The Pig War: Hogging the border
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Why did a single pig spark the US‑British Pig War on San Juan Island?
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On an island just off Washington State in America, there is a pig. It's snuffling around, looking for food, and it trots across an invisible border right into a farmer's garden. And not, it has to be said, for the first time.
So this rooting pig, a Berkshire boar, had been disrupting root crops, mainly potatoes.
But on this day,
the
trespassing pig. Just sends this farmer. Over the edge.
So he takes his rifle off the wall, goes outside, chases the pig to the end of edge of the woods, and shoots it, kills it.
But what that farmer didn't realize was that by killing that pig, he would strike a match, igniting a tinderbox of tensions between Great Britain and the United States of America.
So you've got sixty-four guns pointed at you. You've got uh probably about four hundred Royal Marines. Pretty soon there's five hundred soldiers on the island. And yet the last thing they wanted was to go to war with each other.
Especially over a pig. But why does this pig trigger a geopolitical nightmare? Well, I'm Mark Fennell and strap yourself in for a wild ride. When more than a century ago, yes, a dead pig brought two superpowers to the brink of war, and no one. Saw it coming.
My favorite view is from American camp. And from that height, which is barely a hundred feet above the sea, that if you turn your head to the right, you can see the mountains. If you turn your head to the left, you can see a ten thousand foot strato volcano. It's probably one of the best uh sea level views in the National Park Service. So the guy with a very nice view, that would be I'm a retired National Park Ranger historian. I live here on Salmon Island, right in the middle of the island. I love the scenery. I love the fact that you can drive around the periphery of the island, which is 54 square miles, 60 miles long, seven miles sten to stern, and you see these magnificent And vistas.
So for people that aren't familiar with San Juan Islands, where exactly are you right now?
Okay, so look up into the northwest corner of the United States of America, right at the border, and you see Washington
State.
How did the ambiguous 1846 Oregon Treaty leave San Juan Island disputed?
And we're talking like the very tippy top right of America here, which is where sort of Washington State borders with modern-day Canada. What I want you to do is like zoom in. Zoom in and then squit. There's a big island there. Now that's Vancouver Island. We're not talking about that. Keep zooming, keep zooming. There. You see a tiny cluster of islands? That is where San Juan
Island is. Right in the middle of the Strait of Georgia, which separates Vancouver Island from the North American mainland.
Sandwiched right in there, aren't you? That's correct. So it's important for you to know that the ownership of this particular island is a messy one. So back in 1792, when the British first ventured into this particular part of the Americas and laid claim to the Oregon Country, which uh sort of stretches from the coast, the Pacific coast, all the way to the Rocky Mountains, so like where modern day Oregon, Washington actually most of Canada's British Columbia are today. However,
the United States of America also laid claim of it by virtue of a treaty that they'd signed with Spain, which put the Oregon country into their orbit. And so the two countries agreed that they would mutually explore and occupy this vast swath of land until effective occupation could be
demonstrated. For almost thirty years, the United States and Great Britain were sort of like housemates in the Pacific Northwest, living amongst each other, but with neither really laying claim to fully owning the place, until that is, a proper treaty was signed. The Treaty of Oregon In eighteen forty six, as part of the treaty, they drew a line vaguely along the forty ninth parallel, which is that that line of latitude that runs around the globe.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did a single pig spark the US‑British Pig War on San Juan Island?
0:00–3:30
2
How did the ambiguous 1846 Oregon Treaty leave San Juan Island disputed?
3:30–7:02
3
What role did the Hudson’s Bay Company’s sheep farm play in the conflict?
7:02–10:28
4
How did Lyman Cutler’s shooting of the pig escalate into a military standoff?
10:28–13:26
5
Why did both sides send warships and artillery to the tiny island?
13:26–16:37
6
How did the United States and Britain finally de‑escalate the Pig War?
16:37–20:02
7
What was the 1871 Treaty of Washington and German arbitration’s impact?
20:02–22:40
8
What lessons does the Pig War teach about how wars can start and end?
22:40–25:47