Jay Treaty, signed in 1794, resolved disputes that arose between the United States and Great Britain after the Revolutionary War in America ended. John Jay, chief justice of the United States, arranged the treaty in London.
Neither Britain nor the United States fully lived up to the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War in 1783. Americans did not pay their prewar debts to British subjects. They also refused to pay for wartime property losses of Americans who sympathized with Britain. The British refused to give up military posts on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes and to open their important West Indies markets to U.S. ships.
Relations between the United States and Britain almost reached the breaking point after France declared war on Britain in 1793. The United States remained neutral, but American ships took part in vital trade between France and French colonies. In 1794, an illegal British blockade of French colonies in the West Indies resulted in the capture of almost 300 U.S. ships and brought Britain and the United States close to war.
President George Washington sent Jay to London to negotiate a settlement. The negotiators signed the Jay Treaty on Nov. 19, 1794. The treaty gave the United States control of all military posts on its side of the Great Lakes and opened the British West Indies to U.S. ships under severe restrictions. It also provided that neutral commissions would decide possession of disputed areas on the Canada-U.S. border, the amount U.S. debtors owed the British, and the amounts Britain owed for losses in the blockade. But the treaty failed to stop British interference with U.S. ships, and it prohibited retaliation against such interference.
Jay and other members of the Federalist Party called the treaty the best possible arrangement considering Britain’s superior strength. But the opposing Democratic-Republican Party insisted that Jay could have won better terms by threatening to cut off trade with the British. The U.S. Senate narrowly passed the treaty, but only after Britain removed the section dealing with the British West Indies trade. Washington approved the treaty in August 1795.
