Getting back to an old issue, because I found out I have been
hideously misinforming you all...
The gfsr boundary was always defined as the Marowijne/Maroni river.
Of course, the Dutch and French ran into the same kind of trouble as
the Dutch and the British did on the other side of Surinam: The
Marowijne/Maroni was formed by the two rivers Tapanahoni and
Lawa/Aoua. So they asked the Russian emperor for arbitration. In 1891
he decided that the upstream continuation of the Marowijne/Maroni was
the Lawa/Aoua, and not the Tapanahoni. Thus the contested territory
in between these rivers became Dutch.
But further upstream still, the Lawa/Aoua turned out to be
the "result" of two other rivers, the Marowini (Marouini in French,
and my old school atlas calls it Marowijnekreek) and the
Litani/Itany. Now the area in between these rivers is still
contested, although de facto administered by France (just as the New
River Triangle is administered by Guyana). Reading
the "Boedelscheiding" by Dutch PM Den Uyl, it looks like in 1975
there still wasn't a formal border agreement about this "triangle".
There probably still isn't one now.
By the way, my old (1927) Dutch School atlas shows the border to be
the Litani. An interesting detail, however, is that the border
doesn't go all the way up to the source, or the Amazon watershed
(boundary with Brazil), but leaves the river approx. 20 km before it,
and follows a straight Indian footpath ("Indiaansch voetpad") to the
Brazil border, at a mountain called Temomairem. But this atlas shows
the brsr border in such a way, that I don't have much confidence in
it's accuracy. The atlas was, of course, published almost ten years
before the demarcation of the brgysr tripoint, so I don't think this
brsr boundary was demarcated at all at this time, of course because
the area was still largely unknown territory.
Anyway, some url's to read about it (in French):
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/tristan.bellardie/lim.html
http://www.voillemont-deiber.qc.ca/aventure/uyane/coudrea/chapit2c.htm
Peter S.
(hoi Pepijn!)
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., "Peter Smaardijk" <smaardijk@y...> wrote:
> The Marowini/Marouini triangle was awarded to the Netherlands
through
> arbitration by the emperor of Russia in 1891, but it looks like
there
> has been some sort of an agreement since (maybe 1900, maybe
concluded
> in Basle, the sources are not really clear), that stated otherwise.
> I'm still searching. As you may have guessed, the issue at stake
was
> not different from the Upper Courantyne one (which upper branch is
> the main river, since it has been decided the main river is the
> boundary).
>
> According to http://suriname.esmartweb.com/boedel_d.htm , in 1975
> (independence of Surinam) the Netherlands and France were in
> accordance about the boundary from the confluence of the Marowini
(or
> Marowijnekreek in Dutch) and the Litani (called Itany in French)
> northwards, and it was stated by the Dutch p.m. Joop den Uyl:
Omtrent
> de grens ten zuiden van de samenvloeiing van de Marowijnekreek en
de
> Litani geldt het, blijkens het op 14 november 1975 door delegaties
> van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden en de Franse Republiek
> ondertekende protocol,door de koninkrijksdelegatie bepleite
> koninkrijksstandpunt, onverminderd hetgeen blijkens dit protocol
> gemeenschappelijk wordt aanbevolen als leidraad voor een te sluiten
> grensverdrag en een verdrag betreffende economische samenwerking
> tussen Suriname en de Franse Republiek. [About the boundary south
of
> the confluence of the Marowini and the Litani the protocol, signed
by
> the delegacies of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the French
> Republic on november 14, 1975, giving the point of view of the
> Kingdom, notwithstanding that what is recommended jointly by this
> protocol as a guidance for a boundary treaty, and an economic
> cooperation treaty yet to be concluded between Surinam and the
French
> Republic, is in force].
>
> This document is a letter of Joop den Uyl to the Surinam government
> describing the boundaries of the colony on the eve of independence,
> which was november 25, 1975.
>
> Peter S.