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The Nootka Conventions were a series of three agreements between Spain and Great Britain in 1790 which averted a war between the two countries over overlapping claims to portions of the northwestern coast of North America. The dispute began when Spain seized property settled by British subject John Meares on Nootka Island, leading to a confrontation between Spain and Britain known as the Nootka Crisis which threatened to trigger a major imperial war for control of the Pacific, and theoretically for western North America. Russia was also a party of interest, as their prior trading presence and claim extended much farther south of Nootka to California, and was in fact the reason for the northward expansion of Spanish exploration and attempted settlement.
The Nootka Conventions of the 1790s, negotiated by George Vancouver and his Spanish counterpart Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra prevented the dispute from inflating to war. The Spanish concessions did not give up claims, only allowed other parties to trade at Nootka Sound, where a Spanish fort had been in operation. As of the Conventions the Spanish fort at Nootka Sound was available for occupation by any power, be it Russia, Britain or should Spain desire to return.
The fledgling United States had no claim in this area at the time. Spanish rights in the area were not conceded to the United States until 1818, although theoretically Spain had no exclusive claim to sell the region. Exclusive ownership was nonetheless the position of the United States in interpreting the rights it had bought from Spain, leading to a dispute with Britain known as the Oregon boundary dispute.
Although the Nootka Conventions theoretically opened the Pacific Northwest coast from Oregon to Alaska to British colonization, the advent of the Napoleonic Wars distracted any efforts towards this (as recommended by Vancouver at the time) and the proposed settlement colony in the region was to be abandoned. The Hudson's Bay Company, the remaining British presence in the region, was averse to settlement and any other economic activity than its own, such that settlement and resource development did not take place to any degree until the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858, which formalized British claims on the mainland still residual from the Nootka Conventions into the Colony of British Columbia.
"Nootka Convention"