BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 83 of 142

Correct — B, 141° W. The long interior boundary between Alaska and Canada runs due north along the 141st meridian west, from Mount Saint Elias to the Beaufort Sea, separating Alaska from Canada's Yukon. It is one of the world's clearest examples of a geometric or artificial boundary — a line drawn on a map rather than one following a river, a ridge or a language. Its origin is the Treaty of Saint Petersburg of 1825, the Anglo-Russian convention by which Britain and Russia divided their North American claims: the agreed line ran north and west to the 141st meridian west and then straight north to the 'Frozen Ocean'. When the United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 it inherited that boundary unchanged, which is why a nineteenth-century agreement between two European empires still fixes an American frontier today. Only the southern coastal stretch — the Alaska panhandle, where the line follows the mountains behind the coast rather than a meridian — was disputed, and that was settled by the Alaska Boundary Tribunal in 1903. The meridian's reach extends offshore as well: Canada and the United States have taken different positions on the maritime boundary in the Beaufort Sea, with Canada arguing for the extension of the 141st meridian out to 200 nautical miles.

• (a)151° W — Ten degrees too far west — this meridian runs through the interior of Alaska itself, close to Anchorage and the Cook Inlet, hundreds of kilometres from any international boundary. It is the closest wrong option, which is exactly why the question offers four meridians ten degrees apart: they are indistinguishable to anyone guessing.
• (c)161° W — Further west still, out in the thinly populated country of western Alaska towards the Bering Sea and the base of the Alaska Peninsula. Nothing about it is a boundary of any kind. At this longitude Alaska has no neighbour except the sea.
• (d)131° W — Ten degrees east of the answer, which places it offshore in the Pacific to the west of British Columbia. The Alaska panhandle boundary in that latitude belt does not follow a meridian at all — it follows the line of mountains behind the coast, as fixed by the Alaska Boundary Tribunal in 1903.

Political boundaries are classified by what they follow. Natural or physical boundaries use a landscape feature — the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico, the Pyrenees between France and Spain, Lake Victoria between Tanzania and Uganda. Geometric or artificial boundaries follow a line of latitude or longitude and pay no attention to the ground: the 141st meridian between Alaska and Yukon, the 49th parallel across most of the Canada-United States border, the 38th parallel that divided Korea in 1945, the 22nd parallel between Egypt and Sudan. Cultural boundaries follow language or religion. Geometric boundaries have a characteristic history — they are drawn by distant powers over territory neither side has mapped in detail, which is why they cluster in North America, Africa and the polar regions, and why they so often produce later disputes when the ground turns out not to match the paper. The Alaska case shows both halves of that pattern: the meridian portion has never been in serious dispute because a meridian is unambiguous, while the coastal portion, described in words rather than by a line, took until 1903 to settle.

There is no derivation here — a specific meridian has to be known — but two anchors make it recallable and one habit protects the guess. The first anchor is the pair of numbers that define the Canada-United States border: 49° N for the long western land boundary with the lower forty-eight states, and 141° W for the Alaska-Yukon boundary. Learn them together, because they are the same kind of line drawn by the same logic. The second anchor is the date: 1825, a Russian-British treaty, inherited by the United States with the Alaska Purchase of 1867 — which also tells you why the line is where it is rather than somewhere more convenient. The habit is to sanity-check the magnitude before choosing: Alaska spans roughly 130° W to 173° E, so a boundary meridian with Canada must lie at the eastern edge of that span, which rules out 161° W immediately and makes 151° W improbable. That leaves 141° W and 131° W, and 131° W is out at sea.

• The Alaska-Yukon boundary follows the 141st meridian west, running north to the Beaufort Sea; it is a geometric boundary, drawn on the map rather than following any physical feature.
• It was fixed by the Treaty of Saint Petersburg of 1825 between Britain and Russia, which set the line north and west to the 141st meridian west and then north to the 'Frozen Ocean'.
• The United States inherited the boundary with the Alaska Purchase of 1867 and did not renegotiate it.
• The southern, coastal panhandle portion does not follow a meridian and was disputed until the Alaska Boundary Tribunal settled it in 1903.
• Canada has argued that the maritime boundary in the Beaufort Sea should follow the same 141st meridian out to 200 nautical miles — a claim the United States does not accept.

• Guessing among meridians that differ by ten degrees without checking Alaska's span. Alaska runs from about 130° W to 173° E, so only the eastern edge of that range can border Canada.
• Assuming the whole Alaska-Canada boundary is a meridian. The panhandle stretch follows the coastal mountains and was settled by tribunal in 1903, not by a line of longitude.
• Confusing the 141st meridian with the 49th parallel. Both are Canada-United States boundaries, but one is a line of longitude in the far north-west and the other a line of latitude across the west.

BPSC asks world political geography as a single coordinate or a single named line, with wrong options spaced evenly around the answer so that partial knowledge does not help. UPSC asks the same material through the feature rather than the number — which lake divides two countries, which line is drawn on a map — or through the mathematics of longitude and local time.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The long western land boundary between Canada and the contiguous United States largely follows

  • (a)The 141st meridian west
  • (b)The 49th parallel north
  • (c)The 38th parallel north
  • (d)The Rocky Mountains watershed

  Answer(b) The 49th parallel north — a line of latitude, the counterpart of the 141st meridian west that separates Alaska from Yukon. Both are geometric boundaries drawn by treaty.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Alaska-Yukon boundary along the 141st meridian west was originally fixed by a treaty between

  • (a)The United States and Canada
  • (b)Britain and Russia
  • (c)The United States and Russia
  • (d)Britain and France

  Answer(b) Britain and Russia — the Treaty of Saint Petersburg of 1825. The United States inherited the line when it bought Alaska from Russia in 1867.