On 7 December 1886, the American Guano Company sold all its rights to the British firm John T. Arundel and Company, which made the island its headquarters for guano digging operations in the Pacific from 1886 to 1891. Arundel applied in 1897 to the British Colonial Office for a licence to work the island on the presumption that the U.S. had abandoned their claim. The United Kingdom then considered Baker Island to be a British territory, although they never formally annexed it. The United States raised the question at the beginning of the 1920s and after some diplomatic exchanges, in 1935 they launched the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project and in May 1936 issued Executive Order 7358 to clarify their sovereignty.