The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

The Infrastructure for Research on the History of Dutch Fisheries
The history of the Dutch fisheries is many-sided indeed and offers
several lines of approach for research. However, it is still partly a
neglected field of research and no immediate change in that situation is
expected. Only one long-term research project is in progress, at the
University of Groningen, on the catch and trade of cod by the Dutch.
Some aspects of fishing history are taught in the maritime history courses
at the University of Leiden. A few students have written M.A. theses on
the history of fishing. No more than three Ph.D. theses in this field have
been defended over the past ten years. Funds and opportunities for
further research are not available. In government research institutes for
modern fisheries, hardly any inkling exists of the value that historic
research can have for illuminating present-day and future problems.
Apart from source material in state and municipal archives, good
research facilities are provided by the library in the Fishery Museum at
Vlaardingen. A number of thematic exhibitions in this museum in the
early 1980s boosted related research. However, subsequent budgetary
problems have drastically curtailed the operations of this museum. The
Fishery Museum has national pretentions, but other fishery museums are
locally orientated, and some are more in the nature of an antiquities’
room.
It is evident, and the same goes for other fields of maritime history,
that research on narrow aspects of fishing history is mainly done by
non-professional historians and individual historians. That happens on
an irregular basis and ought to be supported as strongly as possible. A
promising initiative was launched last year: a cash prize for the best
study of the history of fishing. A new journal, called Netwerk, edited by
the friends of the Fishery Museum includes short articles.
An Historiography
In the early 1870s the study of maritime aspects of Dutch history was
encouraged by competitions held by learned societies which resulted in
two excellent books on the early history of whaling and the fishing
industry. The prize winners were a young lawyer, later archivist, S.
Muller Fzn, and an economist, later a professor, A. Beaujon. The latter’s
book covers exactly the theme of the contest: “the history of Dutch
seafisheries, their progress, decline and revival, especially in connection
with the legislation on fisheries in earlier and later times”. An
international exhibition on fisheries at London in 1883 was the reason for
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