historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 4. Times of success. Defending the fatherland
instead of buttressing Christian IV’s pretensions against Swedish and Dutch
pressure, Boxhorn used them to give strength to Dutch interests in the Baltic
and the Northern seas.
Yet the dispute about navigating and fishing in the Northern seas was not
so clear cut. As Boxhorn had to admit, some of the Danish privileges explicitly
stated that Iceland ‘and the neighbouring islands’ were forbidden territory for
the Dutch, a fact that Selden, in the only reference he made to Boxhorn’s Apologia
in Mare Clausum, did not fail to point out. 50 However, since these ‘neighbouring
islands’ remained unidentified, the territories to which they referred
were a matter of debate. Christian IV held that all territories to the north and
west of Iceland belonged to the king of Denmark, but that claim was disputed
by both the Dutch and the English.
Moreover, in the Northern seas the Dutch not only had to take on the Danes
but also the English Muscovy Company. 51 The Muscovy Company, backed
by both James I and Charles I who saw the Company as an excellent mean to
enhance their pretended sovereignty of the sea in the northern hemisphere,
was far more aggressive towards the Dutch than the Danes had ever been,
eager as it was to defend what it held to be its exclusive right. The Muscovy
Company based its exclusive right to fish in the seas around Spitzbergen on
English expeditions in the Northern seas and the final discovery of the island
by Sir Hugh Willoughby (†1554). 52 Although not entirely free from mythical
fabrication, the passage of Von Bremen that Boxhorn quotes in the Apologia
showed that the Dutch could present similar arguments and back them up
with historical evidence.
But the most serious threat to Dutch maritime interests came from the pretensions
of James I and Charles I to the dominion over large parts of the North
Sea. 53 To counter these pretensions the Dutch followed two lines of argumentation
simultaneously: they stuck to the principle of the freedom of the sea on
the grounds of the law of nature and the law of nations, and they pointed out
that James I’s and Charles I’s pretensions were novel and went against the
50 John Selden, Mare Clausum seu de Domino Maris Libri Duo (William Stanesby; London, 1635),
II.32, p. 297. ‘Etiam Christophorus Rex Daniae & Norwegiae anno MCCCCXLV indulsit, Ziriczeensibus
in Zelandia liberam in regnum suum Navigationibus, exceptis Islandia aliisque invicem Insulis prohibitis
quae diplomatis verba sunt.’ Reference to Pontanus, Rerum Danicarum historia, X, p. 623, and Boxhorn,
Apologia, p. 211, where this grant by Christopher III (1418-1448) is reproduced.
51 Indeed, in the Northern seas the English were a far greater threat to the Dutch than the Danes.
See Muller, Geschiedenis der Noordsche Compagnie, pp. 197-284.
52 Willoughby had actually crossed the Barentsz Sea and had reached Novaya Zemlya.
53 Selden held that the dominium of the English monarchs stretched from the coast of the British
Isles to the shores of the countries bordering the seas over whom the English monarchs claimed to possess
lordship.
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