Historical Social Research Historische Sozialforschung

Historical
Social Research
Historische
Sozialforschung
Special Issue
Cornel Zwierlein, Rüdiger Graf &
Magnus Ressel (Eds.)
The Production of Human Security in
Premodern and Contemporary History
Die Produktion von Human Security in
Vormoderne und Zeitgeschichte
Mixed Issue
Cliometrics
No. 134
HSR Vol. 35 (2010) 4

INTRODUCTION AND CONCEPTS
CONTENTS
Special Issue
Cornel Zwierlein & Rüdiger Graf
The Production of Human Security in Premodern and Contemporary
History. 7
Christopher Daase
National, Societal, and Human Security: On the Transformation of
Political Language. 22
DOMESTIC SECURITY REGIMES
Karl Härter
Security and “Gute Policey” in Early Modern Europe: Concepts, Laws,
and Instruments. 41
Rebecca Knapp
Communicating Security: Technical Communication, Fire Security, and
Fire Engine ‘Experts’ in the Early Modern Period. 66
Klaus Weinhauer
Youth Crime, Urban Spaces, and Security in Germany since the 19th
Century. 86
Achim Saupe
Human Security and the Challenge of Automobile and Road Traffic
Safety: A Cultural Historical Perspective. 102
PIRATES AND SECURITY OF THE SEAS
Magnus Ressel
The North European Way of Ransoming: Explorations into an Unknown
Dimension of the Early Modern Welfare State. 125
Joachim Östlund
Swedes in Barbary Captivity: The Political Culture of Human Security,
Circa 1660-1760. 148
Erik Gøbel
The Danish Algerian Sea Passes, 1747-1838: An Example of Extraterritorial
Production of Human Security. 164
3

Leos Müller
Swedish Shipping in Southern Europe and Peace Treaties with North
African States: An Economic Security Perspective. 190
ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES, DISASTERS, AND HUMAN SECURITY
Gerrit Jasper Schenk
Human Security in the Renaissance? Securitas, Infrastructure, Collective
Goods and Natural Hazards in Tuscany and the Upper Rhine Valley.
209
Dominik Collet
Storage and Starvation: Public Granaries as Agents of Food Security in
Early Modern Europe. 234
Cornel Zwierlein
Insurances as Part of Human Security, their Timescapes, and Spatiality. 253
Uwe Lübken
Governing Floods and Riots: Insurance, Risk, and Racism in the Postwar
United States. 275
Melanie Arndt
From Nuclear to Human Security? Prerequisites and Motives for the
German Chernobyl Commitment in Belarus. 289
Thorsten Schulz
Transatlantic Environmental Security in the 1970s? NATO’s “Third
Dimension” as an Early Environmental and Human Security Approach. 309
Rüdiger Graf
Between National and Human Security: Energy Security in the United
States and Western Europe in the 1970s. 329
CLIOMETRICS
Mixed Issue
Maria Eugénia Mata
Environmental Challenge in the Canning Industry: The Portuguese Case
in the Early Twentieth Century. 351
4

Special Issue
The Production of Human Security in
Premodern and Contemporary History
Die Produktion von Human Security in
Vormoderne und Zeitgeschichte
INTRODUCTION AND CONCEPTS
No. 134
HSR Vol. 35 (2010) 4

The Production of Human Security
in Premodern and Contemporary History
Cornel Zwierlein & Rüdiger Graf �
Abstract: »Die Produktion von Human Security in Vormoderne und Zeitgeschichte«.
Since the end of the Cold War, Human Security has become an important
approach in international politics, law, and political science. In contrast
to the so-called ‘Westphalian System’ that knows only states as subjects and
objects of security, human security aims at the security of individual human
beings if failed or failing states do not protect them nor provide for their basic
needs. Thereby, such heterogeneous forms of security as security from war,
food security, energy security or security from crime and traffic accidents become
common problems of international politics. Developing this new concept
of security, UN documents as well as some experts suggest that the extended
concept of security is a recurrence of the premodern concept of security that
prevailed before the clear-cut distinction between domestic and international
politics and the evolution of the system of states. This introduction discusses
contributions on the premodern and contemporary history of (human) security
and tries to assess the heuristic potential of the concept for historical research.
Keywords: Human security, History of security regimes, intertemporal comparison,
interepochal comparison, new medievalism, Westphalian system, failing
states.
The concept of human security was introduced at the level of global politics
and the United Nations in the 1990s and is intended to complement the traditional
concept of state security, but can also stand in opposition to it. Human
security demands that the policies of international organizations must be directed
towards the protection of individual human beings, that their security
and basic rights must be more than just a side-effect of the protection of borders,
governments and the sovereignty of countries against external violence.
Human security emerged as a central category in debates on security policies
after the Cold War and often alludes to a new postmodern and postnational age.
While social and political scientists as well as experts on international law
intensively debate the concept and its policy implications, historians rarely
touch on it. In this special issue of Historical Social Research, historians explicitly
deal with “human security” as both an object of study and, to a certain
� Address all communications to: Cornel Zwierlein, Faculty of History, Ruhr-University
Bochum, Universitätstraße 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany;
e-mail: cornel.zwierlein@rub.de.
Rüdiger Graf, Faculty of History, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, 44780
Bochum, Germany; e-mail: ruediger.graf@rub.de.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 7-21

extent, a heuristical device of historical research combining the social and
political sciences with specifically historical approaches.
The Human Development Report of 1994, the first official UN document to
introduce the concept, defined security as “safety from the constant threats of
hunger, disease, crime, and repression. It also means protection from sudden
and hurtful disruptions in the pattern of our daily lives – whether in our homes,
in our jobs, in our communities or in our environments”. Consequently it enumerated
“job security, income security, health security, environmental security,
security from crime” as the “emerging concerns of human security all over the
world” – a catalogue that is broad but not exhaustive. 1 The Human Development
Report was intended as preparation for the Social Development Summit
of 1995 and, consequently, tried to combine the new formula of development
policy, “sustainable development”, 2 with a new concept of security. Therefore,
issues from the agenda of development policies were implicitly labeled as
security issues. This process or strategy of the securitization of development
issues (intentionally) raised attention to the threats to security in everyday life.
A couple of years later, in 2003, the Commission on Human Security which had
been formed in the meantime explained the shift towards “human security” as
follows:
The international community urgently needs a new paradigm of security.
Why? Because the security debate has changed dramatically since the inception
of state security advocated in the 17th century. According to that traditional
idea, the state would monopolize the rights and means to protect its citizens.
State power and state security would be established and expanded to
sustain order and peace. But in the 21st century, both the challenges to security
and its protectors have become more complex. The state remains the fundamental
purveyor of security. Yet it often fails to fulfill its security obligations
– and at times has even become a source of threat to its own people.
That is why attention must now shift from the security of the state to the security
of the people – to human security. 3
Secure living conditions away from slums, security in the face of natural and
human-made catastrophes, security against violence, criminality, the effects of
civil war or even the effects of badly coordinated road traffic are objects of
human security policy, of NGOs as well as of broader initiatives such as the
United Nations Human Settlement Programme. Framing all these issues under
the comprehensive concept of security allows the UN to assume responsibility;
moreover, it increasingly blurs the once clear distinction between domestic and
foreign policies.
1 Human Development Report 1994, 3.
2 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development 1987; “sustainable
development” had been the main issue of the UN Conference on Environment and Development
(Rio de Janeiro 1992).
3 Final Report of the Commission on Human Security 2003, 2.
8

Behind these definitions and the respective UN programs stand well-defined
interests. In particular, some medium powers, such as Canada, Norway or
Japan, try to use the human security agenda in order to play a major role in
international politics; “human security” is a programmatic and, to a certain
extent, even an ideological term. As a positive formula, human security corresponds
to development policies and relies on – while simultaneously contributing
to – the much discussed erosion of the old concept of undivided state sovereignty
during the 20th Century: 4 Human security is supposed to overcome
state borders for the sake of people’s human rights and the security of their
basic livelihoods when failing or failed states do not accomplish the function of
protecting their citizens from harm and violence. Correspondingly, in international
law the “responsibility to protect” has been developed, fostered once
again by Canada and similar states, and first mentioned officially in a final
resolution of the UN General Assembly in 2005. 5 To a certain extent, “human
security” is the positive complement to the negatively connoted idea that a
hegemonic power or the UN should become a “world police” after the security
architecture of the Cold War disappeared. 6 But its political function does not
prevent the term from having analytical implications; “human security” is the
latest and apparently most successful term in a longer series of notions which
have come up since the Second World War in order to describe changing security
regimes: “extended security”, “common security”, “global security”, “cooperative
security” or “comprehensive security”. All these new notions of
international security try to incorporate political questions which used to be
chiefly domestic into the realm of international affairs. Thus, to some observers,
they seem to correspond to the erosion or end of the so-called “Westphalian
System” of sovereign nation states. Official UN documents such as the
above-cited report by the Commission on Human Security refer explicitly to an
“obsolete Westphalian System”, thus positioning the present development
towards human security as a development which ushers in a new era after
classical modernity. 7 What began with the doctrines of sovereignty by Jean
Bodin and Thomas Hobbes and the classical concepts of civil rights since Hugo
Grotius seems to find a swift end in the present day. From this perspective,
classical modernity becomes an exceptional period of world history sandwiched
between structurally similar premodern and postmodern conditions.
Accordingly, the clear-cut divisions of internal and external security policies
appear as an exception, historically appropriate only for the 19th and the first
two thirds of the 20th century. Therefore, the current questioning of state
4
Cf. the select titles Biersteker 1999; Camilleri and Falk 1992; Krasner 1999; Walker 2003;
Sassen 1996.
5
Verlage 2009.
6
A still worthwhile critical analysis for this point is Paris 2001.
7
E.g. Final Report of the Commission on Human Security 2003, 2.
9

oundaries within the concept of human security also challenges our view of
history and of the boundaries between epochs.
As far as we can see, historians have only partially addressed this challenge.
While transnational history and territoriality have emerged as important topics
of historical research 8 and migration, transnational flows of goods and ideas, as
well as the constitution and maintenance of state borders have ranked among
the most fashionable topics of historical inquiry, 9 these studies only rarely deal
explicitly with the concept of security. Studies of historical security regimes,
on the other hand, still largely focus on the national and military security of
nation states. The concept of “human security”, which has so far been neglected
by historians, might thus provide the means to connect the new approaches
to statehood, citizenship, and borders with security concerns and offer
a coherent frame that can also deal with the classical concerns of nation states.
In this way, “human security” could overcome the artificial divide between
state-centered and transnational history, integrating both into a common
framework while connecting them to highly relevant issues in contemporary
international politics. This volume assembles initial attempts to assess the
utility of “human security” for historical research. Its articles deal with the
issue in two ways: 1) they historicize “human security” or corresponding notions
of security, security policies and practices through time; 2) they explore
the analytical and heuristic value of “human security” for historiography.
1. Historicizing Human Security
Looking at the state of research on the history of security, at first glance the
topic seems to be ubiquitous and to have belonged to the core of historical
research for a long time; if we take a closer look, however, it is not that clear
which studies should be included in such a presumably long bibliography. Even
though Lucien Febvre called for a history of the “sentiment de securité” encompassing
religious, economic, political, and social aspects of security production
as early as 1956, 10 curiously, that path has not been taken by many
historians. In France, in reaction to his demand, on the one hand, a history of
the spread of late Medieval and Early Modern maritime insurance business was
published 11 and, on the other hand, Jean Delumeau’s works on fear, punishment
and culpabilization in Early Modern times appeared. 12 Since fear is the mental
and emotional counterpart to security, Delumeau focused on the inner subjective
reactions to “fear” and how the different confessional cultures in Early
8
Geyer and Bright 1995; Maier 2006; Maier 2000; Conze 2004, 15-43; Osterhammel 2001.
9
As excellent examples see Ngai 2004; Reinecke 2010.
10
Febvre 1956.
11
Boiteux 1968.
12
Delumeau, 1978; Delumeau 1983; Delumeau 1989.
10

Modern Europe reacted to those fears. The broad research on the discourses
and practices of “Policey” put the issue of “security” only very recently in the
forefront. 13 Insurance history remained enclosed for a long time in the narrow
methodological and disciplinary frames of law and business. 14 Only in the light
of the history of knowledge and sciences did it come back in relation to the
history of probability. 15 The fast-growing field of the history of (natural) hazards
and resilience seldom focused on the problem of “security regimes” but
mostly looked at its objects of study from the other side of the coin, from the
perspective of threat and risk. 16 Histories of national security policies still
mostly deal with military capabilities and preparedness, while studies on inner
security discuss, above all, terrorist threats. 17 Apart from some early efforts to
establish “security” as a distinct theme of sociology that also contained short
histories of security, 18 it is only recently that some broader collaborative enterprises
to write histories of security regimes have re-emerged, but these were
discontinued and did not focus on human security. 19 With the exception of one
classical but now quite out-dated attempt by Werner Conze, we do not even
have thorough research on the history of the word and concept of “security” in
a long-term perspective. 20 While the most recent conceptual history has been
elaborated by Christopher Daase, 21 for the earlier epochs, e.g. the Medieval era,
there are only very vague assumptions that “securitas” was not a very frequently
used concept compared to the prevailing notions of “peace” 22 and
“tranquillity”; we have no systematic attempt to describe the functionally
equivalent and synonymous notions, or to give a detailed explanation of that
absence of “security” apart from the obvious answer that the idea of internal
and external security seems to be intrinsically connected to the notion and the
practice of Early Modern state-building.
The contribution by Gerrit Jasper Schenk takes up this task, concentrating
on the exceptional example of the securitas fresco in the Palazzo Publico in
Siena, which shows that the security/state liaison had its roots not in the later
territorial states and big kingdoms but rather in the late Medieval Italian signories
with their tendency to territorialize dominion and governance. The
13 Härter et al. 2010; Lüdtke et al. 2008.
14 Cf. only, as representative for a bulk of studies, Niekerk 1998; La Torre 2000; Koch 1998;
Pearson 2004.
15 Daston 1988; Hald 1990; Hacking 1975.
16 Bennassar 1996; Favier 2002; Kempe and Rohr 2003; Gisler 2003; Schenk 2007; Favier
and Remacle 2007; Favier 2000; Groh et al. 2001; Favier and Granet-Abisset 2005; Mercier-Faivre
et al. 2008; Favier 2007.
17 See for example Leffler 1992; Bluth 2002; Weinhauer 2004.
18 Kaufmann 1973.
19 Gerwen and van Leeuwen 2000.
20 Conze 1984.
21 See Christopher Daase’s contribution to this volume.
22 For the late Medieval notion of peace in the international field cf. only Kintzinger 2000.
11

paper by Karl Härter follows chronologically and shows, for the Germanspeaking
lands, how “security” became central to the 17th and 18th centuries’
discourse on Policey, that is the discourse on the administration and order of
the territorial states. Here, as in the contribution by Rebecca Knapp on technical
knowledge as a driving motor of security production, the authors do not
stress the present notion of “human security” too much, but rather use a more
general notion of “security”. Nevertheless, their papers contribute in important
ways to our overall knowledge of the historical production of security. Moreover,
this special issue contains a whole section on an important Early Modern
security problem: the maritime security of Northern European sailors who were
often captured by North African “pirates” during their Mediterranean journeys
from the 16th century until 1830 (Ressel, Östlund, Gøbel, Müller). The North
African Barbaresque cities (Tunis, Tripolis, Algier) never became real states,
not even in the Early Modern sense. They remained under Ottoman suzerainty
but nevertheless acted quite autonomously on the international scene. In particular,
they negotiated many peace treaties with the European states. Capturing
European ships and sailors and earning the ransom money was for centuries a
main source of income and wealth for the corsair elite of these semi-states.
Until 1830, many attempts by European sea powers to destroy the system of
piracy by force were unsuccessful, so that insecurity was a continuing problem
for the Mediterranean sea trade. Because of its steadiness, the European traders
and sea powers adapted to this problem in various ways, inventing and institutionalizing
new forms of security production.
The contributions dealing with the contemporary history of security production
cover very different thematic aspects of the broad term: threats to urban
security by crime and youth violence (Weinhauer), traffic and road security at
the conceptual border of safety and security – terms that can be differentiated
in English but not in every other language – (Saupe), environmental security in
a larger sense, especially with regard to natural and technical catastrophes
(Arndt, Lübken, Schulz), and energy security (Graf). They exemplify how,
after the Second World War, and especially since the 1970s, discourses on and
conceptions of security widened long before the notion of “human security”
was coined (Daase). They thereby deliver initial suggestions for a history of
“human security” in a narrower sense as an important field of contemporary
history and go beyond the hitherto rare attempts at such treatments of “human
security”. 23 Moreover, they enrich and nuance the currently expanding field of
a political and cultural history of security in a broader sense. 24
23 MacFarlane and Khong 2006, the only monographic attempt to this end, is mainly (143-
259) devoted to the period from the 1990s onwards.
24 Conze 2005.
12

2. Human Security as a Heuristical Device
The second mode of using “human security” in historiography would be as a
heuristical device. This procedure implies complex problems which become
obvious if we look at the division, intentionally produced by the editors of this
special issue, between contributions concerning premodern (mostly Early
Modern) and contemporary states of affairs. This juxtaposition of different
periods of security regimes reflects the prevailing historical narrative in political
science and politics:
In the report by the 2003 UN Commission on Human Security which was
quoted above, the preoccupation of UN politics with the new notion of security
was framed within a historical narrative of a pre-Westphalian world, a modern
Westphalian world of state security, and a (postmodern) 21st-century world of
a yet-to-be-achieved reign of “human security”. This rudimentary historical
narrative has been expanded by S. Neil MacFarlane and Yuen Foong Khong in
their attempt to write a short – and very selective – critical history of the UN
human security concept: They claim that in the case of human security “we are
speaking more of the recovery of very old understandings of security rather
than the generation of new ideas”. 25 In their “archaeology” of the concept they
take big steps through the European history of ideas, claiming that securitas in
the classical and medieval periods “was [rather] an individual matter and was
not used in reference to communities or states”. 26 While the period of the Cold
War “laid down important foundations for the subsequent architecture of human
security in the internationalization of human rights norms” and was at the
same time “paradoxically” a time of “a further strengthening of norms concerning
sovereignty and nonintervention”, 27 MacFarlane and Khong interpret the
idea of “human security” as a return to the pre-Westphalian system, to premodern
conceptions of universal ethical and spiritual principles which do not stop
at state borders. Emma Rothschild sees the horizon of re-entry rather differently,
arguing that “the new security principles of the end of the twentieth
century constitute a rediscovery, of sorts, of […] late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century
politics”, i.e. of late Enlightenment Liberalism from the 1770s
to the 1820s. 28 Similarly, the German historian Alf Lüdtke considers the increasing
surveillance, controlling, and disciplinary activities of state police
forces since the 1990s to be a return of the Early Modern universalistic concept
of “Policey”. 29 One could link that point with the former discussion by stressing
that, in fact, the cameralist administrative sciences of Policey already
25
MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 19.
26
MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 25, following Rothschild 1995, 61 – but Rothschild only
refers to Cicero and Seneca.
27
MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 262-263.
28
Rothschild 1995, 65.
29
Lüdtke 2006.
13

treated all of the above-mentioned “new” UN categories of threats to human
security (crime, violence, tenure insecurity, natural and human-made disasters
etc.) on the same categorical level. Thus, in many of the analyses by historically
arguing political scientists as well as by historians, we find the idea of a
“return to...” or of a structural similarity between premodern and “late” or
“postmodern” conceptions of security. This implies that the time of “high modernity”
and nation states can no longer function as the finally achieved standard
against which aberrations are to be measured but that it appears rather as a
comparatively brief historical exception.
A similar and even more comprehensive mode of understanding the present
as a “return to...” has been around for quite a while: As early as 1977, Hedley
Bull developed the scenario of a “new medievalism” 30 in which, unlike during
the Westphalian System of states with undivided sovereignty, governmental,
sub-, and non-governmental actors as well as hybrid regional-politically integrated
systems might coexist. 31 Until after the end of the Cold War this vision,
to which Bull himself, after having developed it extensively, finally did not
subscribe, received no positive resonance. Since then, however, there have
been attempts in the political sciences – always developed without consulting
historians – to further develop the metaphor or analogy of a “new medievalism”.
32 There are many other analogous observations on the contemporary
political world system which seem to fit in with these metaphorical schemes,
such as pre-Bodin and post-Westphalian concepts of sovereignty; old and new
asymmetric wars; old and new warlords etc.
Finally, one could add another similar historical narrative which occurs in
the studies on the counterpart of “security”: that is, “risk” and “hazard”: When,
in 1986, Ulrich Beck wrote risk society in the aftermath of the Chernobyl catastrophe,
his vision of the historical development of the concept of risk and uncertainty
was still quite opaque. However, he postulated that the “risk society”
of the present, in which the unintended consequences of industrialization politics
rebounded on humankind, was a new epoch, a “second modernity”, which
had to struggle with the heritage of the “first modernity”. Under the influence
of François Ewald’s État providence of the same year (1986), risk sociology’s
historical narrative consolidated and converged with that of Anthony Giddens,
Barbara Adams and other time sociologists, now consisting of three steps: 1)
premodern societies exposed to simple “threats”, handling them as strokes of
fate, living within the horizon of a “closed future”; 2) societies of high or
30
No literature exists concerning Bull’s sources. Already in the 1930s, we can read some
similar observations under this title: Nulle 1937.
31
Bull 1977, 240-271. For some recent literature on “new medievalism” cf. Zwierlein’s
contribution in this volume.
32
Some even compare the competing universal powers of Pope and Emperor with today’s
competing universalisms of the nation states and the transnational market economy:
Friedrichs 2001.
14

“first” modernity calculating “risks” in the conceptual frame of an open future,
“colonizing” the future by planned actions; 3) risk societies or societies of the
“second or late modernity”, living in an extended present and forced to deal
with the unintended consequences of first modernity’s planning efforts, confronted
with new “uncertain uncertainties”. 33 This historical vision – never
precisely developed by Beck or Giddens, but deepened by Beck’s longtime
colleague and collaborator Wolfgang Bonß 34 – coincides with the three-step
“archaeology of human security” mentioned above, even though risk sociologists
seldom define the “second modernity” as a return of “premodernity”.
While some sociologists deepen their theories with historical narratives as
Bonß does, historians have started to deal with the problem and history of
“risks” as well. Outside the field of research on the history of natural and human-made
disasters – where current risk sociology is normally cited only cursorily
–, a debate among historians about the historicization of the concept of
“risk society” has begun only recently. 35
Most of the talk of the “return” of a premodern condition is only metaphorical
in nature and seldom thoroughly reflected; premodern and post- or late
modern phenomena may, at best, look similar in certain respects, but they are
certainly not identical. Paradoxically, part of the plausibility of the metaphor
may derive from globalization and the dramatic revolutions in technological
communications that have changed our ways of perceiving the world and dealing
with our contemporaries. Sociologists and philosophers of time such as
Helga Nowotny describe this as the immersion into an extended present which
they distinguish from modern teleological or historicist conceptions of a linear
time leading into a determinable or open future. 36 The perception of the world
in the mode of such an “extended present”, which replaces the open future of
modern times, decreases the plausibility of classical modern categories (progress,
perfectibility, nation-states as the “containers” of linear conceptions of
growth) while simultaneously suggesting that other concepts (hybridizations,
entanglements of “traditions” and (multiple) “modernities”) should take their
places. Consequently, the autodescriptive discourse of post- or late modernity
finds it plausible to play with mirroring itself in historical patterns that may
even be labelled as “medieval”, the period from which modern thinkers were
careful to distance themselves.
How should historians react to this predicament? Does such thinking in rhetorical,
but sometimes quite systematically developed, analogies produce any
33 Cf. Beck 1993.
34 Bonß 1995; cf. similarly the historical narrative in Peretti-Watel 2000, 31-62.
35 Cf. Fressoz 2007, who argues, as many do, that “risk society” is not really new but rather
that the dialectics between planning, technology and unintended consequences can also be
found in the 19th century. This argument can even be widened to yet earlier periods.
36 Rosa 2005; Nowotny 1989, 47-76.
15

new insights? Or is it just a way of mystifying the obvious, used by sociologists
and philosophers while among practical, technological elites the modern categories
of time- and self-perception are still in full swing? How big is its explanatory
value – does it not create more problems than it solves? How do we
deal with the highly contested notion of “modernity” 37 which forms, as “pre-”,
“post-” and “classical modernity”, the cornerstone of all reflections? This question
is further complicated by modernity’s twofold relation to the study of
security: On the one hand, we use “modernity” and its derivative concepts as
simple temporal notions in order to structure our narratives or to develop arguments
about regimes of security in Early Modern or Late Modern history. But,
on the other hand, according to many accounts the notion of modernity itself
depends on people’s changing relationship towards security. One only has to
think of Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptualization of modernity by means of the
gap opening up between the “space of experience” and “horizon of expectation”.
38 As security – at least in its mental and emotional aspects – is a mode of
anticipation, it is located exactly within this gap and is, thus, essential for understanding
modernity. Moreover, although not referring to temporal horizons,
the differentiation between certain regimes of fear and security is also an important
element constituting Zygmunt Bauman’s distinction between a “solid”
and a “liquid modernity”. 39
If one were to use “human security” seriously as a heuristical device, one
would have to start differently and enter the field of structural intertemporal
comparative reasoning. It would be necessary to extract the structural dispositions
that are associated with the notion today and to try to find similar patterns
in history. The most important structural ingredient of “human security” is the
shift from a perspective centered on the state to one centered on human beings,
and this implies that one would have to focus specifically on all effects of the
processes of growth or erosion of statehood, of the forming of individuality etc.
Several articles in this volume offer arguments along these lines. While “food
security” and the difference between availability and access to food constitute
important elements of development policies and of human security today, reacting
to capacity problems of states and societies at the threshold between the
“first” and the “third” world, they appear to have had “striking” counterparts in
the reflections and practices of food storage in public granaries in Early Modern
states structurally positioned at the threshold of “modernity” (Collet). The
production of human security via insurances also exhibits salient resemblances
between Early Modern and contemporary practices that differ from the intermediate
period of the “normal secure state” (Zwierlein). Papers on Barbaresque
37
For an instructive and skeptical assessment of its analytic potential see Cooper 2005, 113-
152.
38
Koselleck 1995, 349-375.
39
Bauman 2006.
16

piracy in Early Modern times are inspired by the recurrence of piracy around
the Horn of Africa since the late 1990s. While piracy today lies rather at the
margins of the human security approach, the best informed current analyses
suggest that it is a consequence of unstable living conditions in the societies
that host the pirates and, thus, of failed or failing states which are a paradigmatic
human security problem. 40 Intertemporal comparisons have to deal with
the problem that Barbaresque city-states were far away from any forms of
statehood even in Early Modern terms. Comparing the two phenomena might
already suggest that they share enough common features in terms of security
production, which, considering the differences, is highly doubtful.
While many political scientists already do not hesitate to conduct such interepochal
comparisons without waiting for a prior elaboration of a real method
– comparing, for example, Ancient Rome, the Mongolian Empire, the USSR,
and the USA as types of empires 41 – many historians are more hesitant, searching
for the explanatory value for specific phenomena as well as for a theory and
methodology of intertemporal/interepochal comparisons which does not yet
exist. Therefore, at the current state of historiographical reflection, we can
leave the reader only with the suggestion that there is an important problem to
be solved. While a full elaboration of a method of intertemporal comparisons
of human security cannot be delivered in this volume, we hope that the juxtaposition
of Early Modern and contemporary ways of thinking about and producing
(human) security will establish the fruitfulness of this field of study for
future research on security regimes and discourses, focusing on “human security”
as a more specific and narrower object than merely “security”.
This issue of Historical Social Research was prepared by a conference at
Ruhr University Bochum on April 8-10, 2010, which was financed by the DFG
project “Taming of Risk in Premodernity”. We thank the contributors for accepting
a very tight deadline and quickly reworking their contributions and the
DFG for financial support. Rebecca Knapp was central to the organization of
the conference. Laura Sembritzki, Marianne Timpe, Sören Nolte, Anne
Meißner, Sven Speek and Christine Schröder all contributed greatly to its success
in various ways.
References
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Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common
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21

National, Societal, and Human Security:
On the Transformation of Political Language
Christopher Daase �
Abstract: »Nationale, gesellschaftliche und menschliche Sicherheit: Zum
Wandel politischer Sprache«. The article traces the extension of the concept of
security over roughly the last fifty years. It differentiates between four dimensions
of conceptual change: the referent object, the issue dimension, the spatial
dimension and the dimension of perceived danger. The process of conceptual
extension is explained not only as securitization, i.e. the result of voluntary
speech acts, but as a macro-social process of the dissociation of state and society
and the prevalence of liberal values.
Keywords: Security, threat, vulnerability, risk, conceptual change.
1. Introduction
Security is the core value of our modern – or rather post-modern – society. This
has not always been the case. For centuries, not security but spiritual and secular
peace dominated theological, philosophical and even political thinking. At
the beginning of the 20th century, however, peace and security started to compete
with each other for primacy in strategic debates and political programs.
Today, global security is an undisputed value and peace has become a concept
widely regarded as only suited for political sermons. While the conceptual
history of the complex relationship between peace and security has still to be
written, it might be useful to concentrate here just on security and the transformation
of the security discourse over the last fifty years.
It is rarely the case that political change can be captured by analyzing one
single concept. But, as I will argue, the concept of security enables us not only
to describe the change in a political discourse, but to explain the transformation
of political practice of Western states and international society in general. This
transformation goes beyond mere policy adaptation, and rather signals a fundamental
change in the underlying security culture. Security culture can be
defined as the sum of beliefs, values and practices of institutions and individuals
that determine (1) what is considered to be a danger or insecurity in the
widest sense and (2) how and by which means this danger should be handled. 1
� Address all communications to: Christopher Daase, Lehrstuhl Internationale Organisation,
Exzellenzcluster “Normative Orders”, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Senckenberganlage
31, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; e-mail: daase@normativeorders.net.
1 Daase 2009.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 22-37

The concept of security is the most visible aspect of security culture, for depending
on how insecurity and security are conceptualized, dangers are emphasized
or de-emphasized and specific political and social issues come to the fore
or are put in the rear. 2
This is the reason why in order to analyze security culture it is necessary to
concentrate on the conceptual change in security. According to historians of
political thought such as Reinhard Koselleck or Quentin Skinner, the transformation
of language signifies political transformation. However, it seems to be
important to avoid the constructivist shortcut of believing that security has
become today’s core value through willful speech acts of securitization, i.e. the
deliberate denomination of problems as security issues in order to procure
higher significance for them in the political process. 3 While securitization
might be part of the process, the change of security culture goes deeper and can
be explained as the result of political and social de-nationalization and transnationalization,
which in turn is the unintended effect of the emancipation of
society from the state. The concept of security is thus cause and effect of political
change.
The crucial point of this change is that the liberal state – and along with it
the international liberal society – are becoming the victims of their own success.
For the social process of emancipation depends on a relatively peaceful
and secure environment. Societal security demands are only articulated if the
fundamental security needs of the state – i.e. peace in the traditional sense – are
fulfilled. As soon as this is the case, however, further-reaching security demands
are made which tend to overburden the state and international organizations.
Wilhelm von Humboldt was among the first who saw the latent tension
between state and societal security when he wrote in his 1792 treatise “Ideas
about an Attempt to Determine the Limits of Effectiveness of the State” the
following: “Those whose security has to be preserved are on the one hand all
citizens in perfect equality and on the other the state itself”. 4 My argument is
that under the condition of globalization and de-nationalization this latent contradiction
has become a manifest contradiction that is most visible, for example,
in the fight against terrorism.
In the following – after a short note on conceptual history as a method of political
science – I will describe the conceptual change in security by analyzing
the extension of its meaning over roughly the last fifty years. I do so by differentiating
between four conceptual dimensions. The first dimension refers to the
referent object, i.e. the question of whose security is to be guaranteed. In the
last fifty years a dramatic shift of meaning has taken place insofar as the state
was first superseded by society and than society by the individual as the main
2 Wolfers 1962; Daase 1993.
3 See Weaver 1995; Buzan et al. 1998.
4 Humboldt 1967, 118.
23

eferent object of security. The second dimension is the issue area, i.e. the
question: In which policy field are insecurities perceived? Again an extension
has taken place by gradually adding to military dangers economic, environmental
and humanitarian concerns. The third dimension refers to the spatial
application of the term. Here a conceptual broadening can be seen in the gradual
extension from national to regional, international and global security. The
fourth dimension finally refers to the conceptualization of danger itself. Here I
argue that an extension has taken place insofar as the purpose of security policy
has shifted from the defense against threats via the reduction of vulnerabilities
to the management of risks. Figure 1 tries to capture these dimensions graphically.
Figure 1: Four Dimension of Extended Security
Geographical
Scope
Issue
Area
global
international
ecological
humanitarian
regional
national
economic
vulnerability
threat
military
24
state
society
risk
individual
Operationalized
Danger
Referent
Object
2. Conceptual History as a Method of Political Science
Conceptual history is not a standard method of political science. Political scientists
either concentrate on what they see as “brute facts” by defining, operationalizing
and measuring political phenomena in order to explain their causal
relationship or interpret the meaning of concepts and discourses in order to
understand political articulation and communication. Rarely, however, is the
difficult interplay between language and action analyzed. This is the reason
why political scientists can learn a lot from the different approaches to conceptual
history – most importantly from the German school of Begriffsgeschichte

(‘history of concepts’) and the so-called Cambridge School of conceptual history
– which have developed in more or less (willful) ignorance of each other. 5
Begriffsgeschichte “designates the study of concepts in the texts of individual
thinkers and bodies of thought in the past”. 6 The central idea is to cautiously
connect conceptual to social and political history. Concepts are taken as
contested intellectual constructions “which both register and shape what
changes and what persists in the structures of society”. 7 This approach sharply
departs from the earlier German tradition of Geistes- or Ideengeschichte (‘intellectual
history/history of ideas’) which Reinhard Koselleck criticized for “treating
ideas as constants, which although articulated in different historical forms,
do not themselves change”. 8 The underlying hypothesis of Koselleck’s work
and of much of the collaborative venture of the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe
(‘historical basic concepts’) is that in a relatively short timespan between about
1750 and 1850, what Koselleck termed Sattelzeit (‘saddle period’), the political
and social vocabulary in Germany changed fundamentally and specific modern
political and social concepts were created or reformulated. Thus, Begriffsgeschichte
assumes that concepts determine and affect the transformation of
social, political and economic structures.
Quentin Skinner, John Pocock and others developed a similar approach at
Cambridge University. Pocock, for example, speaks of concepts as building
conceptual worlds that affect social worlds. “These conceptual and social
worlds act as contexts to each other”. 9 Thus, in order to understand political
change, it is important to understand conceptual change by reconstructing the
vocabulary – or what Pocock now calls “discourses” – of the time in order to
restore the true meaning of a text or the actual intention of a speaker. Arguing
on a more systematical level, Quentin Skinner linked this basic idea to the
philosophy of Wittgenstein, Austin and Searle and developed a theory of language
games. Such language games, he argues, have to be reconstructed historically
to find out what particular authors in particular situations had intended
to say and to do. 10
Thus, while Begriffsgeschichte emphasizes structural social and political
changes and their relation to conceptual change, the Cambridge School links
conceptual change with historical agency not only by stressing the importance
of major political philosophers but by pointing to the performative function of
language in general. Whatever the differences between the two approaches 11 ,
what political scientists can learn from both of them is that there is no true
5 Palonen 2004.
6 Richter 1990, 39.
7 Richter 1990, 41.
8 Koselleck 1985, 80.
9 Richter 1990, 50.
10 Skinner 1969, 37.
11 Cf. Palonen 2004; Richter 1995.
25

original meaning of concepts that has to be defended as, for example, Carl
Schmitt believed when he maintained: “The theorist cannot do more than preserve
the concepts and call the things by their names”. 12 Equally problematical
might be a positivist approach to concept analysis that tries, in the words of
Felix Oppenheim, “to reconstruct” conceptual meaning in order to gain clear
and unambiguous technical terms for empirical research. 13 Rather, historical
concept analysis takes the contentedness of concepts as given and unavoidable.
14 It therefore does not reconstruct concepts but rather conceptual change.
Conceptual change, however, is not the result of individual action (as insinuated
by securitization theory) but the cumulative effect of many linguistic
actions. 15 On the other hand, language change does not come out of the blue.
Rather it is a reaction to new political and social circumstances that are linked
to power, interests and values of human beings and social groups. Thus, the
micro-perspective of the Cambridge School and the macro-perspective of Begriffsgeschichte
have finally to be integrated if conceptual and political change
are to be understood as co-constitutive. Far from having succeeded in doing so,
I would like to present some preliminary ideas on the following pages as to
how this could be done with regard to the concept of security.
3. The Conceptual Extension of Security
Above, I mentioned four dimensions in which the meaning of security has
expanded over the last fifty years: the reference dimension, the issue dimension,
the spatial dimension and the dimension of operationalized danger. These
dimensions, however, are interrelated. While in the 1950s and 60s a narrow
concept of security referred mainly to military threats to national territory,
today an extended concept of security also captures the individual risk of global
human rights violations. However, at the same time the four dimensions can be
freely combined so that, for example, regional vulnerability through environmental
catastrophes (e.g. in the Gulf of Mexico) or the risk of global financial
crises for the stability of states (e.g. Greece) can come into view. This suggests
that the dimensions I am referring to are relatively independent from each other
so that it is justifiable to treat them separately for analytical purposes.
The analysis starts from a very narrow understanding of security as it had
established itself after the Second World War in strategic debates and public
discourse. However, the concept of security has a much longer history in European
thought and can be related to the diverging spheres of internal public
12 Schmitt 1963, 96.
13 Oppenheim 1981.
14 Gallie 1956; Connolly 1981.
15 Keller 2003.
26

safety and external state security in the process of European nation building. 16
Nevertheless, the 1950s suggest themselves as a starting point since they represent
a time in which the meaning of security narrowed to the greatest possible
degree, focusing on the national survival of states and communities in the face
of existential threats such as world wars and nuclear annihilation. No wonder,
then, that external security became the key concept of international politics
throughout the second half of the twentieth century and remained separated
from social notions of security for quite some time. 17 This separation has
gradually disappeared and meanings of internal and external, national and
human, military and economic, territorial and global security have merged into
an extended concept of security over the last fifty years.
Reference Dimension
The first dimension in which conceptual extension can be seen is the reference
dimension that determines whose security should be safeguarded. Historically,
the concept of security is closely linked to the consolidation of the nation state
as the only legitimate actor in international politics. In early modern times, the
state established itself as a guarantor for the safety of its citizens, as Thomas
Hobbes has famously described. The security of the state, however, remained
precarious in an interstate system without a strong central power. Thus, security
in international relations meant first and foremost state security, i.e. the
safeguarding of the nation’s territory and the defense of national borders vis-àvis
other states. This is the understanding of national security advocated by socalled
political realists such as Hans Morgenthau, John Herz and others after
WW II and throughout the Cold War. 18 As long as no international monopoly
of power exists, they claim, all states live in a self-help system and their first
and foremost duty is to assure national survival. As Kenneth Waltz famously
wrote: “In anarchy, security is the highest end”. 19
This idea of national security as the absence of threats to the sovereignty of
a state did not go unchallenged, however. Historically, liberal theorists such as
John Locke and Immanuel Kant had stressed that the state is only an instrument
to provide safety for the public. Liberal theorists in the 1970s took up this idea
and challenged state-centric Realist thinking by arguing that the main reference
of security policy and the focus of international politics in general should be
society. 20 Societal security was thus understood as a situation in which a collec-
16
Kaufmann 1973; Conze 1984.
17
Cf. Frei 1977; Krell 1980; Haftendorn 1983; Conze 2009.
18
Morgenthau 1954; Herz 1950.
19
Waltz 1979, 126.
20
Keohane and Nye 1977; Doyle 1983.
27

tive of citizens lives in safety and freedom so that it can develop its productivity
and wealth. 21
This line of argument was taken another step further when the concept of
human security became prominent after the end of the Cold War. In this view,
not the state and not even social collectives are the referent object of security
policy, but the individual human being. The human security approach challenges
not only the traditional state-centric view, but also the focus on social
groups. Championed by the United Nations and a number of expert commissions
(among them the Commission on Global Governance and the Commission
on Human Security), the concept is closely linked to a cosmopolitan understanding
of international politics, i.e. the conviction that human beings, not
states, have an intrinsic value and should be protected. 22 Wherever state rights
and human rights come into conflict, human rights should be given priority.
Thus human security does not only refer to the protection of individuals and
communities from war and other forms of violence, but also to the protection of
“the vital core of all human lives in ways that advance human freedoms and
human fulfillment”. 23
Clearly, the extension of the reference dimension of security signals a desire
to politically live up to changing social values and the prevalence of liberal
ideas about human rights and state obligations. It drastically broadens the range
of addressees of security policy and establishes a general moral “duty of care”
and “responsibility to protect” in international politics. This in turn enables the
empowerment and self-empowerment of actors (e.g. states, groups of states or
international organizations) to act – even militarily – on behalf of the international
community and for the benefit of others, and thus to extend the limits of
international politics hitherto in place.
Humanitarian interventions have often been denounced as power politics in
disguise. But they are much more, and precisely therefore even more troubling:
They are a new practice of security policy that is based on an extended security
concept and a new understanding of normative obligations in international
politics. But critical questions remain: Who is entitled to claim to provide security
for others? Who decides when military force is legitimate? Currently, the
political promise of human security outstrips by far the willingness and ability
of states and international organizations to actually deliver it. 24 Political discourse
has outgrown political practice, and many problems that the international
community faces today, be it in Congo, Darfur, Iraq or Afghanistan, are
at least to some extent the result of conceptual extension.
21 Weaver 1993.
22 Beitz 1979; Pogge 2001.
23 Thakur and Newman 2004, 37.
24 Paris 2001.
28

Issue Dimension
The conceptual extension in terms of the referent objects has implications for
the issue areas that security comprises. Traditional security threats were mainly
perceived in military terms. The reason is that by far the greatest security concerns
for states are military attacks and the danger of being conquered. Thus,
traditional national security interests are military in nature. Military security, in
turn, was expected to be threatened for the most part by hostile states. Particularly
the focus on nuclear weapons underlined the Realist perspective on stateto-state
threats and deterrents throughout the Cold War. 25 Non-state military
threats only came into view when in the 1960s “national liberation movements”
in the Third World were perceived as “communist” threats to US and Western
interests and new strategies of “limited war” and “counter-insurgency” had to
be developed. 26 As the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have shown, even small groups
have gained the capacity to inflict disproportional damage and challenge states’
security. That is the reason why the concept of security nowadays does not only
refer to hostile states, but also non-state actors as source of military threats.
However, the traditional focus on military threats changed in the early 1970s
when economic security became an issue. The oil crises of 1973 and 1979
made people aware that their well-being was not just threatened by military
threats, but also by economic vulnerabilities. 27 The concept of security was
therefore broadened to include the access to so-called “vital resources”. The
objective of resource security was said to be to mitigate or dominate vulnerabilities
to supply disruptions. 28 States and societies are vulnerable in this sense
by being embargoed (i.e. by intentional use of the resource weapon), or by
being cut off unintentionally from resources by natural catastrophes, civil wars
or pure shortage. Thus, the conclusion was drawn that in order so safeguard
energy security, economic, political and military instruments had to be integrated
into a single framework of comprehensive security. 29
A further step towards extending the meaning of security was taken when
the notion of environmental security was introduced. The Brundtland Report
stated in 1987 that “environmental threats to security are now beginning to
emerge on a global scale”. 30 Since then environmental degradation and climate
change have been discussed as national and international security issues. 31 The
key argument is that the increasing destruction of the natural habitat of human
25
Kissinger 1957; Brodie 1959.
26
Deitchman 1962; Blaufarb 1977.
27
Wolf 1977.
28
Maull 1989.
29
Nye 1982.
30
Brundlandt Report 1987.
31
Renner 1989; Myers 1989.
29

eings can directly lead to conflict. 32 However, the empirical link between
environmental degradation and the risk of violent conflict has remained controversial.
33 Nevertheless, advocates of environmental security defend the securitization
of the environment by pointing to the magnitude of potential consequences
and the urgent need to rally public support for more resolute
environmental policies. Richard Ullman nicely redefined security in 1983 by
specifying the newly perceived threats:
A threat to national security is an action or sequence of events that (1) threatens
drastically and over a relatively brief span of time to degrade the quality
of life for the inhabitants of a state, or (2) threatens significantly to narrow the
range of policy choices available to the government of a state or to private,
nongovernmental entities (persons, groups, corporations) within the state. 34
In his view, and in the view of many of his colleagues at the time, environmental
degradation and climate change can have exactly these effects and are
therefore legitimate security issues.
A more recent development is the extension of security into the humanitarian
field. With this move the last great issue area of international politics –
namely human rights – comes under the influence of the security discourse.
Humanitarian security refers not only to the human rights situation of groups
and individuals (as the term human security does), but also to the security of
development aid volunteers and disaster relief workers in crisis areas. However,
the protection of so-called safe havens and humanitarian zones is also
seen as the purpose of humanitarian security. 35 The conceptual affinity of humanitarian
security and humanitarian intervention shows how easy it is to
imagine “military humanism” 36 and even “humanitarian wars” 37 by linking
human rights and security.
The consequence of the extension of the issue dimension of security is a dedifferentiation
of tasks and institutions. The subsumption of previously separated
issue areas under the concept of security leads to the gradual suspension
of traditional distinctions between internal and external security and consequently
between institutional spheres of police and the military. This in turn
has consequences for the operative implementation of security policy and the
constitutional structure of national systems and international organizations. In
Germany, for example, the recurring debate over whether to deploy the
Bundeswehr to deal with internal security issues is a case in point. While the
help of the military in disaster relief might be unproblematic, its use for dealing
32
Tuchman Mathews 1989, 166.
33
Homer-Dixon 1999; Deudney and Matthew 1999.
34
Ullman 1983, 133.
35
Simon 2003.
36
Chomsky 1999.
37
Woodward 2001.
30

with internal terrorism or checking mass rallies raises constitutional concerns.
Internationally as well, the de-differentiation of security issues causes problems,
for example in peacekeeping and post-conflict peacebuilding operations
when security sector reform is undermined by the broad mandate that security
forces enjoy. Thus, the de-differentiation of security concerns caused by an
extended notion of security undermines the traditional division of tasks and
possibly institutional legitimacy.
Spatial Dimension
A third dimension of extended security is its geographical scope. The question
is: How far do security concerns reach geographically? Traditional security
policy only applied to the national level. Realists held that it would be foolish
to design security policies beyond the nation state and that even if global security
problems existed, the international system would only allow national solutions:
“World-shaking problems cry for global solutions, but there is no global
agency to provide them”. 38 National security therefore strictly refers to the
security of the territorial state and derives its ends and means from so-called
national interests.
This limitation becomes problematic as soon as states develop common
strategies to defend their common interests regionally. When NATO was
founded in 1949, a process set in that led gradually to the development of a
“security community”. 39 Security communities develop if states integrate politically
by renouncing violence as a means of settling conflicts among each
other and by developing common ideas of how to establish and maintain regional
stability. In many regions of the world security communities have
emerged, overcoming the narrow notion of national security. 40
The term international security refers more broadly to inter-state cooperation
in security issues. It departs from the Realist assumptions by arguing that
cooperation among security-seeking states is possible even in the absence of an
overarching framework that could coerce states to keep their promises. 41 International
security thus redirects the focus from purely national and even regional
concerns towards the stability of the international system as a common
good. The question then is no longer how to maximize national security but
how to create international conditions so that all states enjoy a reasonable degree
of security. Institutions – conventions, regimes and organizations – are
seen as the principal tools for the multilateral preservation of international
security. 42
38 Waltz 1979, 109.
39 Deutsch 1954.
40 Adler and Barnett 1998.
41 Axelrod and Keohane 1986.
42 Martin 1992; Haftenforn et al. 1999.
31

Finally, the concept of global security goes beyond even international security.
While international security still refers primarily to states, global security
refers to human beings all over the world. The Palme Commission argued as
early as 1982 for a notion of “common security” that would transform the
existing inter-state society into a world society. The concept of global security
gave rise to strategies for enhancing living conditions for the world society, i.e.
for all human beings. Thus, global security often goes hand in hand with human
security and integrates measures to protect the environment and the climate,
to secure access to food and clean water, and to end civil strife and violent
conflict.
Again, the liberal intention to go beyond state-centric international politics
and to empower international organizations to provide better life chances for
human beings worldwide is evident. And yet, a consequence of this conceptual
shift could be institutionalized irresponsibility. So far, security responsibility
has grown hand in hand with institutional developments. National security was
guaranteed by nation states. Regional security was dealt with by regional organizations
(either sub-organizations of the UN such as the Organization of
American States or the African Union, alliances of collective defense such as
NATO, or regional dialogue fora such as ASEAN). International security was
the task of international organizations and regimes (such as the UN and the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime). Yet global security has no other institutional
supporter than again the UN, which is more and more overstretched. The
consequence is that although many international actors exist who claim responsibility
in theory, often they shun the obligation in practice. The effect is what
is sometimes called a “diffusion of responsibility”, a phenomenon that is explained
by organization theory as the result of overlapping competencies and
an incongruence between the role and task of organizations. Thus, the long
inactivity of the international community during the Yugoslav crisis or in the
case of the Rwanda genocide can be explained in terms of the so-called “bystander
effect”, which was not only caused by inter-institutional competition
but by the mismatch between institutional claims of competence and the acceptance
of responsibility. If many actors are “in principle” competent for many
security issues, the propensity is high that costly decisions will be passed over
to others. As long as the relationship between national, regional, international
and global security is not clarified, institutional irresponsibility is likely to
remain a severe problem.
Danger Dimension
The fourth, and arguably the most important dimension of conceptual change
concerns the operationalization of danger. Traditionally, political challenges to
the state had been operationalized as threats, which could be measured on the
basis of what was known about the enemy actor, his hostile intentions and his
32

military capabilities. 43 This was the paradigmatic case during the Cold War
when East and West stood heavily armed eyeball to eyeball. Defusing threats
either by counter-threats and deterrence or by threat-reduction and détente
became the crucial endeavor during the Cold War. 44
This concept of insecurity as symmetrical threat became problematic, however,
when more diffuse dangers to the well-being of societies were perceived.
In times of great social and economic interdependence, dangers emanate not
necessarily from hostile actors and through military capabilities, as the oil
crises demonstrated. Thus, insecurity had to be measured in alternative ways,
for example as the degree of vulnerability to externalities, whatever their
sources might be. 45 Thus the security debate was re-focused from the enemy
strength to one’s own alleged weakness. The famous “window of vulnerability”
was thus a byproduct of détente, since disarmament raised the fear that the
good-will of cooperation could be exploited by the enemy.
From the concept of vulnerability it is only a small step to the paradigmatic
shift of security policy after the Cold War. 46 Today, risks, not threats, dominate
the discourse about international politics. The “clear and present danger” of the
Cold War has been replaced by unclear and future “risks and challenges”. The
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, transnational terrorism, organized
crime, environmental degradation and many other issues are discussed in terms
of uncertainty and risk. What makes them similar is their relative indeterminableness.
Why is this conceptual change so significant? Because with the concept of
risk, new existential dangers come into view that do not yet exist, but that have
the potential to develop in the future. The incorporation of uncertainties is the
ultimate extension of the perception of insecurity and it changes the demands
for security policy fundamentally. 47 When the task of security policy is to deal
with uncertainties and risk, it can no longer be reactive as during the Cold War,
but must become proactive. A policy is proactive if it reduces possible dangers
by anticipating future problems, developments and needs. In general, proactive
security policy can be directed towards the causes or the effects of a risk, i.e. it
can be preventive or precautionary. Political prevention aims at prohibiting a
future loss from occurring, i.e. it affects the probability part of the risk equation.
Political precaution aims at reducing the costs of a loss and at mitigating
its consequences if prevention fails, i.e. it affects the loss part of the equation.
Prevention and precaution in turn may be practiced either cooperatively or
repressively, i.e. based on diplomatic means and political cooperation on the
43 Cohen 1979; Knorr 1976.
44 Gaddis 1987.
45 Keohane and Nye 1977.
46 Daase 2002.
47 Daase and Kessler 2007.
33

one hand or on military means and political coercion on the other. Given these
options, the impression is that at least four proactive strategies exist to address
international risks: cooperation, intervention, compensation, and preparation. 48
What is crucial is that all proactive strategies to reduce international risks are
much more active and offensive than traditional security policies aimed at
averting threats or mitigating vulnerabilities. The reason is that the state has to
prevent a danger before it emerges, and thus to intrude – internally – into the
civil rights of citizens and – externally – into the sovereign rights of states.
Thus, the operationalization of security as the absence of risks contributes to
the emergence of what has been called the Prevention State. 49
The so called “war on terror” is a paradigmatic case, since its purpose is to
lower the risk of future attacks. Domestically it compromises civil liberties for
the sake of internal security, internationally it undermines the sovereignty of
states by lowering the threshold for intervention and preventive war. Thus,
proactive policies tend to undermine traditional normative orders and could
lead back to traditional state-centric power politics.
Conclusion
This is not the place to further expand on the benefits and costs of international
risk policy. But it is important to stress that with the emergence of the concept
of “international risk” the extension of the security concept has reached its peak
– at least for the time being. With this concept the liberal definition of security
has prevailed. For risks do not relate only to threats to territorial spaces or
vulnerabilities of collective goods, but also to natural and social nexuses in
which every individual is embedded. Thus, the secular dissociation of state and
society culminates in a concept of security that is de-nationalized and at the
same time globalized and individualized.
To explain today’s security policy, the military entanglement in places such
as Afghanistan and Iraq, the humanitarian activity in some and inactivity in
other places of the world, the overstretch of international organizations and the
attempts at institutional reforms, one has to understand the change in security
culture, nationally and internationally, in the values, ideas and practices of how
insecurity is perceived and security is produced. The conceptual history of
security provides a unique key to that understanding.
48 Daase 2002, 18-21.
49 Denninger 2008.
34

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37

Special Issue
The Production of Human Security in
Premodern and Contemporary History
Die Produktion von Human Security in
Vormoderne und Zeitgeschichte
DOMESTIC SECURITY REGIMES
No. 134
HSR Vol. 35 (2010) 4

Security and “Gute Policey” in Early Modern Europe:
Concepts, Laws, and Instruments
Karl Härter �
Abstract: »Sicherheit und “Gute Policey” im frühneuzeitlichen Europa: Konzepte,
Gesetze und Instrumente«. The article demonstrates that the development
of “security” as a leading category and main field of state activity in the
Early Modern Era was closely interconnected with the concept of “gute Policey”
and the increasing body of police ordinances. Within Early Modern administrative
law as well as in the theoretical discourses of the administrative
sciences, “security” became a crucial objective of the well-ordered police state
and thus succeeded “peace” and “unity” as a leading category. In this respect,
the growing importance of security indicates the “secularization” of authoritarian
regulatory policy. In parallel to this, administrative law was characterized
by the differentiation between “internal” and “social” security. Whereas the
former focused on exterior security threats, for example mobile marginal
groups, the latter manifested itself in scopes such as “poor relief”, the “health
sector” and measures dealing with risks and hazards including bad harvests,
epidemic plagues, fire hazards and natural disasters. The resulting regulatory
policy gave rise to the gradual establishment of administrative measures in the
area of internal and social security, ranging from surveillance to insurances.
However, the addressees of ordinances and the subjects also participated in the
production of security via “guter Policey”, and in this respect security policy
partially adopted popular demands for security and security discourses. Altogether,
the Early Modern “gute Policey” could well be interpreted as a prototype
of “human security”. But on the other hand, “gute Policey” also implied
the juridification of security and the implementation of a state-based security
policy, which ultimately led to the fundamental separation between internal
security and police on the one hand and welfare policy/administration on the
other hand, by the beginning of the 19th century.
Keywords: public law, administrative law, police ordinances, public/internal
security, social security, administration, social control, security policy.
I. Introduction:
Notion and Purposes of Policey and “Security”
In the history of Early Modern Europe, the development of “security” as a
leading category and main field of state activity is closely interconnected with
� Address all communications to: Karl Härter, Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte,
Hausener Weg 120, 60489 Frankfurt am Main, Germany;
e-mail: haerter@mpier.uni-frankfurt.de.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 41-65

the concept of “gute Policey”. 1 Nowadays the term police (Polizei) indicates
an institution primarily dealing with security and order; “human” or social
security as well as welfare or the common weal are out of range of the police. 2
However, the contemporary notion of police is the result of a lengthy process in
which the concept and notion of “Policey” was narrowed to an executive
agency primarily dealing with the maintenance of “internal security”. When the
terms police and Policey first appeared in the 15th century in France and in the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation respectively they referred to the
general concept and the overall purpose of the “good order” of a community,
society or state: the so-called well-ordered police state. 3
The pivotal instrument of establishing and maintaining good order was the
police ordinance – the so-called Policeyordnung: administrative laws, ordinances,
regulations, edicts and so forth, primarily enacted by the Early Modern
authorities (Obrigkeiten) and covering a variety of subject matters in the wide
area of public order. From the 15th century onwards a growing number of
police ordinances (Policeygesetze) in virtually all European states, territories
and cities reacted to crises and topical problems within society and the economy
and aimed at a long-term regulation of social behaviour. Police ordinances
and regulations dealt with religious matters, blasphemy and swearing, deviant
sexual behaviour and sexual offences, sumptuousness and luxury, clothing,
feasts, drinking and gambling, violent offences and larceny as well as with
marginal groups, beggars, poor relief, public health, agriculture and forests,
market and price regulations, commerce, guilds and craftsmen, infrastructure,
fire, natural disasters – to name but a few of the expanding scopes of the Early
Modern police norms, of which many could be subsumed under the purposes of
“welfare” and “security”. As “laws”, Policeygesetze were addressed to all
social groups as the recipients and objects of gute Policey, because society as a
whole was to be policed, regulated, disciplined and ordered. In this respect the
police ordinances also helped to establish “welfare” and “security” as leading
categories which crossed the social order and applied to society as a whole.
Beyond legislation and norms, gute Policey as an overall concept was
closely connected to government and administration (Regiment und Verwaltung)
and with respect to the implementation and enforcement of police ordinances,
it became a central field of concrete administrative action. Although
the Early Modern state had to rely on intermediate powers, local social
groups/communities and traditional institutions to enforce police ordinances,
gute Policey allowed the authorities to expand executive administrative instru-
1 On the conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) of security, see: Conze 1984.
2 On the history of social as well as human security, albeit without giving any attention to the
concept of “gute Policey”, see: MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 23-60; Metz 2008.
3 On the history of gute Policey as a whole and its notion in particular, see: Härter 2010; Iseli
2009; Nitschke 1992; Raeff 1983.
42

ments and institutions, especially with regard to the overall purposes of welfare
and security. Within the concept of gute Policey from the 17th century onwards,
“security” slowly but steadily gained a more and more prominent role as
a crucial element of “good order”: as a general purpose of good government, as
an important sector of police legislation (Policeygesetzgebung) and as a field of
concrete administrative action.
Hence, the police ordinances as well as the theoretical discourses of Policeywissenschaft
(police and administrative sciences) allow us in the following
to analyse the intentions and aims of “security” which were to be established
and maintained by police ordinances, as well as the more specific security
regulations and the concrete fields of administration in which security was
considered to be the primary purpose. With regard to legislation in the field of
public order, security was considered as the primary task of the emerging Early
Modern state. In this respect, gute Policey is tightly knitted to authorities, state
and concepts such as social control, norm enforcement or security policy. But
the analysis of the police ordinances reaches beyond the level of the authorities
and the state and also touches on general social motives, fears and demands for
security interrelated with common risks, dangers, challenges and threats. Recent
historical research on “gute Policey” no longer considers Policeygesetzgebung
and the implementation and administration of gute Policey as top-tobottom
law-making, but as an interactive process of communication, negotiation
and bargaining between social/local communities, intermediary powers,
local office-holders, administration and the authorities/rulers. In this respect the
specific regulations and security matters of the Policeygesetzgebung enable
further-reaching conclusions about the requirements, needs and demands for
“security” within Early Modern society and therefore seem to correspond with
the concept of human security in a historical perspective. 4
II. Security and Policey Within the Theoretical Concepts of
Policeywissenschaft
Nearly all authors of the so-called Policeywissenschaft of the 18th century
agreed that besides welfare, “security” constituted the leading purpose of gute
Policey. 5 In his Traité de la police, the French author Delamare named “la
Secureté, & la Tranquillité publique” as a primary task of police. 6 In the second
half of the 18th century, Justi shaped the relationship between security and
Policey, concentrating on internal security, prevention and the state: “Diese so
4 For recent perspectives on gute Policey as a key concept of Early Modern society see:
Stolleis et al. 1996; Härter 2000a; Blickle and Schüpbach 2003.
5 In general see: Maier 1966; Stolleis 1988; Simon 2004.
6 Delamare 1707, 4.
43

nothwendige innerliche Sicherheit ist nicht allein ein Gegenstand der Policey;
sie ist eben so sehr, und so gar in ihren wichtigsten Umständen ein Gegenstand
der Staatskunst” (This so necessary internal security is not solely an object of
the police; it is equally, and even in its most important aspects, an object of
state government). Therefore he distinguishes between specific and general
internal security, for the latter concerns “sowohl die Wohlfarth und Ruhe aller
Bürger in ihrem Zusammenhange, als auch die oberste Gewalt in ihrem
Verhältniß gegen die Staatsverfassung” (both the welfare and tranquillity of all
citizens in its interrelationship, and the highest power in its relation to the states
constitution). The more specific internal security, on the other hand, was solely
the subject matter of Policey and concerned the individual burgher:
Die besondere innerliche Sicherheit ist diejenige, welche die Bürger, einzeln
betrachtet, genießen müssen, und welche denen Bürgern in Ansehung ihres
Lebens, ihrer Güther, und ihrer Ehre, Schutz und Ruhe verschaffet, und alle
Beeinträchtigungen und Gewaltthätigkeiten von ihnen abwendet; und dieses
zu bewirken, ist die Sache der Policey. Dieses ist einer ihrer vornehmsten
Endzwecke; und die besondere innerliche Sicherheit ist demnach einer von
denen haupsachlichsten Gegenständen, worauf sie ihre Aufmerksamkeit zu
richten hat. (Specifically internal security is that which individual citizens
must enjoy, and which gives protection and tranquility to these citizens with
regard to their life, their goods and their honour, and which averts all damages
and violent acts from them; and effecting this is the task of the police. This is
one of its most noble ultimate purposes; and specifically internal security is
therefore one of the primary objects to which it should direct its attention). 7
Other authors came up with very similar concepts of Policey and security.
Sonnenfels classified internal security in general as a primary task of gute
Policey, and therefore Policeywissenschaft had to comprehend the main principles
of security. With regard to police ordinances and the administrative tasks,
he distinguished two main fields: “Vorsorge für die innere öffentliche Sicherheit”
(provision for internal public security) and “Vorsorge für die innere Privatsicherheit”
(provision for internal private security). Whereas public security
primarily concerns internal state security (“der Zustand, worinnen der Staat von
seinen Bürgern nichts zu befürchten hat”: the condition in which the state has
nothing to fear from its citizens), the latter – innere Privatsicherheit – concerns
“Handlungen, Personen, Ehre und Güter der Bürger” (actions, persons, the
citizens’ honour and property). Gute Policey should provide security in a preventative
and protective way for every individual subject or burgher with regard
to his actions (especially economic ones), his physical body (against violence,
disease, starving etc.), his honour or social reputation (against
defamation etc.) and his property (against fire hazards, larceny etc.). 8 Finally,
in 1799 Berg amalgamated public and private security in his encompassing
7 Justi 1761, vol. 2, 264, 266.
8 Sonnenfels 1787, 25.
44

concept of Sicherheitspolicey, for the precondition of internal security in the
broadest sense was “die Ruhe des Staates selbst […], wenn für die Ruhe und
Sicherheit jedes Einzelnen mit Erfolg gesorgt werden soll” (the tranquillity of
the state itself […], if one is successfully to ensure the tranquillity and security
of every individual). 9 Only a secure state could provide security and welfare for
its subjects by establishing and maintaining gute Policey through a comprehensive
legislation and an effective administration. At the turn of the century several
authors of German public law narrowed the notion of Policey solely to
security by excluding “welfare” and the “common weal” as the main purposes
of gute Policey, such as Gönner (referring to Pütter’s definition): “Die Polizei
hat es immer nur mit Sicherheit zu thun, Erhöhung des Wohlstands liegt ausser
ihrem direkten Zweck” (the police is always concerned solely with security; the
increase of prosperity lies outside its direct objective). 10
Besides the restriction of Policey to security, the important advancement of
Policeywissenschaft in the interconnected conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte)
of Policey and security in Early Modern Europe can be discerned in the
differentiation of external and internal security – brought up initially by Thomas
Hobbes in 1651 in his Leviathan 11 – as well as between the public (internal)
security of the state and the “social security” of the individual burgher. In
this respect the Early Modern concept of gute Policey points to more or less
modern concepts of state-based internal public security (innere Sicherheit),
dealing for instance with terrorism and similar violent threats, on the one hand,
and social or human security, which focuses on the security needs of the individual
human or social groups on the other hand. It almost seems that gute
Policey could be described as a precursor of the modern concept of “human
security”. For one of its crucial assumptions is that the focus of research and
concrete security policy should be on the people and not only on the state. 12
However, Policeywissenschaft as well as the Early Modern authorities subordinated
(or integrated) social security to the concept of gute Policey and
Policeygesetzgebung in particular, for the primary instruments to establish and
maintain internal, public as well as social security were the police ordinances
and the strict observance of them. As Berg puts it:
Gehorsam gegen die Gesetze und die Obrigkeit, und die freye, ungestörte
Wirksamkeit der Regierung für den allgemeinen Zweck … darauf beruht die
innere öffentliche Sicherheit, und diese ist natürlicher Weise der erste Gegenstand
der Sicherheitspolicey. (Obedience to the ordinances and the authorities,
and the free, undisturbed activity of the government for the common pur-
9 Berg 1802, vol. 1, 207.
10 Gönner 1804, 424-425. Compare in general Matsumoto 1999.
11 Schrimm-Heins 1990.
12 Boer and Wilde 2008.
45

pose... this is the basis of internal public security, and this is naturally the first
object of the security police). 13
The “Stärke und Glückseeligkeit des Staats” (strength and happiness of the
state), underlines Justi, is based on the condition that “die innerliche Sicherheit
auf diese Art als eine Frucht der Gesetze entstehet” (internal security emerges
in this way as the fruits of the ordinances). 14 Inner (public as well as social)
security should be produced primarily through laws/police ordinances which
the state should enforce and which the subjects have to obey. In this respect
many authors tried to systematize the vast bulk of police ordinances, indicating
specific fields of regulation and related administrative measures (Sicherheitsanstalten)
in which security matters were of prime importance, thus providing
police knowledge and advice for governments on how to conceive the “best”
police ordinances. In this regard the writing/discourses of Policeywissenschaft
were part of law-making and reflect the development of security as an overall
purpose and intention within the growing body of Early Modern police ordinances.
III. Legislation (Policeygesetzgebung) and Security
in the 16th and 17th Centuries
Since the second half of the 15th century the imperial cities, the territorial
rulers and the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire had enacted a growing
body of police ordinances comprising many regulations which pointed at typical
security issues: revolts and social upheaval, vagrants, robbers and bandits,
marauding soldiers, poverty and poor relief, diseases and plagues, famine and
food shortage, fire, natural hazards and many more. From the perspective of the
authorities and the public, Early Modern society always seemed to be in a state
of disorder – unstable, risky and threatened by permanent crises. However,
neither the police ordinances of the 15th and 16th centuries nor the early treatises
of Policeywissenschaft bore any substantial relation to the term security or
even named it, although they were indicating the prevention of dangers and
threats as well as evil (Übel), abuses, wrongs, deficiencies and shortages
(Gebrechen und Mängel). But on the whole such threats as epidemics, war,
revolts, religious crises, rising prices, bad harvest or natural catastrophes were
regarded as the wrath of God who reacted with divine punishment to the sinful
and deviant behaviour of human beings: God was “zu billichem zorn gegen den
menschen bewegt worden/ und theüwrunge/ krieg/ pestilent/ und andere manigfaltige
plagen/ auf erden kommen” because people had not obeyed “Gottes
13 Berg 1802, vol. 1, 207.
14 Justi 1761, 263.
46

gebot” (God’s law) as well as the imperial police ordinances, argued the
Reichspoliceyordnung of 1548. 15
In this respect the police regulations indicated as their main intentions social
as well as religious peace, tranquility, unity, stability and the common weal,
which were to be established mainly through godly and disciplined behaviour
according to religious norms and the Policeyordnungen, at least to appease the
wrath of God and prevent divine punishment. 16 The Statuten, Satzung, Reformation
und Ordnung, Burgerlicher Pollicey (1541) of the imperial city of Heilbronn
stated the “handthabung gemeynes nützs / Rechtlicher Ordnung / frydens
vnd eynigkeyt” (maintaining the common weal, legal order, peace and unity) as
well as “fryd / Recht vnnd eynigkeyt in vnser Stat” (peace, law and unity in our
city) as its main intentions. 17 Very similarly, the Archbishop of Cologne in
1537 and the Elector of the Palatinate in 1598 indicated the purposes of their
comprehensive Policeyordnungen as “fridds und eynigkeit […] unsern landen
unnd lüden zue wolfart/ nutz/ uffnemmen unnd gedeihen” (peace and unity ...
so that the welfare and utility of our lands and people may thrive), and “stiller
Ruhe/ Frieden und gutem Gemach” (tranquility, peace and comfort), respectively.
18
Although many police regulations contained preventative and practical
means as well as instructions for concrete administration which could certainly
be regarded as security measures, the pivotal idea of gute Policey was to establish
a good order – including security, without naming it – by prescribing a
normative order based on religious and moral norms and covering all aspects of
deviant behaviour, abuses and disorder in a comprehensive and exhausting
Policeyordnung to which everyone (including the higher orders) was to behave
accordingly: human security was to be achieved through social and religious
discipline 19 – or as the Hessian Reformationsordnung in Policey-Sachen (1526)
stated: “abstellung erneuter sünde und mißbräuch, versönung gottes zorn, anrichtung
und pflantzung eines ehrlichen zuchtigen lebens, Christlicher eynyckeit
und ordentlicher sidten, und furderung gemeynes nutzes” (prevention of
renewed sin and abuses, appeasement of God’s fury, the establishment and
foundation of an honest and modest life, Christian unity and proper customs,
and the promotion of public utility). 20
In the course of the 17th century we can observe a growing importance of
security within the framework of gute Policey. First of all the sheer number of
police ordinances, enacted mainly by the territorial rulers, increased after the
15
Cited in Weber 2002, 168. Compare Härter 1993.
16
See Simon 2004, 218-225.
17
Statuten Haylpronn 1541.
18
Policei 1537.
19
Härter 1994; Härter 2000b.
20
Kleinschmidt and Apell 1767, 50.
47

Thirty Years’ war, as Figure 1 shows. 21 In the course of this development the
form of the laws (Gesetzesform) changed as well. Single laws (Einzelgesetze)
were more and more dominant, such as mandates, edicts, decrees, and prescriptions,
which in contrast to the comprehensive Policeyordnung dealt only with
particular matters and regulations of Policey (Policeymaterien) and facilitated a
more flexible and prompt legal reaction to current threats, risks and dangers. In
this respect the police ordinances aimed more at prevention and governance,
indicating and defining areas of the “good order” as a subject of security, occasionally
using the term and explicitly stating “security” as the purpose and
justification of Policeygesetzgebung. Moreover, within the growing body of the
ordinances, typical security issues gained more importance, especially concerning
strolling soldiers, vagrants and bandits as well as duels or the carrying of
weapons, all of them regarded as a matter of public security.
7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
1500
1510
Figure 1: Police Regulations 1500-1799
10 Territorien
7 Reichsstädte
1520
1530
Policeygesetzgebung (regulations) 1500-1799, 7 imperial cities, 10 territories
1540
1550
1560
1570
1580
1590
1600
1610
1620
1630
An edict by the Archbishop of Cologne issued in 1696 claimed that plundering
gangs had overturned public security in the archbishopric altogether (“die
öffentliche Sicherheit im rheinischen Erzstifte gänzlich aufgehoben”). 22 The
Policeyordnung Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1672) dealt in several paragraphs with
21 Based on Härter and Stolleis 1996-2010; included are the data of: Nördlingen, compiled by
Barbara Rajkay; Schweinfurt, compiled by Marian Opalka. They count not the number of
ordinances but the different regulations according to the index of “police matters” (Policeymaterien).
In the following, police ordinances covered by the repertory are merely referenced
with the name of the territory/city, number of the repertory, form and date.
22 Kurköln 182 [Reskript], 07.12.1696.
1640
1650
48
1660
1670
1680
1690
1700
1710
1720
1730
1740
1750
1760
1770
1780
1790

vagrants, gypsies and robber bands, stating that the primary aim of the regulations
was
daß die strasen und wege fuer raube und plackereyen sicher und rein gehalten,
und dadurch handel und gewerbe im lande ohne gefahr getrieben werden, reisende
personen ungehindert wandeln, und ein jeder in seinem hause und stande
sich ruhesam naehren moege” (that the streets and paths may be kept secure
and clear of robberies and feuds, so that trade and business can be carried
out in the country without danger, travellers may make their journeys unhindered,
and every man can peacefully support himself in his own house and
station in life). 23
Maintaining public peace and security with regard to trade and commerce
endangered by ambulant masterless marginal groups was also the prime subject
matter of a police ordinance issued by the Archbishop of Mainz in 1680. 24
The growing number of police ordinances dealing with marginal, migrating
groups defined and distributed the normative label of criminal, dangerous
groups as an external – socially as well as spatially – threat to internal/public
security. 25 They depicted such groups in general as a menace to the common
people: raiding, plundering and burning villages, killing and raping people,
stealing or destructing their property. In addition, the regulations described
certain spaces and places as insecure: the borders, country roads, woods, lonely
spots, farmhouses, mills, or inns in the countryside, where such criminal vagrants
and bandits could hide or were even welcomed. Admittedly, authorities
tended to exaggerate the imminence of such dangerous groups in order to
“stimulate” their reluctant subjects to perform security duties, pay more taxes
for security measures, or to inform them about the habits of beggars, vagrants
or the “criminal milieus”. However, such police ordinances cannot be reduced
to a purely symbolic function and ineffective products of a failed security or
social policy. For the concept of Sicherheitspolicey implied the labelling and
criminalization of marginal groups (independently from the “real” crime rate)
as well as the forming of the enduring stereotype of external dangerous groups
which threatened internal security and endangered specific “insecure” locations.
And beyond this, the Early Modern state did in fact establish and extend
specific security measures and institutions (especially police forces) to enforce
the ordinances, to control and prosecute dangerous groups and to maintain
public security. 26
In the second half of the 17th century we can also discern the growing importance
of public security in the legislation of the Empire, the imperial circles
23
Policeyordnung Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1672), printed in: Wüst 2003, 574-668, cit. 631
24
Kurmainz 342, Verordnung, 30.04.1680.
25
Härter 2003a; Härter 2003c; Fritz 2004; Härter 2005a, chapter 9. For a slightly different
view see: Ammerer 2003.
26
Compare for instance Nitschke 1990; Härter 1999a. This will be discussed subsequently
more in detail.
49

and the permanent diet of Ratisbone (since 1663) respectively, which deliberated
certain issues of gute Policey and securitas publica concerning the Empire
as a whole. 27 In 1668/1670 the diet and the Emperor issued a resolution
(Reichsgutachten) “vom Policey-Wesen/ und sonderlich von Abstellung des
höchst-schädlichen Duelliren/ Balgen und Kugel-Wechseln” (concerning the
police and in particular the prevention of the highly dangerous duelling/fighting
and exchanging of bullets). This was followed by a comprehensive law on the
Puncti Securitatis publicae (later called Reichsexekutionsordnung: imperial
execution order), which dealt with vagrants and gypsy gangs, strolling and
marauding soldiers, robbery and banditry, breach of the peace (Landfriedensbruch),
social upheaval and revolts as well as several security measures such as
safe conduct (sicheres Geleit), prosecution (Nacheile), alarm (Alarmwesen),
patrols and visitations, with regard to the rural areas and country roads in particular.
28 The imperial diet enacted only a few laws concerning public security,
but they were part of and stimulated the increasing Policeygesetzgebung of the
imperial circles and the imperial estates as well as the burgeoning public discourses
on “internal security”.
At the start of the 18th century, “security” had achieved a stable and increasingly
important role within the Policeygesetzgebung, which had established and
was using the concept of allgemeine Landessicherheit (general security of the
land) with regard to “dangerous groups” as well as to property (Eigentum),
trade and commerce. 29 However, the concept of Policey and security and the
Policeygesetzgebung in particular still focused primarily on internal security,
which was threatened by marginal, criminal and violent groups: the poor, vagrants,
ethnical/religious minorities such as the gypsies and the Jews, gangs of
thieves and robbers (Diebes- und Räuberbanden) as well as ex-soldiers, deserters,
duellists or rioting subjects. In this respect the authorities and the Policeygesetzgebung
conceived security as a reaction to criminal behaviour and deviant/dissident
groups, endangering above all the life and property of subjects in
rural areas, small towns and villages as well as the country roads, mail, coaches
and transport of passengers and therefore trade and commerce. Thus society
and economy on the whole as well as individual property were considered as a
matter of public security within the scope of gute Policey, conceiving security
as a crucial precondition of property and economic prosperity and progress.
27 Härter 2003b.
28 “Reichs-Abschieds-Anfang“ 1740, part 1, 324-327, 437-445, 634-670.
29 Compare as examples the “security ordinances” of the imperial circles: “Edikte des Fränkischen
Kreises“ 1700; “Verordnungen des Oberrheinischen Kreises“ 1722; Neue und mehr
geschärffte Poenal-Sanktion und Verordnung des löbl. Ober-Rheinischen Creyßes,
20.12.1726; Instruction, wornach die vom Löblichen Ober-Rheinischen Crayß bestellte
Crayß-Land-Lieutenants mit der untergebenen Mannschafft/ in denen Ihnen aufgetragenen
Verrichtungen sich zu achten haben, 19.12.1726.
50

The reasons for the growing importance of this particular concept of Sicherheitspolicey
in the second half of the 17th and the first decades of the 18th
century can be discerned in certain socioeconomic developments: first of all the
growth of population and the increase of migrating, marginal groups after the
Thirty Years’ War. These groups were not only suspected of committing violent
crimes but also of spreading epidemic plagues, which menaced Europe and
the Empire in several pandemic waves (1660-1670, 1709-1713, 1720-21).
Furthermore, marginal groups and the growing strata of the “idle poor” were
blamed for endangering the basic food resource or causing lack of food. In
general, the Policeygesetzgebung merged different security threats and hazards:
marginal and criminal groups, epidemic diseases and supply crises. In this
regard the police ordinances not only reflected common fears and popular
images of a gradually unfolding topical security discourse but were equally
interrelated with cameralist theory, which influenced the current economic and
population policy as well as the burgeoning Policeywissenschaft. The latter
likewise postulated the growth of population, state-based mercantilist economic
and welfare policies, as well as security, as the primary aims of gute Policey
and Policeygesetzgebung – ultimately to strengthen the power of the state. 30
IV. The Differentiation Between Public/Internal and
Social/Human Security in the 18th Century
Political theory and Policeywissenschaft had additionally further developed the
concept of security and established the fundamental distinction between external
and internal security as well as addressing public security – besides welfare
– as a primary task of the state within the framework of gute Policey. 31 Öffentliche
and gemeine Sicherheit (public/general security) on the one and common
weal/welfare on the other hand merged into the common formula of Sicherheit
und Wohlfahrt, indicating the – modern – differentiation between internal and
social security (innere und soziale Sicherheit). In contrast, the Policeygesetzgebung
as well as the Policeywissenschaft rarely referred to the traditional concept
of universal peace. In this respect the process of establishing public security
as a crucial concept and purpose of gute Policey after the Thirty Years’
War could be interpreted as a “secularisation” of the traditional concept of
peace as related to the internal order of society. Based on the development of
gute Policey and the Policeygesetzgebung in particular, security had become a
leading concept of the state in the 18th century, justifying and stimulating the
expansion of government and administration as well as further legislation in the
fields of order, welfare and security.
30 Compare Simon 2004, 381-562.
31 Conze 1984, 846-847; Simon 2004, 522-524.
51

The following figure (Figure 2) shows the increase of the Policeygesetzgebung
of ten selected imperial territories between 1640 und 1799 in five sectors
of police matters (Policeymaterien) related closely to internal/public as well as
social security. 32
1400
1300
1200
1100
1000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
5 Infrastructure
3.3 Health Sector
3.2 Social Relief
1.3 Marginal Groups
Figure 2: Regulations in 5 sectors
Regulations in 5 sectors of 10 territories 1640-1799
2.2 Security, Crime, Military
1640 1650 1660 1670 1680 1690 1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790
The main issues covered by these regulations can be systematized as follows:
1) “Internal/Public Security”: crimes/violence against people (body, property)
or society/the state (= 2.2 Security, Crime, Military and 1.3 Marginal
Groups):
- marginal groups, criminal vagrants, gangs, thieves and robbers
- military: ex-soldiers, deserters, military excesses
- political crimes: revolts, propaganda, pamphlets, “secret” associations
- and the corresponding security institutions/measures such as patrols, visitations,
rural militia and paramilitary police forces (hussars), wanted lists,
passport control etc.
Within these sectors of police regulations, security was to be established
mainly through repressive executive measures and institutions to protect subjects
and their property as well as society and the state against criminal behaviour
and dangerous groups.
2) “Social Security” with regard to everyday risks, accidents, natural hazards
and disasters:
32 Data/territories such as those given in footnote 21.
52

- poverty/the poor and poor relief
- everyday supply/starvation; bad harvest, high prices, plagues (grasshoppers,
vermin), storms, floods
- health sector: epidemic plagues, accidents, hygiene, first aid
- infrastructure: natural disasters (floods, storms, fires) as well as buildings,
roads, street lighting, traffic, transport, mail
In these sectors of police regulations the focus was on the security of individual
persons, social groups, communities or society endangered by topical
risks, hazards and disasters which were not primarily caused by deviant/criminal
humans but by natural or human accidents; thus the security measures
concerned laid more emphasis on prevention, support, relief and insurances.
Although security as a primary purpose shows up in the course of the 18th
century in new, and more of the existing, sectors of the increasing Policeygesetzgebung,
the different regulations and measures can be clearly differentiated
according to the categories of “internal/public” and “social” security, with the
latter gaining more importance in the second half of the 18th century in relevant
sectors of the Policeygesetzgebung such as health, poor relief, infrastructure,
building and traffic (as Figure 2 shows). 33 Despite the fact that regulations
dealing with the poor, fire hazards or epidemic plagues reached back to the late
Middle Ages, health, poverty, food shortages and building (Bauwesen) were
more and more considered as an issue of welfare and human security, which
the state should provide through Policeygesetzgebung as well as administrative
and preventative measures. Joseph von Sonnenfels, by way of example, expanded
the concept of “personal” or “physical” security (persönliche/ körperliche
Sicherheit), which was threatened not only by crime but also by diseases,
poverty, bodily defects, inability to work or shortage of food, and similarly
enhanced the “security of goods and property” by the inclusion of fire hazards,
storms and lightning in addition to robbery, larceny and fraud. 34 In this respect,
internal/public and social security and the corresponding sectors of Policeygesetzgebung
remained interrelated in many ways: policing marginal groups and
poor relief constituted two sides of the same coin; vagrants and the poor were
suspected of spreading epidemic diseases, of committing arson and endangering
country roads, transport and mail. In this respect, many police regulations
merged internal and social security and therefore also repressive policing of
“dangerous groups” and technical preventative measures.
However, since the end of the 17th century the expansion of the security
concept to “personal security” and the human being as a primary object of
security is clearly discernable in police ordinances dealing with health/diseases,
33
See in general on these sectors of gute Policey: Landwehr 2000b; Holenstein 2003; Härter
2005b.
34
Sonnenfels 1787, 123-192, 200-219.
53

social relief, fire, building or traffic. The Medizinalordnung of Kurtrier (the
electorate of Trier) stated for instance in 1683 for the first time that gute Policey
should aim at “der Unterthanen Conservation, Wolfahrt wie auch derer
Leibsgesuntheiterhaltung” (the conservation and welfare of the subjects as well
as the preservation of their physical health). 35 Although since the late Middle
Ages many authorities had issued laws and ordinances dealing especially with
medical affairs and epidemic diseases in particular, the health sector not only
obtained a greater share within the Policeygesetzgebung in the second half of
the 18th century but evolved into the Gesundheitspolicey/Medicinalpolicey:
state-based health policy via medical laws aiming at the security of persons,
bodies and minds and establishing more or less new provisions and institutions
to provide more security. 36 In his ground-breaking work System einer vollständigen
medicinischen Polizey (A Complete System of Medical Policy)
(1779-1819), Johann Peter Frank defined the health of society as a crucial
constituent of internal security and gute Policey:
Die innere Sicherheit des Staates ist der Gegenstand der allgemeinen Polizeywissenschaft;
[…] ein sehr ansehnlicher Theil davon ist die Wissenschaft, das
Gesundheitswohl der in Gesellschaft lebenden Menschen […] nach gewissen
Grundsätzen zu handhaben, folglich die Bevölkerung […] zu befördern. (The
internal security of the state is the object of general police science; ... a very
considerable part thereof is the science of handling the health of the people living
in society ... according to certain principles, and consequently ... of promoting
the population). 37
Thus the regulations of the Gesundheitspolicey/Medicinalpolicey ranged
from first aid in case of accidents and natural catastrophes, instruction sheets
with remedies for epidemic diseases and cattle plagues, hygiene regulations
concerning refuse, water or food, to the control of apothecaries and medicine
and obligatory vaccination to health passports (Gesundheitspaß), the education,
qualification, examination and accreditation of a “professional” medical staff
(physicians, midwives, etc.) and the institution of state-based hospitals and
birth houses; only the instrument of medical insurance was missing in the broad
range of state-based health-care policy, but was established in the 19th century.
38
We can observe a similar development in the sector of Baupolicey and Feuerpolicey:
The new building regulations (Bauordnung) of 1690, issued after
military devastation and fire disasters in some towns of Kurmainz (the electorate
of Mainz), ordered the rebuilding in such a way “dass jeder genugsame
Sicherheit darin habe” (that everyone should have sufficient security in
35 Kurtrier 285, Medizinalordnung, 1683.
36 Dinges 2000; Wahrig and Sohn 2003; Möller 2005; Grumbach 2006.
37 Frank 1779, vol. 1, 3-4.
38 Frevert 1984.
54

them). 39 In the 18th century the Policeygesetzgebung of many territories and
cities comprised a growing quantity of building and construction regulations as
well as technical provisions, regulating such matters as construction, architecture,
plans, licences, supervision, inspection, material, fireplaces, and increasingly
aiming at the security of buildings, streets, passengers and inhabitants. 40
Although the primary purposes of such comprehensive Bauordnungen concerned
the topographic order and planning of a city or town in general as well
as the prevention of fire disasters, other issues interrelated with security such as
hygiene, waste disposal, street cleaning, street lighting, and also traffic safety
(Verkehrssicherheit) gained in importance. 41 One of the first police ordinances
dealing with traffic safety was the Prussian “Avertissement, wegen des sachte
und vorsichtigen Fahrens in den Residentzien” (announcement concerning
steady and careful driving in the residences), which obliged all carriage drivers
and waggoners to drive slowly for the health and safety of pedestrians, children
and elderly people. 42 The imperial city of Frankfurt similarly issued in 1789 the
“Verbot des schnellen Fahrens und Reutens in der Stadt” (ban on fast driving
and riding in the city); and the city of Mainz threatened serious penalties to all
drivers and equestrians harming pedestrians. 43
However, the main topic of police ordinances dealing with security matters
in the wide array of infrastructure remained fire hazards and Feuerpolicey. The
elector of Cologne, who had already established fire ordinances in the Policeyordnung
of 1695, issued in 1718 a decree in which prevention and the rescue of
subjects from fire hazards (caused by smoke) was mentioned as a primary
purpose for the first time, and the elector stated as his aim: “solchem Uebel
dermahlen mit allem Ernst vorzubiegen, und ihre Unterthanen von sothaner
Grund-verderblichen Brands-Gefahr zu erretten” (to make every effort to
prevent such an evil, and save his subjects from this highly ruinous fire hazard).
“Verhüt- und Abwendung sothaner Land und Leuten Grundverderblichen
Brands-Gefahr” – the prevention of conflagration endangering land and people
– emerged as a topical argument in many of the following ordinances dealing
with fire hazards. This was completed by the launch of an obligatory fire insurance
in 1773, indicating the final shift from reaction and punishment to preventative
supporting measures and insurances respectively. 44 Like the elector of
39 Kurmainz 377, Verordnung, 27.05.1690.
40 See the Repertorium der Policeyordnungen, vol. 1-10, systematic index “5.4 Bauwesen”.
Compare further as an example Süßmann 2007.
41 Compare for instance Württemberg 800, Bauordnung, 02.01.1655: Deß Hertzogthumbs
Würtemberg revidierte Baw-Ordnung, comprising more than hundred pages.
42 Brandenburg-Preußen 2720, Avertissement, 05.05.1758.
43 Frankfurt 4358, Verordnung, 13.01.1789; Kurmainz 2561, Verordnung, 25.08.1792.
44 Kurköln 306, Verordnung, 26.08.1718, cited: Vollständige Sammlung deren die Verfassung
des Hohen Erzstifts Cölln betreffender Stucken, [...] dan in Regal- und Cameral-Sachen, in
Justitz-, Policey- und Militair-Weesen vor- und nach ergangener Verordnungen, und Edic-
55

Cologne, in the 18th century many other rulers issued police ordinances imposing
statutory fire insurances as well as enhancing technical provisions and
measures.
One of the first authors in the Holy Roman Empire who supported such insurances
as a means of security and gute Policey (“einer guthen Policey ganz
gemäß”) was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who drafted five treatises on public
insurances around 1678-1680, 45 shortly after he had issued in 1670 his primary
work on security: “Bedencken welchergestalt Securitas publica interna et
externa und Status praesens im Reich ietzigen Umbständen nach auf Festen
Fuß zu stellen” (Thoughts on how public internal and external security and the
current state of affairs can be put on solid ground in the empire according to
present conditions). 46 From the start of the 18th century onwards, nearly all
authorities and rulers in the Old Reich issued police ordinances prescribing fire
insurances, offices and associations, as well as often regulating nearly all matters
of “Feuerpolicey”, from fire services to building regulations. 47
Insurances evolved into an important instrument of social security and gute
Policey, which was expanded to include more hazards: the fire insurances were
sometimes extended to damages by storms or floods. Beyond that, some rulers
in the 18th century initiated social insurances for widows and orphans of office-holders,
issuing ordinances and statutes regulating the Pfarr-Wittwen Cassa,
Wittwen-Casse vor die weltliche Dienerschaft, Wittwen- und Waysen Kassen
Institut (parsons’ widows’ fund, secular servants’ widow’s fund, institute of
widows’ and orphans’ funds), etc. 48 Whilst earlier charitable foundations supporting
widows and orphans used as their argument the prevention of divine
punishment, the new insurances and funds of the 18th century aimed explicitly
at the protection (“Absicherung”) of specific groups exposed to poverty, such
as for instance the ordinance establishing the “Wittwen-Fiskus” in Württemberg
in 1700. 49 Although earlier efforts at “private” insurances by guilds, trad-
ten [...], 2 vol. (Köln 1772/739), vol. 2, 148 (Nr. 346); Kurköln 588, Verordnung,
14.08.1750, cit. Vollständige Sammlung II, 148f. (Nr. 347); Kurköln 848, Brand-Societäts
Ordnung, 20.06.1773.
45 Printed in: Knobloch et al. 2000.
46 Printed in: Guhrauer 1838, 151-255; compare Schrimm-Heins 1990, 240-241.
47 The territories and cities covered in Härter and Stolleis 1996-2010, issued nearly 200
ordinances dealing with fire insurances.
48 Pfalz-Zweibrücken 681, Verordnung, 13.02.1730; Pfalz-Zweibrücken 1218, Verordnung,
24.12.1749; Kurtrier 1552, Ordnung, 26.07.1779. Compare in general Härter 2009, passim,
especially 63.
49 Württemberg 1495, Verordnung, 09.03.1700; compare further the outline of the development
of the orphans’ and widows’ charity in Württemberg from the 16th century onwards
in Württemberg 2763, Witwenkassenordnung, 1739: Gründliche Nachrichten von dem
Württembergischen Fisco Charitativo, wie solcher [...] Vor arme Pfarrers- und Präceptors-
Wittwen aufgerichtet [...], 1739.
56

ing companies etc. can easily be discerned, 50 the insurances embedded in the
concept of gute Policey implied a new dimension: they were often obligatory/statutory,
state-based, regulated in police ordinances, and in principal
aimed at future prevention and the whole of society (or the concerned target
group of social security). As the Herzoglich-Würtembergische allgemeine
Brand-Schadens-Versicherungs-Ordnung expressed it: because a voluntary
association would fail to cover the possible extent of fire damages, it was necessary
to establish the allgemeine Brand-Schadens-Versicherungs-Anstalt
(general fire damage insurance institution) to which every house owner was
obligated to contribute according to the taxation of his property; for this could
be the only general remedy to ensure not only that aggrieved parties would be
able to rebuild their ruined houses immediately, but that “Häuser und Gebäude
[…] in Zukunft ein sicheres Capital werden” (houses and buildings should
become a safe capital in future). 51
The increase of police ordinances dealing with matters of human security in
the second half of the 18th century is clearly connected to the cameralist economic
and social policies of the Early Modern state, which aimed at the increase
of revenues and the amplification of power. In this regard social security
and gute Policey interlocked closely with the reform politics of so-called
enlightened absolutism. Furthermore, the amalgamation of Policeygesetzgebung
as administrative law and the establishment of concrete state-based institutions
constituted the inception of social law and a primarily state-based social
policy (staatliche Sozialpolitik), which differed from traditional charity based
on the Church, the guilds or traditional communities. 52
V. Conclusion: The Production of Security through
Administration and Communication
The expansion of social/human as well as internal/public security within the
framework of gute Policey indicates an intensification of administration, government
and social control which could certainly be interpreted as statebuilding.
Security and gute Policey at least provided an effective justification
and legitimization for establishing and expanding more state-based, professional
measures and institutions and for transferring security tasks from traditional
services and institutions such as local communities, the Church, guilds,
local courts, rural militia etc. Because of its institutional weakness, the Early
Modern state depended on intermediate powers and traditional social commu-
50
See Schewe 2000; Zedtwitz 2000.
51
Württemberg 3587, Feuerversicherungsordnung, 16.01.1773, cited in Reyscher, Sammlung,
vol. 14, 871-905, 875.
52
Stolleis 2001; Schmid 1981; Reidegeld 2006.
57

nities to perform security services and even fostered participation with regard
to patrolling, guard duties, informing/denunciation and the enforcement of
police ordinances in general. But this proved to be difficult with regard to the
intensification of security policies in the 18th century and led to increasing
problems und conflicts with reluctant or inapt subjects who could make productive
use of security arguments and police ordinances by claiming that security
services would interfere with their daily labour for mere subsistence (and
would also decrease productiveness and taxes). With regard to threats to internal/public
security – especially armed gangs, and robber bands – subjects as
well as local officials were prone to exaggerate the potential number and dangerousness
in order to argue that they could not cope and perform effectively in
the face of such a menace.
In a way, such arguments coincided with the perception of the authorities,
who considered traditional services as ineffective in maintaining security and
endeavoured to expand state-based security measures and institutions, albeit
without having the necessary means and funds and therefore often merely
experimenting with more modern and/or traditional institutions and measures
(or a mixture of both) such as patrols, visitations, inspections, passport control,
or tracing (using wanted lists) performed by peasants, rural militia, military
forces, or new police forces (such as hussars, dragoons, Landjäger, “Hatschiere”,
Landreiter, Landleutnants, Policeykommissare). 53 Similar problems and
developments can be observed in the sectors of human/social security in which
Armenpolicey (poor relief), Gesundheitspolicey (health-care), Baupolicey
(building regulations) or Feuerpolicey remained embedded within local communities,
intermediary powers, the Church, the guilds, and families on the one
hand, while on the other hand new state-based institutions and provisions were
established in the course of the 18th century (as depicted above).
In this respect gute Policey contributed to the establishment of modern security
agencies and instruments as well as to the incorporation of traditional local
institutions into the emerging modern security policy, which altogether could
be interpreted as the expansion of formal social control and the nationalization
(Verstaatlichung) of security. Apart from the recent controversial debate on the
question of the success and effectiveness of Early Modern security policy and
norm enforcement, which we cannot discuss here in detail, 54 it seems indubitable
that this peculiar amalgamation – and in a way, the deficiencies – also
stimulated the differentiation of security instruments and the discourses on
security. On the one hand the Early Modern state could demonstrate, with its
administrative and policing activities in the realm of gute Policey, its ability to
establish and maintain public security and to protect its subjects; but on the
other hand the latter could use “security” (or insecurity) as an argument to
53 Nitschke 1990; Holenstein et al. 2002a.
54 Härter 1999b; Stolleis 2000; Landwehr 2000a.
58

avoid traditional services or to claim governmental benefits and security provisions.
In this respect the growing importance of security in the framework of
gute Policey was by no means solely the result of intended state-building and
modernization, but rather the product of the diverse problems with the administration
of security and gute Policey as well as the corresponding communications
and discourses.
It may be true that the prevention and control of hazards, threats, dangers,
risks, catastrophes, crime and their effects indicates the extent of security, but
in the Early Modern period such a thing was nearly impossible to achieve.
Moreover, the state of “security” is difficult to measure or to determine and
besides such a relatively technical approach it could well be argued that security
is rather a complex product of the relationship between power, mentalities,
and communication. 55 Based on such an approach, we may emphasize the
impact of gute Policey on the increasing importance of security and the forming
of a distinct security policy.
Although police ordinances were enacted by the authorities, they can be
considered as part of the communication process or legal/administrative discourse
on order, welfare and security between different actors: the authorities,
the legislators, the rulers, the jurists, the officials, the local administration,
intermediary powers, local office-holders, social communities, and subjects;
though by no means equal participants of mutual interaction, gute Policey
nevertheless provided options to communicate about security. The media of
this discourse/communication on gute Policey and security can be systematized
as the Policeygesetze themselves; the corresponding official or semi-official
publications (ranging from wanted lists to operating instructions); the reports,
lists, charts and statistics of local officials and office-holders on the enforcement,
implementation and administration of gute Policey; the supplications,
dispensations and complaints of subjects; the writings and treatises of the Policeywissenschaft,
and popular media such as illustrated broadsheets or pamphlets
dealing with catastrophes, crimes, hazards etc. The array of communication
ranged from the genesis of police norms and the law-making procedure via
the process of implementation and enforcement of the ordinances to reactions
and complaints. 56
Already the promulgation of police ordinances generated a wider public
sphere, for they had to be brought to the knowledge of the Gemeiner Mann
(common man), who should be able to understand the regulations, obey them
and help to enforce them. In addition, governments and administrations demanded
responses and information on the implementation, transgressions and
the effect of ordinances and measures as well as on potential threats, hazards
55 Compare in general on the “nature” of security: Foucault 2004; Sofsky 2005.
56 Holenstein 2000; Schilling 2000; Holenstein 2005; Holenstein 2002; Härter 2002; Härter
2005a, 189-241; Härter et al. 2010.
59

and risks; the governments of Baden or Kurmainz ordered the local official to
report periodically on all “Merck- und Nachrichts-würdigen Begebenheiten”
(interesting and newsworthy events) as well as on a multitude of issues concerning
security and gute Policey. 57 And the addressees of ordinances reacted
and communicated actively on matters of Policey and security via supplications,
petitions or complaints, informing governments and administrations,
sometimes articulating their concerns and interests in security and regulations
as well as negotiating for dispensations, concerning for instance security services
that they had to perform. Precisely because local communities and subjects
were essentially integrated into security measures and services, they could
make “productive use” of police ordinances and the security argument.
Within this increasing communication process, security was shaped, negotiated,
demanded, rejected, and conceived with regard to gute Policey as well as
to common fears and popular images. This included exaggeration and even
hysteria: the fear of the black death in the twenties and seventies of the 18th
century, the food crises of 1770-1773 or the robber band of Schinderhannes
(reportedly consisting of hundreds of robbers, militarily organized, and terrorizing
entire towns) are only a few examples of overstated hazards which did,
however, lead to a wave of ordinances as well as to concrete administrative
activities. In this respect, gute Policey as a communicative process and administrative
discourse not only produced security but also exaggerated and even
devised images of threats and hazards, influenced the perception of them and
therefore could also produce insecurity. 58
On the other hand, we should not underestimate the crucial function of gute
Policey in developing and producing security on a symbolic as well as a practical
level. Policeygesetzgebung implied a normative legal order characterized
ultimately by the stability, predictability and calculability of law, an essential
precondition and instrument of modern security – internal/public as well as
social/human. Police ordinances initially defined security threats and hazards as
well as the institutions, instruments and provisions of the responding security
policy in legal terms, reacting to socioeconomic developments and integrating
public discourses, but also according to social and economic attributes. This
included the labelling and criminalization of “dangerous groups” which threatened
internal/public security, as well as the stipulation of inclusion-exclusion
criteria concerning the beneficiaries of security: native or foreign, wealthy or
poor, able or unable to work, genuinely indigent or cheating, accidents/diseases
which merited support or not, etc. Within the framework of gute Policey only
the propertied, industrious, productive, disciplined and “useful” subject should
benefit from social/human security, whereas masterless vagrants and marginal
57
Kurmainz 1066, Verordnung, 13.02.1753; Holenstein 2003, 258-281.
58
For a short summary of the debate on these issues, see the introduction to: Härter et al.
2010, 1-23.
60

groups were considered as external threat to internal security. In this regard
gute Policey formed a state-based security policy and contributed to the juridification
(Verrechtlichung) and nationalization (Verstaatlichung) of security, but
also induced in the long run the fundamental separation of internal security
(innere Sicherheit) on the one hand and welfare policy (Sozialpolitik) on the
other hand. Whether the latter could or should be reintegrated as “Human Security”
in an overall historical concept of security remains an open and controversial
question.
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65

Communicating Security:
Technical Communication, Fire Security, and
Fire Engine ‘Experts’ in the Early Modern Period
Rebecca Knapp �
Abstract: »Kommunikation & Sicherheit: Technische Kommunikation zur
Feuersicherheit und ‘Experten’ für Löschgeräte in der Frühen Neuzeit«. This
article deals with the question weather, and if so how, security could be produced
by technical innovations and communication about these innovations in
the Early Modern period. The linkage between fire security, by fire engines,
technical knowledge and communication about this knowledge will be pointed
out. With the discourse of the improvement of fire engines in journals of the
Enlightenment a trigger for the change in the communication about fire engines
can be found. Further it is discussed how inventions for fire-safety can be
evaluated in the transforming scientific society in the Early Modern period.
Keywords: Security, Technical Communication, Expert, Fire Engine, Enlightenment,
Technical Knowledge, Journals of the Enlightenment, Development of
Technique, Scientific Revolution, Scientific Society, Public Experiments, Invention.
1. Introduction
The following article deals with the main question of whether, and if so how,
security could be produced by technical innovations and communication about
these innovations in the Early Modern period. To clarify this idea, one might
envisage a triangle comprising technique and technical knowledge, technical
communication and security. To trace such an information flow for a technical
security topic, I will use the public discussion about ‘fire engines’ to enhance
the fire security in cities, mainly in journals of the Enlightenment. Between
1700 and 1800 a shift took place concerning the technical standard of fire extinguishing
equipment, particularly of fire engines. This can predominantly be
seen in the lists of fire equipment in cities’ fire regulations. 1
To connect this shift with media of communication, a before/after distinction
2 will be presented concerning information exchange and dissemination
� Address all communications to: Rebecca Knapp, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fakultät für
Geschichtswissenschaft, Juniorprofessur Umweltgeschichte, 44801 Bochum, Germany;
e-mail: rebecca-knapp@web.de.
1 While in the beginning these fire regulations listed leather buckets and ladders, they later
listed more and more different fire engines stored in their arsenal.
2 Koselleck 1987, 270.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 66-85

during the 18th century. But which factors were decisive for this development?
Neither an exclusive ‘top-down’ model of expansion of knowledge and scientific
research 3 nor the approach of the diffusion of scientific knowledge are
sufficient to describe the diverse processes of knowledge transfer in the 18th
century. 4 In the following, some of these processes will be analysed, considering
the idea that communication, public discussions and demonstrations of
inventions 5 of fire engines served as a trigger or motor for the transfer and
diffusion of this technical knowledge. Furthermore, I will consider the general
effect of this shift in the 18th century and its consequences for technical communication
and knowledge.
In the sense of the triangle described above in the context of fire engines, the
following questions arise:
- Who were the ‘producers’ of technical knowledge about fire engines and
which different ways existed to communicate or spread technical information?
- How did they legitimate themselves as ‘experts’ or become legitimated and
by whom?
- How can the inventions or innovations be evaluated?
- What is the interest in communication and public discussions and who are
the addressees?
- Finally, consideration should be given to the consequences of the change in
communication described as ‘expert’.
2. ‘Experts’ and Knowledge
The changes of knowledge and communication undergone mainly in the 17th
and 18th century seem to be a process which is difficult to comprehend. Since
the early 20th century the sociology of knowledge has dealt with questions
about relations between knowledge and society. 6 On the one hand the development
of sciences by scholars, on the other hand the tacit knowledge of
craftsmen which was made visible, and the institutionalization of knowledge,
for example through the foundation of scientific societies, are all named as part
of the so-called “scientific revolution”. 7
3
Hochadel 2008, 336.
4
Remenyi 2008, 349.
5
Although the term ‘innovation’ in the sense of the conversion of an idea into products or
methods might be more suitable for the described processes, it cannot be found in the
sources. The use of the term ‘invention’ follows the analysed sources. As today, in the
Early Modern period this term described genuinely new ideas, mostly in a technical context.
But as may be seen in the following, the use of this term was overstrained.
6
Burke 2000, 13.
7
The discussion about this term is continuous in historical science. Inter alia it can be found
in Shapin 1996, 1-8.
67

But more than this, the change might be found in the combination of these
different circles of knowledge, the reciprocal effect between scholarly knowledge
and practical knowledge, and in the pluralization of knowledge. 8
Within the group of technical experts, one can distinguish between the traditional
knowledge of craftsmen and scholarly theories, although this is very
simplified. While in the Late Middle Ages a strict separation between the technical
domain of craftsmen and scholarship existed, both spheres moved towards
each other from the second half of the 17th century. The ‘new’ professional
group of engineers, besides their practical knowledge, increasingly used
mathematics as a theoretical tool. Science started to benefit from technology
and in a limited way vice versa, but the consolidation of technology into a
science of its own still had a long way to go. However, both ‘schools’ found
their commonalities in their effort to find useful solutions for the further development
of society and for the ‘Landeswohlfahrt’ (state welfare). 9 The main
‘innovation’ of the Early Modern period was not the increase of genuinely new
technical knowledge but the upgrading of useful and practical knowledge in the
mid-18th century. 10 Useless knowledge was increasingly criticized and ‘the
new’ was no longer rejected but in a way became a recommendation for ‘experts’.
11 Under these circumstances it is not surprising that craftsmen in cities,
which were a hub for technical communication and knowledge, or other practitioners
took this chance to participate in the ‘scientific society’, a rising group
which was no longer strictly accessible to the privileged classes only. 12 The
authorities, as well as the public, were now interested in the specialist and
useful knowledge of ‘experts’ who did not need to be legitimated solely by
universities, or to be scholars. Every ‘expert’ was asked to communicate his
knowledge. In the case of fire engines, producers of technical knowledge were
bell founders or coppersmiths as well as mathematicians. Some ideas about the
way of communicating and its change will be shown in the following chapters.
3. ‘Classical’ Media for Communication Before
High Volume Printing
In the times before the spread of knowledge through periodicals such as the
journals of the Enlightenment, a traditional medium of communication about
8 Cf. Burke 2000, 22-27.
9 Troitzsch 2004, 458.
10 Burke 2000, 132; Feldner 2003, 9.
11 Burke 2000, 136.
12 But different actors of the ‘science society’ still tried to differentiate themselves from each
other through the attempt at hierarchization of knowledge. This fact shows the heterogeneity
of this emerging group. Cf. Hochadel 2003, 249-308.
68

inventions was correspondence. 13 An interesting example of correspondence
about fire engines can be found in Dresden from the year 1686. It seems that
after or because of the blaze in ‘Altdresden’ in 1685 14 , the urban authority was
still endeavouring to produce security by means of functional and useful fire
engines. A letter written by Johann Wilde, “Bestalter der Artillerie und Schlangen-
und Sprützenmeister” (“commander of the artillery and hose and fire
engine master”) in Hamburg, of March 27th 1686 to Christian Zencker in ‘Altdresden’
tells that the residence in Dresden had previously contacted Mr. Wilde
and asked for a retrofitting of their fire engines with hoses and other technical
innovations. He answered that he had received the drawings of the engines, on
the basis of which he was to inspect them, and he evaluated the fire engines as
defective. Furthermore, he described his own ‘invention’ of fire engines which
were more useful than the predecessors. 15 Additionally he suggested for the
Dresden fire engines that the copper and brass of the old engines could be reused
to manufacture new ones for a price of 1000 to 1200 Mark. The letter also
reported a recent fire and stated that only the new ‘Schlangen Sprützen’ (fire
engines with hoses) had prevented the city from a major hazard. 16 To give a
clearer idea of his new fire engines, the ‘Spritzenmeister’ from Hamburg sent
five sketches of them to give the city council in Dresden a basis for their decision
about the procurement. 17
This correspondence shows how the formation of ‘experts’ for the construction
of fire engines functioned over hundreds of years and that they enjoyed a
good reputation across territorial borders. Such requests as the one described
above could be used by these ‘experts’ to promote their own ‘inventions’. The
requesting authority had the possibility of being directly informed about the
13 Cf. Döring 2008; Gierl 2004.
14 Cf. Blaschke 1999, 157-172.
15 “… Ich befinde, daß es grosse und schwäre Wercke, nicht allein zu bearbeiten, sondern
auch fort zu bringen, und daneben invendig auch sehr mangelhafft seien. Dann die jezigen
von mir inventierten wercke, so wol in als außwendig sind andere gestalt, auch nicht so
schwär fort zu bringen und zu bearbeiten, wie Messieurs selben gesehen. … Messieurs hat
selber gesehen, dass mir die Sprützen hiesiger Ohrter die so groß und schwär von holz gewesen
alle verworffen, und neue darvon mit Schlangen und Röhren gemachet; und weil die
nun von Küeffer und Eysen, so gar kein Holz als nur die Räder, sein sie nicht allein leicht
fort zu bringen, sondern auch leicht zu bearbeiten …”, Stadtarchiv Dresden,
RA/2.1/F.XIV.13, 17r-19v.
16 “… hetten wir keine Schlange Sprützen gehabt, wehre leider wieder eine grosse Einäscherung
vieler Häuser zu besorgen gewest …”, Stadtarchiv Dresden, RA/2.1/F.XIV.13, 17r-
19v.
17 “Hochgeehrter herr, Hierbey sende demselben fünff Abriesse, welche er E. E. Rathe zeigen
kann, damit sie die Neuen Inventiones sehen können, so ich alhier gemacht, da sich als dan
der Unterschied zeigen und finden wird, und mir solche nach belieben wieder zusenden
…”. One of these sketches is still conserved, and its simplicity clearly shows that the innovations
were merely to be made visible, whereas the secret of this new invention was to be
protected. Stadtarchiv Dresden, RA/2.1/F.XIV.13, 18r.
69

current state of fire engine technology by a capable craftsman and of improving
their existing material or purchasing new inventions. Since the 16th century, the
common way of procurement of craftsmen had been to decide on the basis of
tendered sketches 18 , and this practice can still be found at the end of the 17th
century. The increment of craftsmen’s drawings in the Early Modern period
simultaneously shows the increasing differentiation of experts’ technical
knowledge. 19 Furthermore, the correspondence shows the knowledge transfer
‘from the bottom up’. Due to its bipolar character, the communication about
and the spread of technical knowledge via letters was heavily personalized. It
was almost left to chance through which inofficial ways the contact with such
an ‘expert’ craftsman was first generated. An active intention to establish such
an information flow had to be present, but we cannot speak of a medium to
form public technical communication, knowledge or understanding. Besides all
the information about Dresden fire engines, the above-mentioned correspondence
is significant because of the additional information given in it. Mr Wilde
wrote that he had manufactured two fire engines for Amsterdam and that he
intended to go there for a few weeks. 20 This little comment allows the construction
of a communication network of fire engine experts.
In Amsterdam, Jan van der Heyden (an artist, but also inventor and administrative
practitioner) and his brother Nicolas (a hydraulic engineer) had been
very committed to fire security needs since 1672. Inter alia they invented and
sold “fire engines with water hoses”. It is evident that the Hamburger
‘Spritzenmeister’ Wilde gained some of his knowledge about how to manufacture
fire engines with hoses from his visits to Amsterdam and maybe from
personal contact with the van der Heyden brothers. 21 He transferred it to his
own work and used it for improving fire security in Hamburg. In addition, he
offered his knowledge inter alia to Dresden. For Dresden, again, a direct con-
18 Popplow 2006, 109f.
19 Popplow, 2006, 111.
20 “… und weil ich vor die Stadt Amsterdam auch zwei Spritzen gemacht, dass ich nach
Amsterdam wollte …”, Stadtarchiv Dresden, RA/2.1/F.XIV.13, 17r-19v.
21 One very important work about fire engines and the method of fire fighting, which is more
than merely a machine book, should be kept in mind here: the “Description of the recently
invented and patented Fire Engines with Water Hoses and the Method of Fighting Fires
now used in Amsterdam” by the inventor Jan van der Heyden and Jan van der Heyden Junior,
printed in 1690: Beschryving der nieuwlyks uitgevonden en geotrojeerde slang-brandspuiten
en haare wyze van brandblussen, teegenwording binnen Amsterdamin gebruik
sinde.
About Jan van der Heyden and his son: Both were very engaged in civic duties as Fire-
Chief Generals of Amsterdam and certainly played a great role in the production and communication
of specialist knowledge of fire engines. With their ‘Brandspuitenfabrik’, they
successfully sold their fire engines all over Europe. Of course, the book and separated leaflets
were written mainly for promotional reasons, and addressed to authorities who were
willing and had the financial possibilities and consultants to understand and use this new
fire engine technology in order to generate security. Heyden 1996, xxi.
70

tact to Amsterdam by means of the import of a “Holländische Feuer Sprütze”
in the year 1685 can be proven. 22 This, in short, gives an idea of how communication
and knowledge transfer based on personal contact and correspondence
functioned to advance fire security with useful fire engine inventions. These
ways of communication before the spread of knowledge by journals represent
the high level of technical knowledge about fire engines existing in different
circles and the generation of networks. But the level of this communication
should be understood to have a single, pragmatic function. With the journals of
the Enlightenment, we can ascertain a transformation of this communication to
a higher level of display which was to some extent professionalized.
A link between both levels can be found in the ‘machine books’ of the late
16th and 17th century. They were a ‘new’ medium in the Early Modern period
for the general popularization and pluralization of knowledge. A generalizing
discourse about technical equipment began with the praise of new, useful and
innovative machines in the printed theatra machinari 23 of the late 16th century.
With the help of these books, contemporary engineers tried to increase their
social status, especially by proving the intellectual fundament of their own
profession. 24 However, the authors of the machine books focused on informing
the reader about the results of their own efforts and had less interest in discussing
technical skills. The models of the machines in the machine books served
as an idealization of techniques through which their creators tried to distinguish
themselves from the group of craftsmen. 25
Thorsten Meyer states that the machine books were one of the most important
media of spreading technical knowledge. 26 From the 16th century, the
printed book served as a new structure to spread knowledge between experts
and laymen who were able to read; this led to the popularization of technical
know-how. This might also be described as a dialectic between specialized
science and unspecialized public. 27 The machine books were first addressed to
the nobility and the literate bourgeois. 28 Unfortunately, they showed little interest
in fire extinguishing equipment and because of this, they contain only a
little information about fire engines. 29 In the 18th century the machine books
disappear as media of technical communication. 30 The machine books can be
22
“… die … aus Hollandt … anhero gebrachte große Schlangen Brand Sprüze …”, Stadtarchiv
Dresden, RA/2.1/F.XIV.13, 2r-5v.
23
Literature on machine books inter alia: Popplow 1998; Popplow 2006; Meyer 2004.
24
Popplow 1998, 8.
25
Troitzsch 2004, 451.
26
Meyer 2004, 147.
27
Daum 1995, 27.
28
Meyer 2004.
29
The theatrum machinarum of Heinrich Zeising, printed in 1610, introduced three fire engines
with figures and explanations: Zeising 1610.
30
Meyer 2004, 157.
71

seen as an interlude between correspondence and periodicals. They were an
instance or element used to translate technical knowledge onto a higher level,
but their authors had completely different fundamental ideas from the actors in
journals of the Enlightenment. The medium ‘(machine) book’ was very inflexible
compared to a fast-moving and customizable periodical.
4. The Discourse about the Improvement of
Fire Engines in Journals of the Enlightenment
Besides books, one other medium increasingly replaced correspondence as a
messenger: periodicals. 31 In particular, the 18th century was shaped by the
Enlightenment and closely linked with this was the effort to popularize knowledge.
The formation of the ‘modern’ sciences from the early 17th century led to
the foundation of scientific Academies, followed by the publication of scientific
periodicals and journals. These technical periodicals were predominantly
the most effective medium of spreading knowledge 32 and caused a major
change to communication in the mid-18th century. By degrees, social communication
processes were generated which brought about and intended the access
to technical knowledge of different interested social groups. 33 Popular journalism
served not only as information, enlightenment and amusement but was also
used for social control over the interpretive power of knowledge. Within popular
scientific rhetoric, natural science and new disciplines but also the delimitation
between ‘experts’ and ‘laymen’ could be legitimated, which was appreciated
by the scientists. 34
While the social situation limits information to family or insider knowledge,
as is usual in the technical crafts, the journal transforms knowledge into science.
35 Following this statement, it becomes evident that technical know-how
spread through publication in journals brought about the depersonalization of
knowledge and its sustainable use. The border between crafts and sciences was
softened. Through journals which were printed periodically in large volumes,
specialist knowledge was accumulated, formalized and made publicly available,
in complete accordance with the sense of Enlightenment. 36
Some examples of the depersonalization of technical knowledge in the case
of fire engines and its spread through scientific journals will be presented in the
following. The examples will be evaluated with the focus on actors, legitima-
31 Döring 2008, 101.
32 Burke 200, 132; Feldner 2003, 209.
33 Tschopp 2004, 471.
34 Remenyi 2008, 348.
35 Gierl 2004, 430.
36 Troitzsch 1966, 105.
72

tion, specialist rhetoric of inventiveness 37 and the demand for invention and
inventive content.
The basic idea behind the discussion about the improvement of extinguishing
equipment, especially fire engines, is based on the hazard of a blaze in
cities. Everyone who tried to find ways to diminish or prevent such a hazard for
the good of society was authorized to consider the question of fire-fighting. 38
Thus there was a demand for everyone for useful tools to increase fire security
and diminish or prevent disasters. This wide demand for specialist knowledge
complied with the idea of the scientific academies of a linkage between “theoria
cum praxi”; 39 this is what is meant by a linkage or conflation of scientific
knowledge, technical-empirical know-how and economic knowledge.
4.1 Transformation of Lost Tacit Knowledge
Through Theoretical Reconstruction
In 1759 in an issue of the journal “Hannoverische Beyträge zum Nutzen und
Vergnügen” (“Hanoverian articles for utility and enjoyment”), an article entitled
“a proposal for fire fighting” can be found. 40 The author states that twenty
years ago, a leaflet reached his hands in which an unknown person announced
that he had invented a kind of water catapult that would be more sustainable to
extinguish an ember than a fire engine. The author of this leaflet was deceased
and his sketches of the invention could not be found. 41 In addition, the author
of the article tried to reconstruct theoretically the specialist knowledge which
was lost due to the death of the craftsman. His solutions were wooden vats,
filled with water and thrown into the fire by “Feuerwerker” (fire workers). 42
However, in the same breath he stated that until now his theoretical thoughts
had not been practically proven. With regard to such a practical use, the author
stated that this proof should be made by somebody else. 43 He was satisfied and
saw his work as done because of his proposal of such an invention, which he
37
The terms ‘scientific rhetoric’ or ‘rhetoric of inventiveness’ are used in the sense of the
formation of specialist elements and a way of describing ‘inventions’ which was establishing
itself, including the translation of practical elements in journals.
38
Claproth 1762, 1106.
39
Troitzsch 1999, 275.
40
S., A. C. 1759.
41
“… Vor etwa 20 Jahren [machte] … ein Unbekannter … mit vieler Gründlichkeit, obgleich
schlechter Schreibart bekannt: es seyn die bisherigen Löschmaschinen dem großen Feuer
nicht proportional … Seine Erfindung … ein Wurfwerk … sey mit seinem Geräthschaften
nicht so kostbar, als eine Feuersprytze … und sey ganz zuverlässig … Der Mann war bald
nachher … verstorben [und] mir entgiengen alle Mittel aus dieser Erfindung eine Entdeckung
zu machen …” S., A.C. 1759.
42
“… so haben wir, was der gute Erfinder mit sich ins Grab genommen.” S., A.C. 1759.
43
“… Nun versuche, ändere, verbessere und führe aus, wer will. Den übrigen wird ein Spott,
verachten und auslachen auch gerne vergönnet. Mich genüget, zu einer Erfindung Vorschläge
gethan zu haben …”. S., A.C. 1759.
73

declares to be “A thousand million times better ... than what Schwarz, Coehorn,
Gernhard von Gahlen and other butcher-birds have hatched, to the misfortune
of the world”. 44
Because of the way that the writer describes the deceased inventor, the
above-mentioned separation between theory and practice and his alienation
from empirical experiments, it can be assumed that he considered himself to be
part of the group of scholars within the group of ‘technical intelligence’. The
justification of the usefulness and importance of his reconstructed invention is
twofold. On the one hand he states that these vats could be more suitable than
fire engines in some cases. On the other hand he alludes to the securitizing
factor of his invention in contrast to, for example, Coehorn’s weapon of war.
The ‘invention’ that vats filled with water could extinguish a fire seems to
be in itself neither new nor even inventive. But the way in which the author of
this article sets this alleged lost knowledge in context with the case of the ineffectiveness
of fire engines and ‘negative inventions’ such as weapons of war
can be seen as a developing ‘rhetoric of inventiveness’. It seems that it was
mainly not genuinely new inventions that were communicated and recognised
by these journal articles, but that the way they were described and set in context
was becoming increasingly important. In the developing knowledge society
and with public communication through journals, authors knew how they
could represent themselves as ‘inventors’ and ‘experts’ in this way.
4.2 Prize Questions for the Collection of Knowledge
In 1771, the Danish Society of Sciences in Copenhagen posed a prize question
concerning the most advantageous configuration of fire engines. 45 Johann
Gustaf Karsten Wenceslaus, mathematics professor, received the prize for his
“Treatise on the most advantageous arrangement of fire engines”. 46 In the preface
of his book, he relates that since 1770 he had had orders from the ducal
government of Mecklenburg to coordinate the procurement of useful fireextinguishing
machines for small rural towns and to control their capability and
price-quality ratio. These experiences were the basis for his treatise. 47
However, these competitions were not genuinely addressed to scholars and
their theories. In 1772 the “Royal Prussian general chief finance, war and domains
directorate” tendered a prize concerning the best manufacture of a fire
engine for the use of the flat country. This prize was halved and awarded to two
people. The first was the professor of mathematics and teacher Georg Simon
44 “… Millionen tausendmal besser … als was Schwarz, Coehorn, Gernhard von Gahlen und
andere Neuntödter der Welt zum Unglücke ausgebrütet haben.” S., A.C. 1759.
45 Meister “Review” 1775a.
46 Wenceslaus 1773.
47 Wenceslaus 1773, 3.
74

Kügel, who had authored the treatise, 48 and the second the “hand fire engine
maker” Insel from Berlin who had proven himself as the most legitimate to
manufacture a fire engine following the theoretical guidelines made by Kügel.
This fire engine was compared to other useful fire engines and performed excellently.
49 Regarding the awarding of prizes, scholars as well as craftsmen
participated in competitions and were thus recognised in the literate discourse
about fire engines. However, in cases of prize questions one can see that the
main intent was not the generation of new knowledge or new inventions. The
first aim was rather to collect and combine different tacit knowledge. The legitimation
for participants in these prize questions was given by the tendering
institutions themselves and some participants could show their suitability by
official posts or particular skills concerning their daily business. It could be
stated that competitions aimed firstly at the inventory of different technical
knowledge in different circles; they were intended to support useful knowledge
and bring different circles of knowledge together. The prize questions by academies
and authorial institutions were a practice to generate stocks of knowledge.
50 Of course, the institutions also intended to find special knowledge for
their own efforts and by awarding prizes to technical specialists, these persons
became ‘experts’.
4.3 Economic Competition in the Manufacture of Fire Engines
A teaser by J. C. Riepenhausen was published in the ‘Hannoverisches Magazin’
in 1772 with the title “Invention of a new kind of fire engines or so-called
water mills”. 51 At first he remarked that fire engines available on the market
cost between 500 and 700 Reichstaler and procurement was too expensive. 52 As
he emphasized, he offered an equivalent alternative for about 100 Reichstaler.
As a reason for this cheap manufacture, he stated that his design got along
without a bellows and screws, but nevertheless ensured a continuous water jet
from the pipe. Furthermore, he claimed that this sort of engine would have
more advantages concerning its handling, compared to the familiar fire engines.
At the end of his article, he even advertised other, optical, mathematical and
physical instruments that he had produced.
The author of this article was a ‘Practicus’, which is not surprising, since
only by manufacturing fire engines would it be possible to see which components
can be omitted while still retaining the function of the machine. It is not
possible to verify whether this so-called “new invention” really functioned as
48 Kügel 1774.
49 Meister, “Review” 1775b.
50 Keller 2008, 37.
51 Riepenhausen, “Erfindung” 1772.
52 “… trotz aller Nützlichkeit [wird] oft vom Kauf abgesehen …, da man ein solches Kapital
nicht investieren möchte …”, in: Riepenhausen, “Erfindung” 1772.
75

well as described. The article gives no information about any test or any other
kind of legitimation of the ‘inventor’s’ ability. The only legitimation one could
imagine is the cheap price, but it is not possible to determine whether this was
assessed in general. Taking as a starting point Riepenhausen’s assumption that
his fire engine worked, the importance of the economic aspect concerning a
cheaper production seems to have increased and been further promoted through
more active competition, which developed owing to public discussions. Its
positive effect was that functional fire engines and thereby better fire security
became generally affordable. This development was based on the step-by-step
efforts to equip rural and small towns with fire engines too. The addressees of
those teasers were no longer only ‘major cities’ which had the financial power
to procure the highly developed and very expensive fire engines. With the
small cities, a new market focused on the economic aspect was opened up. To
fill this market niche, enter the market and successfully place the offered products,
a fire engine manufacturer had to spread information about the (mainly
economic) advantages of his ‘inventions’ through a ‘mass medium’ such as a
journal. This example shows that the spread of information about fire engines
not only supported the idea of development of techniques but also of economic
aspects. Fire security was not only triggered by the spread of genuinely new
and better fire engines but also by the promotion and rising availability of
existing technical standards and a change of the audience from a few cities to
the multitude of smaller towns.
4.4 Public Experiments and their Description
in Journals as Legitimation
In 1770 the “Berlinische Sammlungen” 53 reported about a bell founder’s assistant
from Saxony, who had created a fire engine which evoked great admiration
during a public test. The water was lifted through the pipe for 193 “Salzburg
shoes” or 102 “Leipzig cubits”. 54 With the fire engines created and built by
him, Mr. Thilläyn (“fire engine maker with royal privileges at Rouen”) made
an attempt in which he lifted the water without the help of leather hoses and in
a constant beam up to 100 “foot”. 55 Expectedly, he promised to create such fire
engines for everyone at a low price but could not publish the secret of his in-
53 Anonymous, “Neue Wassersprützen” 1770.
54 “[Diese Feuerspritze hat] bei der öffentlichen Probe eine allgemeine Bewunderung erreget.
… das Wasser ist vermittelst derselben [Röhre], noch 70 Schuhe höher, als das Dach der
Salzburgischen Domkirche und also 193 Salzburger Schuhe oder 102 Leipziger Ellen hoch
getrieben worden.” Anonymous, “Neue Wassersprützen” 1770.
55 “Herr Thilläyn … hat mit einigen neuen Brandsprützen, von seiner eigenen Erfindung,
einen Versuch gemacht, unter welchen sich eine befindet, die … [das Wasser] ohne Hülfe
von lederner Schlangen, mit einem beständigen Strahl 100 Fuß hoch treibet.” Anonymous,
“Neue Wassersprützen” 1770.
76

vention for any price. 56 This article was written anonymously, so the author’s
motivation is not known, but it might be suspected that the author was an eyewitness
of the public test, because of the nearly emotional way he describes
what happened. It might be suspected that he was not very well educated in
technical knowledge, because he does not give any information about the technical
details of the fire engines tested. For him the yardstick for the functionality
and usefulness of the fire engines was how high they could bring the water
and if the beam was constant. Certainly these two factors were inter alia important
to evaluate the suitability of fire engines, but not solely. In this case, much
more important is what he tells the reader about the manufacturers of the engines.
They are both craftsmen, but in different social positions. The journeyman
is from Saxony, while Mr. Thilläyn comes all the way from Rouen.
In his study of electricity in the German Enlightenment, Oliver Hochadel
analyses the role of electricity showmen with the example of the ‘electrifier’
Martin Berschitz and explains the kind of space such showmen took up in the
culture of science of the Enlightenment, how far they produced knowledge,
what this knowledge was about and how it was transferred. 57 A comparable
practice seems to be evident for fire engine manufacture. The above-mentioned
manufacturers of fire engines travelled to cities to promote their engines. In this
way they informed about fire engines by demonstrating their useful function, of
course without revealing their technical ‘inventions’. But in contrast to the
‘electrifiers’ and their demonstrations, the manufacturers of fire engines had to
prove the applicability of their inventions for fire-fighting. Hence a reciprocal
result of these demonstrations was that a successful public test was equivalent
to a proof of usefulness. In this way different kinds of fire engines gained public
acceptance and recognition in the micro-historical city circle of knowledge.
Through public opinion, they were perceived as an ‘invention’ or technical
progress for fire security nearly without reflection on whether in a wider context
of knowledge this could really be considered ‘new’ or not.
In the “Journal von und für Deutschland”, the ‘fountain master’ Karl Kirn
from Trier published a description of a new fire engine in 1785. Inter alia he
advertised his machine, which could be offered at a reasonable price in the
sense of an economic improvement. He emphasised the convincing functionality
of this fire engine in its public demonstration at the cathedral’s square.
Therefore the spectators and laymen were considered as witnesses. 58
This article shows two things: On the one hand the above-mentioned economic
aspect; on the other hand the fact that the public proof for fire engines
56
“Er wird für jeden, der es verlangt, dergleichen Sprützen um einen billigen Preis verfertigen,
kann aber vor der Hand, sein Geheimnis, dessen Erfindung ihm viel Zeit und Mühe
gekostet, noch nicht entdecken.” Anonymous, “Neue Wassersprützen”1770.
57
Hochadel 2008, 331.
58
Kirn 1784, 92.
77

was not only used as a legitimation medium by travelling showmen but also by
craftsmen in situ to present their skills in manufacturing useful fire engines to
the public.
In the category “Dresden curiosities”, the “Magazin der sächsischen
Geschichte” (magazine of Saxon history) 59 reported a general fire engine test
(‘Hauptspritzenprobe’) at the old market square on October 6th 1787, which
was attended by the chancellor and the governing mayor among other spectators.
The “ingenious Inspector Köhler” was sent to Weimar by the elector to get
a personal impression of the excellent fire engine facility there. According to
his plans, he supervised the construction of an engine which could also be used
as a water-feeder. The ‘copper-molder’ La Mare had also manufactured a new
big fire engine and a water-feeder. Both machines were tested with different
hoses and different distances of the feeder. As a result it was stated that it
would be “desirable for the encouragement of diligence as well as for the good
of the city that the public should acquire this engine as their property.” 60 Again,
the author is anonymous. His descriptions prove the continuous efforts of the
authorities to collect and exchange knowledge through the inducement and
financing of these journeys. Although personal contact is still essential, a
change of tactic can be recognised. To create public acceptance it was no
longer correspondence, which had been the most important way for many
years, but public proof that was used as a medium. The official Dresden general
fire engine tests demonstrated the special interest of authorities in the assessment
and advancement of new technologies. The public discussion, although
not always about genuinely new ‘inventions’ and improvements, led to
a rising perception and acceptance of technological progress for the welfare of
the whole society.
Many descriptions of such tests of fire engines can be found in journals of
the Enlightenment over the years. As indicated, they can be interpreted on two
levels. Firstly, the public experiment itself: The idea of an empirical, rational
and experimental renewal of sciences began with Francis Bacon in the
16th/17th century. 61 With public tests this experimental science seems to have
been transferred to the daily business of fire engine manufacturers. In accordance
with this, the tacit knowledge of craftsmen rose as a public legitimation
for fire engine ‘experts’ at the end of the 18th century. Clearly committed demonstrations
with nearly identical machines were put on repeatedly, although in
the meantime everybody knew about the function of fire engines. These repetitions
made the public test of fire engines become more and more of a ritual.
59 Anonymous, “Dresdner Merkwürdigkeiten” 1787.
60 “Es wäre sowohl zu Aufmunterung des Fleisses als zum Besten der Stadt zu wünschen,
dass das Publicum diese Spritze zu seinem Eigenthum erhielte.”, in Anonymous, “Dresdner
Merkwürdigkeiten” 1787.
61 Krohn 1990, 211.
78

Secondly, their description in journals of the Enlightenment: For the most
part these descriptions were not written by the manufacturers themselves. But
because of their publication in journals, they were recognised in scholarly
circles and adopted. The practice of experimental legitimation was spread
through ‘technical intelligence’, which led to a decline of philosophical constructs
and the integration of tangible elements into theorems. 62 This shift towards
experience and experiment in journals of the Enlightenment made the
public test into an inventiveness-rhetoric element. From being an auxiliary
method of legitimation, the experiment was transferred from practice into theoretical
thinking.
4.5 Utopian Theorems or ‘Inventions’?
The journals of the Enlightenment did not only report about obviously successful
‘inventions’ of fire engine technique. The case of the ‘invention’ by the
mining master (‘Bergmeister’) Löscher can prove that not everything named
‘invention’ was accepted. First, a review written by Löscher about his own
publication “invention of a fire engine without pipework, pistons and valves” 63
can be found. 64 Most likely because of this review, a second article on
Löscher’s invention by an anonymous author followed. Assessing the ‘invention’
in the context of fire engine standards at the end of the 18th century, it
seems probable that the ‘funnel fire engine’(‘Löschers Trichterspritze’) would
not have found any consideration in the Gelehrtenrepublik (scholars’ republic).
It does not provide any technical refinements and is based on merely the simplest
physical laws of pressure. Accordingly, the “Neue Allgemeine Bibliothek”
stated that this funnel fire engine was cost-effective and could be a useful
machine for the peasantry, at least. 65 But all in all this funnel fire engine had no
genuinely new usefulness owing to the lack of hose connections and air vessel.
Therefore it was not even able to produce a constant water jet. Perhaps this fact
is the reason why Löscher did not try to keep the secret of his ‘invention’. On
the contrary: Löscher described the engine and its functionality so precisely
that “every artist could manufacture this machine”. 66
Another example that seems to belong to the less successful improvement
concepts is the ‘invention’ by Mr. Fürst, described in the “Monatsschrift für
Mecklenburg”. The results of the tests using the equipment (probably a hose
attached to a frame to produce higher water lifting) were damaging for the
62 Fischer 2004, 158.
63 Löscher 1792.
64 Löscher 1793.
65 “… wenigstens für das Landvolk eine nützliche Maschine.” Anonymous, “Review” 1793.
66 Anonymous, “Review” 1793.
79

competence of its inventor: 67 The hose broke and for fire fighting it was not
useful in any way. 68 It is inconceivable that, following such a public report
about the unsuitability of a certain invention, any actor of security production
would consider a purchase. Thus the publication and public declaration of
unusable inventions contributed to the production of fire security in cities by
preventing the production of insecurity.
One example of a nearly utopian theoretical idea, which was insufficiently
tested under laboratory conditions and could not be practically realized, is the
description of an allegedly fireproofed suit. This suit, made of raw material and
soaked with ash water, was intended to enable a human to stand in the fire.
This might have been retrospectively perceived as a quack theory, since in
order to do this it would constantly have to be poured with ash or salt water by
bystanders, and the person would also have to be guided because his eyes
would have to be protected by the suit. The ‘theoreticus’ Justus Calproth himself
barely thought about the practical possibilities of realizing this idea. He
wanted to leave this to others. But in order to avoid the rejection of his theory
by the population, he indicated that this work, which only seemed to be dangerous,
must be made savoury and plausible to the common man by public
tests. 69 Claproth was a lawyer and taught in Göttingen. Maybe he and his
thoughts were ahead of his time, as today we have refractory suits, and his
invention for recycling paper also required centuries to assert itself. 70 Nevertheless
this invention can be seen as an insecurity and danger-producing theoretical
consideration for fire-fighting. Probably the practical impossibility appeared
here as a healthy regulation to the formation of theories. However, in
this example the tactic of inventive rhetoric can be seen too. For the scholars,
the laboratory tests were not enough to strengthen the persuasiveness of the
invention, so the genuine legitimation tool of the practitioner, the public test,
was used. The practice of using practical legitimation rituals to break down a
scholarly theory becomes evident.
5. Conclusion
These examples are proof of a shift in the self-imaging of the technical intelligence
and in its public image, and a change in communication and information
about technical topics. To summarize:
67
“… was bei dem Versuche geleistet worden, wird jedermann von dem Werthe dieser Erfindung
Licht geben …” Anonymous, “Beschreibung des Versuchs” 1790.
68
“… von einer Maschine, die mit langen Stängen gerichtet werden muß, nicht wohl
Gebrauch zu machen”, Ibid.
69
“bloß dem Anschein nach gefährliche Arbeit dem gemeinen Mann durch Versuche
schmackhaft und plausibel gemacht werden [soll]”, Claproth 1762.
70
Claproth 1774.
80

- New institutions and their efforts at the collection of useful knowledge led
to new media for technical communication.
- These institutions and their media served as a legitimation for ‘experts’.
- These ‘experts’ were no longer only scholars since, according to the idea of
usefulness, the demand for tacit knowledge and craftsmen’s skills arose.
- Due to the concentration and conflation of these different processes of information
and communication in the journals of the Enlightenment, the former
hierarchy of knowledge had softened. Thereby the reciprocal character
should be pointed out.
- Because the practice of craftsmen was now becoming visible, the method of
empirical experiment was distributed and accepted as producing knowledge.
71
- Hence it was not the actors of the production of technical knowledge for fire
engines that were changing but the attention to and the emphasis on them.
Access to wider and new markets was opened. The radius for the diffusion
of knowledge increased.
Regarding the inventiveness of the fire engineers described in the presented
articles, it must be granted that the communication of genuinely new inventions
was less significant compared to the tacit knowledge of them becoming public.
Owing to the legitimation and general validity that they achieved in different
ways, they received public acceptance, and these ‘inventions’ were transferred
from ‘specialized or even secret knowledge’ to ‘general knowledge’.
This transfer of special knowledge and, as a consequence thereof, legitimation
as an ‘expert’ also comprised a lucrative incentive to participate, not only
in the fire engine discussion. Hence it is not surprising that scholars as well as
practitioners promoted their ‘inventions’ in journals. Based on this, communication
in the 18th century seems to have taken place on a secondary level of the
‘knowledge revolution’: The rhetoric of inventiveness had become daily business
and a process of self-fashioning inventors was set in motion. The participants
knew which instruments and arguments they could use for stylization and
legitimation of themselves as an ‘inventor’ or ‘expert’. There was a recognised
need to describe or demonstrate the function of inventions. For this reason the
difference between the demand for invention and the innovative contents can
be ascertained.
To conclude, a few considerations should be mentioned concerning shifting
communication, invention, fire security and security in general.
The general Enlightenment idea of the usefulness of technical knowledge, of
pluralizing knowledge and of general education seemed to cause more security.
There was a general fear of the population and a need for security which could
71 Shapin 1996, 96-100.
81

only be produced if there was a common perception and reception and a general
understanding of the operating mode.
Although a quantitative analysis is still lacking, the qualitative analysis allows
us to state that the articles concerning fire engines in the journals of
Enlightenment support the effect of security, because topics concerning fire
security were mentioned more often than, for example, they were in machine
books. The examples presented show how fire hazards in a technical sense
were prevented and handled. They demonstrate processes to enhance security
in case of the disasters pointed out.
After the mid-18th century, a general change in technical communication
and in the diffusion of different knowledge systems can be seen. The ideal type
of a scholarly inventor who created new inventions for security did not function
without practical elements. Theorems led to the borders of the thinkable and to
utopian ideas. The transference of practical and tacit knowledge to a theoretical
level by the inclusion of it in the scriptualization process and the increasing
rhetoric of inventiveness can be found. And vice versa, theorems were broken
down to practical usefulness. The combination of emerging sciences and the
diffusion of empirical knowledge produced security in general. In Early Modern
cities the main actor of security production were the authorities, and the
market of security products was mainly focused on them. The predominant aim
was the ‘promotion of the state’s welfare’ (‘Beförderung des Landeswohls’).
One of the major influential factors might not be seen in genuinely ‘new inventions’
but in the developing communication and the involvement of the
public, resulting in depersonalization and the formation of a pool of knowledge
which was used to develop this ‘Landeswohlfahrt’. Not only a few outstanding
inventors but the collectivity of them affected the flow of information and the
knowledge about fire engines. But although the popular Enlightenment and
within it the technical Enlightenment is tangible in the second half of the 18th
century, distinguishing this time from ‘before’, there was no discernable overall
progress of inventive knowledge but rather a progress of the spread of inventive
communication.
Nevertheless, the discourse about fire engines and other fire-securing methods
led to so-called shifting baselines and changed the fundamental sense of
security of following generations.
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und Sozialgeschichte der Technik im 18. Jahrhundert, edited by Ulrich Troitsch,
257-279. Münster, New York, Munich: Waxmann 1999.
Tschopp, Silvia Serena. “Popularisierung gelehrten Wissens im 18. Jahrhunderts.”
In Macht des Wissens, die Entstehung der Modernen Wissensgesellschaft, edited
by Richard van Dülmen and Sina Rauschenbach. Köln: Böhlau, 2004.
85

Youth Crime, Urban Spaces, and Security in
Germany since the 19th Century
Klaus Weinhauer �
Abstract: »Jugendkriminalität, städtische Räume und Sicherheit in Deutschland
seit dem 19. Jahrhundert«. This article focuses on juvenile delinquency
and on its perceptions in the last thirds of the 19th and of the 20th centuries.
Three questions are discussed: Were there any debates on (human) security in
both time phases and if yes, which problems were discussed; which larger social
developments were mirrored in these debates; what were the implications
of potential threats posed by juvenile delinquency for life in urban settings?
In the last third of the nineteenth century the perception of and fears about
youth crime focused on easily discernable proletarian male youth (groups and
individuals) who mainly lived in densely populated urban neighborhoods. As
(youth) crime was mainly interpreted as a threat towards the state and authorities
were convinced that the police could successfully handle all challenges in
this field, there were no debates about security at that time.
In West Germany during the 1960s and the 1970s, two important changes in
juvenile delinquency, in its perception and fears could be discerned. First, a
twofold – spatial and social – dissolution of boundaries (Entgrenzung) of youth
crime developed. The establishment of the transnational networks of the youth
cultural underground, in which drug consumption played an important role,
was instrumental in these developments. Second, in the early 1970s, as the case
of the Rockers shows, youth crime had become a potentially omnipresent phenomenon
of everyday urban life evoking diffuse spatial fears. Every seemingly
friendly boy from the neighborhood could all of sudden turn into a “juvenile
violent offender”. Thus, crime could potentially lurk everywhere, in every
niche of (urban) society. It was against this background that the age of security
dawned as it promised a safe haven against all future urban threats.
Keywords: youth crime, juvenile delinquency, security, urban space, crime
statistics, urban violence, “Underground”, “Rockers”, drug consumption,
working-class youth.
1. Introduction
With its Trust Fund of Human Security, established in 1999, the United Nations
attempts to promote human security. Its main aims are the protection and
� Address all communications to: Klaus Weinhauer, Universität Bielefeld, Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft,
Philosophie und Theologie, Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft, Universitätsstrasse
25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany; e-mail: klaus.weinhauer@uni-bielefeld.
http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/kweinhau/.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 86-101

empowerment of people and communities whose survival, livelihood or dignity
are threatened. Recently it was pointed out that human security is a concept “so
vague that it verges on meaninglessness and consequently offers little practical
guidance to academics who might be interested in applying the concept”. 1
From a social and cultural historical perspective, however, security is a promising
but still neglected field of research. This is especially true when it comes to
an analysis of security in urban spaces. In a contribution which tries to overcome
the pitfalls of the concept of security, two problems should be tackled: It
should be clarified what is meant by security and the analysis should be focused
on clear-cut time phases and also on relevant social fields.
While a history of security written from the perspective of the state has a
long and well-established tradition dating way back into the eighteenth century,
2 much less historical scholarship exists that is focused on social aspects of
security. In Germany the sociologist Franz-Xaver Kaufmann was among the
first to include such a perspective in his studies. 3 He emphasized that in order
to care for or about the future, the present must be safe. 4 As social science
research suggests, security is about providing against indefinable future threats.
Seen from this angle, security is a social value which tries to work against the
contingency of time and against the uncertainty of the future and aims at a
controllable complexity (beherrschbare Komplexität). 5 This leads to a double
paradox: the safer the living conditions appear to be, the more people strive for
security. Every new step towards a secure society, however, produces new
potential risks.
The crimes committed by juveniles figure prominently when it comes to describing
the state of security in contemporary urban spaces. 6 This relationship
between youth and (imagined) crimes has a long history which dates back to
the nineteenth century. Thus, in focusing on youth crime 7 , urban space and
security I would like to present a comparison of two time phases: the last third
of the nineteenth and the last third of the twentieth century. The main focus of
the whole contribution, however, will be on the 1960/70s. Both periods were
phases of multiple social transitions. 8 These changes were brought about by
three interrelated processes: industrialization, urbanization, and migration/social
mobility. In Germany and elsewhere during the last third of the
1 Paris 2001, 102.
2 Lüdtke and Wildt 2008; Zedner 2009; Loader and Walker 2007.
3 See Kaufmann 1970.
4 Kaufmann 2003, 73-104, 93; See recently Münkler 2010, 11-34.
5 Kaufmann 2003, 9.
6 Space is understood not as a pre-existing container but as a socially constructed entity. With
this I follow Lefèbvre 1991.
7 The terms crime and delinquency are defined by Brusten 1999, 507-555. In this paper the
terms youth crime and juvenile delinquency will be used synonymously.
8 Overviews are given in Osterhammel 2009; Mazower 2000; Hobsbawm 1998.
87

nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization closely interacted and
changed the economic structure but also led to rapidly growing cities. Moreover,
there were big transnational migration movements and a highly mobile
working-class population. The very high mobility of large sections of the working
class led to a huge body of casual laborers which in many European countries
aroused social fears. 9 Moreover, in this phase of intense social changes the
state’s monopoly of physical violence was firmly established in a process
where police forces began to emancipate themselves from their roots in the
military. In the last third of the twentieth century these processes came to an
end or took different directions. Many former industrial towns became deindustrialized
while cities were strongly affected by the redevelopment of city
centers and by the building of high-rises at the periphery. Waves of migration
and international agreements brought refugees and laborers (“guest workers”)
to Germany. Looking at the state’s monopoly of physical violence, its erosion
began in the 1970s when private security institutions were allowed to handle
services which in former times had been provided by the police.
In my analysis of juvenile delinquency and of its related perceptions in the
last third of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries three questions are at the
center: Was youth crime in both time phases discussed against the background
of security, and if yes, which problems were put to the forefront; which larger
social developments were mirrored in these debates; what were the implications
of potential threats posed by juvenile delinquency for life in urban settings?
While such an approach can benefit from the analysis of crime statistics,
it must be taken into consideration that such statistics are questionable: Crime
statistics tell more about social norms and values than about ‘real’ crime figures.
10 Moreover, it seems promising not only to analyze the social historical
aspects but also to scrutinize the social perception of youth crime among politicians
and police personnel as well as in the media. Simultaneously, it should
also be checked which offences stood at the center of public interest. 11 It also
needs to be inquired whether there were certain urban spaces where juvenile
delinquency could develop or where it was imagined that such crimes could
take place.
2. Youth Crime in the Last Third of the 19th Century
The 1880s were a phase in which the dangerousness of youth, mainly the male
proletarian youth, was discovered. 12 In the public debates these imagined
9
See Jones 1984.
10
See Reinke 1992, 199-214; Dinges and Sack 2000, 42-43.
11
See the pioneering studies Cohen 1973; Hall 1978.
12
Von Trotha 1982; Roth 1983. See as a general overview Benninghaus 1999; Speitkamp
1998.
88

threats were combined with the dangers of life in big cities. 13 On the one hand,
the population of the Kaiserreich in the late nineteenth century had a fairly
high percentage of young people. 14 This was especially true for big industrial
cities where, for example, in 1905 in Barmen or Essen 63 resp. 67 percent of
the inhabitants were younger than 30. 15 On the other hand there is the Reichskriminalstatistik
(imperial crime statistics), established in 1882. These court
statistics were used to point at the rising figures of convicted juveniles aged
between 18 and 22.
While criminality of all types was predominantly the preserve of young men
between the age of eighteen and thirty, the “most crime prone group was men
between the ages twenty-one and twenty-five” 16 . Two additional aspects, however,
must be taken into consideration: First, in the last third of the nineteenth
century, it was mostly the working-class youth which stood at the center of the
heated public discussions about rising youth crime. Second, although at least in
the first years of its statistical measurement there were high numbers of convicted
juveniles in rural areas, from the turn of the century, the city became the
major site of crime and crime fears. 17 Thus, many contemporary studies focused
on young proletarian males as the central figures of urban crime which
was thought to be mainly situated in proletarian neighborhoods. 18 Clemens
Schultz, a Hamburg pastor, published a classical account which was later often
quoted. In 1912 he wrote: The urban Halbstarke was
the ‘degenerate’ young person (...) his preferred activity is to stand around idly
in the marketplace and ... he is the sworn enemy of order, he has a passionate
distaste for order; he therefore hates regularity, and equally hates all that is
beautiful and, in particular, work, especially the regular, ordered fulfilment of
duty. (...) When social life is convulsed, for example by a revolution, or perhaps
just by a general strike or by great political commotions, this scum
comes to the surface and has a dreadful effect. This mob is much worse than
individual, so-called hardened criminals. It is possible to protect oneself against
those, but these powers of darkness have a poisoning, polluting effect,
much worse than any contagious epidemic. It is ... the State’s duty to take action
against these dreadful elements. 19
Contemporary counter-measures against youth crime mainly concentrated
on the time phase between the end of school attendance and the beginning of
military service. State and church officials and medics relied in their countermeasures
mainly on social pedagogical education, on work and work-related
13
Roth 1997; Malmede 2002; Oberwittler 2000; see also the pioneering study written by
Peukert 1986.
14
Tenfelde 1982. “Young” includes people between 0 and 30 years of age.
15
Tenfelde 1982, 203.
16
Johnson 1995, 198.
17
Malmede, 104. See for rural areas Gestrich 1986.
18
See as a classical account Schultz 1912; also Mischler 1889, 197-198; Appelius 1892.
19 Schultz 1912, 8 and 33-34.
89

discipline and on military discipline but also on actions that could be taken by
the police and on the effects of incarceration. 20
Until 1914 fear of crime was about two things: It was a fear about the total
downfall of the bourgeois order and it was a fear of political upheaval. These
fears were focused mainly on highly mobile young male workers. Crime and
social democratic orientation were believed to go hand in hand. 21 Moreover,
these debates often concerned the racial purity and strength of the German
nation. 22 As current research has elaborated, the main settings which contributed
to the rising numbers of violent youth crime were: 23 migration, job mobility,
and also a growing state interest in punishing the rough young proletarian
males. The importance of the latter becomes obvious when we take a closer
look at the imperial crime statistics, where three offences figured prominently:
firstly property offences (mainly theft) and acts of bodily harm (Körperverletzung).
These crimes were often committed by groups of young male working-class
lads. 24 Both offences were often expressions of a proletarian way of
life of “playful adventure” 25 and they were committed by proletarian youth
against proletarian youth. Third on the list were offences against state and
public order such as damage to property, breach of the domestic peace, and
resistance against officers (Sachbeschädigung, Hausfriedensbruch, Widersetzlichkeit
gegen Beamte). All in all, these were offences against the growing
number of order norms issued by the bourgeois state. 26 This becomes evident
when we look at the offence of “gefährliche Körperverletzung” which was
created in February 1876. With this addition to the Reichstrafgesetzbuch justice
and police were intensifying their crusade against physical violence. 27 This
indicates, as Ralph Jessen has convincingly underlined, not only that there were
rising numbers of violent offences but also that a much stricter law enforcement
and a lessening tolerance towards violence became prominent. Sometimes
these violent acts were even interpreted as political terrorism, as the confusing
and somewhat strange term “Buben der Propaganda der That” 28 (boys of the
propaganda of the deed) underlines. These young lads were mainly described
as the lumpen proletarians: the avant-garde of social democracy. 29 In the crime
20 See Saul 1971.
21 Oberwittler 2000, 32.
22 See Dix 1902, 3.
23 Malmede 2002, 62.
24 Malmede 2002, 47.
25 Malmede 2002, 49.
26 Malmede 2002, 111.
27 Jessen 1992, 248. See also Jessen 1991.
28 Appelius 1892, 85.
29 Malmede 2002, 67.
90

statistics, however, such political offences were of minor importance, which
contrasted greatly with public perception. 30
Although juvenile delinquency was intensely debated until World War I, the
current state of research shows that the topic of security was completely absent
from these discussions. There was no public debate about security against
(youth) violence. It was mainly about saving the state order or about protecting
everyday order (Ordnung). Crime was conceived less as a threat to individuals
or to social groups. All in all, before World War I authorities were sure that
when it came to discussing and punishing youth crime they were confronted by
clearly discernable individuals who failed. In these views two facts were inevitable:
First, it was clear that these individuals were overwhelmingly of proletarian
origin and mostly lived in the densely populated urban neighborhoods.
Second, if any severe troubles might occur in this social field, state authorities
were convinced that the police (sometimes assisted by military troops) would
meet these challenges successfully.
3. Youth Crime in the 1960/70s
From a social and cultural historical perspective the 1960/70s saw some farreaching
social changes. In general, for West German society the 1960s were a
decade of new departures, which already started at the beginning of this decade
and not, as it is often thought, only as late as ‘1968’. 31 In particular, changes in
the norm and value systems – be they already visible or still underway – must
be taken into consideration when youth crime and its social construction are
studied. There was also a breakthrough of mass consumer society with its inherent
challenges of making choices in many situations. Social science research
was discovering youth culture(s) 32 and a path was taken to virtually equate
youthfulness with social change. Thus, the changing patterns of consumption
among youth gained public attention.
Beginning in the last third of the 1950s in West Germany, sceptic concerns
were articulated about the ever faster changing society. These anxieties culminated
in the case of the Halbstarke, whose protests were dramatized by media,
politicians and social institutions which were all alarmed by these young people.
33 The latest studies, however, underline that these actions should be interpreted
as an expression of a minority promoting a hedonistic lifestyle. Their
actions pointed at tensions between, on the one hand, social change in a consumer
society and conservative moral norms and values on the other hand. 34
30 Malmede 2002, 83; see for a later time period Wagner and Weinhauer 2000.
31 See for the state of historical research: Frei 2008; Klimke and Scharloth 2008.
32 Compare Siegfried 2000, 588; for an overview compare Sander and Vollbrecht 2000.
33 See as the latest study Kurme 2006; Poiger 2000.
34 See Heintz and König 1957; Kaiser 1959.
91

In the second half of the 1960s (around 1967), however, crime became a
main issue in the field of domestic concerns. The caesura in the numbers of
crimes registered by the police as well as in the perception of crime and its
inherent dangers is underlined by three developments. 35 First, roughly by the
middle of the 1960s, the figures of the crime statistics (including juvenile delinquency)
collected by the police showed a marked increase in the number of
offences. Second, public concern about crime grew stronger. This trend is
supported by the fact that new television programs were established (for instance
in March of 1964 and in October of 1967) which dealt with criminal
cases. 36 At the same time, opinion polls were taken that demonstrated that from
the mid-1960s onwards, there was a heightened need for security among West
Germans. 37 To this day it is not clear whether these TV programs and opinion
polls were expressions of fears about crime or whether they contributed to the
increase of such fears. 38 Third, among policemen and politicians the term “Innere
Sicherheit” began to gain importance at the end of the 1960s. Under this
vague umbrella term the police set out to define the fight against crime as a tool
to deliver security.
In January 1973, the news magazine Der Spiegel quoted the North Rhine-
Westphalian minister of the interior Willi Weyer, who had said that juvenile
delinquency has “‘risen in an alarming way.’” Moreover, in the same article the
magazine reported an “over-proportional rise in violent crime” committed by
young people. 39 In the 1960s, however, it was not mainly working-class youth
on which public concern was focused, but youth in general. Besides violent
offences, police personnel, politicians, and journalists of the late 1960s put one
set of offences at the center of their concern about youth crime: drug consumption.
40 Starting during the mid-1960s, drug consumption took the shape that is
has today: It became an international youth problem – which, at least in the
case of Germany, is still not well-studied. 41 On the one hand, within the youth
culture, drugs were an expression of a revolt in lifestyle, 42 which can be characterized
by self-realization, hedonism, and by the “attainment of new worlds of
35 See for further details Weinhauer 2005; Weinhauer 2003.
36 Zimmermann 1969, 11 and 45.
37 See Reuband 1995; Weinhauer 2003, 249-250. Compare as an opinion poll Allensbacher
Berichte, no. 19, August 1971.
38 Compare Weinhauer 2003, 251-262.
39 Der Spiegel 26, 1 January 1973, 64. More detailed information on the following is given in
Weinhauer 2006, 376-397.
40 In this essay, the term drugs includes cannabis products (hashish and marijuana), opiates
(morphine and heroin), cocaine, LSD, mescaline, amphetamines, and barbiturates. Alcohol
is not included. For details see Weinhauer 2006, 187-224. Problems of definition are discussed
in Renggli and Tanner 1994, 10-15.
41 See as a local study Stephens 2007; also Marwick 1998, 78, 480-496; Tanner 1998.
42 Compare Klessmann 1991.
92

experience”. 43 On the other hand, debates about drugs figured prominently in a
process of “normative self-assurance” made to combat the erosion of social
norms and values. 44
3.1 Threats of the Underground
Leaving aside the rising numbers of criminal offences, as registered by the
police, and the growing importance of crime for domestic concerns, during the
mid-1960s youth crime transformed in two important ways: Juvenile delinquency
lost its traditional spaces and offences were no longer exclusively
committed by juveniles coming from the lower social stratums but also from
those belonging to higher social classes. With regard to (juvenile) delinquency,
for a long time, the police were mostly concerned with the red light and entertainment
districts as well as the port areas of big cities. It was there that runaway
youths found hiding-places when they had left their parental homes or
reformatories. Moreover, large parts of the criminal underworld could be found
in these precincts. 45 Starting in the mid-1960s, however, police, social workers,
and politicians had to face juveniles who were part of a complex – more or less
counter-cultural – underground. 46 Political actions such as demonstrations,
happenings, sit-ins etc. were only one part of these international networks,
which were also structured by inner-city meeting points in the streets and in
other public places.
This vaguely defined underground was not exclusively concentrated in the
traditional red light or port districts but also in the city centers, in wealthy
quarters as well as in the suburbs. 47 Moreover, it was not the underclass youth
which constituted the core groups of the underground. Instead, members of the
middle and higher stratums of society dominated this new underground. Thus,
the emergence of the underground meant a spatial as well as social expansion
of delinquent milieus. During the mid-1960s, in West Germany the dropouts
(Gammler) could be seen as the harbingers of the underground that developed
in big cities like Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, or Hamburg. 48 The dropouts, whose
disposition (Habitus) and political directions differed from town to town, were
predominantly 17 to 25-year-old males of middle-class background. 49 The long
43
Tanner 2001, quote on 245.
44
Tanner 1990, 399.
45
Compare the descriptions of Werner 1969, 41-45; Pietsch 1965, 126; compare also Falck
1965, 161-173; see as a broader interpretation Reinke 2010, 539-553.
46
For the term underground, compare Hollstein 1969, 24-27, 106-142; Der Spiegel 21, June
9, 1969, 142-155; for an international overview compare Marwick 1998, in particular 489-
492.
47
A summary is given by Kreuzer 1975, 137-149.
48
Compare Claessens and Ahna 1982, 103-106; a good contemporary impression is provided
by Kosel 1967.
49
Compare Jaedicke 1968, 87.
93

hair of the dropouts especially “attacked the image of the masculine man; their
untidiness challenged bourgeois feelings of cleanliness; having no job and
possessions they questioned the capitalist achievement-orientated society.” 50
The underground networks – just as the later student protests – were instrumental
in changing the police’s analysis of threats. From this time, there were
so many patterns of social behavior that juveniles could exhibit that the spectrum
of normality (and of delinquency) could not be very easily defined. The
international youth/cultural underground had too many ways of delinquent
behavior ready to explain crime/delinquency with the help of individual abnormal
behavior. Moreover, it was not only the underground youth which used
the supplies of new consumer goods (clothes, beat, rock, and pop music, drugs,
motorbikes, etc.) to create their personal lifestyles. This also became increasingly
true for ‘normal’ young men and women. 51 Moreover, during the mid-
1960s, the term society (Gesellschaft) 52 gained the upper hand vis-à-vis community
(Gemeinschaft) when it came to describing and analyzing the social
order in West Germany. Because of this and owing to the discovery and the
development of the underground, criminologists and police personnel were
able to understand delinquency and criminality as a social problem.
3.2 Working-Class Youth Crime: The Rockers
Working-class-based youth crime and the corresponding fears did not disappear
in the 1960s. It was in cities such as Hamburg, Berlin, or Essen in 1968/69
where the press, in particular the Bild-Zeitung, turned the Rockers into a public
threat – into real folk devils. The interest that the Rockers garnered from the
police and from the press lasted until the early 1970s. 53 Rockers were seen as
the tip of an iceberg of ever-increasing juvenile delinquency and violence. 54
Press reports gave the impression that anybody could become the victim of the
violent acts of the Rockers – anywhere, anytime. 55 Thus, the Rockers’ case was
an example of the breakthrough of the term violence when it came to describing
and analyzing security and social order in these years. 56
When the Hamburg police force checked their card files, it became evident
that nearly two thirds of the Rockers were unskilled, many of them pursuing
50
Hollstein 1981, 12.
51
For the term “bricolage”, compare Hebdige 1979.
52
Nolte 2000.
53
The state of research on the Rockers is reviewed in Cremer 1992; for an analysis of the
press in Essen, compare Adam 1972, 57-69; for a paradigmatic opinion poll, compare
Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Behoerde fuer Inneres [Federal archive of the city of Hamburg, Office
for domestic affairs], Infas Hamburg Report. Bad Godesberg, 1974, 824.
54
See as an statistical overview Thome and Birkel 2007; for local details see Adam 1972, 62-
63.
55
Der Spiegel 26, January 1, 1973, 8, 15 and 22; Konkret (1972) 13.
56
See Cremer-Schaefer and Steinert 1998, 99-100, 117-122.
94

only odd jobs. 57 Similar to the members of the underground, the Rockers did
not meet in the traditional delinquent areas of the red light districts or in the
city districts close to the ports. Instead their pubs were spread all over the
city. 58 Some Rockers lived in high-rise concrete-laden residential districts such
as the Maerkisches Viertel in West Berlin. 59
The Rockers imported the long hair of the contemporary dropouts into their
rough working-class outfit, wore black leather jeans and jackets, heavy boots
and later also rode motorbikes. They gave their groups names like “Bloody
Devils”, “Hell’s Dogs”, “Black Souls” or “Hell’s Angels”. 60 The Rockers
showed off an aggressive pattern of masculinity with which they distinguished
themselves from all current social tendencies, which they considered would
lead towards softness and femininity. Therefore, Rockers often attacked homosexuals
and disliked ‘soft’ hashish smokers. 61 The Rockers of the late 1960s,
who resembled the Halbstarke of the late 1950s only in a limited sense, were a
working-class component of contemporary youth delinquency in Western
Germany. 62 Their provocative appearance owing to their rough and aggressive
masculinity was reinforced by their usage of Nazi symbols.
In the early 1970s, the big gangs of the Rockers dissolved and only small
groups were left. Simultaneously the outfit of the Rockers began to change
towards a more civilian disposition (Habitus). They wore leather vests, jackets
with leather fringes, and jeans jackets with inscriptions. The Hamburg police
approached this end of old certainties by ‘inventing’ a new group of juvenile
delinquents. They were “outwardly totally inconspicuous in their group behavior
and performance”; however, they were “threatening in a similar way” to the
Rockers. Beginning in early 1972, this “Taetertyp nach ‘Rockerart’” (a quasi-
Rockeresque perpetrator-type) was also labeled as “young violent offender”
(Junge Gewalttaeter). 63
This definition made it easy for the police to include all young delinquent
boys and girls who wore ordinary clothes. As a consequence, the numbers of
“young violent offenders” in Hamburg skyrocketed from 563 in 1971 up to
1,909 in 1972. 64 This example underscores the close relationship between youth
(culture) and youth delinquency, 65 since the changes in the way of clothing led
to this redefinition of youth crime. On the one hand, the ‘normal’ youth copied
the leather clothing style of the Rockers. The clothing industry had made this
57
Kreuzer 1970, 348.
58
Simon 1997, 270.
59
Homann 1969, 12-15.
60
See Wolter 1973, 293.
61
Compare Kreuzer 1970, 339, 352.
62
For literature on Halbstarke see footnotes 19, 33 and 34.
63
Wolter 1973, 294.
64
Piesch 1975, 12.
65
This is underlined by Trotha 1982.
95

style palatable to non-Rockers. On the other hand, Rockers apparently integrated
new styles into their outfits. Even without Rockers, the threat of juvenile
delinquency could be maintained by this widening of definition. Since the
police decentralized the perspective on delinquency, its threat seemed to be
omnipresent with deep roots in society. Even a friendly, normally-dressed boy
next door could turn into a “young violent offender.”
4. Conclusion
In the last third of the nineteenth century the perception of and fears about
youth crime and youth violence were focused on easily discernable proletarian
male youth (groups and individuals) who mostly lived in densely populated
urban neighborhoods. If any severe troubles should occur in this social field,
state authorities were convinced that the police (sometimes assisted by military
troops) would meet these challenges successfully. In the last third of the twentieth
century juvenile delinquency and youth violence became much more
diffuse and was not so easy to locate in urban spaces. In West Germany during
the 1960s and the 1970s there were two important changes in juvenile delinquency,
in its perception, and in the related fears which influenced the search
for security in a society which was felt to be changing ever faster. First, there
was a double dissolution of boundaries (Entgrenzung) of youth crime. From the
mid-1960s delinquent behavior was no longer concentrated in its traditional
centers such as red light or port districts of the cities. At the same time, delinquency
reached broader strata of society. The establishment of the international
underground networks, in which drug users played an important role, was
instrumental for this development. The early 1970s brought a second impulse
for this end of certainties about the social and spatial aspects of youth crime.
As the case of the Rockers has shown, from now on it was impossible to ascribe
delinquency predominantly to abnormal individuals. Youth crime had
become a potentially omnipresent phenomenon of everyday urban life. Thus
the fight for security as a social value which tries to work against the contingency
of time and against the uncertainty of the future gained unprecedented
importance.
Both time phases under consideration here mirrored changes in the urban
setting of delinquency. In the last third of the nineteenth century the debates
focused on the interaction of industrialization, urban growth and social life in
overcrowded working class neighborhoods. The fears about crime of the
1960/1970s occurred against the background of radical changes in the built-up
urban environment caused particularly by urban renewal with its focus on
concrete high-rises and the redevelopment of city centers. As a consequence,
96

the resurgence of the scholarly field of criminal geography in the mid 1970s 66
was one effort to locate more precisely the origins, spaces, and fears of crime in
Western Germany. In short: In the early/mid 1970s there were diffuse spatial
fears. Every seemingly friendly boy from the neighbourhood could all of sudden
turn into a “juvenile violent offender”. Thus, crime could lurk everywhere,
in every niche of (urban) society. It was against this background that the age of
security dawned as it promised a safe haven against all future urban threats.
References
Printed Sources
Allensbacher Berichte, no. 19, August 1971.
Der Spiegel 21, June 9, 1969, 142-155.
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101

Human Security and the Challenge of
Automobile and Road Traffic Safety:
A Cultural Historical Perspective
Achim Saupe �
Abstract: »Die UN-Agenda zur menschlichen Sicherheit und die Herausforderungen
der Verkehrssicherheit aus kulturhistorischer Perspektive«. The
worldwide enhancement of road traffic safety is one aspect of the UN agenda
on “human security”. The article examines the history of road traffic safety and
the development of automobile safety technologies since the mid twentieth
century with a strong focus on West Germany. From a historical perspective
there are two reasons why the UN agenda includes the enhancement of road
traffic safety. Firstly the development of road traffic safety is a “success story”
in industrialized countries even though there are still high death rates globally.
Secondly, the enhancement of road safety is linked to advanced civil societies
with all their stakeholders, and strengthening civil society is a key concern of
the UN worldwide.
Beyond that, automobility is a symbol of modernity. Discourses about automobile
safety inform us about the conceptions and regulation of individual freedom
and security in different societies. Moreover, new safety technologies
such as the safety belt modify the interactions between human beings and machines
and thus the idea of freedom, autonomy and responsibility.
Keywords: automobility, road traffic safety; automobile safety; safety belt;
individualization, autonomy; freedom.
With the rise of the concept of human security, terms such as national security,
internal and domestic security, social and economic security were fundamentally
expanded. This expansion of security as an important political term and
concept integrates new societal values into the political discourse about security.
1 The human security agenda focuses on the global as well as the regional
and integrates the protection of individuals, groups, and people. The UN program
strengthens individual rights, while the rights of groups, ethnicities or
nations and in this respect the sovereignty of states have ostensibly taken a
back seat. The report “Our Global Neighborhood” of the Commission on
Global Governance claims the protection of individuals as its main concern,
and therefore new threats such as crimes, social distress, diseases, poverty,
� Address all communications to: Achim Saupe, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung
(ZZF), Am Neuen Markt 1, 14467 Potsdam, Germany; e-mail: saupe@zzf-pdm.de,
.
1 Daase 2009, 150.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 102-121

unemployment, migration, drug traffic, and arms trade have entered the political
agenda under one comprehensive heading. 2
The “Commission on Human Security” concluded in its final report that
“human security means protecting vital freedoms” and offers two strategies:
“protecting people from critical and pervasive threats and situations”, and
“empowering” people’s “strengths and aspirations”. 3 Critics have argued that
this
new conceptualization of security […] is so vague that it verges on meaninglessness
– and consequently offers little practical guidance to academics who
might be interested in applying the concept, or to policymakers who must prioritize
among competing policy goals. 4
The rise of the concept of human security is often interpreted in the context
of the rise of the discourse about individual human rights, which refers to an
individualization, privatization and juridification of social relations in the second
half of the twentieth century. The collective and individual rights to security
were mentioned by the Charta of the United Nations of 1948 and became
vital in the OSCE process. In the 1980s they were discussed in Germany by
various political theorists such as Gerhard Robbers und Josef Isensee who
demanded a fundamental “right to security”, which was in a way related to the
American concept of “freedom from fear”, first mentioned in Theodor Roosevelt’s
Four Freedoms speech in 1941. 5 German critics swiftly responded, raising
fears that such a fundamental right to security could include a considerable
loss of freedom and constitutionality. 6
As Zygmunt Bauman has remarked, the German terms Sicherheit and its antonym
Unsicherheit in German are much more inclusive than “security” in
English. Sicherheit manages to squeeze into a single term complex phenomena
for which English has at least three terms: security, safety and certainty. Hence,
the linguistic difference between safety from accidental events and security as a
protection against intentional damages does not exist in the German language.
Of course, in German there is “Sicherheit”, “Gewissheit” (certainty) and
“Schutz” (protection), but the term “Sicherheit” integrates all of them. For
Bauman, all these ingredients of “Sicherheit” are prerequisites of selfconfidence
and self-reliance on which “the ability to think and act rationally
depends”. 7 With the overall inclusive concept of “human security”, the differences
between “security” and “safety” seem to dissolve in the English-speaking
world, too.
2 Commission 1995, 145.
3 Commission on Human Security 2003, 1.
4 Paris 2001, 102.
5 Isensee 1983; Robbers 1987.
6 Denninger 1990. The relation between the “human security” concept and “human rights” is
critically discussed by, among others, Oberleitner 2002.
7 Bauman 1999, 17.
103

Empowering people to live a secure life implies, at first glance, the idea of
strengthening individual and collective responsibilities while simultaneously
restricting the sovereignty of the national states. The worldwide enhancement
of road traffic safety is one component of the UN agenda on “human security”.
In the following article, I will reflect on the concept of “human security” by
using the example of the development of automobile and road traffic safety
since the mid-twentieth century with a strong focus on Germany. The discourse
about automobile and road traffic safety is also linked to the interaction of
stakeholders in advanced civil societies and developing countries (and the
development of a “world society”) and the interactions of human beings and
safety technologies. Therefore, finally, I will discuss the conception of the
individual contained in contemporary discourses about automobility and the
enhancement of road traffic safety.
Road Traffic Security as World Politics
As mentioned above, the human security paradigm includes a lot of aspects of
security and safety right up to engineering standards and road traffic safety. 8
The 1994 UN Human Development Report on “New Dimensions of Human
Security” listed injuries from road accidents under the rubric “human distress
in industrial countries”, and even mentioned road traffic noise as an indicator
for (in)security:
In industrial countries, traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people
aged 15-30 – with some of the highest injury rates in Austria, Belgium,
Canada and the United States. And in developing countries, traffic accidents
account for at least 50% of total accidental deaths. The highway death toll in
South Africa in 1993 was 10,000, three times the number of death from political
violence. 9
In 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) focused on the theme of
road safety in cooperation with the World Bank. In the same year the World
Bank supported the Global Road Safety Forum (GRSF) in alliance with the
foundation of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) – an important
stakeholder of the automobile industry. In its 2004 report, WHO drew
attention to the fact that road traffic collisions kill more than 1.2 million people
a year around the world. As main traffic risks WHO mentioned speeding, alcohol,
non-use of helmets, seat belts and other restraints, poor road design, poor
enforcement of road safety regulations, unsafe vehicle design, and poor emergency
health services. Therefore, World Health Day 2004 tried to advocate a
“systems approach” to road safety, which took into consideration the key as-
8 Unesco 2008, 41.
9 United Nations Development Programme 1994, 31-32.
104

pects of the system: the road user, the vehicle, and the infrastructure. 10 This
relates to a classical concept developed in the 1950s and 1960s, that road traffic
accidents could be minimized by enforcement, education, and engineering.
In general, since the 1960s and 1970s there has been a decrease in the numbers
and rates of fatalities in “high-income” countries – a term defined by the
World Bank. 11 At the same time, there has been a pronounced rise in numbers
and rates in many so-called “low-income” and “middle-income” countries. 12
The case of reunification in Germany provides a good illustration of how economic
factors can influence car crashes. 13 After the reunification many people
suddenly experienced a surge in affluence and access to previously unavailable
cars and in the two following years, the number of cars that were bought and
the total distance travelled by cars increased by over 40 percent. At the same
time, there was a four-fold increase in death rates for car occupants, with an
eleven-fold increase for those aged 18-20. The overall death rate in road
crashes in this period nearly doubled, from 4 per 100,000 in 1989 to 8 per
100,000 in 1999. On the basis of this experience, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Technische Zusammenarbeit (“German Society for Technical Cooperation”,
GTZ) supported international cooperation among various stakeholders in road
safety projects and initiatives and helped to shape national strategy development
processes from 2004. 14
The Myth of the Car and
the German Discourse about Automobile Safety
Cars are more than a means of transportation. In 1956, David Riesman and Eric
Larrabee argued that the symbolic meanings of automobiles overwhelmed
instrumental meanings. 15 Roland Barthes compared the representative car with
a Gothic Cathedral, and Henri Lefebvre saw the car as a “magical” object, “a
denizen of the land of make-believe”. 16 A few years later in 1974, while the
design of cars had become less representative and more functional, Ron Horvarth
claimed that “the automobile may prove to be the single most significant
innovation in American culture during the twentieth century”. For Horvath, the
automobile was “so shrouded in myth and has so much symbolic meaning that
we could call it our ‘sacred cow’”. 17 Automobiles and automobility are still a
10 WHO 2004.
11 Cf. World Bank 2010.
12 Yitambe et al. 2009.
13 GTZ 2006.
14 GTZ 2004.
15 Riesman and Larrabee 1993.
16 Barthes 1972, 88. Lefebvre 1971, 102.
17 Horvath 1974, 168.
105

symbol of mobility, prosperity, freedom, and stand for the possibilities of modernity
and development. Besides the enormous death rates from car accidents,
this is possibly an important factor in understanding why UN and WHO agendas
focus their particular interest on road traffic and car accidents: They represent
in a way the obvious risks of modernization. 18
In 2009, the German historian Eckart Conze characterized the history of the
Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 2009 as a constant “search for
security”. 19 It has been argued that the 1950s and early 1960s were dominated
by a discourse about national and social security, while the 1970s have been
seen as the “decade of internal security” because of the political response to the
terrorism of the Red Army Faction (RAF). 20 In 1969 the German sociologist
Franz Xaver Kaufmann described the rise of the semantics of security to a
“normative concept”. Besides traditional fields of security policies – such as
public security, national security, and social security (the latter was his main
focus) – he emphasized the importance of technical safety. He differentiated
between the safety of systems, operational reliability, and road traffic safety
and built up many categories such as “instrumental safety”, “self-reflective
safety”, and “autotelic safety”. For Kaufmann, technological safety and, in
particular, road traffic safety and automobile safety was one of the most important
factors which strengthened the normativity of the security paradigm in
everyday life. 21
Before the political concept of “internal security” was established in the
domestic policies of the Federal Government in West Germany, the same term
was used by car manufacturers and popularized by print media which commented
on new developments in the automobile industry. The development of
“internal safety” features in the car industry was part of a “safety race” in the
last few decades, in which regulatory administrations, car and insurance companies,
and road users were all involved. 22
18
At the same time, the number of deaths in car accidents was always an argument used to put
other societal risks into perspective: Thus the historian Keith R. Jackson observed that since
1976, “more Americans have died on the road than in all the wars of the history of the
United States combined” and calculated that the “500,000 young men on the desert sand,
about 100 of whom died in pushing the Iraqi Army back to its own boundaries, were
actually safer than if they had been at home, where a statistically larger number of them
would have died accidental deaths, mostly in automobile crashes.”, in: Jackson 2006. And
the expert for internet security Bruce Schneier, who was called a “security guru” by the
press, relativized the risk of becoming a victim of a terrorist attack with the same argument.
Schneier 2003, 28-30.
19
Conze 2009.
20
Braun 1978. Funk and Werkentin 1977.
21
Kaufmann 1973, 49-90.
22
MacGregor 2009. Several studies draw attention on the history of automobile safety technologies.
Cf. Niemann 1999; Weishaupt 1999. From a more cultural-historical point of
view, Norbert Stieniczka showed that after the Second World War the German discourse on
automobile safety was structured by the dispositive of the “disciplined road user”. Later in
106

Since the 1950s, the number of car accidents increased in West Germany as
in other industrialized countries, and safety experts had to develop new safety
technologies and new societal strategies to prevent road traffic risks. This led to
new definitions of automobile technical safety in the mid-1960s. Safety experts
now focused not only on the causes of car accidents, but also on the consequences
of car accidents in order to reduce the effects of a crash. Therefore,
German car manufacturers differentiated between “external security” and “internal
security”. With the rise of the term “internal security” as a political key
concept in the fight against crime and terrorism in the 1970s, car manufacturers
ceased to use this concept. Automobile safety experts in Germany began to use
the terms “primary” and “secondary”, and in particular “active” and “passive”
safety as was customary in the English-speaking world. 23
In the course of mass motorization after World War II the death rates on
West German streets increased nearly as much as the number of new registered
vehicles. In 1951, when the Federal Motor Transport Authority was founded to
manage the Central Vehicle Register, the Central Register of Traffic Offenders,
and the Central Register of Driving Licences, Federal Minister for Transportation
Hans-Christoph Seebohm (DP/CDU) remarked in a speech about the fight
against road traffic offenders: “We have to be in a position to eliminate from
our roads those vermin which hamper the flow of traffic and continually
threaten to involve respectable drivers in accidents.” 24 This rhetoric to protect a
Volksgemeinschaft (“people’s community”) of drivers went hand in hand with a
strengthening of “individual responsibility and self-discipline”. 25
This stood in contrast to the liberal automobile and road traffic policy. In
1952, all existing speed limits were abolished, even, and against all reason, in
the inner cities. During the Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”) the automobile
was not only a symbol of new prosperity, but also of freedom which
was understood in an anti-totalitarian way. On the one hand, these policies
intended to emancipate the citizens from the paternalism of the traditional
German authoritarian state, on the other hand there were new instruments for
the control of road traffic such as the Traffic Registers. The abolition of all
speed limits led to a rapid increase in the number of accidental deaths, and in
1958 inner-city tempo limits were reintroduced.
the 1970s, the idea of the “representative sports car” was broadened and the automobile
industry developed the “foolproof automobile”. This “foolproof automobile” reduced
driving risks through the implementation of new safety technologies. See Stieniczka 2006,
23.
23 It is not very surprising that in the United States, car manufacturers did not use the term
“internal security”, because it could have been connoted with the “Internal Security Act” of
1950 and the persecution of Communists in American society.
24 “Bundesverkehrwacht, ADAC und Sicherheit der Straße” 1951, 7.
25 Klenke 1994, 158.
107

In the debates about the control of road traffic and the improvement of road
traffic safety, the experience of National Socialism was an ambivalent discursive
point of reference. On the one hand, German highways were propagandized
by the Nazis as National Socialist modernization. 26 On the other hand,
National Socialist road traffic policies began in 1934 with the general abolition
of speed limits, but they were reintroduced on the eve of World War II: in May
1939 for motor trucks and then in October for all automobiles. In order to save
resources needed for the war, high speed on German roads was now judged to
be “unnationalsozialistisch”.
From the 1950s onwards as a part of an “ideology of free automobility”, the
tightening of road traffic regulations and the fight against road traffic offenders,
road traffic controls and fixed speed limits were discredited with reference to
“Gestapo methods”, “blind obedience” or “the steerable masses”. 27 In 1960 this
led the German sociologist Rudolf Gunzert to remark, during a hot debate
about speed limits at Whitsun, that the West German citizens would “give up
fundamental democratic rights without too much objection”, while a speed
limit “would cause them to practically mount the barricades”. 28
Nevertheless, the concept of the “disciplined road traffic user” and the antitotalitarian
ideology of the “freedom to drive” went hand in hand. Up to the
1960s, many participants of the debate were convinced that automobile accidents
were caused by black sheep and were not a consequence of increasing
automobility. The campaign “Free speed for free citizens” (Freie Fahrt für
freie Bürger) was promoted by Germany’s largest automobile club (ADAC) in
1974 in the aftermath of the oil crisis as a provocative answer to the speed
limits on federal highways and traffic-free Sundays. This once more made
visible that automobilism was linked with a liberal concept of freedom. In the
end, the campaign of the German automobile club was successful and mandatory
limits were lifted and replaced with an advisory limit of 130 kilometers per
hour. While the discussion about a mandatory speed limit returned from time to
time in the following years, even at the end of the 1970s the arguments against
speed limits still drew on Nazism. As the news magazine Der Spiegel wrote,
“with the end of the Nazi regime came the end of the period of speed limits on
German highways”. 29
The Enhancement of “Passive Safety”
In the meantime, the car industry enhanced the “internal” and, in particular, the
“passive” safety of cars in response to growing public interest. The “passive
26 Schütz and Gruber 1996.
27 Klenke 1994, 158-159.
28 Gunzert 1960, 326.
29 “Neue Glaubenskrise ums Tempo-Limit,” Der Spiegel 26/1979, 20.
108

safety” included a safety cage with two crumple zones, at the front and back,
patented by Daimler-Benz engineer Béla Barény in 1951, a padded dashboard,
shock absorbing bumpers, burst-proof door locks, safety glass windscreens,
snap-off mirrors, flush-mounted switches and mirrors, head restraints to prevent
whiplash, a collapsible steering column, side impact bars, and (in the early
1980s) airbags. One of the most important new passive safety technologies was
the invention of the safety belt. After 1955, Ford and Chrysler offered seat belts
as optional extras, and from 1957 onwards, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz equipped
some of their production series with lap belts. In the same year, Swedish
engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point safety belt, and from 1959 in cars
the three-point safety belt became standard equipment in Volvos. In 1961, 70
percent of newly registered cars in Sweden were fitted with front seat belts.
In the United States, the insurance company Liberty Mutual Insurance financed
the construction of the “Liberty Safety Car” by the Aeronautical Laboratory
of Cornell University in 1955. One year later, Ford tried to sell its “Fairlane
Sedan” on the basis of its new safety features and launched the first safetyled
automobile advertising campaign with the slogan: “You’ll be safer in a ’56
Ford!” In Ford showrooms, photographs were presented that claimed to show
that passengers in a new Ford were more likely to survive an accident than
those who travelled in a Chevrolet. 30 The campaign, which presented photographs
of car accidents to potential car buyers, failed.
Between 1961 and 1966 the number of annual traffic deaths jumped from
38,000 to 53,000 in the United States, a 38 percent increase. In 1965, Ralph
Nader’s book “Unsafe at any speed” 31 and the consumer movement surrounding
it – such as the “Center for Auto Safety” (1970) and “Public Citizen”
(1971) – brought public criticism to bear on General Motors and other manufacturers,
forcing them to pay more attention to traffic safety. Discussing safety
was a long-held taboo in car industry, and Stan Luger has argued that this remained
so until the 1990s. 32 Lee Iacocca, a top manager of Ford in the 1960s,
was cited in the publication “Safety Last: An Indictment of the Auto Industry”:
“Styling cars sells cars but safety does not.” 33
In the same year that Ralph Nader’s publication appeared, the General Service
Administration (GSA) established safety standards for governmentpurchased
cars following a five-year-long debate about this topic and after
some federal states had launched initiatives to enhance automobile safety. 34
The National Highway Safety Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle
30 Stevenson 2008, 193-196.
31 Nader 1965.
32 Luger 2000.
33 O’Connell and Myers 1966. At the beginning of the 1970s this was still an argument of
German car manufacturers; see for this the interview with VW manager K. Lotz:
“Sicherheit verkauft sich schlecht,” Der Spiegel 43/1970, 252.
34 Luger 2000, 66-68.
109

Safety Act established the role of federal government in auto safety and
“brought to an end the auto industry’s long-held political hegemony” in the
United States. 35 New regulations were controlled by the Department of Transportation,
which was set up in 1966 to ensure “a fast, safe, efficient, accessible
and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and
enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future”.
36
The American automobile industry was well prepared for these government
measures, which can hardly be described as far-reaching. Seat belts were standard
equipment in all Buicks from 1964, and an advertisement in 1966 told
consumers: “Use them.” Other advertisements followed this new strategy of
mentioning new passive security items which were built into the cars of the
1960s. Ford offered in its 1966 Thunderbird an “overhead safety convenience
panel” of control switches and warning lights, into which a seat belt warning
light was built. This had aeronautical connotations and anticipated a technological
development in which cars would “communicate” with the driver to
uphold safety.
From the 1960s onwards, debates about automobile safety in the United
States have been conducted along an ideological divide. One side has argued
that individual drivers must take precautions to ensure their own safety. This
was the widespread opinion of the powerful economic lobby of the automobile
industry which insisted that automobile safety could not significantly rise unless
motorists actively cooperated. Those on the other side of the argument –
safety activists, insurance companies and government officials – maintained
that the public would never behave properly and that therefore “technical fixes
must be developed and mandated to decrease the risk of driving” while auto
makers should accept their responsibilities. 37 Throughout the 1970s seat belt
use in the US remained between 3 percent and 10 percent and increased when,
beginning with New York in 1984, federal states adopted mandatory seat belt
laws. By 1994, seat belt usage had increased to 73 percent, but even in 2008
seat belt usage in the United States had still not topped 75 percent. 38
These new American safety standards had an impact upon export nations
such as the Federal Republic of Germany and its car industry, bringing with
them an “Americanization” of German business policies. 39 As in the United
States, West Germany’s critical press argued that the automobile industry was
avoiding the installation of relatively expensive new safety technologies. In
35
Luger 2000, 74.
36
Taken from the Department of Transportation “Mission & History”: (accessed June 19, 2010).
37
Wetmore 2009, 111. Also: Irwin 1985, 227.
38
Wetmore, “Implementing Restraint”, 117.
39
Cf. Hilger 2004.
110

1970, there was a turning point in West Germany. Official statistics counted
1.4 million traffic accidents and 500,000 injuries, while 21,332 persons died in
road traffic accidents. 40 Since then, the absolute numbers of traffic accidents
dropped owing to the introduction of speed limits on ordinary highways in
1972 and a year later on federal highways in response to the oil crisis, the establishment
of alcohol limits in July 1973, and the compulsory wearing of
helmets for motorcyclists in 1980. This was coupled with a lower rate of newly
registered cars, the extension of highways, and last but not least new safety
standards. 41
In 1971, the news magazine Der Spiegel demanded “days without dead people”,
the introduction of a “safe vehicle” in which individuals could “survive
the crash”. 42 Three years later Der Spiegel wrote about the “motorized world
war on the streets” and demanded the installation of airbags in cars, which the
car industry appeared to be resisting. 43 At the beginning of 1976 the West German
government implemented a law for mandatory seat belt use, although
those breaking this law were not subject to prosecution at first. The mandatory
seat belt use led to a heated debate among safety engineers, health and legal
professionals, politicians, journalists, and drivers who were both for and
against the seat belt and disagreed whether the seat belt was a “life-saver” or a
“shackle”. 44 The legal obligation to wear a seat belt was commented by Der
Spiegel in 1976 with a front page headline “Bound to the car”. This was a reaction
to widespread fears about not being able to free oneself in the case of an
accident. A year earlier, the same news magazine posed the question whether
“the liberal state should be allowed to coerce the car-citizen into surviving” 45 –
which might have awakened associations with the contemporaneous debate
about the forced feeding of RAF terrorists on hunger strike. In the course of the
debate critics denounced the mandatory seat belt use as “state-decreed suicide”.
46
The Federal Government reacted to these reservations against seat belt use
with a nationwide campaign “click: first belt up, then drive”, which promoted
seat belt use with numerous ads in magazines and posters on German high-
40 The relative numbers in relation to newly registered cars and individual distance had
dropped since the invention of the automobile. König 2010, 218.
41 In the years after 1970 the number of traffic deaths dropped more or less continuously (as
mentioned with the exception of the years after reunification), and by 2008 4,467 traffic
deaths were counted in 2.2 million road traffic accidents, the lowest rate since 1950.
42 “Sicherheitsautos: Für Tage ohne Tote,” Der Spiegel 34/1971, 86-104.
43 See also the publication of the German theologian Klaus-Peter Jörns from 1992: “Krieg auf
unseren Straßen. Die Menschenopfer der automobilen Gesellschaft” (“War on Our Streets.
Human Sacrifices of the automobile society”).
44 Beckmann 2004.
45 “Sicherheitsgurte. Furcht vor der Fessel,” Der Spiegel 50/1975, 40-52, 40.
46 “Das ist eine Art Todesurteil. Spiegel-Interview mit dem Stuttgarter Verkehrsrichter Hans
Kindermann über die Anschnallpflicht,” Der Spiegel 35/1982, 100-101.
111

ways. But it took until 1984, when fining for non-seat belt users was adopted,
for seat belt use to increase from 60 to 90 percent. Nevertheless, the introduction
of fines did not stop an obstinate judge from acquitting a “belt grouch”
(“Gurtmuffel”) with the comment that the freedom not to use the seat belt
distinguished a citizen from a subject. 47
Road Traffic Safety as Mass Education
and the Changes to Car Safety in Commercials
Since the early years of automobility, measures to improve road traffic safety
went hand in hand with road traffic education. Since the 1960s, television programs
about road traffic safety became commonplace. In Germany, between
1966 and 2005 public television aired the weekly program Der siebte Sinn
(“The Seventh Sense”) which confronted the viewing public with road traffic
dangers and gave advice about how to reduce the risks of automobility. British
television broadcast public information films from 1971 onwards that promoted
the use of seat belts with the catchphrase “Clunk, click, every trip!” presented
by the media personality Jimmy Savile. In the United States organizations such
as “Traffic Safety Now”, an organization of some thirty safety organizations,
lobbied state governments from the 1980s for mandatory seat belt use laws and
promoted seat belt use in brochures, in elementary schools, in educational
programs with police officers, and public service announcements. In 1985, the
US Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
and the Ad Council created a television commercial with Vince
and Larry, known as “The Crash Test Dummies”, who demonstrated what
could happen when a person did not wear a seat belt. Unlike humans who die
or become crippled in real crashes, Vince and Larry dusted themselves off after
each crash and lived to joke another day. In 1999, Vince and Larry were retired
along with their campaign slogan “you could learn a lot from a dummy” when
the Department of Transportation revised the campaign and a new slogan simply
advised “Buckle Up. Always.”
Technically, the improvement of automobile safety was also a result of the
scientific simulation of accidents. In the 1960s the automobile industry began
to use crash tests to do research on the consequences of automobile accidents
for vehicle occupants using crash test dummies developed in the military aircraft
industry. With the technical perfection of crash test dummies in the 1980s,
safety engineers abandoned the use of dead bodies to develop new automobile
safety measures. Crash tests and their illustrations in magazine articles and TV
reports mass-produced accidents, making them appear less like chance events. 48
47 Sternsdorff 1985.
48 Cf. Virilio 2009, 7-8.
112

The accident was no longer something improbable since the accident had become
a statistical and recursive quantity. 49 From the 1970s, the crash test results
as well as their illustrations belonged to the common evaluation criteria of
public car magazines like Auto, Motor und Sport and ADAC Motorwelt which
were more and more concerned with the problem of automobile safety.
Meanwhile, West German political parties promised comprehensive national
and social security in their electoral campaigns in the 1950s. After the 1957
elections, in which the Social Democratic Party used the slogan “security for
all”, Mercedes-Benz promoted its cars with the slogan “safety accompanies
you”. The ad showed a Mercedes star, which led the way over a dark and wet
gleaming cobbled street. The iconography of the advertisement created a film
noir atmosphere as well as connoting the compass rose motif in the NATO
flag. 50 While the brand symbolized total safety and security in this advertisement
in 1965, at the time Ralph Nader formulated his vigorous critique of
safety standards in the automobile industry, Mercedes-Benz’s commercial
experts were forced to take a more differentiated approach:
Often it is said: Don’t talk about security, it is a dangerous topic. Why? Because
there is no such thing as absolute safety? Because even the safest car is
driven by humans who have different temperaments and react differently? No,
this is not a reason for us to avoid the topic. On the contrary, you have the
right to know how safe an automobile can be and what the manufacturers of
motor vehicles can contribute. 51
Twenty years later, such caution about the question of automobile safety no
longer existed. By 1984 Volvo Germany was promoting its vehicles with the
slogan “safety at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour” and linked speed with
safety. In a way, this was a prelude to Ulrich Beck’s study on the “risk society”
and his theory of self-generated risks at the heart of a self-reflexive “second
modernity”. 52 This development towards a risk society allowed advertising
campaigns to use pictures of simulated and controlled car crashes.
In 1994 there was a campaign featuring a crashed Mercedes-Benz S-Class,
renowned for its length. The ad asserted that the vehicle would also convince in
the crashed “short version”. Advertising with crash test pictures was formerly
unthinkable, but in the 1990s it reached the marketing strategists. In another
more recent advertisement, car manufacturer Peugeot used the slogan “more
fun with safety” just as Opel did for its “Astra”. In 2009 Fiat presented a crash
test picture of a damaged Fiat 500 with a panda at the wheel, using the catchphrase:
“engineered for a lower impact on the environment”. Here, safety and
49
Bickenbach 2009.
50
NATO was founded two years before in 1955.
51
“Mercedes Benz nimmt Stellung zu einer aktuellen Fragen der Autofahrer von heute”,
1965, cited in Sproß 1999, 95.
52
Beck 1992.
113

environmental aspects were combined. And in 2008, an advertising agency
headlined a co-campaign for Mercedes-Benz and the Dutch Cancer Society,
which decided to no longer advise women to perform monthly breast selfexaminations
with the words: “some tests you’re better off not doing yourself”.
53
In recent decades, crash test pictures have formed our view of damages
caused by road traffic accidents in a stereotypical manner, playing down the
still existing risks of driving, reducing the image of a fatal accident to a harmless
fender bender. Therefore, the risks of road traffic and automobility are
nowadays not only a matter for state legislators, insurance companies and
safety engineers; we are visually insured against accidents in the images that
surround us.
Morality in the Age of Safety Technologies
The French philosopher of technology Bruno Latour has argued that artifacts –
and in particular the safety belt – are bearers of morality as they constantly help
people to make all kinds of moral decisions. In this understanding, safety techniques
are “techniques of morality”. 54 In 1977, the Carter administration mandated
that by 1983 every new car should have either airbags or automatic seat
belts that closed over vehicle occupants when they closed the car door, despite
strong lobbying from the auto industry. When driver-side airbags became mandatory
in all passenger vehicles in 1994, the automatic seat belt was abolished.
Nowadays, many cars produce an irritating sound to remind the driver to use
the safety belt.
For Latour, such technical equipment embodies morality because the decision
to wear a safety belt is not made exclusively by the driver, but also by the
car. With the technology of the seat belt, the saying “never drive faster than
your guardian angel can fly” no longer applies. As Latour puts it:
The driver may become more careless, the car more intelligent. What one loses,
the other gains. Each learns to live with the other: the belt needs a human
being to put it in place and to take it off, the human being learns to live ‘on
probation’ without making abrupt movements. Drivers no longer have to try to
restrain themselves in case of sudden braking, the seat belt does it for them,
but they retain the supreme freedom: to engage or disengage the guardian angel.”
55
53 Available online under (accessed 19.6.2010).
54 Latour 1996. Cited from the unpublished translation by Lydia Evans, “The moral dilemmas
of the Safety-belt”, http://www.bruno-latour.fr/poparticles/poparticle/P-31-MORAL-SEAT
-BELT-GB.pdf (accessed 19.6.2010).
55 Ibid., 4.
114

In 1973 the novelist James Graham Ballard wrote his famous novel Crash,
which was made into a movie directed by David Cronenberg. For Ballard the
car driver lives within a “huge metallized dream” that includes “speed, drama
and aggression, the worlds of advertising and consumer goods, engineering and
mass manufacture, and the shared experience of moving together through an
elaborately signaled landscape”. 56 For Ballard, the century of the automobile
created a culture of death, and the only way out for Ballard “would be to dehumanize
driving with electronically controlled cars and traffic flow”. 57
This vision would be the end of traditional “autonomy” in automobility, and
in a way it has become true. In 1978, advanced braking system (ABS) was
pioneered and the electronic stability control (ECS) was developed in the 1990s
to “assist” the driver to keep the vehicle under control in critical maneuvering
situations. With these new developments the driver’s domination over technology
was not called into question, with car sellers emphasizing not without
reason that these technologies “assist” the driver rather than “governing” the
driver. Intelligent navigation-based speed control amplified the tendency to
delegate the control of the car to the technology and developments such as
advance collision warning, automatic braking and lane departure warning systems
that assist drivers to avoid accidents and are said to reduce injuries have
actually come into use. 58 A further technological innovation was the development
of driverless cars by the research project “Eureka-Prometheus” (Programme
for a European Traffic of Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented
Safety), financed by the European Community in the years from 1987 to 1995.
The pivotal idea of the research project was to reduce the human factor, such as
“a limited field of vision, lack of experience, uncertainty, deficiencies, limited
faculty in information processing and in the manner of reaction”. 59 The electronically
controlled vehicle “VaMP” achieved a distance of 158 kilometers
without human intervention (on average, however, human intervention was
required once every nine kilometers).
In 2001, the German Federal Ministry of Transport proclaimed that “the final
decision and responsibility in the system human-machine-environment has
to rest in the hands of the road traffic user” and that “external control which
could not be influenced by the driver” were not desirable. 60 A similar argument
was formulated by a management board member for research and technology at
Daimler-Benz, who remarked in 2002 that “cars nowadays integrate much
computing power, whereas the pleasure of driving still remains – because that’s
what customers want.” Additionally, he noted that nobody knows today
56 Cited by Wollen 2002, 16.
57 Featherstone 2004, 16.
58 See Insurance Institute for Highway Safety 2008.
59 Cited in Stieniczka 2006, 337.
60 Bundesministerium für Verkehr 2001, 21.
115

whether motorists in 50 years’ time will want to be driven by remote control –
something that very few desire today. 61
However, new technological safety solutions delegate control tasks from the
human being to the technology and, therefore, some critical commentators have
argued that we have to conceptualize the driver as a “cyborg” or a “car-driverhybrid”:
The interplay between car and actor is no longer “merely in the hands
of the driver”, and new smart cars “eliminate any sort of independence that was
assigned to earlier stages of automobility”. 62
Conclusion
Up to the beginning of the 1970s the car industry and its managers often argued
that “safety doesn’t sell”, not least because they wanted to avoid having to
equip cars with relatively expensive new safety technologies. Increasingly, car
safety was constructed as a positive quality in a similar way to motor performance
and nowadays efficiency. New safety features were optional extras and
regarded as attributes of social distinction – until they became, in part, standard
equipment. In recent years, car safety has become a key concern of the car
industry, and now “safety has to be there because cars don’t sell on price
alone”, as the American economic journalist Joseph R. Perone wrote. 63
Today, security and safety are not only guaranteed by states and governments.
While governments formerly legitimized themselves on the basis that
they were there to establish “public tranquility, security and order” and subsequently
national and social security, between the 1970s and the 1990s security
and safety were discovered as commodities by the private sector. This “marketorientated
privatization of security” 64 has led to a private service sector for
security, in which the car industry is only one obvious example. In West Germany
the international trade fair “Safety 1974” for security technologies took
place for the first time in 1974 and expanded in the following years.
Contemporary history of automobility and road traffic safety reveals that
there has been a change from a discourse about road traffic safety conducted in
terms of security, freedom, mobility and autonomy (often understood as the
naïve pleasure of driving and individual mobility) to a pragmatic discourse
about the dynamic relations between safety and risks that are socially and technologically
controlled. The implementation of new safety standards is additionally
part of a strong narrative about the rise of (global) civil society and the
negotiation processes between its various stakeholders: consumer pressure
61 Abele 2002.
62 Beckmann 2004, 87-89. Schmucki 1999.
63 Cited in MacGregor 2009, 103.
64 Weinhauer 2007, 218.
116

groups, the media, insurance companies, government officials, and lobbyists
from the automobile industry.
The implementation of the seat belt and the improvement of seat belt use illustrate
different attitudes to civil liberties, different concepts of social engineering
and different roads to a modern civil society. In the United States,
national authorities passed controversial bills to strengthen the responsibility of
the car industry and to enhance the implementation of technical safety while
preventing laws for mandatory seat belt use for a long time. In West Germany,
in the course of an “Americanization” of German business policies the compulsory
installation of seat belts was out of question; authorities passed controversial
bills to force individuals to fasten their seat belts while preserving at the
same time the “freedom of speed”.
The development of passive safety technologies indicates that there has been
a change in the conception of the relation between human beings and the technology.
The development of the human-machine-system has shown that the
control of technology by the individual has been replaced by the “assistance” of
the individual driver by technology. Of course, the popular visions of a future
in which humans are entirely governed and controlled by technology have not
yet become true, but autonomy in the age of automobility has changed. The
discourse about the “disciplined road traffic user” and the “responsible road
traffic user” has come to an end. In addition to governmental sanctions such as
driving bans and other punishments against road traffic offenders there are new
technological possibilities controlling the drivers’ behavior nowadays, such as
the development of smart cars or radar controls on public streets, which are
indicated in advance.
The UN program of “human security” is an expression of a shift in the semantics
and the political dimensions of security and safety and has itself
changed because it strengthens at first glance the role of individuals, their
rights and their responsibility in comparison to national governments and their
mandate to protect social groups and the individual. Of course, the rather vague
concept of “human security” includes the development of road traffic safety.
Firstly, the death toll is still a problem in high-income countries and indeed a
serious problem in developing countries and societies. Secondly, the experience
in high-income countries with road traffic safety exemplifies the fact that
risks of modernization can be reduced. Thirdly, the enhancement of road traffic
safety is linked to the strengthening of civil society with all their stakeholders.
Fourthly, and of interest for further study, the idea of the individual and therefore
the idea of autonomy in the age of automobility and new passive safety
technologies have changed considerably. Individuals are no longer in full control
of themselves and therefore no longer subjects of discipline, and they are
no longer understood as dominating over nature and technology. Individuals
are instead an integral part of a complex social and technological “insurance
culture” in which they are encouraged to take part.
117

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Special Issue
The Production of Human Security in
Premodern and Contemporary History
Die Produktion von Human Security in
Vormoderne und Zeitgeschichte
PIRATES AND SECURITY OF THE SEAS
No. 134
HSR Vol. 35 (2010) 4

The North European Way of Ransoming:
Explorations into an Unknown Dimension
of the Early Modern Welfare State
Magnus Ressel �
Abstract: »Die nordeuropäische Art des Gefangenenfreikaufs: Eine unbekannte
Dimension des frühmodernen Wohlfahrtsstaates«. This article is concerned
with distinctly “confessional” characteristics in the organization of buying
back captured sailors out of Northern Africa. The history and ways of slave
redemption of Hamburg, Lubeck, the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway and the
Netherlands are presented, analyzed and compared. As a result it is possible to
distinguish the comparatively prominent role that centralized, bureaucratized
and governmentally administered institutions played in the ransoming business
of the Lutheran world.
Keywords: white slavery, captivity, Barbary corsairs, welfare state, confessional
mentality, imagined empathy.
Introduction
When in 1994, with the United Nations Development Report, the concept of
“human security” was introduced into political discourse, the concept was
exemplified in somewhat solemn words:
In the final analysis, human security is a child who did not die, a disease that
did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in
violence, a dissident who was not silenced. Human security is not a concern
with weapons – it is a concern with human life and dignity. 1
The most important change that the concept of “human security” is expected
to bring is the departure from a narrow perspective of security. It is meant as a
global and people-centered security concept that is expressly set in contrast to
the traditional focus on state security. 2 Even though the concept is clearly
meant to be used for problems of our time, the universal aim of prevention of
human suffering as the ultimate goal is certainly not a novelty in itself. This is
� Address all communications to: Magnus Ressel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Fakultät für
Geschichtswissenschaft, Juniorprofessur Umweltgeschichte, 44801 Bochum, Germany;
e-mail: Magnus.Ressel@ruhr-uni-bochum.de.
1 Human Development Report 1994, 22.
2 Human Development Report 1994, 23.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 125-147

acknowledged by important authors on “human security”, who see this concept
as being rooted in history with its origins going back to Greek antiquity. 3
For a historian it is tempting to elaborate on this point and to look more
deeply at the historical dimension of “human security”, i.e. the origins and the
development of the emphasis on the individual’s rights. One contribution was
made in 2007, when the historian Lynn Hunt argued that the reason why human
rights gained such importance in the 18th century was a growing “imagined
empathy” of large parts of the society for suffering individuals, a development
that she sees at this time as peculiar to the Western world. 4 The equality of
human beings was stressed more and more and as a consequence, the state and
other institutions were increasingly regarded as providers and protectors of
these rights. The idea of “imagined empathy” has not yet gained widespread
currency and its connection with an increasing insistence on basic human rights
is rarely found in the existing literature. At this point, the concept of “imagined
empathy” therefore remains vague and unspecific.
It is here that this article aims to contribute. I will try to exemplify the phenomenon
of “imagined empathy” with a certain subject within to a certain
subject in history and try to connect it to a directly related “production of human
security”. In order to do so, a definition is needed beforehand: Wherever
we see in history a phenomenon where suffering of individuals leads towards
recognizable actions of large group-systems with the goal of reducing or removing
the origins of this suffering, we may speak of a form of “production of
human security” avant la lettre. With this definition at hand, “imagined empathy”
becomes specifiable in the concrete modes of security production for
individuals organized by larger groups. In the following article I will try to give
an example of this by examining a very specific form of “production of human
security” and connecting it with the mentality of distinguishable groupsystems.
I. The Problems of the Barbary Corsairs
for Northern Europe
For over 300 years (roughly ~1520-1830), the so-called “Barbary pirates”,
Muslim corsairs operating from the present-day Maghreb states, cruised in the
waters of Southern Europe and posed a serious danger towards Christian
Europe. The ships of all European nations came under threat as soon as they
operated in a zone comprising the entire Mediterranean and the Atlantic, within
a sector that reached from Cape Finisterre in the north to the Canary Islands in
the south-west. Because the southbound ships of Northern Europe were usually
3 MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 19-60.
4 Hunt 2007, 32-69.
126

the largest of their time, carrying a cargo of great value and making exchanges
between two distinct geographical zones, the profitability of this branch of
shipping was exceptionally high. Therefore, many merchants of all nations
were attracted and consequently had to deal with the problem of the Muslim
corsairs.
One of the most pressing aspects of this conflict for contemporaries was the
high number of Europeans who found themselves imprisoned in Northern
Africa. A flood of letters pleading for rescue emanated from Northern African
cities and found its way to concerned relatives in all parts of Europe. These
letters and actively petitioning relatives were a heavy burden on the conscience
of the merchants and the governmental authorities, both of whom benefited
most from the trade with Southern Europe.
During the Early Modern epoch, all important continental Northern nations
were at some time heavily involved in long-distance trade with Southern
Europe. The two most prominent Early Modern German harbor cities, Hamburg
and Lubeck, began to conduct this trade in large quantities in the last third
of the 16th century. The northern Netherlands were able to inherit the rich trade
connections of Flanders and Brabant after the beginning of the Dutch revolt
and after 1590 began to appear in great numbers in the Mediterranean. Denmark,
in contrast, did not organize a trade beyond Cape Finisterre on a considerable
scale before the beginning of the 18th century, but was then quickly able
to catch up with its competitors. 5 The two Hanseatic cities, the Netherlands and
Denmark consequently all had to deal with the problem of incarceration of their
sailors in Northern Africa.
In the following, I will elaborate on the reactions this problem triggered in
Northern Europe and try to connect the findings with confessional characteristics.
Put more abstractly: The relation between a confessional mentality and its
embedding in institutions charged with a specific production of human security
are the main subject of this article. I will argue that the answer to the question
“Why did states dominated by the Lutheran or Calvinist creed react towards
this problem in the specific way they did?” can give us profound insights into
the “imagined empathy” of the respective confessions. In order to make this
claim, I will follow a step-by-step approach. First, I will briefly present an
overview of the history of Catholic ransoming. Then, I will describe the discourse
and practice of ransoming in the Hanseatic cities, Denmark and the
Netherlands but with the important reservation that I will only look at the most
important level of this business, the governmental layer. 6 Finally, I will inter-
5 For an overview of the southern trade of the Hanseatic cities see: Beutin 1933, 1-58. For
Denmark see: Degn and Gøbel 1997, 130-141. For the Netherlands see: Bruijn 1977.
6 Below the governmental level we find all over Europe a wide array of brotherhoods or local
institutions pledged to this business, which shall not be regarded here.
127

pret the findings with the help of current research in the sociology of welfare
states and try to put the entire business of ransom into a broader perspective.
II. The Origins and Practice of Ransoming
in the Mediterranean
With the intensification of the “petite guerre” 7 between Muslims and Christians
during the 16th century, the numbers of captives in Northern Africa swelled to
disproportionate sizes. 8 Even if the number of 1.25 million Christian slaves in
the Barbary states which a historian has put forward 9 may be “fantasmatique” 10 ,
the great dimensions of this problem for the Mediterranean world cannot be
doubted. With the foundation of the “Santa Casa della Redenzione dei Cattivi”
in Naples in 1548, the state stepped in for the first time on the Italian peninsula
to organize the ransoming independently from the religious orders. Soon, the
other important Italian territorial states followed suit and founded governmentally
controlled bodies to organize the ransoming of their own nationals. Venice
gave its “Provveditori sopra Ospedali e Luoghi Pii” the control of ransoming in
1586 11 and Genoa opened its “Magistrato per il riscatto degli Schiavi” in
1597 12 ; other Italian states did the same in the second half of the 16th century. 13
In Spain, in contrast, the Trinitarians were able to dominate the ransoming
throughout the Early Modern Era. 14 One of the most eminent historians on the
Barbary corsairs, Salvatore Bono, thus distinguishes between two Catholic
ways of ransoming: The monastic orders operated in the larger Catholic monarchies
and the Case di redenzione worked “quasi esclusivamente” in Italy. 15
What were the main features of these two models? In both cases, the incomes
derived not from obligatory duties, but from donations or bequests collected
by clerics of the Catholic Church. Operating on a grand scale with close
proximity to the field of action, these institutions seem to have been rather
professional at conducting their business. Yet, whereas a Casa di redenzione
operated directly on behalf of the home state, the orders retained more independence
in their ransoming activities. At the moment, it seems that the orders
were the more effective ransomers within the Mediterranean. Even if the number
of over 100,000 redeemed captives, which a historian has put forward for
7
Panzac 2009, 55.
8
Heers 2001, 246.
9
Davis 2001.
10
Panzac 2009, 129-140. He arrives at the number of 180,000 white slaves in the period from
1574-1644.
11
Davis 2002, 456.
12
Lucchini 1990.
13
Davis 2003, 150.
14
Friedman 1983.
15
Bono 1993, 204.
128

the Trinitarians, 16 might be exaggerated, their efficacy of ransoming cannot be
doubted. However, this large number cannot conceal the great problems that
the Catholic world had in ransoming their brethren. From a detailed study of
four ransoming missions from 1660-1666, we learn that the average duration of
captivity of a Catholic in Northern Africa was, due to lack of funds, four to five
years. 17
III. The Governmental Institutions of Ransom
in the Cities of Hamburg and Lubeck
The weakness or often total absence of orders in the Protestant world after the
Reformation forestalled the activity of redemptionist orders in Northern
Europe. Alms-collecting by relatives of the captives to finance the ransom was
the obvious recourse of which we have the first notice in the year 1547 in the
city of Danzig. 18 For the following 70 years, this was the usual recourse in the
entire northern German world. It sufficed as long as the numbers of captives
remained small. After the beginning of the Dutch uprising against their Spanish
overlords in 1568, however, the southbound trade of Lubeck and Hamburg
soared. Thus, in the last third of the 16th century, for the first time large numbers
of Germans found themselves caught in Northern Africa. The problem got
out of hand in the last decade of the 16th century when alms-collecting no
longer proved adequate to buy the large numbers of captives back. The average
duration of captivity grew longer, the number of letters begging for rescue
increased. In the first decade of the 17th century, we see brotherhoods of sailors
intervening in the Hanseatic cities and paying for ransom, because the alms
collections no longer sufficed.
With the renewal of fighting between the Dutch and the Spanish after 1621,
the Hanseatic trade to Iberia and the Mediterranean experienced another great
rise, which coincided with the greatest Muslim corsair activity ever seen. 19 The
ensuing clash led to the largest number of Germans ever caught by Muslim
corsairs. Only one year after the fighting had recommenced, the captains and
officers of the Hamburg ships founded the “Stück-von-Achten-Kasse”, a fraternity
pledged to the redemption of its members. Membership was on a voluntary
basis but was restricted to captains and ship officers. 20 Thus, the lower
deck found itself abandoned and left to the risk of having to remain in Muslim
bondage without the least bit of hope of being rescued. Since the ordinary
16 Dams 1985, 148.
17 Larquie 1991, 82.
18 Rühle 1925, 111-112.
19 Panzac 2009, 133-135.
20 Kresse 1981, 38-39.
129

sailors mostly came from the poorer parts of society, the necessary ransom
sums were in all likelihood never payable by their relatives.
At this point the state stepped in and took on responsibility for its subjects.
An institution was founded, which can be called, with some justification, the
first obligatory social insurance in the world. In May 1624, after some months
of debate within the governing apparatus and with the society of the shipmen,
the Hamburger Sklavenkasse was created. 21 It was an office administered by
the Hamburg Admiralty, which had the duty to collect from every sailor and
respective shipowner a fixed amount of money if the ship had a destination
west of the Netherlands. This money was to be used to buy back captives from
Northern Africa. The basic principle of the Sklavenkasse was to eliminate the
risk of captivity by transforming it to a fiscal fee shared by all risk-bearers. The
message of the government to its sailors was clear: you will be safe in southern
waters, you are protected by your state regardless of the perils which wait for
you there, even if the worst happens and you get caught by the Muslim enemy.
Soon after the foundation of the Hamburg Sklavenkasse, Lubeck followed
with its own Sklavenkasse in 1627. 22 Immediately after their foundation both
institutions came under heavy financial pressure from the exacting demands of
the situation in the southern waters. This often led to a lack of funds and resulted
several times during their first years in the inability to pay for the redemption.
23 Nevertheless, the Sklavenkassen continued their business even
when an ever-increasing number of captives had to be ransomed. Because the
profits in this trade at this specific time of war were very large, a merchant
class prone to engage in profitable risks would not let itself be stopped even by
intense corsair activity, and continued to send large numbers of ships southwest.
The port cities of Hamburg and Lubeck were two of very few places in
Europe which could maintain their neutrality throughout the entire Thirty
Years’ War. Their shipping was thus able to penetrate deep down southward
during this conflict and provide the cities with large revenues. One can regard it
as a sign of steadfast Hanseatic loyalty that the two founding cities of the old
league allowed their twin institutions to share the burden of ransoming by
giving money to the respective Sklavenkasse in case of need. Yet, even this
sharing of burdens did not suffice to finance the tolls which the intense war
with the corsairs put on the Sklavenkassen. Their income basis needed to be
enlarged quite early after their foundation. The Lubeck Sklavenkasse had to be
21 Baasch 1897, 202-212.
22 Wehrmann 1884, 161-162.
23 Beutin 1933, 40-41.
130

eformed only two years after its start, in 1629. 24 Hamburg followed suit in
1641. 25
Before these reforms, apart from the money which the Sklavenkassen obtained
from collections in the churches, the individual crew members had to
pay the lion’s share for these institutions. After 1629 in Lubeck and 1641 in
Hamburg, the shipowners were obliged to contribute substantial sums according
to the load a ship carried and its destination. The closer the destination was
to the Barbary corsairs, the higher the rate that was to be paid. Thus, we have
three different sources of income for the German Sklavenkassen. The first one
was provided by the crew members: they had to pay a high percentage of their
income if the ship’s destination lay west or south-west of Brest and only half of
this rate for the “safer” destinations east of Brest. 26 The next source came from
the shipowners according to shipload and a division of the map into risk zones;
and a third one were the always ongoing alms collections.
Until 1750 both institutions remained under great strain to pursue the ransoming.
In the 14 “hot” years from 1615-1629, the smaller of the two cities,
Lubeck, lost at least 22 large ships to the corsairs. 27 In the relatively “calm” 28
years between 1719 and 1747 we know of 50 Hamburgian ships which got
caught by the corsairs; this meant captivity in Northern Africa for 633 sailors. 28
It should be noted that this number of captives is more than thrice that of Denmark
during the same time, which gives a good hint at the respective size of
Hamburg’s and Denmark’s southbound trade in these years. Apart from the
1,809,200 Mark Lübisch, which Hamburg had to pay for ransom, the loss of
the precious ships was disastrous for a single city, even of the size of Hamburg.
After 1750, it rarely happened to a German ship to get caught by the corsairs
since German shipping to Southern Europe had been much reduced owing to
heavy competition of states which had peace treaties with the regencies 29 and
because the corsair activity had decreased sharply.
The Hamburg Sklavenkasse ceased to exist in 1810; Lubeck’s Sklavenkasse
was closed in 1861. 30 Both offices underwent some fundamental reforms in the
18th century which greatly changed their modes of operation. Regardless of
these reforms, the fundamental structure always remained the same, i.e. the
production of human security, assured by obligatory payments coming from
crew members and shipowners. For nearly 200 years, these institutions ensured
that almost no sailor who served on Hamburg or Lubeck ships and got caught
24
Wehrmann 1884, 162-166.
25
Baasch 1897, 212-215.
26
In contrast to Lubeck, sailors from Hamburg did not have to pay for destinations east of the
Scheldt, see: Baasch 1897, 213.
27
Wehrmann 1884, 167.
28
Baasch 1897, 237.
29
Beutin 1933, 58-59.
30
Wehrmann 1884, 193.
131

y the corsairs had to remain in North African captivity. Their success in this
endeavor was so remarkable that in 1754 the Hamburg senate could publicly
and triumphantly put into print that due to the work of the Sklavenkasse
all slaves caught from our ships who had been captives in Algiers had been
completely ransomed and were given back their freedom. 31
This is in essence what the German Sklavenkassen had always tried to be:
the providers of nothing less than absolute human security for all of Hamburg’s
and Lubeck’s sailors. This had been their foremost goal and it had been, at
tremendous cost, nearly always attained.
IV. The Governmental Institutions of Ransom
in Denmark
Denmark intermittently sent out some ships to southern waters during the 17th
century. In general, it seems that Denmark could not effectively compete with
Dutch, English or German shipping. This was in all likelihood not due to the
several wars in which Denmark was involved, but rather to the underdeveloped
state of its shipping industry and, probably, a lack of mercantile thinking at the
governmental level in the first half of the 17th century. 32 A noticeable increase
can be remarked during the last decade of the 17th century, when the rest of
Europe was at war and the two Nordic states maintained their neutrality. 33
Even though its shipping remained limited during the 17th century, Denmark
was sometimes faced with the problem of Danish sailors in captivity in
Northern Africa. The obvious recourse was, like in the rest of Europe, to alms
collections. 34 This sufficed as long as the shipping to Southern Europe remained
comparatively small. After the failure to redeem hundreds of Icelanders
35 it seems that better measures were demanded. In 1634 therefore, when
Copenhagen’s Skipperlav 36 was inaugurated, we find in its articles the obligation
to collect money from all sailors to buy back sailors from Northern Africa.
This Skipperlav resembled in some regards the German Sklavenkassen. There
was the element of obligatory membership, but only for the ships’ officers:
31
Hamburger Staatsarchiv, 111-1 Senat Cl. VII Lit. Ca. No. 2 Vol. 3 Fasc. 7, No. 11.
32
Nielsen 1933, 272-284.
33
Ekegård 1924, 67-78; Degn and Gøbel 1997, 131.
34
Fossen 1979, 235-239.
35
After the raid on Iceland in 1627 with a capture of roughly 400 inhabitants, collections were
the recourse of the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway to buy back the captives. See: Helgason
1997, 275-276; Andersen 2000, 41-42. However, these measures failed to a large extent:
Fossen 1979, 240-241.
36
The Skipperlav was a semi-public organization of the sailors of the capital, which fulfilled
many governmental tasks and had considerable executive power.
132

Article 4: All Merchant-skippers and steersmen, which are based or live here
in the city, shall be or are obliged to betake themselves into this Guild. 37
Even though the money for the Skipperlav came only from its members, i.e.
the higher decks, its duties included the ransom of all sailors of a ship taken:
Article 10: All money, which incurs into this Skippers-Guild, shall be used for
these members, which either by Turks or religious enemies have been captured
and ransomed. Crews of poor ships-brothers from this guild, as well as
sick or injured shall also be helped. 38
We are presented with the curious situation of an organization where the income
base was smaller than that of the Sklavenkassen in the Hanse cities, even
though its duties were the same and even far greater (they included many tasks
in and around the harbor of Copenhagen). This can be explained by the rarity
of Copenhagen ships taken by Barbary corsairs. Thus, the organization was
theoretically equivalent to the German Sklavenkassen, but not in substance.
Whereas the Sklavenkassen were under tremendous strain to ransom their
sailors from the first day after their foundation, the Skipperlav was not seriously
tested for the greater part of the 17th century. It seems that most Danish
ships that were caught in the 17th century came from Bergen, where a special
fee existed since 1653 for the freeing of slaves from Africa. 39
In the years from 1670-1680, important changes took place in the patterns of
shipping throughout Europe. French corsairs effectively reduced German and
Dutch shipping to southern waters, much more than the Barbary corsairs had
ever been able to. Danish shipping could not be hit hard, not having had great
relevance south-west of Great Britain until then. Thus, the competitors were
weakened just at the time when Danish shipping became the object of more and
more support from the governmental side. The creation of the Kommercekolleg
in 1668/71 in Copenhagen signaled the rapid advent of mercantilist thinking in
Denmark, which translated into an ever-increasing commerce fleet. 40 Consequently,
in these years we find more mentions of captured vessels from the
Kingdom.
In 1675, the Skipperlavs’ income base was broadened. Now, the ordinary
sailors, though not allowed membership, also had to pay into its coffers exactly
half the rate of the ship’s officers. 41 And in 1685, this was again extended:
After this year Danish sailors not living in Copenhagen also had to pay if their
ship sailed from the city. 42 After these changes the institution resembled the
first German Sklavenkassen before the reforms of 1629 and 1641. One obliga-
37 Hassø 1934, 13.
38 Hassø 1934, 15.
39 Fossen 1979.
40 Hassø 1934, 25.
41 Hassø 1934, 40-44.
42 Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 65.
133

tory institution was responsible for the safety of all sailors on the ships of the
city of Copenhagen. Because Europe was embroiled in huge wars after 1687
and Denmark kept its neutrality for most of the time, the Dannebrog could
advance further and further south in the years around 1700. 43 This in turn led to
more captives who needed ransoming. As a result, in the last decade of the 17th
century, we see a ransoming activity of one or two Danish sailors per year. 44
At the turn of the century, this decentralized system of ransoming failed,
when it became really demanding for the first time. In 1706 the armed frigate
“St. Christopher” from Bergen was caught by Barbary corsairs and more than
40 Danish sailors found themselves caught at once after having fought with
great courage. 45 Already in 1708, another Norwegian ship, the “Fortuna” from
Drammen got caught by Algerian Corsairs. Four years later, in 1712, more than
26 Danish sailors still remained in bondage, when two large Norwegian ships,
the “Jomfru Anna” from Bergen and the “Ebentzer” from Arendal, were captured
by the corsairs. These events again swelled the numbers of the King’s
subjects in Northern Africa. At this point, it became obvious that the traditional
ways of coping with this problem could no longer suffice. Collections in the
entire kingdom did not bring in enough money and Bergen itself was overstretched
to conduct the ransoming of its ships’ crews on its own. 46 Copenhagen’s
Skipperlav had sufficient funds, but it lacked the will to use them for the
Norwegian ships’ crews and it lacked professionalism in conducting its task. A
special institution, led by experts with connections to a network of merchants
spread throughout Europe, was needed. This institution should have its only
duty in organizing the ransom of the Danish captives from Northern Africa.
The model which was now imitated was the one the southern neighbors of
Denmark had by then already used successfully for decades. A Sklavenkasse
was to be founded. 47 The King personally ordered its creation, following the
advice of Sealand’s Bishop, Christian Worm. 48 It was to be led by the Bishop
and two well-connected merchants from the capital, Abraham Klöcher and
Johan Jørgen Soelberg.
In one of their first letters to the magistrate of Copenhagen, the new board
immediately liquidated the old ineffectual heritage of the skipperlav, explicitly
stating in scathing words that they had
43 Degn and Gøbel 1997, 89.
44 Hassø 1934, 81.
45 Møller 1998, 105.
46 Møller 1998, 108.
47 Called “Slavekasse” in Denmark
48 Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 159-160.
134

heard that the money, which the skipperlav has collected according to its 16
articles, has swelled to a great and sufficient capital, without any captives having
been ransomed in a long time (one or another excepted). 49
The skipperlav had failed even in its core task, the ransoming of sailors from
Copenhagen. Therefore, the new board demanded all the money from the skipperlav
reserved for the business of ransoming, which it quickly received.
Within a few weeks, a network of ransom was established with its financial
hubs in Hamburg and Amsterdam and the German merchant, Johannes Pommer
in Venice, as its key contact person, managing the business of ransom in
the Mediterranean itself. 50
Already before the foundation of the Slavekasse a list of 82 subjects of the
Danish King who were languishing in Northern Africa had been compiled. 51
With the beginning of its business in April 1715, the board decided to ransom
only the captives who had served on Danish ships when they had been caught. 52
Of these, eight could already be ransomed in just seven months, and 23 more
were freed in the following year. 53
The Danish Slavekasse drew its income from the same sources as the German
Sklavenkassen; yet in the Kingdom the burden was much higher for the
shipowners and much lower for the sailors. All ships which sailed to Holland,
England, France, Spain, or Portugal had to pay three shillings per last directly
to the Slavekasse (in Hamburg the shipowners only had to pay two thirds of
this rate). Also, all sailors of the entire Kingdom were obliged to pay to the
Slavekasse (in Hamburg the sailors had to pay three times as much). It is interesting
to remark these sailor-friendly rates in the monarchy and the shipownerfriendly
rates in the trade-cities. Additionally, biannual collections in the
churches throughout the Kingdom also brought revenue for the Slavekasse.
Thus, we see after 1715/16 three fully-functioning Sklavenkassen in Hamburg,
Lubeck and Denmark, each one closely resembling its sister institutions.
All Sklavenkassen were remarkably efficient, with almost no cases of captivity
in Northern Africa of an insured sailor lasting longer than one year. Like its
German counterparts, the Danish Slavekasse had always tried to be the provider
of absolute security for Danish sailors on Danish ships. We can legitimately
conclude: It attained this goal at most times of its existence.
The Danish Slavekasse existed until 1757. After Denmark had made its last
peace treaty with a Maghreb state, i.e. Morocco in 1753, there was no longer a
49
Landsarkivet Sjælland, EA-001, Stifts Bispeembede, Kopibog for udgående breve vedr.
Slavekassen. 15.5.1715 – Slavekassen til Magistrat i Kiöbenhavn.
50
Landsarkivet Sjælland, EA-001, Stifts Bispeembede, Kopibog for udgående breve vedr.
Slavekassen. 20.4.1715 – Slavekassen til Johannes Pommer i Venedig.
51
Møller 1998, 108.
52
Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 160.
53
Landsarkivet Sjælland, EA-001, Stifts Bispeembede, Kopibog for udgående breve vedr.
Slavekassen. 30.12.1716 – Slavekassen til Kongen.
135

need to insure Danish sailors against the risk of Muslim captivity. For the
Slavekasse, the only tasks remaining were the ransom of the last Danish captives
and the unwinding of its business. During over forty years of its existence,
the Slavekasse had not only ransomed well over two hundred Danish sailors
from captivity 54 , it had also initiated and financed 55 the first peace talks with
the Barbary rulers, which in 1746 had brought Denmark the long sought-after
peace treaty with Algiers. It had thus worked as a kind of “Ministry for Barbary
affairs”.
V. The Governmental Institutions of Ransom
in the Netherlands
After having inherited the merchants and thus the know-how and trade routes
from Antwerp, Amsterdam became the center of the 17th century world economy.
56 The common enmity of the Netherlands and Algiers against Spain
helped the Dutch in the two decades after 1590 to liberate captured sailors from
Algiers more easily and ensured a certain benevolence for Dutch ships. 57
With the beginning of the 12-year truce in 1609, the Netherlanders had a
breakthrough into the Mediterranean. 58 In 1611 they were able to obtain a
treaty with the Ottoman Emperor and to install an ambassador at Constantinople.
It was hoped at The Hague that this would also ensure safety for Dutch
ships from attacks from the North African corsairs. Yet the respect for orders
from the Sultan was not too high at Algiers and the Dutch cease-fire with Spain
irritated Algiers. Thus in the decade from 1610-1620, more and more Netherlanders
found themselves on the slave-markets of Algiers. It was decided at
The Hague to conclude a treaty with the regency and install a consul there. The
consul Wijnant de Keyser arrived in 1616 at Algiers and immediately began
ransoming all Dutch slaves at the place. He used governmental funds for this
business, expecting the States-General to pay for the liberation of the sailors.
Yet, in this point he miscalculated. In 1618, the States-General expressly forbade
him to continue ransoming with governmental money, officially stating
that the state was only responsible for the sailors on warships, not for the sailors
on merchant ships. 59
Hereby the States-General set a precedent which would remain valid for
more than a century to come. It took the Netherlands until 1726 to obtain a
54
The most eminent historian of the Danish Slavekassen has counted 224 ransomed slaves
from 1715-1753, in: Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 161-163.
55
Wandel 1919, 5-9; Andersen 2000, 37-54.
56
Israel 1989, 38-42.
57
van Krieken 2002, 16-19.
58
Israel 1986, 164-169.
59
van Krieken 2002, 23.
136

stable peace treaty with Algiers and even longer to get one with Morocco.
Therefore, Dutch ships were constantly being captured in the 17th and at the
beginning of the 18th century. A historian has arrived at a number of 6,000-
7,000 Netherlanders who may have at some time been captives in Northern
Africa. 60 The ransoming of the Netherlanders was normally carried out by the
single provinces and these in turn financed it mostly through collections, lotteries
and money from relatives. 61 On a national level, several nationwide collections
were held in the aftermath of peace accords for this purpose. 62 On several
occasions, wholesale expeditions with squadrons of warships were sent out to
do the ransoming, always with explicit orders to catch as many North Africans
as possible in order to exchange them for their Dutch counterparts in the regencies.
63
All these measures never sufficed. Algerians were hard to catch and the exchange
rate of prisoners was disadvantageous for the Netherlanders. The great
problem of voluntary donations was their irregularity, in stark contrast to the
permanent collections in Denmark and the Hanse cities. Due to scarcity of
funds, it was explicitly decided in 1663 to only ransom Netherlanders, not
Scandinavians or Germans who had served on Dutch ships. 64 Yet, even for
Netherlanders, the money available was never enough. It has been estimated
that the quota of Netherlanders ever ransomed was 33-50%. 65 This percentage
is much lower than the quota in Hamburg, Lubeck or Denmark, which ranged
between 80 and 90%. 66
At times the creation of a national Sklavenkasse was seriously deliberated.
For example, in 1717 the powerful province of Holland tried to push through
the foundation of a Sklavenkasse, modeled after the Hamburgian, in the assembly
of the States-General. 67 It did not succeed with this because the other provinces
– Zeeland is explicitly named – opposed the proposal for the following
reasons:
1) The corsairs would be encouraged to cruise even more if the Dutch Republic
guaranteed all its sailors their ransom.
2) The prices for captives would soar, thus buying back through private means
would become more difficult.
60 van Krieken 2002, 131.
61 Ridder 1986, 5-12.
62 Ridder 1986, 12.
63 Ridder 1986, 16-17.
64 van Krieken 2002, 62.
65 van Krieken 2002, 139.
66 This figure has been established for the Danish Slavekasse and is in all likelihood also valid
for the German Sklavenkassen: Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 161.
67 van Krieken 2002, 93.
137

3) The North African rulers would lose interest in a peace with the Netherlands,
because a state with a Sklavenkasse is a source of revenue for the corsairs.
4) The sailors would no longer defend themselves adequately if they were
assured of their later ransom. 68
The last reason is especially noteworthy. In all openness it was stated that
the terribly feared slavery in Northern Africa was helpful for the commercial
interests of the republic’s shipping. This gruesome image put enough scare into
the sailors to fight to the last and thus to defend the ship and the cargo better.
The value of human security was explicitly put below security of the economy.
The United Provinces decided not to intervene and to retain their insufficient
system which left the ransoming to local initiatives, voluntary contributions
and family members.
The Dutch ransoming system seems to have been on the verge of a fundamental
change after 1730. In 1728, after the stable peace with Algiers had been
attained, the States-General decided to ransom all remaining 256 slaves who
had been taken on ships from the republic, be they from the Netherlands or
from foreign countries. 69 Even after this decision, it took another seven years
until the last one of these was liberated. From 1728 until 1736 and from 1743
until 1749, two pastors from the Netherlands were appointed in Algiers to take
care of the slaves from the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia. 70 At this
time a Sklavenkasse was also founded in Zierikzee, which lasted from 1732
until 1747. 71 From that year on (1747), the States-General finally accepted the
duty of the entire state to buy back all its subjects from Northern Africa. 72
When in 1755 the long-sought peace with Morocco was finally achieved, the
Netherlands from then on no longer needed to use governmental money to
ransom their brethren. Had the peace treaties not been attained, the ransom
system of the Sklavenkassen might have been introduced.
VI. Typologies of North European Ransom
What are we to make of these observations? We have looked at several prominent
Early Modern maritime states which all had to deal with the problem of
captivity of their own subjects on a large scale and their institutional reactions
towards the problem. Three of these states have in common that they created
governmental offices to collect funds from their sailors and shipowners and
68
Nationaal Archief Den Haag, 1.01.03 – Staten Generaal, 3392, 06.07.1717.
69
Van Krieken 2002, 103. Krieken states that this happened more to ensure the peace with
Algiers than out of compassion for the captives.
70
Van Krieken 2002, 137.
71
Ridder 1986, 13-15.
72
Ridder 1986, 14.
138

used these funds to buy back their subjects out of Northern African captivity.
We may summarize our findings in a simplified table:
Northern European Ransoming
Systems
Number of captives in Northern
Africa from 1590-1830
Money for ransom
Organization of ransom
Denmark, Hamburg,
Lubeck
139
Netherlands
5-8000 73 6-7000 74
Progressive taxation of the
group concerned, additional
alms collections
Mostly state-run,
centralized
Mostly alms collections,
only little help from the
state
Mostly privately,
decentralized
Average duration of captivity Mostly less than one year 75 Three to five years 76
Quota of redeemed captives 80-90 % 77 33-50 % 78
Many numbers in this table are certainly highly debatable. Yet, even if we
allow for a substantial error range, the basic and fundamental differences between
the two blocs remain the same. One group created professional organizations
dedicated to the ransoming of their own nation’s sailors only, and these
institutions, everywhere called Sklavenkassen, were financed by obligatory
duties imposed upon the endangered group. The other bloc decided expressly
and repeatedly not to do so, even though the problem here was more or less the
same, qualitatively and quantitatively. The lack of such organizations in the
Netherlands had dire consequences for the Netherlanders captured in Northern
Africa. Longer periods of slavery and a high uncertainty of an eventual ransom
were direct consequences of the refusal of the state to intervene and to take the
entire business into its hands.
How are we to explain the refusal of the Netherlanders to install a Sklavenkasse,
even though this had dramatic consequences for its sailors? Is it due to
the very different naval power of the two blocs? Being the center of the world
economy until and beyond 1726, when they finally concluded a lasting peace
with the Algerians, the Netherlanders always had very different means at hand
to take on the corsair enemy. The naval power of the Hanse cities was marginal
in comparison with the United Provinces. The idea of naval power as a deterrent
of Sklavenkassen gains plausibility if we look at Denmark’s Slavekasse. It
73
The wide range is due to the insufficient data available, especially in the cases of the German
Sklavenkassen. Yet, the figure with its two limits is the result of intense calculation
and taking into account of all available numbers and therefore reliable.
74
Van Krieken 2002, 131.
75
See footnote 66.
76
Boon 1987, 18-19.
77
Only “national” sailors are taken into account, e.g. Hamburgians on Hamburg ships etc.
78 Van Krieken 2002, 139.

was founded in 1715, when its naval power was rather weak and the institution
ended with the ascent of Denmark’s naval power after the mid-18th century.
The Danish case seems to confirm the thesis of incompatibility of Sklavenkassen
with a strong navy.
Yet, naval power is not a very important factor in the decision process about
Sklavenkassen. For one thing, naval expeditions against the corsairs were in
most of the cases blatant failures. Only the British and French expeditions in
the late 17th century had achieved their aims. But these were the exceptions to
the general rule. The Dutch expeditions of 1618-20, 1655-56, 1662, 1664, 1670
and 1721-24 were all costly and only partly effective at attaining their goal. 79 In
the end, The Hague had to accept a peace treaty in which permanent tributes
were stipulated, in contrast to the tribute-free peace treaties which England and
France were able to attain.
But even more to the point, why should naval power stand in contradiction
to state-organized ransoming? The historical evidence simply does not support
such an imagined dichotomy. A state with a powerful navy like Great Britain
had its “Algiers-duty”, very much resembling a Sklavenkasse, to finance the
ransoming of its subjects. 80 When in 1720 a “Project tot het ruineeren der
Turkze Rovers” was put forward in the Netherlands, it was explicitly stated in
one of its articles that a Sklavenkasse should flank the massive naval attack on
the corsairs. 81 Thus, governmentally organized ransoming and a strong navy
within one state are not contradictions. They could and did come together, one
could and did exist without the other or both could and often were absent. In
the minds of the decision-makers they were to a large measure independent of
each other.
Are the observed differences due to the political structure of the states in
question? The two Hanse cities were small political units, where a Sklavenkasse
could easily be introduced by and for limited groups. The entire cities being
very dependent on the trade towards southern waters, it was easy to convince
all decision-makers of the advantages of Sklavenkassen for all people of the
cities. This was not so in Denmark-Norway, where the trade routes went to a
large degree east and northwards when the Slavekasse was introduced. Yet, in
the absolute monarchy of Denmark-Norway, the decision-making process
could at times be very easy. It took one memorandum from Sealand’s Bishop to
the King to get the Slavekasse going, without any amendment. 82 With a different
political structure we may well believe that Denmark-Norway would have
gone the same way that the Netherlands did. Here, a central government with
limited powers could only act in accord with the provinces. In an absolute
79 Van Krieken 2002, 26, 53-55, 57-67, 94-97.
80 On the Algiers-duty: Matar 2005, 38-75.
81 Project tot het ruineeren der Turkze Rovers [...] 1720.
82 Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 159-160.
140

monarchy, this opposition could be overcome, which was not so in a republic
with independently-minded constituent parts.
However, it is precisely this observation that allows us to rule out the different
political structures as the causator of the (non-)introduction of Sklavenkassen.
The political structure was certainly important on the national level, where
the decentralized Netherlands could not agree upon a foundation of a Sklavenkasse.
Yet, at the local level the differences between the two blocs still remain.
In Copenhagen after 1634, we have a de facto Sklavenkasse in the form of the
Skipperlav with its obligatory duties and its responsibility to ransom Copenhagen’s
sailors. It would have been very easy for the single provinces or cities in
the Netherlands to introduce Sklavenkassen at the local level. Yet, the only
Sklavenkasse that ever existed in the Netherlands was the local one at
Zierikzee, a short-lived and very late foundation. Amsterdam, Middelburg and
other great cities never had a Sklavenkasse, even though it would have been
very easy to found one. The political structure of the large Dutch harbor cities
was very much comparable to Hamburg and Lubeck. In all these cities the
power lay in the hands of the richer merchants and the emerging bourgeoisie.
The same groups of power-holders easily founded Sklavenkassen in the cities
east of the Elbe and refused to do so west of the Elbe. Thus a political structure
did not stand in the way of a foundation of Sklavenkassen in the Netherlands.
VII. The Combination of Historical “Facts”
and Sociological “Theory”
After having refuted the more simple explanation for the found typologies, we
are still left without a satisfying answer for the discrepancy of the ransoming
modes. A more complex model is needed as explanandum for the differences in
the organization of ransoming of the two blocs. This shall be done by setting
the established typology in a broader perspective and then analyzing it anew.
The entire phenomenon of slave ransoming has to be regarded not as something
exceptional but structural for the affected maritime societies. The ransoming of
Europeans was an affair so stable that we can regard it as an integral part of
Early Modern welfare. Like the poor, the group of the slaves to be redeemed
was an inherent part of every seafaring society in Early Modern Europe. The
authorities were confronted with endless petitions from individuals who needed
money to save husbands, relatives or friends from a mortal threat and, regarded
much more dangerously, their souls from the arch-enemy of God. The endless
flow of supplications aimed at the “imagined empathy” of an entire society. As
we have seen, the typology of the chosen ways to produce security for the
suffering captives exactly follows confessional lines.
In recent years, sociology has turned considerable attention towards the
connections between features of the modern welfare states and their respective
dominant confession. As an offspring of the widespread discussion and re-
141

search about and on the welfare state, which was sparked by the first publication
of Esping-Andersen’s work on the typologies of the modern welfare states
in 1990 83 , the origins of the essential variations between the states of the modern
West are now being traced more and more towards religious roots. 84 Also,
the historians and sociologists with an interest in the Early Modern Epoch have
raised their voices in this debate. In his book “The disciplinary revolution”, the
American sociologist Philip Gorski has put religion at the centre of the stage of
Early Modern history and used it as an explanation of many different phenomena
of the epoch. 85 Though he is mostly interested in the connections between
the state’s power and its respective confession, he has also devoted quite considerable
thought to the links between the Reformation and Early Modern
forms of poor-relief. 86 Gorski in essence argues that Protestant poor-relief was
marked by a high degree of centralization and bureaucratization at the level of
the state. A sharp line was drawn in the Protestant world between “deserving”
and “undeserving” poor; the former received alms, the latter were sent to the
“Zuchthaus”. Gorski contrasts this with Catholic poor-relief, which remained to
a large degree in the hands of the clergy and never knew a sharp distinction
between “deserving” and “undeserving”. He also distinguishes sharply within
Protestantism between Calvinist and Lutheran poor-relief: according to him the
former was marked by “considerable decentralization, and a harsher but more
activist approach towards the poor.” 87
Another sociologist, Sigrun Kahl, has elaborated on Gorski’s theses and
made far-reaching connections between the religious doctrines of the respective
three confessions and the social welfare systems of our present-day states. 88
Kahl finally arrives at a table of twelve stylized features of the three confessions.
In this table we find core theological statements on work and poverty and
the way the poor were treated in the area of the respective confession. The
strength of Kahl’s article lies in the very serious attempt to bridge the research
of modern sociology on the welfare state and historical research on the Reformation,
both of which have more or less ignored each other in the last decades.
Even though Kahl never uses the terms explicitly, she clearly tries to describe
83
Esping-Andersen 1990.
84
Philip Manow has pointed out the many flaws of Esping-Andersen’s model of the three
types of modern welfare state: “there is ample evidence that the religious cleavage dimension
was also critical to the way that the capitalist conflict was pacified by means of the
welfare state. Especially if we account for the crucial differences between Lutheran and
reformed Protestantism, we can solve many of the empirical and theoretical problems in
Esping-Andersen’s approach”, in: Manow 2004.
85
Gorski 2003.
86
Gorski 2003, 125-137.
87
Gorski 2003, 137.
88
Kahl 2005.
142

distinct group attitudes of inclusion and exclusion towards its poorer members,
the groups being distinguished by their confessions.
Kahl tries very hard in her article to accentuate the differences between the
Lutheran and Calvinist approach towards the poor. She empirically bases these
differences mainly on the denseness of “Zuchthäuser” in the Calvinist and
Lutheran areas and the degree of centralization of systems of poor-relief. From
her article one gets the impression that the distinction between “deserving” and
“undeserving” poor was marked in Calvinist areas more by punishment of the
“undeserving” and in Lutheran areas more by a relatively effective help for the
“deserving”. The “deserving” got no great assistance in the Calvinist world,
while in the Lutheran world the state actively intervened on their behalf. Kahl
emphasizes that this state intervention in the Lutheran world happened not in
opposition to the church but with intimate collaboration between church and
state. 89
Since we have established that the Sklavenkassen were not an exotic but a
normal institution of poor-relief in Early Modern Northern Europe, we can now
look at them from the “confessional” angle. We can certainly count the sailors
among the “deserving” poor, since they had usually fought bravely to protect
the merchandise of their masters, the flag of their state and thus the honor of
their rulers. 90 Here was a group that clearly did not deserve the drastic plight
into which they had fallen. Thus, the decision-making process towards finding
an answer to the slaves’ petitions must therefore have been a very hard exercise
for the petitioned, since they knew that they were deciding upon the fate of
brave members of the community. Their answer to it, whether positive or negative,
was thus certainly a reflection of deep convictions with regard to the
“imagined empathy” of a given society.
It is remarkable how well the models of Gorski and Kahl fit with the Lutheran
Sklavenkassen. Centralized and bureaucratically operating governmental
offices, relentlessly collecting obligatory duties and using this money in one of
the most complicated businesses conceivable: is that not Lutheran poor-relief to
its maximum extent? Since the buying back of sailors from slavery was just a
form of poor-relief in extremis, we see here the Lutheran way of poor-relief at
its extreme. This always happened, as is clearest in the case of the Danish
Slavekasse, where Sealand’s Bishop led the entire agency, in close cooperation
with the churches. The obligatory insurance is the qualitatively new element of
these institutions, to which only Lutheran states resorted. For its subjects in
danger of and actually in slavery, the Lutheran state was expected and ready to
89 Kahl 2005, 105.
90 It is important to note that only the sailors who had defended themselves bravely were
bought back; see: § 5 of the Hamburg Sklavenkasse, printed in: Baasch 1897, 207.
143

provide absolute human security, firstly with institutions, later with the readiness
to sign expensive peace treaties with the Barbary regents. 91
This strong role of the Lutheran state as a redistributor of money and producer
of human security was demanded by the ruled and the authorities were
willing to accede in this demand. An unavoidable and undeserved risk of any
deserving member of this state was regarded as not tolerable. When such a
danger lured, the entire system reacted and secured the neutralization of this
threat by spreading the financial burden on the shoulders of all risk-bearers.
This differs markedly from the Calvinist world, where the state as a nexus
binding the people together was not as strong as in the Lutheran world.
What can we deduce from our presentation about the Calvinist welfare
state? Kahl has emphasized Calvin’s rejection of state involvement in matters
of poor-relief:
According to Calvin, poor relief should be part of the church’s ministry.
Church and private charities retained a key role in the administration of poor
relief. Private charity was part of proving and displaying election. In this
sense, Calvinism kept the traditional ostentation of public giving. 92
Having no Sklavenkasse but only its repeated discussion and ultimate nonintroduction
at hand, it is not hard to see a rejection of state involvement in the
Calvinist-dominated Netherlands. Even the hard plight of its sailors in Northern
Africa could not move the society at home to overcome its basic propositions
on relief-giving. The result was dire for thousands of Netherlanders who got
caught by the Muslim corsairs.
We have to remark that the people of the United Provinces did care a lot for
their brethren in Northern Africa. The Netherlanders gave intensely and over
decades huge sums of alms for the ransoming of their relatives. At the moment,
we have no data at hand but we can presume that the alms-giving in the Netherlands
for the caught sailors brought in much more money in relation to national
wealth than in the Lutheran world. Individual generosity tried hard to compensate
for the lack of a Sklavenkasse. Yet, the ratio of just 33-50% liberated sailors
in the richest parts of Europe proves that in the 17th century, the state as
machinery of organization and redistribution had already far surpassed the
ability of individual generosity and voluntary commitment. The only way to
really produce sustainable and absolute human security lay in the intervention
of the state, as the examples of the Lutheran neighbors showed.
91 These treaties have usually been regarded solely as parts of a commercially activist policy,
see e.g.: Andersen 2000, 37-54. This cannot be doubted, but it should be remarked that in
Denmark’s case the Slavekasse had initiated these peace talks, an institution whose function
was not commercial but to produce security for its sailors. The aspect of generating security
from slavery is thus not just a side-effect of these treaties, but inextricably connected with
their commercial aims.
92 Kahl 2005, 110.
144

The Netherlanders had often been asked if they wanted a Sklavenkasse to
produce human security for all their sailors. This question could only come
before the highest assembly of the state because the slaves in Northern Africa
were the poor with the greatest merit. The fact that these proposals had caused
the Netherlanders intense debates and thorough questioning of their traditional
approach proves that the ultimate refusal of a Sklavenkasse was well-considered
and has to be a reflection of the “imagined empathy” of the Netherlandish
society at the time. In the end, the state’s intervention was even regarded
as harmful for the private ransomers. 93 We know that this was not true and that
individuals, for all their endeavors, could not compensate for the state in this
regard.
So with the case studies of the Protestant way of ransoming captives out of
Northern Africa, we finally arrive at an observation which in itself fits very
well into the established picture of sociological and historical literature. The
strong role of the Lutheran state as an embodiment of mutual insurance of a
given group and thereby as an active producer of human security can be traced
to sources in the existing confessional mentality. The Calvinist state did not act
the same way that the Lutheran did; it openly decided not to produce human
security when this came into conflict with trade security. The Calvinist state
left this most essential sort of poor-relief to the society at large and thus preferred
the production of security for the economy of its system, not for individuals.
The Lutheran state appears as a social system marked by a high degree
of inclusiveness for all deserving members of the community, while the Calvinist
state appears as a social system marked by more exclusive tendencies, even
for its deserving members.
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147

Swedes in Barbary Captivity: The Political Culture
of Human Security, Circa 1660-1760
Joachim Östlund �
Abstract: »Schweden in Gefangenschaft der Barbaresken: Die politische Kultur
humaner Sicherheit, circa 1660-1760«. This article aims to present a specific
form of “Human Security” during the Early Modern era. As a case study,
the relationship between Sweden and the North African states will be put forward.
The Swedish maritime expansion in the Mediterranean during the 17th
century resulted in insecurity for the men who manned the ships when they became
targets for Muslim corsairs from North Africa. This article explores how
the Swedish state responded to the threat towards its seamen during a period of
100 years (1660-1760). The Kingdom not only reacted militarily or diplomatically
towards this threat. Intense attention was also paid to humanitarian aspects
on the level of the individual. The state tried several preventative measures
to reduce the risk of captivity and installed a nation-wide ransoming
system. The article highlights the complex relationship between state security
and human security and shows how cultural values, economy, institutions and
international politics also give form and substance to the praxis of the “Production
of Human Security”.
Keywords: Sweden-North Africa relations, national security, human insecurity,
human security, captivity, ransoming.
Introduction
The Swedish maritime enterprise in the Mediterranean during the middle of the
seventeenth century not only resulted in the import of cheap salt but also in
new politics of security for the men who manned the ships. Muslim corsairs
operating from the present-day Maghreb states posed a serious danger towards
the shipping of all European nations in the Mediterranean. The biggest threat
was their attempts to seize the cargo and carry their crew to the slave markets
of North Africa. Usually the captives were engaged in hard labor and held for
ransom. In their letters asking for help and in the writings of eyewitnesses, this
bondage was described as slavery. The reactions from relatives and authorities
were intense, and the social anxiety about the captivity of large groups of men
� Address all communications to: Joachim Östlund, Department of History, Lund University,
P.O. Box 2074, 220 02 Lund, Sweden; e-mail: joachim.ostlund@hist.lu.se.
This article is a part of an individual research project financed by Stiftelsen Riksbankens
Jubileumsfond, 2009-2011.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 148-163

esulted in responses unusual for the Early Modern period. The purpose of this
paper is to discuss humanitarian aspects of the necessary protection of trade.
The human dimension of security, or the question of security in people’s
daily lives, emerged in the 1990s as a conceptual response to two changing
dimensions of the international order, referred to as globalization and the end
of the Cold War. This shift was defined and explicated in the 1994 UN Human
Development Report. According to the UNHDR, human security meant “safety
from chronic threats such as hunger, disease and repression” and “protections
from sudden and harmful disruptions in the patterns of daily life”. 1 The UN
identifies seven specific sources of human insecurity: economic, food, health,
environmental, personal, community and political sources of human insecurity.
Since then the term has been used in different ways. On the online database
“Human Security Gateway”, the human security concept is defined separately
from national security, and where the latter is defined, its focus is on the defending
of the physical and political integrity of states from external military
threats. This distinction is put forward to highlight the fact that the goals of
national security may in many cases threaten human security: “Ideally, national
security and human security should be mutually reinforcing.” 2 In summary, the
model of human security consists primarily of four features: its focus on the
individual, its concern with values of personal safety and freedom, its consideration
of indirect threats, and its emphasis on non-coercive means.
In the following I will show how human security became an important instrument
in the Swedish maritime expansion. The purpose of this article is to
trace policies of human security during the period 1660-1760, and to discuss its
form and substance. The following questions will be highlighted and discussed
in the article: (a) How did the human aspect of security initially become identified?
(b) In what ways did human security become an organized and institutionalized
part of the Swedish state? (c) How is the Swedish policy of human
security related to political, cultural and historical factors?
Identifying Human Insecurity
During the middle of the seventeenth century Swedish economic politics formulated
a new interest: to find cheap salt and markets for Swedish staple commodities
in Southern Europe. The rising salt prices in Setubal and Lisbon
pushed the Swedish merchants into the Mediterranean, and there they entered a
world dominated by sea warfare and violence. The struggle for control between
the two dominant empires of the region, Spain and the Ottoman Empire, resulted
in an unstable and insecure environment. During the seventeenth century
1 Human Development Report 1994, 23.
2 Human Security Report Project.
149

the conflict transmuted into coastal raids, semi-official privateering and piracy.
Constantinople’s control over its North African vassals declined and the Barbary
Coast became a center of corsairing. On the Christian side, Malta and
Livorno played similar roles. 3
The insecurity in this area was identified rather quickly when letters from
captives in North Africa reached the King, state officials or family members in
Sweden. For example, in 1661 a galley slave in Algiers, Johan Arvidsson, sent
a letter to the Admiralty about his poor condition. The message was then forwarded
to the Church authorities along with the question of whether they could
organize alms for a ransom. That was the usual process, and it was repeated in
many other cases. But Arvidsson’s case was also taken care of by the Lord
High Admiral Carl Gustaf Wrangel himself when he informed the Council
about a ransom. Later, alms were collected and the Admiralty also gave money
to pay the ransom of the galley slave Arvidsson. This example shows that one
human being mattered and that it was a question of high priority. 4 How is it
possible to understand this response? As Linda Colley has put forward, the
Barbary captives embodied a particularly dramatic form of vulnerability. Collections
on behalf of North African captives seem to have elicited higher levels
of generosity. 5 This might also explain why Swedish subjects even gave alms
to Greeks who begged for aid in Sweden for their captured family members in
Turkey. In 1705 alms were collected all over Sweden for captured monks belonging
to the Greek Catholic Archimandrite at the St. Athanasius Cloister. 6
But ransoming was sometimes lacking, for different reasons. This becomes
visible in a report about a ransom written by Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeldt to the
King. Sparwenfeldt was a traveller and researcher who, during a journey in
North Africa in 1691, had interviewed Swedish captives. In his report he recommended
that a ransom should be paid for “the best, the most functional, the
youngest and purest Swedes”. Old, damaged and “un-Swedish” bodies should
not be liberated according to this line of thought. Many of the individuals interviewed
by Sparwenfelt had been held in captivity for more than ten years, and
most of them had been captured on ships from Holland. Because of their Swedish
citizenship they had been left behind, according to Sparwenfeldt. 7 This was
also the praxis among the European states: Each state ransomed its own citizens.
It is therefore important to emphasize that human security at this stage
was dependent on citizenship.
In Sweden, information about what was happening in North Africa was
fragmented during the second half of the seventeenth century. This can partly
3 Müller 2004, 30-31, 49-51.
4 Ekman 1962, 70.
5 Colley 2002, 77-78.
6 Forsell and Granstedt 1949, 28; Lundström 1906, 119.
7 Riksarkivet Stockholm, Diplomatica Turcica: bihang Tripolitana, vol. 7, 1694.
150

e explained by the Protestant Reformation, which ended the contact with
ransoming organizations that had existed in Catholic European states since the
thirteenth century, such as the Mercedarians and the Trinitarians. The Church
of Sweden was indeed active in raising ransoms and publishing the plight of
Barbary captives, but it lacked the contacts and knowledge of the Catholic
redemptionist orders in Continental Europe. The basic information came from
sporadic official contacts, and the letters from captives. Let’s take a closer look
at the letters – this is where the discourse of security was formulated by the
victims.
The letters from captives in North Africa give information about what they
expected from relatives or authorities at home. What demands were possible?
Did they beg for help, demand help, or did they even ask when they would be
helped? When Swedish seamen in bondage wrote letters for help, many of
them sought aid directly from the King. In a Lutheran society this was a normal
thing, since the King was not only the head of state but also the head of the
church. According to the Lutheran state ideology, the sovereign symbolizes the
Lord – judging, preserving order, and guaranteeing prosperity – and the good
shepherd who demonstrates virtues, comforts and gives his blessing. This paternalistic
idea of double responsibility was a commonly held norm repeated
from the middle of the sixteenth century in prayer days, proclamations and
propaganda in everyday life in Swedish society. According to this line of
thought, an imagined bond was created between the King and each and every
individual in the realm. 8 This ideology is also reflected in the letters.
Many letters are signed by five, ten or even fifteen people. The first item is
typically a salutation to the addressee, and after that there is an explanation of
the case. Some petitions are broader in scope, giving details about what has
happened and the problems they are dealing with. All the letters are united by
their paternalistic subordination in line with Lutheran ideology, the descriptions
of their misery, and their ambition to evoke benevolence. The detailed description
of their misery should be taken seriously, but at the same time, this was
also a rhetorical strategy used to create an emphatic identification and
strengthen the will to do honorable deeds. This idea is very distinct in the letters.
In many of the early letters compassion with the victim is most important
argument for aid, but in some cases demands for help are also put forward, as
in the following example:
some of us here gathered in greatest truth, on our bare knees, with buoyant bitter
tears of the heart and the eyes, praying and demanding, one more time, for
Your Royal Highness’ help and liberation. 9
8 Östlund 2007, 55-56.
9 Riksarkivet Stockholm, Diplomatica Turcica: bihang Algerica, vol. 15, 1680.
151

The next argument is formulated as a direct reflection of the Lutheran ideology.
This time the King, not his subjects, is addressed and informed of the
consequences of the deeds which reflect the fundament of the political and
moral order. The letter says that if the King liberates them, this will be “very
delightful to God the Almighty”, and therefore, the King’s “great richness
should not diminish, but by the good God many times be blessed and increase”.
10 In a religious world view, this argument should not be taken too
lightly. The religious view of human security is common to many letters: for
example, “all this pain to my body does not hurt me as much as their will [for
me] to give up my religion”. 11 This shows what they feared. It is also clear that
the captives turned the ideological statements back towards the party that represented
them, and even raised demands to be liberated. But what is the meaning
of freedom according to the captives? Many captives argue that they want
to be subjects under a rightful and benevolent king, not a tyrant: “that we one
more time could return to our dear fatherland with joy and health … and that
we poor slaves continue to be His Royal Highness’ and our most merciful
King’s most humble servants.” 12 Security, or even freedom, is here defined as
belonging to the benevolent King. If the King does not help, his legitimacy is
contested and therefore the messages are composed as a reminder of the moral
obligation defined by the state. What was the impact of these cries for help?
Solutions to Human Insecurity
The Swedish response to corsair activity was not entirely similar to how other
European states reacted. At an early stage the Swedish state chose negotiation
instead of “forceful persuasion”, or coercive diplomacy, towards the North
African states. Swedish ships never participated in any bombings of harbors,
and even in the beginning of the nineteenth century wars were believed to be
“an infinitely high price for security”. 13 The first attempt by the state to ransom
Swedish captives was made by Captain Jöns Barkman in 1661, the same year
that the first letter, from Johan Arvidsson, arrived in Sweden. His visit and
contact with the Dey in Algiers was also related in a letter from a large group
of captives addressed to the Chancellor of the State in 1662. They wrote that
Barkman had visited them twice, but failed in the negotiation to get them re-
10 Riksarkivet Stockholm, Diplomatica Turcica: bihang Algerica, vol. 15, 1680.
11 Riksarkivet Stockholm, Diplomatica Turcica: bihang Algerica, vol. 15, 1707.
12 Riksarkivet Stockholm, Diplomatica Turcica: bihang Algerica, vol. 15, 1724.
13 Lunds universitetsbibliotek, De la Gardieska collection: historical documents, 25:4, 800-01-
09. Eric Sköldebrand, consul in Algiers, report: “Upplysningar, rörande De Barbariska
Staterne samt olägenhetene och förmonera af Krig eller fred med de samma”, signed in
Stockholm, 9 January 1800.
152

leased. 14 His failure might explain the next reaction from the state: retribution
by corsairing. In 1663 a secret privateer company was founded by the Queen
Dowager and a number of councilors. The purpose was to capture Muslim
ships in the Red Sea. In September one ship out of two reached its destination
and was successful in taking two richy-laden Muslim vessels. But from the
investors’ point of view the expedition was not a success. 15 This corsair activity
was an exception, and after this failure, Swedish politics towards the North
African states changed.
Among state officials and merchants, the relationship now turned into a
question of how to implement solutions for human security. Swedish merchants
met the threat from the corsairs with insurance from companies in Amsterdam.
Different strategies about “security from the Turk” are also put forward. In a
legal case from 1666 about such insurance, it was mentioned that seamen were
skeptical towards this shipping; a merchant wrote in a document that “no seaman
will sail on that ship because of fear of the Turk.” 16 A different kind of
insurance, or systems of convoying to meet the risk of Turkish captivity, were
discussed by Swedish merchants during the middle of the seventeenth century,
and ideas of human security were transformed in this way into an important
factor for a successful economic enterprise.
On a state level, different non-coercive strategies towards human insecurity
were formulated in 1668 when the Board of Trade decided that a peace treaty
was needed. This had a humanitarian dimension where one of the motives was:
“so that our subjects can trade under secure conditions”. This response reveals
an awareness of the importance of the sailors. This was further underlined
when, in the same year, the Board of Trade took the initiative of a collection of
alms for the ransoming of captives. 17 To accomplish peace with the most powerful
state in North Africa, Algiers, the plan was to send the Jewish professional
negotiator, Azeweda from Amsterdam, together with the Swede Eosander.
Unfortunately this plan was cancelled because the ship was caught in ice,
and because of certain political factors. Then a new expedition was planned, to
be undertaken by Jöns Barkman in 1669. But this initiative was also cancelled
when a group of powerful politicians objected with the argument that a Swedish
peace with Algiers could create irritation in Holland and England. 18 Swedish
loyalties in European power politics become a hindrance, and the first step
to a harmonization between state security and human security failed.
14
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Diplomatica Turcica: bihang Algerica, vol. 15, 1662.
15
Krëuger 1854, 25-26.
16
Söderberg 1935, 140.
17
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Topographic index, Letter from the Board of Trade to His Royal
Majesty, 1668, 26/4.
18
Ekegård 1924, 252.
153

In 1671 the Swedish seamen in Barbary captivity were officially described
as a serious problem in a national proclamation in the churches by the Queen
Regent Hedevig Eleonora. Benevolence towards the seamen in bondage was
her main argument: Everybody should give alms and show compassion towards
these poor victims. This was the wish of the Queen Regent, and it was also
motivated by the duty to love one’s neighbor. This view of the victim shows
that the individual had a double relationship towards the sovereign: one bound
to religion, and the other to the fatherland. Therefore the Queen concluded that
there were two motives for collecting ransom funds for these individuals: to
save their souls and to secure their bodies. 19 This was a rather forceful reaction
to a problem that was not yet very serious. At the same time, this announcement
reflected one of the greatest fears during the second half of the seventeenth
century: the fear of the Turk.
In the mid-seventeenth century the salt trade between Sweden and Portugal
was established, but Swedish merchants did not enter the Mediterranean extensively
until the late 1690s. 20 It is clear that the Swedish authorities and merchants
were well aware of the risks of sailing in Southern waters, and that a
number of strategies had already been put to the test to reduce the risk. During
this period no insurance company existed in Sweden, nor was there any official
organization for dealing with ransoming. The payment of ransoms depended on
initiatives taken by the captives in their letters as a request, hoping for the
goodwill of relatives, county governors, the Church, the Admiralty, the King,
or the Board of Trade. For example, in 1699 the carpenter Jonas Thorson was
captured by corsairs from Algiers, and in 1707 one of his many letters finally
reached its destination, his parents in Karlskrona. 21 In this letter he told them
that he had been sold twice on the slave auction, and then asked them for help
to request a collection of alms for his freedom. His parents took the letter to the
magistrate and explained the situation. Then the magistrate contacted the
county governor, who finally sent a letter to the King requesting national
alms. 22 Even former captives took the initiative to collect ransoms: for example,
Mats “Moor” Börgesson in 1666, who was granted royal permission to
collect ransom funds (probably for his comrades left behind in North Africa). 23
These examples show that solutions to human insecurity could differ. There
existed no formal organization to which the captives could send their letters,
19
Lunds universitetsbibliotek, Kongl: may:ts placat, om hielp til the fångnas i Turckiet
åtherlösn. Stockholm, 1671.
20
Müller 2004, 55.
21
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Diplomatica Turcica: bihang Algerica, 1707.
22
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Topographic index, Landshövdingarnas skrivelser till Kungl. Majt
Blekinge län vol. 2. Landshöv. Otter om en kollekt öfver hela riket för befrielse af
sjömannen Jonas Thorson som blifigt tillfångatagen af sjöröfvare och såld till slaf. 1707,
26.7.
23
Landsarkivet i Göteborg, Göteborgs rådhusrätts dombok, January 1666 (digital archive).
154

ut as these instances demonstrate, help was given anyway. Because of the
irregular system, it is quite difficult to give reliable answers about the results of
the practice of human security. More research is needed in order to estimate
how many people made it back home during this period. In the beginning of the
eighteenth century the situation in Swedish society had changed in major ways
– changes that would affect the outcome of human security in the Southern
waters.
The Realization of Human Security
Following the end of the Great Northern War of 1700-1721, secure trading and
the economy were of the utmost importance for the bankrupt Swedish state.
The humanitarian disaster caused by the war and the downfall of Caroline
absolutism resulted in a changed view of citizenship. This can be seen in the
constitution of 1720, which, for example, caused Voltaire to declare Sweden to
be the “the freest land in the world”. Rousseau called the constitution “an example
of perfection” and Gabriel Bonnot de Mably called it “a masterpiece of
modern legislation”. 24 The disastrous war ended the Swedish era of great power
and changed the attitude of many politicians. War was now believed to be the
greatest threat to national security, and therefore economic development became
a question of national security.
With the end of the war, the protection of shipping in the Mediterranean received
high priority. This can be seen in a couple of decisions. In 1724 the
Swedish Convoy Office (Konvojkommissariatet) was founded, with the purpose
of organizing and securing shipping in Southern Europe. Convoying,
peace treaties with and consular service in North African states, and the ransoming
of captured Swedes were now carried out under the umbrella of one
institution. It was financed with the Extra-Licent, a duty established by merchants
in 1723 to be paid on exports and imports. 25 And in 1726 a decision was
made to organize four national collections of alms each year to pay the ransoms
of Swedes in Barbary captivity. During these years large amounts of money
were collected through alms in Sweden. The Swedish Parliament also established
a committee that would be responsible for these funds, the “Algerian
Fund Office” (Riksens Ständers deputation öfwer det Algiereiska Fondwercket).
As an example of the monetary sums involved, during the years
1755-1760 the Swedish state paid 130,000 Riksdaler for ransomed Swedish
captives in Morocco. This amount is equivalent to approx. 5 million Euros
today. 26 What is important here is that these decisions show how the question
24 Roberts 1995, 91.
25 Krëuger 1854, 25-27.
26 Olán 1921, 108.
155

of human security was transferred to the state level, and that as a consequence
the system became professionalized and institutionalized. Of great importance
is the treaty made between Sweden and Algiers in 1729. This treaty was shaped
along the lines of other treaties between European states and Algiers, and with
it a consular service and the system of Algerian passports were established. The
purpose of the treaty was to ensure trade security and, not least, that of the
seamen. The Swedish treaty with Algiers also stated that the consul had the
right to have a priest at the consulate and that Christian slaves had the right to
attend the sermons. The religious aspect of human security was also followed
up when Jacob Serenius, a Swedish priest in London, received permission to
send “forbidden” hymn books to Swedish captives in Algiers and to other seamen
sailing in these waters. 27 State officials were also concerned about captives
who were held in bondage for longer periods, that “these poor slaves without
hope of ransoming should take injury to body and soul”. 28
Compared to the political situation during the second half of the seventeenth
century, when European power politics became a hindrance for a peace treaty
with Algiers, Sweden gained a powerful ally in the beginning of the eighteenth
century, namely the Sublime Porte. Together they were united against the
common enemy, Russia. This, in turn, affected the relationship towards the
North African states. According to David Gustaf Ankarloo, the Swedish consular
secretary in Algiers (1801-10), the peace treaty with Algiers was struck
under good conditions thanks to the agency of the Sublime Porte. 29 With the
changing political map, Swedish diplomats could now use the friendship of the
Sublime Porte. Swedish diplomats too, for example, raised questions about
security from corsairs from the Ottoman regencies Tunis and Tripoli. 30 In 1737
the Swedish-Turkish economic relations were settled, and later strengthened
with a treaty of commerce and a military alliance. 31 According to the researcher
Verner Söderberg, the relationship with the Sublime Porte resulted in cheaper
treaties and tributes compared to countries such as Denmark, France, England
and Spain. 32
After the treaty with Algiers, treaties were made with Tunis (1736), Tripoli
(1741) and Morocco in 1763. Another important institution during the middle
of the eighteenth century was the organization of seamen’s establishments
(Sjömanshus) in different cities. There are examples of seamen’s wives apply-
27
Jacobowsky 1930, 95.
28
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Topographic index, Marocko Tanger ang. 3ne svenskar utlösen ur
slaveri in T. Composite offices to His Royal Majesty, 1737, 23.11, vol. 13.
29
Lunds universitetsbibliotek, De la Gardieska collection, Codices VIII 32. Ankarloo, David
Gustaf, Utdrag af mina bref till M.F., skrifna under mitt vistande i Alger[…]. 1802-1811.
30
Eliasson 2005, 54.
31
Karlson 2003, 52-55.
32
Söderberg 1912, 94-95. Around a half billion Euros in today’s value was paid in total to the
North African states.
156

ing for and receiving economic help when their men were enslaved, or worse,
when they died in captivity. Ransomed seamen could also get economic help. 33
Before the founding of seamen’s establishments, the Convoy Office could also
give social funds to ransomed slaves. 34 With the seamen’s establishments one
can say that the human security aspect was in some way extended to the families
of the victims.
The consuls in different parts of the Mediterranean world also played an important
role for the captives. The duties of the consuls were many. They collected
business information, assisted the subjects of their home state in handling
contacts with local authorities, and influenced the “protection costs” of
the home state’s subjects by informing them of risks, and taking measures to
diminish such risks. 35 They also gave a helping hand to individuals during their
captivity in states with no treaty. The latter is shown in letters by captives and
in books written by former captives. In Marcus Berg’s book “Description of the
barbarous slavery in the kingdom of Fez and Morocco” (1757), he portrays the
help given by the consul in Algiers, George Logie. Berg writes that during their
visit in Fez the survival of the group was totally dependent on the help that was
given by George Logie, and according to Berg, Logie also gave them money
without the permission of the Swedish state. Berg also writes that he met eight
French captives who told him that they had received money and food from the
Swedish consul George Logie, but non from the French consul. 36 Help from a
consul is also mentioned in a letter from four Swedish captives in Morocco, but
this time from Consul Jakob Martin Bellman in Cadiz (the uncle of the famous
Skald Michael Bellman). 37 This contact probably meant a lot to the captives. It
is also worth mentioning that George Logie is a common reference in a wide
range of documents concerning the relationship between Sweden and the North
African states. He was not only one of the most important actors in the politics
behind peace treaties between Sweden and the North African states but also
one of the most active agents of human security in his work of ransoming
Swedes, as well as captives of other nationalities. His work was also well rewarded
by the Swedish King when his service ended in 1758. 38
As has been shown, different agendas were discussed during the seventeenth
century in dealing with the threat from the Barbary corsairs. This continued
during the eighteenth century. The question of a Swedish insurance system was
raised to meet the fear of the Mediterranean waters. Many ship-owners were
33
Stockholms stadsarkiv, Sjömanshuset, Gratialansökningar 1749-1775 E IVa kolon 3, 1750-
1756 E IVa kolon 1.
34
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Topographic index, ang. förskotterade medel för bl.a. underhåll åt
lösgivna slavar 1732 23.5. City offices vol. 34.
35
Müller 2004, 20.
36
Berg 1757, 35.
37
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Diplomatica Turcica: Bihang Maroccana, vol. 6, 7 May 1760.
38
Krëuger 1854, 15, 240, 355, 399.
157

disappointed with the convoys – they were slow and difficult to organize in an
adequate way – but were also skeptical of ideas of a Swedish insurance company:
What if only the captain was insured and not the seamen? etc. The importance
of this question was also demonstrated when even the government
demanded an inquiry (1728) from the Board of Trade, the latter also noting the
dilemma if only the skipper, rather than the whole crew, was covered by the
insurance. 39 These examples speak for themselves: The simple seaman should
also be protected from the fear and risk of enslavement.
During the seventeenth century there was not enough capital for the establishment
of a Swedish insurance company, but in 1739 the “Stockholms
sjöassuranskompani” (“Stockholm sea insurance company”) was established.
Its purpose was to break the dependence on foreign companies. And, following
this, a Swedish “slave insurance” was also created in 1745: “Insurance on the
danger of the Turk and on human life” (“Om Försäkring på Fahra för Turcken
och på Menniskiors lif”). This insurance was a direct copy of the Hamburg
Laws, which date from 1731. The Hamburgian “Assekuranz- und Havarie-
Ordnung” (“Insurance and Damage Regulation”) was also copied directly by
Denmark and Prussia. But this insurance was said to be unpopular in Sweden
among the foreign companies. Information about the practical use of this insurance
is not available yet, but it was probably of no great importance. Still, it is
an interesting example of how people tried to deal with the fear of captivity and
human security. The captivity of some hundreds of Swedish seamen, maybe up
to a thousand in the end, received serious attention. It is noteworthy that the
insurance makes a reference to the Admiralty’s “Sclav-Cassa” (slave fund).
The term “Slaf-Cassa” is also used by the famous economist Anders Berch in
one of his books (1747). According to him, the security for shipping in the
Mediterranean was dependent on convoys and treaties. He also wrote that for
the seamen there should also be “Slaf-Cassor” when peace was not possible
with the corsairs, so that they would not fear sailing in the Southern waters. 40
This term refers to the existing institutions, Sklavenkassen, in Copenhagen,
Lübeck and Hamburg. 41 The praxis was the same, but in Sweden the Konvojkommissariatet
was the central institution for both ransoming and protection of
the shipping.
Previous analysis has shown that the implementation and realization of human
security was related to different historical, political and cultural factors. In
the following the analysis will highlight how the legal status of human security
could differ in relation to the different political and cultural contexts during the
beginning of the eighteenth century.
39 Söderberg 1935, 148-150.
40 Berch 1747, 323.
41 Ressel 2010. This volume.
158

The Political Culture of Human Security
As already mentioned, the European praxis of ransoming was that every state
was only responsible for its own subjects. Human security was in this sense
limited to citizenship. Other limitations were set by cultural differences. This
becomes clear if we compare European treaties regarding prisoners of war with
the European peace treaties with the North African states. The praxis among
Christian nations of not enslaving prisoners, or civilians, can be seen in an
agreement between Sweden and Denmark from 1719. The treatment of the
prisoners is regulated in detail. A prisoner of war should be held captive for a
maximum of three weeks; he should be treated well and with compassion; he
should not be put into any hostile prisons nor forced into any labour, and finally,
the wounded or sick have the right to treatment and medicine so that they
can be ransomed in good health. 42 But in relation to non-Christian societies,
these types of agreement were in general not considered applicable in Western
Europe. 43 The same can be said of the perspective from the other side. In the
Swedish treaty with Algiers in 1729, the power relationship becomes clear if
we look at the regulations for the captives. According to the treaty no Swedish
subjects should be harmed or tortured, and no Swedish subject should be enslaved.
If a slave flees to a Swedish warship, this person should be taken back
(not according to the treaty with Tunis – in this case the slave is free). Finally, a
Swedish subject cannot be forced to ransom a slave, even if the slave is his
family member, nor can the slave’s owner be forced to sell against his will (the
deal should be struck with both parties’ consent). 44
From this we can draw the conclusion that human security is related to the
contact between states, and that the animosity between the Muslim world and
the Christian world played an important role in how human security was implemented.
The legal standards in the Swedish treaty are also related to the
international standard, where the more powerful states defined the level of
human security. The stipulation of the lack of obligation to ransom subjects is
also a blueprint from the English treaty with Algiers of 1682. According to
Linda Colley this “meanness”, in terms of human security, was partly a function
of the English state’s limited resources at this stage, but also plain meanness.
45 The stipulation that the Swedish state, or other European states, was
under no obligation to ransom its subjects can therefore partly be interpreted as
a failure of human security, even if the treaty resulted in the ending of kidnapping.
It is also important to highlight that the price for upholding the peace with
42 Lunds universitetsbibliotek, Cartel emellan Swerige och Danmark/om Krigs-fångarne slutet
Stockholm den 30 April/11 Maji Åhr 1719.
43 Rosas 2005, 48-50.
44 Lunds universitetsbibliotek, Freds och handels tractat, emellan kongl. maj:t och cronan
Swerige, och republiqven Alger, afhandlad och sluten i Alger then 5/16 aprilis åhr 1729.
45 Colley 2002, 53.
159

the North African states was paid not only with gold, but also with large
amounts of weapons and ammunition. In this sense the European states also
made it possible for the North African states to continue to threaten their own
seamen. It was easier to implement human security where the state had a monopoly
of violence, at home.
The system of human security that was established by the Swedish state had
strict instructions, especially for the Algerian Sea Passes. In January 1730 the
“Rules for Algerians Sea Passes” were published. According to the directions,
an Algerian Sea Pass could only be given to Swedish skippers and to foreigners
if they had been Swedish burghers for three years. Ship-owners had to swear an
oath that they were the only owner, and that the pass should only be used on
the ship at hand. The documents were then sent from the Magistrate to the
Board of Trade, which then issued a pass. All changes regarding ownership had
to be reported the Board of Trade. The Sea Pass was restricted to one journey,
and when the ship got back home the skipper had to restore the pass to the
Board of Trade within eight days if the harbor was in Stockholm, and in other
cases within fourteen days to a county governor, who in turn was to restore the
pass to the Board of Trade. The same strict regulations were given if the ship
was sold on foreign ground. If somebody falsified or misused a pass on a foreign
ship, the punishment was death. If a ship-owner gave false information on
the pass, large sums of money were to be paid in fines. If a ship sailed without
a sea pass, fines were given, and if a ship was captured without a sea pass, the
skipper was – if he came back – punished with prison for one month. The fines
were shared between the informer and the ransom for captured Swedish subjects
in Turkey or Barbary. Fines were also given to any shipper who sailed in
the Mediterranean without the Algerian Sea Pass, because this threatened the
safety of the crew. 46 This clearly shows the importance that was placed on the
safety of the seamen. The importance of the correct use of the Algerian Sea
Passes was also discussed among state officials. For example, in a document
about the security of the Swedish shipping with respect to Algerian cruisers,
the importance of following the rules given by passes was discussed: “when an
Algerian galley closes in it should be met with friendship and according to the
directives”. 47 This was a reminder of the directives given in the peace treaty,
but also a wish to avoid misunderstandings when Swedish ships were inspected.
The strict standards of human security given by the directions of the Algerian
Sea Passes were not only meant to protect the seamen from Muslims corsairs
but also from “doubtful” merchants engaged in long-distance shipping.
This new attitude might also explain the diplomatic conflict between Sweden
46 Sandklef 1952, 88-89.
47 Riksarkivet Stockholm, Topographic index, ang. säkerhet för svenska sjöfaranden mot
algeriska kryssare 1743 6.9. Composite officers vol. 15.
160

and Hamburg. This conflict began in 1731 with a request from the Swedish
resident at Hamburg, Carl Christoph Stralenheim, to responsible authorities in
Hamburg. Stralenheim was instructed to act for the ransoming of 10-12 enslaved
Swedes, left in Algiers, who had been caught while serving on Hamburg
bottoms. 48 This type of request was unusual, maybe unique, between European
states at this stage, but the request might be explained by the cultural similarities
and the long tradition of economic alliances and friendship between Sweden
and Hamburg. 49 The debate, in which the Swedes pushed hard for the security
of their subjects, can be followed in a numbers of documents in the
archives to the end of 1746. 50 As an aftermath to this diplomatic controversy,
the King and the Board of Trade officially proclaimed in 1748 that Swedish
subjects sailing under a foreign flag must ensure their security through the
responsible shipping company to avoid the risk of becoming enslaved by any of
the African states. 51 This was both a warning and a recommendation from the
state. Swedish state officials put forward a ransoming request when Swedes
were captured on Danish ships, which was implemented, and in turn also
helped Danes in captivity in Morocco. 52 In these cases we can see that cultural
resemblances and contacts had a positive effect on human security. It is therefore
important to keep in mind that cultural values and contact between states
also gave form and substance to the political process of human security.
Conclusion
Today, human security is described as an emerging paradigm for understanding
global vulnerabilities. Its proponents challenge the traditional notion of national
security by arguing that the proper referent for security should be the individual
rather than the state. It is well known that policies for state security do not
necessarily include policies for human security. States are in many cases providers
of human insecurity outside as well as inside their own borders. There-
48
Hamburger Staatsarchiv 111-1 Senat C1. VII Lit. Ca. Nr. 2, vol. 3, Fasc. 5a, Document 1.
49
Kellenbenz 1958; Hildebrand 1884.
50
Riksarkivet Stockholm, Topographic index, Medelhavet ang. tryggandet av sjöfarten i
Medelhavet samt ang. den s.k. slavkassan i Hamburg m.m. Chancellery office to His Royal
Majesty 1735 30.1 vol. 23. ang. svenska slavars utlösande i A. Composite offices to His
Royal Majesty 1738 12.4 vol. 13. ang. den i algeriska slaveriet varande fältskiären
Hiedenreichs 1740 5.2 Composite offices vol. 14. ang. säkerhet för svenska sjöfaranden
mot algeriska kryssare 1743 6.9. Composite offices vol. 15. ang. några svenska slavars i A.
utlösande genom kollekter 1746 6.12. Chancellery office vol. 37.
51
Publication, angående the swenske siömän utlösen, som under främmande flagg blifwa
fångne, 20 June 1748.
52
Landsarkivet Sjælland – EA-001 Sjællands Stift Bispeembde - 1715-1758 Kopibog for
udgaaede breve vedr. slavekassen - Bind 1734-1745. fol. 235-239. Riksarkivet Stockholm,
Topographic index. Danmark ang. ur marockansk fångenskap utlösta danska undersåtar.
Composite offices to His Royal Majesty 1766 1.7, vol. 19a.
161

fore situations where state security and human security are combined are highly
interesting to study. This article has used the relationship between Sweden and
the North African states as an example of this.
This analysis has shown the complex process of human security from 1660-
1760: how human insecurity was identified, how solutions were implemented,
the realization of human security, and what political and cultural factors affected
this process. It is clear that the Swedish security policy was not only
orientated towards state concerns but definitely also humanitarian and responded
to ordinary people’s needs when dealing with sources of threats. An
interesting shift in the relationship between Sweden and the North African
states began around 1720. With the establishment of the Swedish Convoy Office,
the policies of national security and human security started to mutually
reinforce each other. This was believed to be the most effective tool for the
Swedish state to accomplish further economic development in the Mediterranean
world. The professionalization and institutionalization of the human security
policy (consulates, consuls, Sea Passes etc.) also made it easier for individuals
such as George Logie to act more freely as agents of human security,
compared to their predecessors. The difficult practice of human security during
the Early Modern epoch was partly a function of the state’s limited resources,
but different historical, political and cultural variables also played an important
role. The complex working of these factors has been highlighted. The Protestant
Reformation, Lutheranism, the outcome of the disastrous Great Northern
war, and the alliance with the Sublime Porte, were all factors that gave form
and substance to the praxis of Swedish human security. In summary, this article
has shown that cultural, political and historical factors played an important
role for how human security could be carried out in different parts of Early
Modern Europe.
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163

The Danish Algerian Sea Passes, 1747-1838:
An Example of Extraterritorial Production
of Human Security
Erik Gøbel �
Abstract: »Die “Algerischen Seepässe” Dänemarks, 1747-1838: Ein Beispiel
der extraterritorialen Produktion humaner Sicherheit«. This paper discusses
the Danish “Algerian sea passes”, 1747-1838, as an example of production of
“Human Security”. Since the seventeenth century, privateers from the Barbary
States (i.e. Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, and Tripoli) had seized ships under the
Danish flag and captured the sailors. Often they were ransomed, in the beginning
by family members and from 1715 by the Slave Fund in Copenhagen. Beginning
in 1746, however, Denmark signed peace treaties with the Barbary
States. Thereafter Danish shipmasters would carry so-called Algerian sea
passes which secured safe passage. The system worked well until after 1830
when the privateering business stopped. The Danish authorities issued 28,000
Algerian sea passes which produced specifically “Human Security” for hundreds
of thousands of Danish sailors. Insights into this system may challenge
our notion of the so-called “Westphalian System”.
Keywords: Security at sea, maritime insurance, sea pass, Slave Fund, Barbary
States, privateering, Danish maritime history.
Introduction
The concept of “human security” as it was formulated in 1994 by the United
Nations Development Report is a very visible reflection of a marked change of
the meaning of “security” in our contemporary world. 1 The older, allegedly
narrower focus on the military security of nation-states within this field has
been more and more relativized and the security of the individual, dubbed
“human security”, has become the ultimate goal, at least within the discourse. 2
Whereas in the time of the Cold War, a “production of security” meant an
easing of tensions between the blocs, nowadays an aspired “production of
human security” can serve as justification to infringe on the sovereignty of
nation-states. 3 One of the qualitatively “new” elements is said to be the de-
� Address all communications to: Erik Gøbel, The Danish National Archives, Rigsdagsgården
9, 1218 Copenhagen, Denmark; email: eg@ra.sa.dk.
I wish to thank Magnus Ressel for useful remarks on an earlier version of this paper.
1 Human Development Report 1994.
2 On the discourse, see: Gasper 2005.
3 See e.g.: Kaldor 2007, 182-197.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 164-189

territorialization of “security production”, often constructed in opposition to a
state-based “Westphalian System”. 4
This dichotomical construction shall serve here as the starting point for an
essay on a specific mode of “production of human security” during the Early
Modern Era. If there was a given “Westphalian System”, in which clearly defined
rules and demarcations ensured stability and security 5 , it may be of interest
to look at the fringes of it in order to see more clearly its peculiarities and
the weaknesses of such a branding. Serving as an example here is the Kingdom
of Denmark, a medium-sized power within Early Modern Europe and the
Northern African regencies. These were the so-called Barbary States in Northern
Africa – Morocco, Tunisia, Tripoli, and especially Algiers, all of which
threatened the most basic security of the Danish 6 King’s subjects in two ways,
as they both raided Danish coasts and seized Danish ships. 7 Any territorially
based mode of securing the King’s subjects was impossible since most of the
danger lured in international waters, i.e. was extraterritorial. Therefore the
ways in which a classical European power reacted towards this difficult and
often unsolvable threat may give us profound insights into the underlying systems
of both sides at large. In this essay the intention is to specify in detail
what this danger meant, where it lured and how it was met. The aim of the
following is to give a complex example of extraterritorial “production of human
security” during the Early Modern Era and thereby enrich our understanding
of issues of security production for individuals in a time and international
system which is perhaps too narrowly simply called “Westphalian”.
The Threat to “Human Security”
The Danish King’s subjects living in the islands of the North Atlantic were the
ones most threatened by the corsairs from Northern Africa. The corsairs sent,
from the sixteenth century, sailing expeditions to the Faroe Islands and Iceland
among other places where they went ashore, plundered, killed, and captured
many people whom they took as prisoners to Northern Africa. This kind of
terror culminated in the early seventeenth century.
They landed, for instance in 1627, in several places in Iceland and made
more than a hundred people captives after having robbed and destroyed the
4 An overview and a critical examination of this idea is given in: Bacon 2001.
5 It may be remarked that the idea of a “Westphalian” system is not very popular among
historians, see e.g.: Duchhardt 1999.
6 The Danish Kings ruled over Denmark, Schleswig, Holstein, Southern Sweden (until 1658),
Norway, Faroe Islands, and Greenland, as well as small tropical colonies. In this article,
“Danish” refers to all of these possessions.
7 A general history of Danish shipping can be found in Degn and Gøbel 1997; Feldbæk 1997;
and Møller 1998. A history of Danish shipping with special regard to the Barbary States,
Algerian sea passes etc. can be found in Gøbel 1982-1983; and in Rheinheimer 2001.
165

villages. The same year Algerians killed at least thirty-four people and took
with them as prisoners 242 inhabitants from the small island of Heimaey off
the southern coast of Iceland. 8 In 1629, they carried off thirty women from the
settlement of Hvalba in the Faroe Islands. 9 The Barbaresques also landed in
many other places in Northwest Europe. In 1631, two Barbaresque vessels
attacked Baltimore near Cork in Ireland where they took 111 captives, and five
years later they went ashore just twelve miles from Bristol and took prisoners;
thus 2,000 people were captured and carried away from that region in 1634-
1635. 10 Such raids went on for a very long time, as two Tunisian ships cruised
in 1817 near the Thames where they seized a vessel from Hamburg and another
from Lübeck. 11
In order to prevent this odious practice the Danish King sent out men-of-war
on several occasions. For instance the ‘Lindormen’ and the ‘Gabriel’, in 1638,
whose commanders were instructed “to cruise diligently around the Faroe
Islands and Iceland in order to prevent the Turks or others from molesting the
King’s subjects”. 12 Again, in 1687, a flotilla of six men-of-war was equipped in
order to fight against the Moslems in the North Sea around Helgoland and the
Elbe’s estuary. But of course the Mediterranean coasts of Spain, France, and
Italy were the most endangered by raids from the nearby Barbary States.
Another kind of threat to human security was the fact that vessels from the
Barbary Coast often attacked Christian shipping, captured ships and cargoes
and made the crew members prisoners in Northern Africa. This had happened
since the Middle Ages, but as European trade and shipping increased through
the centuries, the Barbaresque problem became more and more serious, also to
Danish sailors, shipowners, and merchants.
Danish shipping to the Mediterranean had been very limited before the
eighteenth century. 13 But as time went on the Barbary seizures became a significant
problem to ships under the Danish flag in the Mediterranean as well as
in the Atlantic off North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.
Several Danish ships were seized and the eyewitness accounts of that time
clearly reflect the fact that the exotic Barbaresques made up a formidable threat
to the Christian sailors, who were unable to communicate with them and who
were frightened by the hard fate they expected as slaves in the Barbary.
We do have a description of such an encounter at sea. 14 The ‘Jomfru Christina’,
mastered by Hans Thode Gram, departed from its home port Trondheim
on 7 September 1769 bound for Lisbon. A month later Cape Finisterre (i.e. the
8 Helgason 1997.
9 Wandel 1919,1.
10 Barnby 1970, 27-29; Field 1932, 277-282.
11 Wandel 1919, 120.
12 Bricka 1885-2005, 11 April 1638 and 01 April 1633.
13 Feldbæk 1997, 232. Cf. Bang and Korst 1930, 144-145, 178-179.
14 Moss 1773. Other accounts are e.g. Diderich 1756; and Ravn 1754; and Jacobsen 1821.
166

north-westernmost point of Spain) was sighted, and three days afterwards when
the ship was just north of Lisbon, a vessel was sighted to the windward at 2
o’clock in the afternoon.
As it approached we became anxious that it might be a Turkish privateer, but
did neither expect it to be an Algerian nor that they had declared war on Denmark.
Therefore we had confidence in our Turkish sea pass which we had acquired
not long ago. As the other vessel came closer it fired a bow cannon so
that the cannonball passed us close to our stern. We had no choice but to clew
up our course and heave to as the wind was almost calm. When the other vessel
came so close that its crew was able to call us, we were ordered to come
onboard the privateer and produce our passport 15 … Our master went there by
the ship’s boat manned by four sailors. The four stayed in the boat waiting for
the master to return. After having waited for some time, a lot of Turks and
Moors came down and took us onboard their vessel. We became very frightened
as we thought they would kill us … Thereupon the Turks took possession
of our boat and rowed to our ship. Upon their approach our shipmates
heard their strange chattering speech and became aware of the many people,
they could not figure out what all this meant. But when they came to our ship
it became clear that they were Turks, and they entered the ship like ravenous
lions, chased the helmsman away, stroke our Danish colours, and sent our remaining
six shipmates down into the ship’s boat. Some of the Turks took the
captured sailors to their own xebec, while the rest of them took possession of
our ship – which they considered as a lawful prize 16 .
A week earlier the same privateers had succeeded in taking the ‘Rigernes
Ønske’ of Copenhagen, so the xebec could disembark a total of twenty Danish
prisoners in Algiers.
This happened when Algiers had just broken the peace with Denmark, but
under normal circumstances the Danes would be allowed to pass without hindrance
after having produced their Algerian sea pass.
Before the peace treaties were signed, the Danes often avoided being attacked
by demonstrating their will to defend themselves. This was the case, for
instance, in 1672 near the Canary Islands when the large armed frigate, the
‘Oldenburg’, deterred four Moslem privateers from attacking by showing all its
cannons and handguns. 17
The Moslems were, however, not definitively illegal pirates. They considered
themselves, as did their rulers, as participants in a kind of holy war against
the infidels – and thereby qualified as privateers. A privateer (or corsair) was as
a rule a private warship authorized by its own government by a letter of marque
to capture enemy shipping for profit during a war and to bring their prizes
before a prize court. Some privateering vessels were owned partly or even
15
Danish National Archives, Kommercekollegiet, Algiersk søpasprotokol no. 202, passport
no. 111/1769.
16
Moss 1773, 3-7.
17
Henningsen 1953, 52.
167

wholly by governments or princes. Privateering was a different practice from
pirates who would attack all vessels at all times and simply take ship, cargo,
and crew just like that. Privateering was abolished from international maritime
law by the Paris declaration of 1856. 18
Figure 1
On 4 October 1769 the Danish ship ‘Rigernes Ønske’ of Copenhagen (in the middle) was
seized by an Algerian settee armed with ten guns (to the right). The Danish captives were
transferred to the Admiral’s xebec (to the left) which took them to Algiers a month later.
Contemporary drawing by Christian Børs who was among the captivated. (Bergen Maritime
Museum).
The most important base for the privateers was Algiers, but privateering expeditions
were also equipped in the ports of Morocco, Tunisia, and Tripoli. The
Strait of Gibraltar and the Sicily Channel, which are ten and one hundred-andforty
kilometres wide respectively, were the most frequently used hunting
grounds.
On the other hand, the narrowness of the Strait of Gibraltar meant that in
1796, for instance, the Danish consul Lynch in Gibraltar could send a small
boat out west in order to warn Danish shipping entering the Mediterranean that
the prince of Algiers had started, in spite of the peace treaty, to seize Danish
ships. The Swedes, it can be added, warned their shipping in the same way. 19
Ships which were not bound for the Mediterranean were instructed to keep
at safe distance from the danger. Thus the West India and Guinea Company’s
18
Montmorency 1976, 258-259.
19
Danish National Archives, Board of Commerce, box 1063, Royal resolution of 23 November
1796; Olán 1921, 151.
168

commanders had orders to steer a course west of the Canary Islands so as not to
come into sight of these islands and thereby “risk to meet the Turks who often
cruise in those waters”; the same held true with regard to the Cape Verde Islands.
20 The ships’ articles of the Asiatic Company likewise stated that everybody
onboard the large India-men and China-men should be prepared to defend
the ship against the Barbary privateers and be ready to die if necessary. Even
the ship’s chaplain onboard the ‘Kronprinsen’ en route from Copenhagen to
Tranquebar in India in June 1709 had to participate in preparations for defence
when a privateer approached. 21
As a rule privateers operated first and foremost from April to October, as
they wintered in harbour for the rest of the year, as did much European shipping.
Most seizures took place in the Mediterranean or within a semicircle
within Cape Finisterre, the Azores, and the Canaries. The privateers often lay
waiting near the ports, but sometimes they operated instead on the open sea,
even as far away as the fishing grounds off Newfoundland. Two or three vessels
would operate together and normally only attack weak opponents such as
fishing boats or other small vessels. The privateers, on the other hand, were
characterized by being fast sailing and effective ships equipped with many
sails, much armour, and large crews. 22
The size of the total privateering fleet is not known. But the Moroccans, for
instance, would have as a rule a fleet of only twelve large and small vessels.
Thus, in 1766, they had four frigates armed with sixteen to forty-five cannons
and 130 to 330 men, three xebecs with twelve to sixteen guns and 120 to 126
men, as well as three gallions with four to eight guns and 80 to 120 men. 23
Traditionally it has been supposed that the privateering business and slavery
were essential elements of the economy of the Barbary States, and that the total
number of enslaved Europeans was a little higher than one million. 24 It has
been demonstrated, however, that this was not the case, 25 even though 20,000
Christians were kept as slaves in Algeria alone between 1621 and 1627, while
the number was a little more than 36,000 in all Barbary together in 1680. 26 The
latest estimate is that around 180,000 persons were enslaved during the golden
days of the corsairs, namely from 1574 to 1644. 27 In the eighteenth century, the
20
Danish National Archives, West India and Guinea Company, box 27, Instruction of 31
October 1682, par. 11, and instruction of 08 November 1689, par. 4; box 29, Instruction of
10 July 1697; etc.
21
Articler 1752, 32-33; Hans Mesler’s journal. Corresponding rules, dated 18 February 1636,
can be found with regard to other mercantile shipping, cf. Secher 1897, 656.
22
Coindreau 1948, 99-101, 113-123.
23
Høst 1779, 175-176.
24
Davis 2003, 3-26.
25
Braudel 1966, 190-212; Weiner 1979, 205.
26
Dan 1684, 310.
27
Panzac 2009, 137-138.
169

number of Christian slaves in Algeria had been reduced to 2,000-3,000, and in
the early nineteenth century it was only 1,200. 28
Ransom Money
An important purpose behind making Christian sailors captives was the possibility
of obtaining ransom money from their homes. Therefore, slaves were
allowed to write home to their families or authorities and in some instances a
few selected slaves were allowed to go home in order to give information about
the prisoners, their harsh conditions, and the possibilities for ransoming them.
Letters from slaves can be found scattered in Danish and German archives. 29
For very long it was up to family and friends to raise the often very large
amounts of money necessary to ransom their loved ones from slavery. In many
instances, nevertheless, they succeeded, often after having raised a collection in
the churches. Severe problems remained, however, in having the money transferred
safely to Africa and in seeing to it that the right persons were ransomed.
Instead of such individual actions it was realized that it would be much more
expedient if a more general and coordinated effort could be established.
Through the 1620s sporadic collections of ransom money had been arranged
by Danish authorities. But on 2 August 1630, the King and his Council decided
that 20,000 rix-dollars should be used for ransoming Danish prisoners from the
Barbary States. The large sum turned out, however, to be insufficient to ransom
all slaves, so extra money still had to be collected in the early 1640s. 30
Seventy of the prisoners taken at Heimaey were still alive in Algeria in 1635
– half of them were ransomed and came home in the summer of 1637, the rest
never returned and we do not know their fate. 31 It must be supposed, however,
that some may have escaped, some have converted to Islam, some have been
exchanged for Moslems captured by Christian powers, some may have been
ransomed by other Europeans, and some have arranged for their own release. 32
In the late seventeenth century, ransom money had become ordinary alms to
be asked for in Denmark, either by relatives of slaves or by general collections
in the churches. In order to arouse pity in the churchgoers wooden figurines of
sailors in chains were exhibited at the church doors. 33
28
Bennett 1960.
29
E.g. Rheinheimer 1999; Rheinheimer 2001; Møller 1998.
30
Bricka 1885-2005, e.g. 2 August 1630, 12 September 1634, 22 December 1636, 18 January
1639, and 9 March 1637; cf. Erslev 1887-1888, 230, 242-243; Braudel 1966, 209-211.
31
Blöndal 1924, 52-72.
32
For instance Bricka 1885-2005, 9 March 1637 and 3 January 1639.
33
E.g. Rheinheimer 2001, 27.
170

Figure 2
Algerian sea pass issued on 5 January 1781 for the ship ‘de Friede’ of Bergen, burthen 67
lasts, commanded by Hans Ellertsen, and bound for Saint Croix in the Danish West Indies.
The size of the parchment is 30x40 cm. It is written on the sea pass that the shipowner had
taken his oath that vessel and cargo was Danish property. The top section was cut off along
the wavy line. (Danish National Archives)
An addition to the church collections were the small amounts of money
which were provided by the shipmasters’ associations in Bergen and Copenhagen.
34 From 1653 and 1707, respectively, every shipmaster and mate paid a
small part of their wages, so-called ransom money, to help free Danish sailors
from slavery in the Barbary States. From 1715 the money was administered by
34 Hassø 1934, 15, 52, 81-83, 122.
171

the Danish envoy in Brussels who had, before that, been responsible for recovering
Danish ships captured by European privateers. 35
At that time a number of ships under the Danish flag were seized. The large
armoured frigate ‘St. Christopher’ from Bergen with a crew of forty men was
taken when it was homebound from Leghorn in June 1706. 36 On this occasion
the King allowed a collection both in the churches and at peoples’ homes. The
revenues were to be administered by the municipal authorities in Bergen to
ransom the ship’s officers and as many ordinary sailors as possible. In August
1708, the ‘Fortuna’ of Drammen was seized en route to Cadiz and taken to
Algeria, and in August 1712 two more ships under Danish colours were seized
on their way home from Portugal and Spain. Supplications from relatives to the
King resulted in a comprehensive collection all over his realm.
The results were not satisfactory, as all slaves could not be ransomed. For
instance twenty-nine out of the forty men from ‘St. Christopher’ were still held
as slaves in 1714, and had been so for eight years.
Some prisoners, most often masters or mates, succeeded in freeing themselves.
Sometimes they borrowed the necessary ransom money from their
shipowners or others at home, but often these sums were so high that they
could not meet their obligations once they had come back home and had to
spend the rest of their lives in poverty. 37
The Slave Fund, 1715
In 1715, the slave issue had become a matter of urgency, as more than eighty of
the King’s subjects were held as prisoners in Algeria alone. 38 The King issued
therefore, on 12 April 1715, three ordinances. 39 The first one introduced a duty
on all shipping to France, Spain, England, Portugal, and Holland, namely three
shillings per commercial last of burthen. 40 The second ordinance decreed that
on two Sundays every year collections should be held in all churches, after the
pastors had aroused Christian pity in their flocks. The collected money was to
be sent to the Slave Fund in Copenhagen which was established by the third
ordinance. The Fund should also receive the afore-mentioned money from the
shipmasters’ associations, which was extended, in 1716, to all ports and fixed
at two shillings per rix-dollar for shipmasters and mates and at one for ordinary
35 Danish National Archives, Danske Kancelli, Indlæg til Sjællandske Tegnelser 174, 175, and
177/1715 (box D.21-20).
36 Møller 1998, 104; Fossen 1979, 240.
37 Møller 1998, 108.
38 Ibid.
39 Fogtmann 1786-1854, 12 April 1715. – The latest survey of the history of insurance in
Denmark is Feldbæk et al. 2007.
40 Danish ships were measured in commercial lasts which roughly equalled a carrying capacity
of 2.6 tons. Cf. Møller 1974; Müller 2004, 242.
172

sailors – respectively two and one percent, that is. 41 Thus, the collections contributed
about one half of the money in the Slave Fund, while money from
sailors and ships made up the other half. 42 (By decree of 26 November 1768,
the duty on burthen was abolished, and afterwards only crew-members on
vessels with an Algerian sea pass had to pay the so-called ransom money. This
had to be paid until 1827). 43
Appointed as members of the Slave Fund Commission were a bishop and
two competent merchants. 44 The Commission had to find the best ways of
ransoming slaves, if necessary after having consulted experts in this field. First
of all the commissioners should ransom slaves from the Barbary States, and
keep accounts of the Slave Fund as well as of the numbers and names of the
ransomed slaves. The funds might be increased a little by trying to have ransom
money paid for the Turk prisoners who were held in Copenhagen. Finally, the
Commission was ordered to present an annual report on their activities and the
results.
Ordinary marine insurance was not relevant with regard to the odious practice
of Moslem privateering. First, it could not be considered as piracy because
the privateers were authorized by their governments, and second, there was no
war declared against the North Africans. As time went on, special slave insurance
was developed, but it was not in common use in Scandinavia. A few
shipmasters and mates were, nevertheless, insured in order to make sure that a
certain amount of ransom money would be paid out. 45
Ransom money fluctuated quite a lot according to circumstances. A shipmaster
cost, for example, more than an ordinary sailor, and the amounts also
changed over time. 46 During the 1630s, ransom money is known to have fluctuated
from less than one hundred rix-dollars to almost six hundred rix-dollars. 47
In 1714, two shipmasters ransomed themselves at 3,200 and 2,350 rix-dollars
each. At the same time a sailor was ransomed for a little less than four hundred
rix-dollars, but even that was a sum much larger than what an ordinary family
could afford. 48 From 1715 to 1736, the Slave Fund Commission ransomed 163
41
Fogtmann 1786-1854, 13 mar 1716; Schou 1777-1850, 13 March 1716.
42
Wandel 1919, 9.
43
Fossen 1979; Kong Friderich den Fierdes Forordninger fra Aar 1707 til 1708 1708, Copenhagen
Shipmasters’ Association’s articles of 25 January 1707, par. 16; Schou 1777-
1850, 13 March 1716; Fogtmann 1786-1854, 12 April 1715; Forordning … over … Told,
Consumption og Accise … 26de Novembr. Ao 1768 (Copenhagen, 1768): chapt. 21;
Forordning om Tolden og Kiøbstad-Consumtionen … 1ste Februarii 1797 (Copenhagen,
1797): par. 367; Schou 1777-1850, 21 August 1747.
44
Instructions for the Slave Fund Commission can be found in Danish National Archives,
Danske Kancelli, Sjællandske Tegnelser 177/1715 (box D.20-9).
45
Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 157-167; Lorange 1935, 74 Söderberg 1935, 139-140, 148-151.
46
E.g. Høst 1779, 157.
47
Bricka 1885-2005, 4 October 1627, 2 March 1636, and 9 April 1641; Fossen 1979, 240.
48 Møller 1998, 108.
173

Danish subjects for 154,649 rix-dollars or 949 rix-dollars on average, an average
which was valid until the Slave Fund was closed down in 1754. 49 When, on
the other hand, a Danish man-of-war was lying in the roads of Algiers for instance,
the prices were drastically reduced. Thus, the ‘Delmenhorst’ ransomed
prisoners at eighty rix-dollars per person in 1746, and nine years later the
‘Fyen’ had a slave at only thirty-nine rix-dollars. 50
We do not know how many of the Danish King’s subjects were slaves in the
Barbary States during the centuries for shorter or longer periods. Even though
the number of seizures declined after the middle of the eighteenth century, the
number of enslaved Danes probably amounted to thousands. We do know that
from 1716 to 1754, the Barbary privateers seized no less than nineteen Danish
vessels with 208 men onboard, and when the Staten van Holland, in 1682,
ransomed 178 slaves in Algeria who had been engaged on Dutch ships, seven
Danes were among the liberated. 51 The Danish Slave Fund Commission, nevertheless,
would not ransom Danish subjects who had been engaged on foreign
vessels. 52 The commissioners reported proudly, in 1736, that at that time no
Dane was held prisoner in the Barbary States. 53
Very soon after its establishment the Slave Fund had engaged local representatives
in the financial centres of Hamburg and Amsterdam, as well as the
merchant Johannes Pommer in Venice, from where he managed the ransoming
business on behalf of the Danes. Between 1715 and 1753 the Fund and its
representatives ransomed a total of 224 slaves. Before 1746 fourteen ships were
captured and 180 slaves ransomed, i.e. on average 0.5 ships and 6.0 ransomed
slaves per year. From 1748 to 1754 it amounted to five seized ships and 44
ransomed seamen, i.e. on average 0.7 and 6.3 respectively per year. 54 Even
though more ships were seized and more sailors were to be ransomed, the Algerian
sea passes were a success as the trade and shipping activities under the
Danish colours in the Mediterranean increased at an even higher rate, as demonstrated
for instance in the Sound Toll Registers. 55
It must be added briefly that many other privateers operated in European
waters, yet without taking sailors as slaves. Especially ill-famed were the Maltese
Knights and the corsairs of Zeeland during the War of the Spanish Succes-
49 Wandel 1919, 6-9; Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 161-163; cf. Lorange 1935, 74.
50 J. J. Ihnen, Journal was auf der im Jahre 1746 von … C VI nach der mittelländischen See
… ausgesandten … Orlog-Schiffe Delmenhorst … sich vorgetragen (copy in Danish National
Maritime Museum after manuscript in Stadtarchiv Aurich): 32; Zimmer 1927, 78.
51 Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 157-167; Vries 1684, 160-168.
52 Rheinheimer 2001, 29-30.
53 Wandel 1919, 6.
54 Bro-Jørgensen 1935, 160-164.
55 Bang and Korst 1930.
174

sion. But by far the most seizures were done by British and French privateers
during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. 56
Figure 3
Typical pages of an Algerian sea pass protocol, 1795. The first ships’ names are ‘Anna Dorothea’,
‘Kron Printz Friderich’, ‘Christian Severin’, and ‘die Hoffnung’. Home ports are Copenhagen,
Christiansand, Farsund, and Apenrade. Destinations include Saint Croix, Genoa,
the Mediterranean, and Lisbon. (Danish National Archives).
Treaties, 1746-1845
All Christian seafaring nations experienced the same problems with the Barbary
privateers, even great maritime powers such as Britain, the Netherlands,
and France. Even though several authors recommended common action against
the Moslems, no such action was taken. 57 So, the seafaring nations had to cope
with the problem on an individual basis – and ended by signing peace treaties
with the Barbary States. These, except for Morocco, were not states as such,
however, but peripheral territories under the control of the Ottoman Empire. It
may seem a little strange to sign a peace treaty in such cases where no war had
been declared, but according to Islamic law there was by definition an eternal
war going on against the Christians.
56 Feldbæk 1997.
57 E.g. Project 1721; Herrmann 1815.
175

The peace treaties were as a rule made after the same pattern. The Europeans
promised to deliver once-and-for-all presents as well as annual presents
typically consisting first and foremost of bullion, weapons, ammunition, and
pretiosa. Even though this was very expensive, it was considered less expensive
than the alternative which would be protection by men-of-war of the merchantmen
in convoys, a practice which was rather slow and complicated to
organize.
In return for the presents the Christian mercantile shipping would not be disturbed
by the Moslem privateers. This would be secured by providing the merchantmen
with a special kind of sea passports which were cut into two pieces,
of which the upper part was sent to the Barbary States while the large lower
part with the text, which was in a European language, was to be carried by the
shipmaster. 58 As neither privateers nor European seamen were able to read or
understand the spoken language of their counterparts they simply produced
their own part of the passport – and if the parts fitted together the European
ship should be allowed to pass on without any hindrance. The Christian seafaring
nations made use of individual wave lines to cut their passes. 59
Entering into a treaty with the Dey of Algiers was discussed in Denmark for
a long time, especially after Sweden had concluded such a treaty in 1729. 60 The
Danish Slave Fund Commission gave their opinion on the matter, in 1736, and
suggested to the King a draft which was very much like the text of the peace
treaty which was – after futile efforts at contact in 1738 and 1742 – signed by
Denmark and Algeria on 10 August 1746. 61
In the treaty, King Frederik the Fourth and Dey Ibrahim Pasha assure that
they will live in peace with each other for ever, and that “all ships, be they
small or large, should never in any way cause each other any harm or damage”
(paragraph one); 62 the ships must not delay each other (paragraph three); and
“when an Algerian privateer meets one of His Majesty’s subjects’ ships, the
Algerians may only approach the ship with a barge manned with two persons in
addition to the bargemen, no more than two persons are allowed onboard the
58
Foreign sea passes are shown e.g. in Müller 2004, 145; Bowen 1926, 189; Granville 1924,
32.
59
Harboe 1839, 418; Henningsen 1970, 17.
60
Müller 2004, 55-60; Boëthius 1922, 99-106.
61
Holm 1897, 159-161; and Holm 1898, 204-211; Bjerg 1996; Wandel 1919, 6-11; Andersen
2000, 37-54; Danish National Archives, Foreign Department of the German Chancery, Special
Part, Barbary States, box 1, Report of 13 October 1736 from the Slave Fund Commission.
62
Danish National Archives, Treaty Collection, Original treaties in Turkish, Danish, and
French; printed edition published in Danish and German as an appendix to Kong Friderich
den Femtes Forordninger 1746 1748; abridged version in Reedtz 1826, 197-198; translation
in Wandel 1919, 10-11. This treaty is identical with the treaty of 22 January 1752 with
Tripoli, except for an insignificant difference in paragraph 9, cf. Udenrigsministeriet 1882,
22-29.
176

Danish ship, and when the shipmaster has produced his passport they must
leave the ship immediately, and no merchant vessel must be detained” (paragraph
four). No Dane may be “taken, sold, or made a slave” (paragraph
twelve). Furthermore, the rights and obligations of Danish consuls and men-ofwar
are acknowledged (paragraphs fifteen through eighteen). It is also agreed
that “no Algerian ship, be it large or small, is allowed to run into sight or enter
any port belonging to Denmark, as such might give occasion for misunderstandings”
(paragraph eight). Strangely enough, no mention of presents or
tribute can be found in the peace treaty, but this must have been an implicit
condition. After ratification of the treaty by the Danish King and the Divan, its
contents were published in Denmark by proclamation of 12 January 1747. 63
The Danish treaty was verbally correspondent with the Swedish one from
1729; only two paragraphs differ, as paragraphs eight and twelve are not to be
found in the Swedish treaty. 64 The Dutch-Algerian treaty of 18 June 1712 is
also very much like the Danish and Swedish ones; several paragraphs have
identical wording. 65 The Dutch tradition dates back to the first treaty with Constantinople
in 1660, in which dispositions to many of the later provisions can
be found. These were developed in the following treaties between the Netherlands
and the Barbary States, culminating in the treaty with Algeria dated 30
April 1629, the content of which is identical with the 1712 treaty. 66 The French
King signed a treaty with Algeria for the first time in 1619, the English in
1662, and the German Kaiser in 1727. 67
The same provisions as in the Danish treaty of 1746 were reiterated almost
unchanged in the other treaties which were signed by Denmark and the Barbary
States: namely Tunisia on 8 December 1751, Tripoli on 22 January 1752, Morocco
on 18 June 1753, the Sublime Porte in Constantinople on 14 October
1756, Morocco again on 25 July 1767, Algeria on 16 May 1772, and Tripoli in
1816, 1824 and 1826 – until the last Danish obligation to pay tribute was repealed
by treaty with Morocco dated 5 April 1845. 68
The Danish reason for signing these slightly ignominious treaties was
mainly economic, namely the important shipping and trade under the Danish
flag. However, we should also be aware that these treaties ensured absolute
safety for all Danish sailors for the future. That this was also an important
63
Schou 1777-1850, 12 January 1747.
64
Even though paragraph 8 in the Dutch-Algerian treaty of 26 March 1662 says that both
Danish and Swedish sailors onboard Dutch ships might be enslaved, according to Dan
1684, 102.
65
Cau 1725, 449-452; a brief mention can be found in Sandbergen 1931, 155-156.
66
Vries 1684, 19-26, 84-86, 99-103, 134-141.
67
Reftelius 1739, 464-465.
68
Udenrigsministeriet 1882 passim; Udenrigsministeriet 1877, passim. The most important
Dutch follow-up treaties were from 1726, 1757, 1794, and 1816, while the Swedish were
from 1736, 1741, 1758, 1763, and 1771.
177

eason to sign these treaties can be clearly read from the petition of the Slave
Fund to begin peace negotiations with the Barbary States. Here not one economic
reason is stated but instead the authors elaborate on the misery of the
Christian slaves in Northern Africa. 69 However, this did not always ensure full
security. On three occasions Barbary States violated the treaties and began to
seize Danish ships: Algeria 1769-1772, Tripoli 1796-1797, and Tunisia 1800-
1802. Denmark reacted by sending out squadrons of fifteen, three, and eighteen
men-of-war respectively to demonstrate naval force and strength of will, but it
turned out to be almost impossible to force the Barbaresques. Instead the Danes
had to accept new economic demands from the Moslems, a solution to the
conflicts which was still much cheaper than sending out sufficient men-of-war
to protect the Danish shipping by convoying the merchantmen. 70 Thus, in the
1790s it was estimated that the value of the tributes made up only fifteen percent
of the net earnings of the Mediterranean trade and shipping under the
Danish flag. 71 Considerable additional expenditures by the foreign service and
the navy must not be forgotten, however. A very important factor in producing
human security was the installation of Danish consuls in the Barbary States:
1747 in Algiers, 1752 in Tunisia and Tripoli, and 1753 in Morocco. 72
Another matter for concern was the fact that not a few prisoners converted
and abandoned their Christian faith for the sake of Islam, either for practical
reasons or from conviction. This, in addition to the hardships of the captured
countrymen and the need to have the sailors back to man the Danish fleet, was
also an important driving force behind the ransoming efforts. 73
It is strange that none of the Danish treaties mention explicitly the introduction
of so-called Turkish or Algerian sea passes. Probably it has been implied
that this special kind of passport, which was already well known, should be
made use of. This was suggested in 1736 by the Slave Fund Commission. 74
The Danish Vice Consul in Morocco could state that in the 1760s the sea
pass system was working well. When a privateer captain was to depart he
picked up from every consul a sea pass (i.e. upper part only) for which he had
to make a receipt, and he even received a small gift “in order to prevent him
from mistreating ships of those nations at sea”. 75
69
Wandel 1919, 5-9.
70
Andersen 2000, 184-195, 204-206; Garde 1852, 255-260, 311-326; Linvald 1923, 118-120,
313-318. Cf. Olán 1921, 156-158.
71
Bjerg 1996, 87.
72
Marquard 1952, 440-458.
73
E.g. Bishop Worm’s letter to the King 05 April 1714, in Danish National Archives, Danske
Kancelli, Indlæg til Sjællandske Tegnelser 174, 175, and 177/1715 (box D.21-20).
74
Wandel 1919, 6; Müller 2004, 144; Eck 1943, 190-191.
75 Høst 1779, 179.
178

The sea pass system did provide security as is demonstrated from the following
example. 76 On 30 May 1749, a ship under the Danish colours bound for
Marseille was seized near Cape Finisterre by a xebec from Tetuan (a Moroccan
port just east of the Gibraltar Strait), because Denmark had not signed a peace
treaty with Morocco. The ten Danes were taken prisoners onboard the xebec.
The next day, however,
our xebec met an English ship from where the shipmaster was ordered to come
onboard to us to show his English sea pass. When he had done that the answer
to him was: We have peace together. Thereupon he went back to his own
ship again to proceed his voyage.
The Danes were taken ashore and enslaved.
Algerian Sea Pass Protocols, 1747-1848
Fulfilment of the Barbaresque treaties was rather expensive for the Danish
government, but it was considered so advantageous after all that Danish authorities
made every effort to secure that Algerian sea passes were not abused.
A considerable number of regulations were published in Denmark in order to
make sure that the authorities could supervise and control the issue of passes
etc.
On 1 May 1747, the royal ordinance concerning Algerian sea passes was
given. 77 It was probably inspired from two Dutch placards of 1713 and 1715,
which together comprised the same provisions as the Danish ordinance, and
which had their roots in the States-General’s ordinances of 1623 and 1625
concerning Turkish sea passports. Another obvious source of inspiration was
the Swedish ordinance of 12 January 1730, as the Danish and Swedish texts are
very much concordant. 78
The Danish ordinance prescribed that the shipowners should take their oath
and produce documents which proved to the municipal authorities that the ship
belonged to subjects of the Danish King and that it was equipped at the expense
of Danes. Furthermore, the shipmaster had to take an oath that he would not in
any way abuse the sea pass. Only then could the Board of Commerce in Copenhagen
issue an Algerian sea pass. It was written on a large, beautiful
parchment form. The sea pass was valid for only one voyage, and the shipmaster
had to return it to the Danish authorities immediately upon his return. The
Board of Commerce’s supervision was carried out by means of protocols,
76
Diderich 1756, 11-12.
77
Danish and German text in Kong Friderich den Femtes Forordninger 1747 1748, 31-46;
Schou 1777-1850, 1 May 1747. Cf. Andersen 1925, 301-304, 356-357.
78
Cau 1725, 619-620; Vries 1684, 54-56, 62-63; Olán 1921, 66-68, and Müller 2004, 144-145
(ordinance of 1730).
179

called the Algerian Sea Pass Protocols, in which information about all Algerian
sea passes that had been issued were registered.
Figure 4
Title page of the printed version of the royal Danish ordinance of 1 May 1747 concerning
Algerian sea passes. It is written on it that the text has been read at the town hall to the burghers
present on 12 May 1747. The name of the town is unknown. (Danish National Archives)
At least from March 1748, it was compulsory for all ships under the Danish
colours destined to ports beyond Cape Finisterre to carry an Algerian sea pass.
This held true for voyages to Spain, Portugal, all ports in the Mediterranean, as
well as to Africa, America, and Asia. 79
The price of a sea pass was considered rather high by the shipowners. They
had to pay fifty rix-dollars to the Slave Fund for having an Algerian sea pass
79
For the following, see Fogtmann 1786-1854, passim; and Schou 1777-1850, passim. Cf.
Link 1959, 140.
180

issued, plus two rix-dollars for the form itself, and in many cases also perquisites
to the municipal authorities. As from 1783, payment to the Slave Fund
was instead regulated according to the burthen of the vessel.
When France, in 1830, conquered Algeria the situation with regard to privateering
in the Mediterranean changed completely, because Tunisia and Morocco
also committed themselves to stopping their privateering business at
once. Danish shipowners now wished to have the obligation to carry an Algerian
sea pass abolished. The Board of Commerce agreed, whereas the Africa
Consular Directorate found that Denmark still had to respect obligations with
regard to sea passes stipulated in the treaty with Morocco. Thus, a new Danish
ordinance dated 9 July 1831 maintained the sea pass obligation but reduced to
one third the fees to be paid.
The shipowners were not satisfied and repeated their dissatisfaction, supported
by the Board of Commerce. Only when it could be shown, in 1840, that
only Sweden and to some degree Norway 80 maintained the sea pass obligation
– while it had become voluntary in Russia, England, the Netherlands, and Belgium,
and had been abolished in Prussia and the Hanseatic Towns – could the
Danish Department of Foreign Affairs (which had taken over the issue after the
Africa Consular Directorate) and the Board of Finance be persuaded, but only
insofar as it should hereafter be voluntary for Danish shipping to take out an
Algerian sea pass. 81 The result was a royal ordinance of 1 July 1840 in accordance
with this cautious point of view. The year after, Sweden also adjusted its
sea pass rules. 82
The effect came immediately. While 261 Algerian sea passes had been issued
in Denmark in 1839, the number was reduced to 149 in 1840, and further
to fifty, fifteen, nine and only six in 1844. No Algerian sea pass was issued
thereafter.
A sea pass was, as already mentioned, only valid for one voyage. But gradually
it was accepted that the ships could sail beyond Cape Finisterre from port
to port for up to two years. Thereupon the Danish consul in a foreign port
would renew the passport for another two years. 83 This was important to the
many ships which were engaged in the tramp trade without returning to their
home port for years on end. But as soon as such a ship returned to domestic
waters, the voyage was considered to be finished and the sea pass had to be
returned to Copenhagen. 84 It was decreed, however, that if this meant delay to
80 From 1814, Norway was no longer ruled by the Danish King.
81 Danish National Archives, Udenrigsministeriet/Kommercekollegiet, Samlede sager til
konsulatsjournal, file no. 440 (concerning the ordinance of 1 July 1840), file no. 233 (concerning
reduction of fees), file no. 772 (concerning fees for Algerian sea passes). Cf. Marwedel
1938, 29.
82 Krëuger 1856, 34-35.
83 Schou 1777-1850, 26 February 1781.
84 Schou 1777-1850, 3 July 1793; Fogtmann 1786-1854, 2 October 1802.
181

the shipping then the old sea pass could be renewed anywhere in the monarchy.
85
The Board of Commerce’s Algerian Sea Pass Protocols are preserved in the
Danish National Archives from the period 1747-1848, but with a lacuna from
mid-October 1771 to the end of 1777. 86
The look and layout of the registers changed over time, but the eighteen
volumes do contain almost the same kind of information about the individual
voyages: 1) passport’s serial number, 2) name of shipowner, 3) name of shipmaster,
4) ship’s name, 5) burthen, 6) home port, 7) destination, 8) date of oath,
9) date of issue of sea pass, 10) date of return of sea pass, 11) name of person
who has returned the passport, 12) any other information. At times there would
also be information about the amount paid and whether or not the passport had
been renewed.
The Algerian sea pass form which was handed over to the shipmaster was
sealed by the Board of Commerce and signed by the Board members. The
document was in Danish and guaranteed that the ship was Danish property;
furthermore it mentioned the ship’s name, home port, and burthen, as well as
the destination and the shipmaster’s name.
Research Potential
The research potential of the Algerian Sea Pass Protocols shall not be discussed
in detail here. Suffice it to mention that the protocols constitute an unrivalled
source material for mapping all long-distance shipping under the Danish colours
in the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century.
The Algerian Sea Pass Protocols have been made use of in mapping shipping
to the Mediterranean (by Dan H. Andersen), 87 and to Guinea and the West
Indies (by Erik Gøbel). 88 With regard to India shipping the sea pass protocols
have just provided supplementary information compared to other sources. 89 The
completeness and reliability of information in the Algerian Sea Pass Protocols
have been tested and confirmed in different ways. 90
Information from the Algerian Sea Pass Protocols can be used both for
mapping general trends over time and for following shipping from a single port
or even individual shipowners or a single master – all with regard to chronology,
number of voyages, burthens, destinations, etc.
85 Schou 1777-1850, 1 July 1803 and 9 April 1810.
86 It is known that in that period too, a considerable number of Algerian sea passes were
issued. One volume of Algerian Sea Pass Protocols has been lost.
87 Andersen 2000, 319-330; Andersen and Voth 2000.
88 Gøbel 1990; Gøbel 1995; Gøbel 2002.
89 Feldbæk 1969, 248-254. Cf. Diller 1999, 79-136.
90 Andersen 2000, 319-330; and Gøbel 1982-1983, 89-98. Cf. Henningsen 1985, 313-316.
182

900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
No. of Voyages
0
1748
1750
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
Diagram 1
Algerian Sea Passes for the Mediterranean, 1748-1806
1752
1754
1756
1758
1760
1762
1764
1766
1768
1770
1772
1774
Diagram 2
Destinations, 1788, 1798, and 1806 (Total)
183
1776
1778
1780
1782
1784
1786
1788
1790
1792
1794
1796
1798
1800
1802
1804
1806
Mediterranean Atlantic West Indies Guinea Asia Other
Denmark Schleswig-Holstein Norway
An example of mapping of a general trend is represented by the adjoining
Diagram 1 which shows shipping under the Danish flag in the Mediterranean,
1748-1806. 91
Another example is represented by Diagram 2 which demonstrates the enormous
importance of Mediterranean shipping compared to other long-distance
91 Calculated from Andersen 2000, 197, 331-332.

shipping, as well as the contributions by the different parts of the Danish
King’s dominions. 92
Epilogue
Sailors and ships were exposed to many dangers at sea. Sickness and death
were difficult to prevent; shipwreck or general average 93 were also inevitable in
many cases, but the economic consequences could be modified by means of
maritime insurance; privateers, or even pirates, were also a nuisance to shipping.
Privateers from the Barbary States used for centuries to be a threat to European
shipping and to the human security of Christian sailors, including many of
the Danish King’s subjects. The structure of the international political and
economic system was therefore important as a decisive background or framework.
In the beginning of this article it was asked how the Kingdom of Denmark
produced extraterritorial security against these threats from the fringe of the
“Westphalian System”. As we have seen, it was with a mixture of measures
that the Kingdom tried over the centuries to produce this security for Danish
seamen. The most effective way of ensuring respect for its subjects was the
signing of tribute-based peace treaties between Denmark and the Barbary
States in the mid-eighteenth century. Both parties won by agreeing upon this
system and they saw to it that the treaties were usually respected, apart from a
few brief periods of disagreement and hostility. After 1830, the threat from the
Barbary States faded away and the passports were no longer necessary. But
from 1747 to 1844 the Danish authorities issued around 28,000 Algerian sea
passes (i.e. almost 300 per year on average) which produced security for hundreds
of thousands of Danish sailors.
Many peculiarities of a modern understanding of “Human Security” can be
found in the examples presented. We find diplomacy, military intervention,
ransoming and the payment of tributes. At the centre of all these measures was
mostly the ultimate aim of reducing suffering of individuals. An important
difference stands out between our modern concept and the ways of production
of this sort of security for the individuals of the Early Modern Era, which is
that the Danish King acted only for his own subjects and not for the individuals
92 Danish National Archives, Kommercekollegiet, Algierske søpasprotokoller no. 1188
(1788), no. 1850 (1798), and no. 1852 (1806).
93 “General average” is a term in marine insurance for the adjustment of a loss when cargo on
board a ship belonging to one or more owners has been sacrificed for the safety of the
whole, whereby the amount of the loss is shared by all who have shipped cargo in the vessel,
for instance if the deck cargo of a ship has had to be jettisoned to safeguard the ship in
rough weather.
184

of other states. Yet, it was the individual’s security on which the emphasis was
already placed centuries ago, not the security of the state. Both were seen as
inextricably linked and the state was ready to devote quite substantial resources
to reducing the threat to its subjects. In opposition to a state-centred viewpoint,
we can clearly identify a striving towards “human security” in many actions of
an absolute monarchy of the so-called classical “Westphalian System”. 94 For
our modern understanding it may be helpful therefore to take better into consideration
the “longue durée” of “human security” and to see it as a result of a
centuries-old evolution, which can often be found or even measured throughout
history in specific examples, of which one was presented here.
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189

Swedish Shipping in Southern Europe and
Peace Treaties with North African States:
An Economic Security Perspective
Leos Müller �
Abstract: »Die schwedische Schifffahrt in Südeuropa und die Friedensverträge
mit den nordafrikanischen Staaten. Eine Betrachtung aus der Perspektive
ökonomischer Sicherheit«. In the late eighteenth century, Swedish ships frequently
sailed in the Western Mediterranean. They could be found in Marseilles,
Livorno, Genoa, Alicante, Sicily, Sardinia, and North Africa, as well as
in Cadiz and Lisbon outside the Mediterranean. Indeed, the Mediterranean was
an area of great importance for Swedish shipping. How was it possible that
Sweden – a small country in northern periphery of Europe – could play such a
prominent role in carrying trade in Southern Europe? There are a number of
plausible explanations but an especially significant factor was the fact that
Sweden had peace treaties with North African states. The treaties improved the
security of Swedish-flagged vessels, reducing their protection and operation
costs, insurance premiums, etc. It was economically reasonable for foreigners
to employ Swedish carriers.
The topic of this essay is this connection between the establishment of peace
relations between Sweden and North African states and the success of the
Swedish carrying business in Southern Europe. The issue is approached from
the protection-cost perspective (institutional economics) and related to the different
concepts of security: state security, economic security and in a certain
sense also human security.
Keywords: Swedish Long-Distance Trade, Swedish Shipping Business, Swedish
Consular Service, Swedish Convoy Office, Barbary-States, Protection-
Costs.
Introduction
According to a French report from the mid-eighteenth century, the Swedish
merchant marine was the fifth in Europe, behind that of Britain, France, the
Dutch Republic and Denmark, but ahead of Spain and the Two Sicilies. 1 Sweden
was indeed an important maritime state, with a large carrying trade in
Southern Europe. At the same time, by conventional economic standards, it
� Address all communications to: Leos Müller, Department of History, Centre for Maritime
Studies, Stockholm University; Södra huset, Hus D, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden;
e-mail: leos.muller@historia.su.se.
1 Romano 1962.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 190-205

was underdeveloped country. The urbanization rate, a good indicator of Early
Modern level of development, was extremely low in Sweden. 2 What were the
causes of the discrepancy between the large merchant fleet and the relative
backwardness of the state’s economy? To understand this we have to look
closer at origins of Swedish trade and shipping in Southern Europe.
The original commercial interest of Sweden in Southern Europe was not
shipping business: it was Portuguese salt. Carried by the Dutch, the salt from
Setubal had already become the preferred salt quality in Sweden by the first
half of the seventeenth century, and because the salt was a strategically important
commodity the connection with Southern European salt sources became
strategically significant. Sweden’s trade policy in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries paid much attention to the issue of salt supplies. 3
In the first half of the seventeenth century Sweden’s foreign trade was dependent
on the Dutch carrying capacity. After 1650 Sweden entered a new
mercantilist policy aiming to reduce the kingdom’s dependency on the Dutch,
and a part of the policy involved building up its own merchant marine for trade
with Southern Europe. This policy was successful. In the 1670s and 1680s
Swedish trade with Southern Europe already became a well-established trade,
concerning a large number of ships. Swedish vessels sailed to Portugal in convoys
loaded with bar iron, tar and pitch, and weapons, and retuned with cargoes
of salt. About twenty vessels annually sailed to Portugal by the late century. 4
When the prices of the Portuguese salt increased dramatically, in the early
1690s, the Swedish skippers went into the Mediterranean to find new cheaper
sources of salt. This move opened the way for direct Swedish trade within the
Mediterranean basin.
However, shipping in Southern Europe was a risky business. Vessels were
under threat from corsairs from North Africa, cargoes and vessels could be sold
and sailors put into captivity. This even applied to Swedish vessels and Swedish
sailors. The guerre de course, corsair war, went on for centuries – an expression
of the struggle between Muslims and Christians. 5
Barbary corsairs had often been characterized as pirates – both by contemporaries
and in the historical literature. Such a description is not correct. The
corsairs acted with the permission of their rulers in Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers and
Morocco. A more proper way to characterize them is as privateers. However,
the situation was even more complicated because Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers
2
For a comparative view of Scandinavia in Europe see e.g. van Zanden 2001, 70-80. Stockholm,
by far Sweden’s largest city, had about 60,000 inhabitants. Gothenburg and
Karlskrona, the second and third cities, had only about 10,000 inhabitants by the late eighteenth
century.
3
Carlén 1994; Carlén 1997.
4
Müller 2004, 51.
5
For details see Magnus Ressel’s contribution in this volume.
191

were not independent states but vassals under formal Ottoman rule. In spite of
this, they carried out their own “foreign policy”. Indeed, the guerre de course
was an important argument for the legitimacy, and semi-independence, of the
local rulers. 6 The only truly independent state in North Africa was Morocco.
The warfare did not only concern shipping. Barbary corsairs were raiding
coastal areas of Spain and Portugal and the Canary and Balearic Islands. The
numbers of Christian Europeans who were enslaved were substantial. In Algiers
there were about 740,000-760,000 slaves between 1520 and 1830. In total
there were more than a million European slaves in North Africa. 7 The majority
were Spanish and Italian, but among the slaves there were also sailors from
Northern Europe, including Swedes and Danes.
The European powers met the corsair challenge by naval force or by convoying
of their shipping. But none of these strategies was efficient. The solution
preferred by the North European states was instead peace treaties with the
North African states and payment of tribute or ransom for leaving the nation’s
merchant marine in peace. This system was fully developed by the seventeenth
century. In Sweden the idea of establishing peace treaties with the North African
states had already appeared in the 1660s, but nothing happened then. 8
The Shipping Policy Package:
The Swedish Navigation Act and Peace Treaties
During the Great Northern War 1700-1721, the Swedish shipping activities in
Southern Europe declined. Especially during the Danish involvement in the
war, between 1709 and 1720, the Swedes were excluded from the long-distance
carrying trade. Exports and imports were once again carried by the Dutch. The
peace with Russia in 1721 ended the war. After that the dependency on Dutch
shipping was heavily criticized and in the coming years Sweden launched an
ambitious shipping policy.
The policy package consisted of three parts. In 1724 Sweden enacted Produktplakatet,
the Swedish Navigation Act, which prohibited imports to Sweden
on other ships than those of Sweden or the cargo-producing country. 9 The Act
was inspired by the English Navigation Acts. It was a result of the political
discussion about the condition of Sweden’s foreign trade after 1721. The balance
of trade was negative and the Dutch were accused of causing this by high
carrying costs. Moreover, dependency on a foreign carrying capacity made
Sweden vulnerable, which was an especially sensitive issue as regards salt
6 Windler 2000, 172.
7 Harrison 2007, 413.
8 Ekegård 1924, 78.
9 Müller 2004, 61-65; see also Heckscher 1922; and Heckscher 1940.
192

supplies. Salt, together with Baltic grain, was the most capacity-demanding
import. Thus the primary aims of the new shipping policy were securing imports
of salt from Southern Europe and reducing the role of Dutch shipping in
the import trade. In the long term the purpose was the strengthening of exchange
with Southern Europe, not only the imports of the strategically important
salt but also the encouragement of exports of Swedish export produce –
bar-iron, tar, pitch, and sawn goods.
The Swedish Navigation Act appeared to fulfill these aims well. In the years
immediately following 1724 the number of ships under the Swedish flag passing
the Danish Sound – the best indicator of Swedish shipping activities –
increased rapidly. The Dutch shipping to Sweden collapsed. There were in the
Sound over a hundred Dutch ships coming from Swedish ports by 1720. In
1725 and 1726 their numbers collapsed to six and three respectively. 10 The
number of registered ships in Sweden increased from 230 in 1723 to 480 in
1726. 11
Thus, in the short term, the Swedish Navigation Act was a big success. Yet
it is difficult to evaluate the effect in the long term. There was in eighteenthcentury
Sweden a drawn-out discussion about the benefits and costs of the
Navigation Act. A large number of political actors argued that it actually made
the Swedish carrying trade more expensive, and so increased the prices of
imports in Sweden – primarily salt – and made exports less profitable. 12
The second part of the institutional package relating to the shipping policy
of the 1720s was the peace treaties with North Africa and the innovation of
Sweden’s convoy system. Increasing shipping under the Swedish flag to
Southern Europe naturally entailed problems with Barbary corsairs. The Swedish
policy-makers were well aware of it and in parallel with the work on the
Navigation Act they reformed Sweden’s convoy system. A new Convoy Office
(Konvojkommissariatet) was established in 1724, with its seat at Gothenburg
on Sweden’s west coast. 13 This office was responsible for the organization of
convoying, a practice that the Swedish merchant marine had used since the
1690s.
But convoying was not the only duty of the new office. In addition, the office
was dealing with all the problems raised by Barbary corsairs. Thus it handled
the payments of ransom and release of Swedish sailors from North Africa.
It soon dealt also with negotiations with the North African rulers, the exchange
of gifts between Sweden and these states, and the keeping of consular representation
on the spot. To fund the Office a new duty, the so-called extra licenten,
10 Bang and Korst 1930-1953, 60-67.
11 Müller 2004, 142, table 5.5.
12 For the discussion see Carlén 1997.
13 Müller 2004, 65-66.
193

was introduced in 1723, and collected by the Convoy Fund (Konvojkassan). 14 It
is important to point out that this Swedish system differed from that of Denmark,
even if the basic precondition of peace with the North African states was
the same. The duty, extra licenten, was imposed on all Swedish exports and
imports, which was perceived unfair by merchants and ship-owners who had no
use of convoying (trade in the Baltic and North Seas). Moreover, the funding
by extra licenten was never sufficient and the annual costs of the Convoy Office
became a burden of the state. 15 Consequently, the system continued to be
controversial during the remaining part of the century – in similarity with the
Navigation Act. However, in spite of the broad criticism, and a short break
(1790-1797), it survived until 1867.
Instead of expensive convoying of Swedish merchantmen in Southern
Europe and paying ransom for captives, the Swedish authorities aimed to establish
peaceful relations with the Barbary corsairs. Three years after the Swedish
Navigation Act, in 1727, the steps were already being taken to sign a peace
treaty with Algiers. This was actually a consequence of the Dutch treaty with
Algiers of 1726. Before 1726, Swedish and Dutch ships went in the same convoys,
protecting each other. The Dutch treaty of 1726, however, exclusively
concerned the Dutch ships, which left the Swedes out in trouble.
The Swedes empowered George Logie, a Scottish merchant with long experience
of North Africa, to negotiate the treaty, in which he soon succeeded.
The treaty between Sweden and Algiers was signed in April 1729 by Jean von
Utfall, the Swedish representative, and the Algiers Dey. A part of the agreement
was the exchange of gifts, or perhaps more exactly Sweden’s tributes to
Algiers. Sweden sent to Algiers two vessels loaded with 40 guns, 800 sabres,
1,600 cannon balls, masts, anchors, with a total value of 21,000 rix-dollars – a
very substantial sum. The Algiers Dey expressed his satisfaction and reciprocated
with a liberated captive, two lions and a couple of other wild animals.
First, the exchange confirms the picture of small European powers supplying
the Barbary fleets with naval necessities and weapons: items that could and
were used in the guerre de course against other European powers. Second, the
characteristics of the exchange even had a highly symbolic meaning, stressing
the superiority of a Muslim ruler over a Christian power. 16
Another part of the agreement was the establishment of Swedish consular
representation in Algiers, in accordance with the traditional Mediterranean
consular system. 17 The first Swedish consul appointed to Algiers was George
Logie. The consuls in North Africa were supposed to mediate between the
Algiers Dey and Sweden, so the consuls had an important diplomatic function.
14 Müller 2004, 68-69, Åmark 1961, 762-775.
15 Åmark 1961, 755.
16 Windler 2000.
17 Steensgaard 1967, 13-55.
194

This was a significant difference in comparison with consular representations
in European states. In France, Britain, the Dutch Republic, Russia and other
members of the European state system, even including the Ottoman Empire,
there was a clear distinction between the diplomatic representation, the embassy
at the capital, and consular representation with consulates situated at
major ports. The consuls dealt with the promotion of commerce between their
home and host countries and with the collection of commercially useful information.
The semi-diplomatic role of consuls in North Africa reveals the fact
that Algiers and other Barbary states were not seen as members of the European
state system. The commercial exchange between Sweden and North Africa
was very limited, in spite of the high-flying plans launched during the
negotiations. In 1738, nine years after the signing of the treaty, George Logie
described the state of Sweden’s trade with Algiers in these words:
I find not that Algier can be otherways beneficiall to Sweden than that by having
peace with them it gives free liberty to our Ships to go safely on the coasts
of Spain and Portugalland to all ports of the Mediterranean with our own Cargoes
and have the benefit of being employed and freighted by other Merchants
with the same safety that they can ships of other nations and now I am on this
subject I must begg leave to acquaint and inform your Lordships that I find no
other method or possibility of keeping a firm and secure peace with the kingdom
of Algier than now and then that is once in two or three years to give
some handsome presents to the Dey and Leading men of the Gouvernment to
keep them steadfast in our friendship which is what is practiced by the French
by the Hollanders and all other nations in peace with them…. 18
The treaty between Sweden and Algiers also included an article on the introduction
of Algerian passports. Accordingly, all vessels under the Swedish
flag sailing beyond Cape Finisterre in Spain were obliged to keep a special
passport issued by Sweden’s Board of Trade. The passport confirmed for an
inspecting corsair crew that the ship under the Swedish flag was indeed from
Sweden, had a Swedish crew, captain and ship-owner. Without such a passport
the ship and its crew could be taken as captives. 19
In similarity with other parts of the treaty, the introduction of Swedish Algerian
passports copied a model established by other North European powers.
The issuing of Algerian passports by the Board of Trade was a regulated and
controlled activity because abuse of passports would put in danger the whole of
Sweden’s shipping business in Southern Europe. Articles regarding the Algerian
passport issued by the Swedish King on 12 January 1730 indicate how
seriously this issue was treated. 20 The strict procedure and control of the issuing
18 Riksarkivet Stockholm, Kommerskollegium Huvudarkiv, Skrivelser från konsuler, Liverpool
Livorno 1725-1822, EVIaa: 229, George Logie to the Board of Trade, Leghorn/Livorno
2/13 Oktober 1738.
19 Müller 2004, 144-147.
20 Modée 1740, 803-807: Den 12 Jan. 1730 Reglemente om Algeriske Siöpass.
195

procedure also means that the surviving registers of passports contain reliable
data on Swedish shipping beyond Cape Finisterre. The registers will be employed
here for the mapping of Swedish shipping activities in Southern Europe.
In 1736 George Logie left Algiers for Tunis to negotiate a peace treaty with
another Barbary state. This treaty was signed in December 1736 and the text
closely followed that of Algiers. Yet the gifts were not as expensive as in the
Algiers case. The first Swedish consul arrived in 1738. 21 The treaty with the
third North African state, Tripoli, was signed in 1741, also negotiated by
George Logie. It took another twenty years before the fourth treaty, the treaty
with Morocco, was signed. The negotiations were opened in 1761 and the
treaty signed in 1763. The Swedish negotiator, Peter Kristian Wulf, became the
first Swedish consul in Morocco, seated at Salé. Morocco was the strongest and
only truly independent North African state.
The third part of the institutional package to promote Swedish shipping was
the expansion of the consular system in the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic
coast of Europe. Between 1700 and 1750 about twenty new consulates were
established in the area – from Smyrna in the Levant to Rouen in France. 22 Remarkably,
no consulates were established in Northern Europe – with the exception
of the consulate in London. Sweden’s trade in Northern Europe was based
on other, more traditional trade patterns than the trade in Southern Europe, a
new area for the Swedes.
The shipping policy package that the Swedish authorities launched in the
1720s also combined a number of aims. It was supposed to replace foreign –
read Dutch – carrying capacity in Sweden’s trade. It was supposed to secure
sufficient supplies of salt for Sweden and open new trading opportunities for
Swedish exports in Southern Europe. Another less apparent intent of the policy
was the building-up of a strong Swedish merchant marine and an experienced
marine labor that in the case of war could be recruited to the navy. This aspect
did not receive much attention in the remaining part of the century, in spite of
the fact that this was also common to the English and Swedish Navigation
Acts. Finally, it was supposed to make Swedish shipping in Southern Europe
safer, reducing risks and protection costs for the Swedish actors. This, most
probably, was a very important aspect of the Swedish shipping boom in the
second part of the century, a boom which has nothing to do with the Navigation
Act of 1724.
Swedish authorities appear to have chosen a different solution to security
problems in North Africa in comparison with the Dutch, Danes and the Hanseatic
cities studied in Magnus Ressel’s article here. From about 1730 the
Swedes, instead of paying ransom for individual seamen, formed a semidiplomatic
relation with the North African states, paying gift-tributes and with
21 Müller 2004, 127.
22 Müller 2004, 42, table 2.1.
196

consular representation in the area. The system was connected to the Convoy
Office. It was a public solution ideally financed by the special duty on trade.
But the duty had never been sufficient to pay the system and the state was
repeatedly forced to cover the missing sums. As the major benefactors of the
system were a few merchants and ship-owners engaged in trade in Southern
Europe, often members of Stockholm’s mercantile elite, the system was criticized
as a exploitation of public means by private interest. Such a criticism was
a typical feature of the political struggles in eighteenth-century Sweden. Indeed,
exactly the same argument was used against the Navigation Act.
The Costs of the Convoy Office and Shipping Activities
From the accounts of the Convoy Office, we have a detailed picture of the
public costs of the peace treaties with the North African states. The figures as
such say a lot. In addition to these transparent public costs there were other
large, less visible costs, for example in insurance premiums, relative wages of
sailors, freight rates and others. No comparison of the costs and benefits of the
system is possible because we have very scattered data on the profitability of
the shipping in Southern Europe. Thus the figures may be used to illustrate
tendencies and sudden changes in the cost structure.
Looking at the long term development of the costs of the Convoy Office, we
can notice a slow increase until the 1760s. The annual expenditures oscillate
between 50,000 and 100,000 dollar silver money until the 1750s. Then they
increase rapidly in the 1760s. The large expenditures during the 1760s related
to the peace treaty with Morocco, which was unusually expensive. Some annual
expenditures are extremely large, far exceeding the average. This seems to
be related to extraordinary outlays: special gifts related to political changes in
the principalities, newly appointed consuls, and similar. Such appointments
were often connected with additional tributes. The increases are related to new
treaties signed. The graph for the period 1777-1796 (in new rix-dollars) indicates
a stable level of expenditure. This was the period of boom in Swedish
shipping to Southern Europe.
197

Figure 1: The Costs of the Swedish Convoy Office 1726-1796
(1726-1776 Dollars Silver Money)
Figure 1 (Cont.): (1777-1796 new rix-dollars).
Source: Karl Åmark, Sveriges statsfinanser, 1719-1809 (Stockholm, 1961), 762-775.
Note: In 1777 Sweden introduced a new monetary system that makes it difficult to compare
data from the periods.
It is interesting to compare the development of the Office outlays with the
data of shipping activities based on Algerian passport registers. As pointed out
above, the registers provide a reliable data set for the long-term development of
Swedish shipping in Southern Europe. 23 The registers cover the period between
1739 and 1831 and they include information about 30,000 passports, represent-
23 Müller 2004, 144-149.
198

ing on average about 300 voyages per annum destined south of Cape Finisterre.
However, when we look closely at the data, it is apparent that until 1760 the
annual number of ships never exceeded 200. The level of shipping activities
was quite stable at about 150 voyages per annum, with a noticeable increase
during the Seven Years’ War. This indicates that the shipping policy package
introduced in the 1720s and 1730s did not actually have any significant effect.
It seems to strengthen the argument of critics of mercantilist policy: that the
policy was costly but did not promote shipping very much.
The situation changed in the 1770s. The number of ships annually sailing
beyond Cape Finisterre rapidly increased. First, between 1770 and 1778 the
number of passports issued rose from 198 to 287, almost by 50 percent. Another
jump came between 1778 and 1782, when the passports issued reached
441, another increase by 50 percent in only five years. The expansion was
directly related to the American War of Independence. The war entailed a
demand for neutral carrying capacity and Sweden, which stayed out of the war,
could provide such a capacity. The situation became even more beneficial in
1780 when Russia, Denmark and Sweden created the League of Armed Neutrality.
The British, who did not respect Sweden’s neutral flag before 1780,
now began to treat the Swedes in a better way. In addition, from the end of
1780 the Dutch Republic, the largest neutral carrier in Europe, became involved
in the war with Britain – the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784).
The neutral Swedish and Danish vessels replaced the missing Dutch capacity. 24
It became apparent that neutral shipping could be a very profitable business for
Sweden.
The same strategy was then applied during the French Revolutionary Wars.
The Dutch and French were again involved in the war against Britain, leaving
the Danish and Swedish – and this time even the US – merchant marines as the
neutral tonnage. According to the Swedish Algerian passport registers, the
number of Swedish-flagged voyages increased from 257 in 1792 to 624 in
1800. The figures for the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) are volatile owing to a
new vulnerability of European neutrals. The policy employed by the Dutch,
Danes and Swedes between 1756 and 1800 did not work during the total war of
1804-1815.
The picture of Swedish shipping booms directly related to the wartime conditions
is confirmed by the data for traffic in the Sound and the development of
registered Swedish vessels. 25 Does this mean that the Anglo-French warfare
and Sweden’s neutrality are the only determinants of the development, and that
the shipping policy package from the early eighteenth century is insignificant?
We have seen that the shipping policy package of the 1720s did not matter
24 On the League of Armed Neutrality and shipping business see Feldbæk 1971; Feldbæk
1983; Feldbæk 1969; De Madariaga 1962; and Müller 2010.
25 Johansen 1983; Müller 2004, 142, table 5.5; and Kilborn 2009.
199

much. Such a view would confirm the criticism of shipping policy by contemporaries,
but it would not explain why the policy was also used during the
French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and why it survived until the midnineteenth
century.
The peaceful relations with North Africa and the consular network in Southern
Europe were the precondition of the development. A very large share of the
Swedish shipping boom in the 1770s, 1780s and the 1790s was located in
Southern Europe. About one third of the Swedish carrying capacity was actually
employed in Southern Europe, in commodity trade and tramp shipping. 26
All this suggests that the shipping policy package was necessary. The willingness
of authorities to pay for the Convoy Office and to accept the costs of keeping
peace relations with North Africa also confirms that the policy was seen as
a necessity. Without the peace in North Africa, Swedish ships would be at risk
in the Mediterranean even during the Napoleonic Wars.
The significance of peace in the Mediterranean is illustrated by the last conflict
between Sweden and a Barbary state, namely the Tripoli “war” of 1801-
1802. The Swedish naval presence outside Tripoli was of no avail, nor was
cooperation with the US navy. Eventually peace was bought at a price of
650,000 rix-dollars. 27
Figure 2: Number of Algerian Passports Issued 1739-1820
Source: Kommerskollegium, Huvudarkivet, Sjöpassdiarier för åren 1739-1800, C II b. Board
of Trade, Swedish National Archives, Stockholm.
26 It was somewhat different in Denmark with its large Atlantic and Asiatic shipping. See
Johansen 1992 and Feldbæk 1969.
27 Borg 1987; Krëuger 1856, 71-78.
200

Economic Security, National Security, and
the Protection-Cost Approach
The differences between the Swedish policy regarding North African states and
the exploitation of Sweden’s neutrality point at the diverse options that Sweden
had regarding security and risk-diminishing strategies. Sweden’s eighteenthcentury
neutrality was vulnerable, dependent on the good will of Britain and
other great powers and the overall functioning of an anarchical European state
system. 28 Sweden had very limited possibilities of influencing the behavior of
the great powers. A military confrontation was out of reach; the only way to
meet the challenge of a great power was through diplomatic means. The same
limited options, and a final failure of neutrality policy, may be noted in the
Dutch Republic and in Denmark. All three neutrals were forced into “impossible”
wars against great powers: the Dutch Republic (1780) and Denmark
(1807) against Britain, and Sweden (1808) against Russia. That kind of risk
was also impossible to predict, calculate or insure against. The peace with
Russia or Britain could not be bought for any calculable price, which points at
the different kind of security concept in this context – namely national security.
29
The vulnerability of Swedish shipping in Southern Europe was of a different
kind. It could be met by combined diplomatic and economic means. The threat
posed by Barbary corsairs concerned economic security – the possibility of a
loss of cargo and ship, and human security – the possibility of captivity or
enslavement. But the threat never concerned the national security of Sweden.
This distinction is very important if we aim to study Swedish shipping in
Southern Europe from an economic perspective. National security, on the one
hand, is about the state’s security; the issue of costs or profits does not matter if
the state is in danger. Economic security, on the other hand, is about costs and
profitability of a business. Regarding the situation in the Mediterranean, the
security was about protection costs and competitive advantages, and human
risks, not about the threat to national security.
The role of protection costs in shipping has traditionally been related to the
successful development of seaborne trade. European seaborne trade expanded
during the whole Early Modern period, and the expansion could not be explained
by any significant technological change in shipping which would affect
the production costs of shipping. Indeed, a sailing ship of 1800 did not differ
very much from a sailing ship of 1500, whereas a steam ship of 1900 was very
different in comparison with a sailing ship of 1800. Thus, the expansion of
seaborne trade before 1800 had to be explained in another way.
28 Schroeder 1994, passim.
29 For the different concepts of security see Paris 2001.
201

One explanation that has attracted much attention and that is relevant in the
context of this essay is the decline in transport costs. 30 The larger the share of
transport costs in the commodity price, the larger the impact of the decline in
transport costs on the final commodity price. Lower transport costs made
commodities cheaper and so more affordable. With a limited technological
change in shipping before the mid-nineteenth century, the most efficient way to
reduce overall transport costs was the decline in transaction and protection
costs. The issue of protection costs is especially interesting in waters that were
troubled by violence, such as the Mediterranean owing to the guerre de course.
Even small improvements in the security of shipping could significantly improve
the profitability of the whole business. Improved security of shipping had
an impact on many other costs. It reduced insurance premiums. The lower
insurance premiums are actually mentioned by Swedish consuls as a competitive
advantage of Swedish shipping in the Mediterranean. 31 Most probably,
improved security made seamen less hesitant to sail in the Mediterranean and
so it might have reduced wages. Contemporary treatises show that Swedish and
Danish sailors were paid less than their Southern counterparts, even if this fact
cannot immediately be related to the improved security of Danish and Swedish
shipping. 32
The protection cost approach was first employed by Frederic C. Lane, a historian
of Venice, to explain the success of Venice as a commercial republic. He
pointed out the significance of a state that provides security for the shipping of
its citizens. In this way protection costs are made public: instead of paying for a
large crew and armaments on his ship, the ship-owner pays the state for protection.
33
The Swedish historian Jan Glete employed the same logic to explain the
boom of Dutch seaborne trade in the Baltic Sea. The royal navies of Denmark
and Sweden made the Baltic waters safe and so kept the protection costs low –
especially of Dutch shipping. The Fluit could be such a superior carrier in the
Baltic trade because it sailed in relatively safe waters. 34
Glete’s and Lane’s works were concerned primarily with the sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean. But the same approach
might be used to characterize the Northern European policies toward the Barbary
corsairs in the eighteenth century. The policy package employed by Sweden
from the 1720s made the protection costs of Swedish ship-owners public,
and the ship-owners paid the state for protection – extra licenten. Because the
30
For the effect of the decline in transport costs (transport revolution) on the expansion of
overseas trade see O’Rourke and Williamson 2002; O’Rourke and Williamson 2004; for a
contrary view see Flynn and Giraldez 2004; and others.
31
Müller 2004, 73.
32
Liljencrants 1768.
33
Lane 1950; Lane 1958.
34
Glete 2000, 125-126; on the fluit design’s advantages see Barbour 1996, 122-123.
202

use of naval force – convoying – was expensive and inefficient, the office
instead chose to pay for security by the acknowledgment of North African
states and payments of tributes.
Sweden, owing to the peace treaties with the North African states and owing
to its neutrality, had low protection costs, and these costs were made public.
Certainly, this was an important factor for the improved economic security of
the shipping business under the Swedish flag and one explanation for the successful
development of the Swedish merchant marine, becoming the fifth in
Europe after the American War of Independence.
It is worth mentioning that even Douglass C. North, a Nobel laureate in economics,
and his colleague Gary M. Walton back in the 1960s argued that the
success of North American shipping in the eighteenth century was related to
the reduced uncertainties such as piracy and privateering. 35 Another factor was
the improved organization of shipping, but that is not our focus here. The protection-cost
approach employed in the development of Swedish shipping in
Southern Europe also relates closely to the neo-institutional economic school,
to the idea of protection costs as a component of transaction costs.
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205

Special Issue
The Production of Human Security in
Premodern and Contemporary History
Die Produktion von Human Security in
Vormoderne und Zeitgeschichte
ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES, DISASTERS,
AND HUMAN SECURITY
No. 134
HSR Vol. 35 (2010) 4

Human Security in the Renaissance?
Securitas, Infrastructure, Collective Goods and
Natural Hazards in Tuscany and the Upper Rhine
Valley
Gerrit Jasper Schenk �
Abstract: »Human Security in der Renaissance? Securitas, Infrastruktur, Gemeinschaftsgüter
und Naturgefahren in der Toskana und im Oberrheintal«.
This article investigates the character of collective perceptions of security in
the Renaissance. In addition to the findings of conceptual history, an picture
analysis will be used. Besides the concern for salvation and protection from
violence and injustice, public welfare was the task of a good government in
material terms as well (provision of food, infrastructure). It also comprised the
prevention of natural hazards. Legitimation strategies of those who governed
and the needs of those who were governed had – according to the region – an
impact on the development of specific ways of dealing with natural hazards.
“Human security” thus played a part in state-building processes.
Keywords: security, infrastructure, collective goods, natural hazards, disasters,
Lorenzetti, Tuscany, Florence, Alsace, Strasbourg, Arno, Rhine.
Point of Departure
In this article, several considerations of a systematic type are developed concerning
the concept of security and its sociopolitical provision in the Renaissance.
A working hypothesis is the consideration that the height of the Western
Modern Age, in which the state functioned principally as a guarantor for “human
security”, represents an occurrence that is extremely rich in historical
conditions. In fact, with respect to postmodern privatisation even of state security,
the Western Modern state is perhaps even an exception. 1 The first step
therefore deals with the reconstruction of a stage in the development of – perhaps
typically European – perceptions of “human security” and several early
conditions for their current establishment as, depending on the standpoint, a
post-colonial instrument of power or a cosmopolitan ideal. Using two regions
as an example, a second step will be to consider which role the understanding
of what security is, or should be, played with respect to collective goods and to
the threat that natural risks pose for these goods. The regions chosen – Tuscany
� Address all communications to: Gerrit Jasper Schenk, Technical University Darmstadt,
Residenzschloss, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany; e-mail: schenk@pg.tu-darmstadt.de.
1 See MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 11-14 on questions of definition.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 209-233

and the Upper Rhine Valley – of course cannot stand for the whole of Europe.
Their differences, from geomorphology to the sociopolitical structure, can,
however, in terms of comparative heuristics, reveal similarities and differences
when handling natural risks. 2
Several researchers, from Kingreen to MacFarlane/Foong Khong, view the
European Middle Ages as a chaotic phase of competing powers which, at best,
knew fragmented forms of “human security”. 3 It makes sense to broach the
issue of safety from violence for the Middle Ages too, in particular safety
within or among communities, as has been carried out many times for other
eras. 4 However, a second topic area is also closely connected to the question of
security of the people. In this area, prospective answers are also possible for the
question of the origin and path dependency 5 in the development of the concept
and reality of modern “human security”. The reference here is to the descriptively
portrayed, sociopolitical “public services” and “infrastructure” 6 , and the
threat which is posed to these by natural occurrences such as, for example,
floods and earthquakes along with all of their consequences, including the
destruction of streets, interruptions to trade, crop failures, hunger, migration
and social insecurity. Here it can namely be shown that, firstly, towards the end
of the Middle Ages there were highly pragmatic perceptions of “security” in
connection with perceptions of the common good and the fair use of collective
goods. 7 In addition, it can be demonstrated how a close sociopolitical connection
between security perceptions and security requirements on the one hand,
and the institutional methods of dealing with the threat to this security on the
other, developed. This development, which resulted from the interests of a
social “above” and “below” which to a certain extent stood in contrast to one
another, converged in the culmination of “the state”.
Securitas in the Renaissance –
a Different Conceptual History
Around 1338/1339, Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted frescoes that conveyed a
highly political meaning in the governmental hall of the ruling administration,
the Nove, in the town hall of the Republic of Siena. 8 Until the 18th century,
2
With respect to the methodical functions of the comparison and heuristical, descriptive,
analytical and paradigmatic aspects cf. Haupt and Kocka 1996, 12-15.
3
Kingreen 2003, 28; MacFarlane and Foong Khong 2006, 29-36.
4
Cf. the articles in this volume, in addition e.g. Härter 2010; Lüdtke and Wildt 2008; Tomuschat
2008, 73-74.
5
Werle 2007.
6
On this somewhat problematic concept cf. Vec 2008. On (modern) infrastructure cf. Laak
2004.
7
Cf. Moss et al. 2009; Gailing et al. 2009.
8
Cf. Starn 1994, 12-20. The dating is attested by accounts.
210

peace and war were identified as the topic of the opposing frescoes; in 1792,
Luigi Lanzi interpreted them as a moralising instruction about good and bad
government and the effects of these on town and country: a perspective that
served as a model, that helped the frescoes to be characterised as Buon Governo
und Malgoverno, and that still shapes art historical discussion about this
masterpiece by Lorenzetti today. 9
An extremely complex allegory of good government or social peace is indeed
portrayed on the northern wall of the governmental hall. Peace, or Buon
Governo, is suggestively characterised by nine virtues: fides, charitas, spes,
pax, fortitudo, prudentia, magnanimitas, temperantia, iustitia. Added to these
are sapientia, iustitia comutativa and distributiva as well as concordia. The
eastern wall, joining on to this, shows the peaceful and benedictory effects on
town and country, which discernibly represent Siena and its contado. 10 On the
western wall and dialectically connected with the latter, one finds the portrayal
of Malgoverno, or war, together with the effects on town and country, above
which fear (timor) hovers, akin to a dark angel. 11
Image 1: Securitas
9 Cf. Southard 1980, 361-365; Rowley 1958; Rubinstein 1958; Feldges-Henning 1972;
Frugoni 1979a; and Frugoni 1979b; Skinner 2009; Starn 1994, 12-20. Gibbs 1999 presumes
that Lorenzetti, in the allegory of good government, originally gave Iustitia a positioning as
prominent as Pax; this does not affect my interpretation.
10 Cf. Feldges-Henning 1972, 159-162; Frugoni 1979a, 24.
11 Cf. Starn 1994, 42-43; Frugoni 1979a, 24.
211

The personification of security takes an unmistakably central position in the
fresco of peace with respect to the portrayal of Buon Governo and its effects on
town and country. The angel-like winged securitas hovers above the city gate
at the city limits, facing towards the peaceful cultural landscape, wrapped in
filigree white fabric, holding a banner in her right hand, and in her left, gallows
with a person hanging from them (see image 1). In terms of her form, she visibly
corresponds to an important figure in the allegory of Buon Governo: pax. In
Lorenzetti’s fresco, pax is striking due to her leaning position in comparison
with the other virtues. The way in which she is portrayed is also comparatively
unusual: her feet rest on pieces of armour. She is dressed in white clothing,
which traces the shape of her body in classical folds, and holds a large olive
branch in her left hand. According to Chiara Frugoni, who interprets the frescoes
as political propaganda of the ruling Nove, the figure of pax corresponds
to that of securitas: “Securitas and pax form the binominal of concordia …
The picture even suggests a yet subtler differentiation: Security in the city rests
upon peace among its inhabitants…”. 12
Lorenzetti’s frescoes have inspired a multitude of art historical and historical
interpretations, from Nicolai Rubinstein to Quentin Skinner: 13 They are
interpreted, for example, as a theological argumentation for the government of
the Nove, drawing on the biblical Book of Wisdom; as a portrayal of Siena as
the divine Jerusalem (or Babylon); as a pre-humanistic rediscovery of ancient
Roman ideals; as a depiction of the secular ideal of a republican society in the
wake of a rediscovery of Aristotelian politics, whether inspired by Thomas
Aquinas, or conveyed by Brunetto Latini’s encyclopaedic Li livres dou tresor;
as praise of the bourgeois work ethic and industriousness, owing to, for example,
the portrayal of the artes mechanicae in town and country; or as a depiction
of astrological concepts concerning the ways in which the planets influence
life on earth (the concept of planet children) – the embodiments of planets
are indeed located above the frescoes.
Each interpretation can be supported by strong arguments, but two things
are clear among the variety of interpretations: Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s frescoes
provide information – maybe exceptionally – about late medieval perceptions
of salus publicua, which can be described as public welfare or good social
“configuration of order”. 14 Securitas plays an important part in this configuration
of order. The frescoes convey messages almost propagandistically, such
as, for example, the statement that security in the Middle Ages is primarily
12 Frugoni 1979b, 76: “Securitas e Pax costituiscono un binomio nella concordia ...
L’immagine suggerisce una distinzione ancora più sottile: nella città la sicurezza è nella
pace dei suoi abitanti...”. Following the reconstruction by Gibbs 1999 securitas also corresponds
iconographically to iustitia.
13 Differentiated survey by Schmidt 2002, 84-137.
14 On salus publicus and its relation to securitas since antiquity see Eberhard 1986, 244. On
the concept of configuration of order see Schneidmüller and Weinfurter 2006.
212

connected with peace and justice, which are guaranteed internally by good
jurisdiction and government, and that this security is based on the models of the
above-mentioned virtues. However, there are even subtler traces of contemporary
concepts of security, which Lorenzetti perhaps did not consciously aim to
portray. The frescoes must hence be examined not for perceptible intentions,
but rather for implicit perceptions and collective attitudes. 15
In the research it is discussed whether the images of pax and securitas have
Roman templates, e.g. coin designs. From Nero to Constantine, coins personified
the Securitas Augusti as an objective of the ruling powers within the Imperium
Romanum and aimed at legitimising the policies of the emperor. 16 If
Lorenzetti was really making a reference to this iconographic tradition, then he
did so loosely – his pax is holding an olive branch instead of (like the Roman
securitas) a spear in her hands, and the grim attribute of his securitas is nowhere
to be found on Roman coins. Robert Gibbs recently called attention to
the fact that Lorenzetti is more likely to have been referring back to illustrations
in contemporary Bolognese law manuscripts of the Decretum Gratiani
and in the Digest. Here the man hanging from the gallows can be found as an
illustration for the second book of the Digest (de iurisdictione), harvest scenes
as illustrations for texts about usufruct, pictures of cultural landscapes for texts
about border and access rights, and scenes of building activity very similar to
those that shape Lorenzetti’s cycle of frescoes. 17 Following Gibbs’ line of
reasoning, the juristic emblems refer to the everyday administration of justice
as a guarantor of social securitas. This much more direct connection to contemporary
images strikingly accentuates the public dimension of securitas 18
and emphasises the concern of the ruling parties for public welfare. In terms of
the history of ideas, a long line can therefore be drawn, with the help of either
ancient coins or the contemporary illustrations of the Institutiones of Justinianus,
from the legitimisation strategies of the Roman emperors to those of the
governments of Italian city states during the Renaissance. 19
15
The intention is to interpret the frescoes not only as a ‘source of tradition’ but also as a
‘remainder’.
16
Cf. Rowley 1958, 95. A Neroic Dupondius, Lugdunum, 64 AD is particularly close to the
way securitas is portrayed, cf. Cohen 1880, 300-301, nos. 321-25; Mattingly 1923, 267-
268, for example nos. 344-349; Mattingly and Sydenham 1923, 164-165, nos. 284-297.
17
Gibbs 1996-1997, 210-212 with Fig. 6; Gibbs 2002, 174; L’Engle 2002, 229-230 with Fig.
4.
18
Cf. also Ebel et al. 1988, 162-163, 196.
19
More probably in terms of a perception of ancient conceptions than in terms of a continuous
tradition.
213

Image 2: Landscape
The art historian Max Seidel goes even further and sees a depiction of the
security, agricultural, trade and traffic policies of the Republic of Siena in the
magnificent panoramic picture of the cultural landscape before the gates of the
well-governed city (see image 2). On three levels, he claims, one can discern
firstly a very clear depiction of Sienese politics in town and contado, secondly
a symbolic depiction of the underlying state theory and thirdly the mythological-astrological
superelevation of a political doctrine of security by means of
peace and harmony. 20 In my opinion, Seidel convincingly shows that one can
find very specific, material connections to the governmental politics of the
Nove in the first third of the 14th century in the picture. For this purpose, he
consults council minutes on crop policies, statutes of the Sienese road construction
authorities, land and tax registers as well as chronicles of that period. 21 The
scenes of grain cultivation and of harvesting could therefore be understood, for
example, as an illustration of the reactions of the Nove to the climate-related
crop failures and years of famine in the first third of the 14th century. 22 In order
to prevent the imminent danger of social unrest and strife due to a lack of corn,
the council minutes state, the Nove levied a forced loan of 15,000 florins in
1330 for the purchase of grain and in 1340 they even imported grain for 40,000
florins. 23 The argument used here is hence a type of social emergency situation,
which justifies the impingement of ownership rights for the higher aim of ensuring
“state” security. While the reason for tax collection is explained in the
council minutes as the preservation of public security and the concern for pub-
20 Seidel 1999, 7.
21 Seidel 1999.
22 Seidel 1999, 49. On the famines from 1315-1317 in (mainly Northern) Europe and a possible
climate impact cf. Dodds 2007.
23 Seidel 1999, 51.
214

lic welfare, the frescoes, with their portrayal of a secure, rich harvest can also
be understood as a subtle depiction of the government’s legitimisation strategy.
According to Seidel, the policies of the republic concerning infrastructure
are depicted even more concretely. Although the responsibility for maintaining
land and water routes theoretically fell under the regalia of the emperor, from
the High Middle Ages onwards the related rights and duties had in fact mostly
been handed over to various rulers depending on the region. 24 Residents were
often called upon to maintain the routes, but in the Italian city states the local
council usually organised the construction and maintenance of public roads
itself. 25 The street in the foreground of the picture displaying the effects of
Buon Governo on the countryside is, according to Seidel, a classic example of a
strata magistra. It has a plastered surface, as stipulated by the Sienese Statuto
dei Viarî, is well lit and traverses the country in a clear manner, as laid down
by the security measures of the Nove against highwaymen. 26 In terms of its
building technique, the bridge visible in the background also provides a reference
to the contemporary measures of the Nove, who replaced the old wooden
and stone bridges in the valley of the Arbia River and thereby enabled the
transport of heavy materials such as millstones as well as roof beams for the
construction of cathedrals. 27 Moreover, it is indubitably no coincidence that the
cultural landscape in the background displays a mill, as a rich harvest and the
transport of crops into the town were closely connected with the concern for
milling grain. 28 Here too, the regiment of the Nove is celebrated in the picture
as a guarantor of security and economic prosperity, or, read inversely, the controlling,
possibly expropriating involvement of the “state” is discernible here.
The Republic of Siena, in fact, not only operated an active policy of street
construction, but in the area of water supply even ensured the well-being of the
city inhabitants as early as the 14th century with miles of subterranean aqueducts.
29
What the banner of securitas demands is thus made visible in the cultural
landscape: “That each person may go on his way freely without fear and everyone
may cultivate his field by means of work, as long as the local authorities
keep this lady in power, for she has taken all strength away from the wrongdoers”.
30 The allegory of Buon Governo repeats this on an abstract level, in con-
24 Szabó 2007, 107.
25 Cf. Duvia 2007, 212-213; Stopani 1993, 28-29.
26 Seidel 1999, 53-54; 55-58.
27 Seidel 1999, 54-55.
28 Cf. Balestracci 2003.
29 Cf. Balestracci 2003.
30 “SENZA PAURA OGN UOM FRANCO CAMINI/ E LAVORANDO SEMINI CIASCU-
NO/ MENTRE CHE TAL COMUNO/ MANTERRÀ QUESTA DON[N]A I[N] SIGNO-
RIA/ CH’EL À LEVATA A’ REI OGNI BALIA”. In historical scholarship the lady
(donna) is generally considered to be Iustitia, but the inscription on the board seems to refer
215

nection with state theory. The equivalent is ultimately also found in macrocosmic
congruence on the medallions above the fresco by means of the portrayal
of the planet Mercury and the moon, which are understood to be the cause of,
or at least a beneficial factor in, the human activities shown on the fresco –
something that is disputed by contemporaries. The embodiment of astrology in
the medallion under the fresco supports this interpretation. 31 Lorenzetti’s frescoes
can be read on several levels and from different perspectives. Securitas is
portrayed, among other things, as a worldly governmental aim to be striven for
in a sociopolitical sense and is brought into connection with very pragmatic,
material concerns: security of the roads, agricultural well-being and livelihood,
trade and exchange, peace and legal security.
This observation therefore expands findings from conceptual history relating
to contemporary intellectual discourses, which were usually shaped by clergymen
and sometimes by lawyers, and clearly differentiates them. The conceptual
history of the semantic field of securitas (and related terms) is unfortunately
not sufficiently elaborated for the Medieval millenium. 32 On the one hand, a
theological discourse which opposed securitas and certitudo to each other can
be traced from late antiquity to the period of the Protestant Reformation
(strongly simplified): Augustine sees securitas as a negative standpoint in
contrast to certitudo, certainty of faith, and Martin Luther still describes securitas
as the standpoint of those who do not trust God. The term certitudo underwent
a differentiation in the course of the Middle Ages, which can ideally be
divided along three lines: theological ‘salvation certainty’, philosophical
‘knowledge certainty’ and political ‘operation certainty’, whereas in the Late
Middle Ages, the term securitas, in terms of ancient perceptions, still seems to
have been experiencing a kind of Renaissance. 33 This ancient perception of
securitas publica, which referred to the pragmatic aspects mentioned above
(security of the streets, etc.) had been taken up again since the High Middle
Ages, at the latest in the context of the discussion of the ruler’s concern for
utilitas publica (John of Salisbury, Thomas Aquinas). 34
Lorenzetti’s frescoes therefore show conceptual facets of securitas which
only at first glance have little to do with the high-brow discourse of the theolo-
to the personification who holds her and who is labeled as SECVRITAS; see Delumeau
1989, 22. The differentiation between iustitia and securitas is actually not clear here, either
iconographically or conceptually.
31 Starn 1994, 96; Greenstein 1988, 498-500. On the planet children see Blume 2000. There
was no agreement on the impact of stars on human life among contemporaries since the
determination of man by stars was not in line with the religiously motivated postulate of
human autonomy. The majority of contemporaries, however, assumed at least a certain impact
of stars on human action, cf. Kunze, 1986, 183-185.
32 Cf. for this passage Arends 2008; Liesner 2002; Conze 1984; Makropoulos 1995; Schrimm-
Heins 1990; Kingreen 2003, 27-28.
33 Liesner 2002, 80-81.
34 See below note 37; Eberhard 1985, 196-198.
216

gians. They tie in with the ancient tradition, but are conceptually broadened by
transcendent cosmological references and are interspersed with Christian ideals:
ideal concepts such as peace and justice, material goods as well as income,
livelihood and advancement. These very practical, material concepts shaped the
social order and the material housing of the people, namely city and nature, as
shown by the cultural landscape in front of the gates of the city. Microcosm
and macrocosm, city and country, rulers and ruled are analogously related to
one another. The astrological interdependence of macrocosm and microcosm
was compatible with Christian perceptions, since in the book of nature it was
possible to recognise the will of God, who at the same time, using Aristotelian
logic, was also thought to move the stars as a prima causa. 35 Hence, in descriptive
terminology, the unmistakable aims of Renaissance security can be identified
as public welfare and services. Christian ideals (caritas, misericordia) not
only obligated individuals but also governances to care for public welfare. 36
The public services stretched to collective goods such as the construction and
maintenance of roads and bridges, but also the provision of food and protection
from violence and injustice. Classic areas of what is today understood as “human
security”, which it was in the interest of the government to provide owing
to the benefit of it for trade and exchange, are thereby covered. 37 A Buon governo
that saw a threat to this security thus had to seek counter-measures, preventively
protect its citizens, organise help in emergencies and rebuild what
was destroyed.
Using Siena as an example, it has already been seen how these kinds of
counter-measures might have looked in the case of crop failures, imminent
price increases and famine in 1330 and 1340. It was possible to supplement
measures such as forced loans and the import of grain with regulations against
price increases and the construction and maintenance of city corn houses as
storage facilities to ensure against supply shortages. 38 They were intended to
guarantee the security of the community, but were also necessary for the military,
and were part of city politics. However, not only the city as an enclosed
space, but also the infrastructure built in the contado provided security against
the threat from hostile nations and from nature. This infrastructure included
roads and bridges, ditches, dams, fountains and roadhouses. These had to be
constructed and maintained, and not only in Siena, but also in Florence, the
35
Cf. North 1986, 55-56, 74-75; Weltecke 2003, 188-189; Schenk 2010, 508-509.
36
Levin 2004, 22-24.
37
Cf. note 1; on the duty of the ruler see Ptolemaeus, book 2, chapter 12, 553: “Ut autem
stratae in sua communitate sint liberae, et transeuntibus forent securae, iura principibus
permittunt pedagia. […] amplius autem, et viarum securitas in regimine regni principibus
est fructuosa, quia illuc magis confluunt mercatores cum mercibus, unde et regnum in
divitiis crescit […].” Cf. also Conze 1984.
38 th
For Florence cf. Pinto 1978, 22-23, 107-120. For examples from the 15 century north of
the Alps cf. Jörg 2008, 178-318.
217

whole of Tuscany, and generally throughout Europe, albeit with strong regional
differences in quality, quantity and day-to-day administration. 39
Securitas, Infrastructure and Averting Danger
A second aspect of the topic now comes into focus: Natural hazards and disasters
also represent a threat to societal security owing to the destruction of infrastructure.
In fact, an extreme natural occurrence by definition only becomes a
disaster if society is affected. Disasters are always the result of complex, historically-induced
and process-driven causalities at the intersections between
nature and culture. 40 The sociopolitical dimension plays a large part in the
reaction to or prevention of disasters by societies. Political power thereby consists
not only of forms of causal power such as, for example, the ability to
assert one’s own wishes in a social relationship, even in the face of adversity. 41
In the sense of Hannah Arendt, it can also include modal forms of political
power, for example, the self-empowerment of groups by means of common
perceptions, attitudes and specific actions. 42
This becomes particularly perceptible in the case of disasters that are not
connected with an everyday threat from natural forces, but instead shake a
community suddenly and perturbingly, such as earthquakes, for example. These
occurrences were often understood as God’s reaction to sinful behaviour of the
community and as a warning sign encouraging people to return to God and
repent – a demonstration of certitudo in belief was therefore desired in order to
regain the securitas of the community. Common practices of this kind were
masses and Rogation processions for the purpose of re-establishing unity,
strength of belief and solidarity, and to protect the community from future
danger. 43 When in 1466 Siena was shaken by an earthquake on the Feast of the
Assumption of Mary (15th August), the day of the city’s patron saint, of all
days, the people reacted with a procession – quite typical behaviour, as will be
seen. 44
However, besides tradition-bound forms of behaviour, the ways of dealing
with recurring dangers could also lead to specific formalised behavioural patterns
and sociopolitical order configurations, e.g. rule-governed behaviour as
well as the formation of cooperatives and administrations that were responsible
39
Cf. e.g. Seidel 1999, 139-140; Casali 1995, 53-91.
40
Cf. Hewitt 1997; Oliver-Smith 2002, 25-26 (“multidimensionality of disaster”), 43-45;
Garçia-Acosta 2002, 60-62.
41
Weber 2005, 38.
42
Arendt 1970, 45; Krause and Rölli 2008, 7-18.
43
Delumeau 1989, 90-176; Schenk 2009a, 73-74.
44
Morandi 1964, 98-99; the earthquake is not registered by Guidoboni and Comastri 2005 and
would deserve a detailed investigation.
218

for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure. These types of reaction
to and the prevention of disasters were often oriented towards public welfare,
which, however, was defined in different ways and could become the subject of
dispute. Conflicts concerning what brings security to the community are particularly
illuminating for the question of competing agents, beneficiaries, winners
and losers and their argumentation and legitimisation strategies when
providing security. 45 In the following, a few examples of these kinds of conflicts
and of how they were handled administratively beyond the Republic of
Siena will be presented.
Case Studies: Florence and Strasbourg
The commune of Florence, which established itself as a republic in the 12th
century and constructed an extensive network of roads and bridges throughout
its contado in a phase of expansion in the 13th and 14th centuries, serves as the
first example. 46 During the years 1360-1370, the plain from San Salvi and
Ricorboli to the east of the gates of Florence faced the threat of floods due to
the meandering Arno. After a catastrophic flood that claimed hundreds of lives
in November 1333, the commune passed a strict ban on obstructing the course
of the river in this zone with weirs for mills, for example. 47 However, the security
of the city faced a different threat as a result, because no mills for the production
of flour would have been available in the case of a siege. 48 Soon the
commune allowed mills to be operated precisely in the aforementioned zone,
which increased the danger of floods due to backwater, but also generated jobs
and tax revenues. 49 In 1371, the republic decided by way of precaution to protect
the northern banks with a wall at the residents’ expense, because a vital
street to Bologna traversed this area. 50 No lasting success seems to have been
achieved, however, because in 1380/81 a commission of the responsible administrative
body, the Ufficio di Torre, inspected the locality and decided on extensive
building measures. 51 A short time later, one of the local mill operators was
sued for damages by a neighbour, because the backwater had damaged his
private property. In 1383, the defendant fought back with an expert’s report
based on Roman law about ownership rights and liability laws in connection
45
Schenk 2009b, 18
46
Cf. for general issues Luzzati 1986; La Roncière 2005, 27-100.
47
Cf. Schenk 2007, 367, 373-374; La Roncière 2005, 130-133.
48
Cf. on the communal mills Muendel 1991, 375; Papaccio 2008, 76-79.
49
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Provvisioni Reg. 55, fol. 135r+v (February 1368).
50
Cantini 1800, 118.
51
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di Parte guelfa, numeri rossi 105, fol. 33r; ibid.,
Provvisioni Reg. 70, fol. 65r+v; ibid., Provvisioni Dupl. 37, fol. 145v-157v. On the
complex history of the multifunctional Ufficio di Torre and its different elements and
names see Guidi 1981, 283-293; Casali 1995, 53-72; La Roncière 2005, 57-73.
219

with the private usage of public goods, which was compiled by the Florentine
lawyer Donato Ricchi de Aldighieri. The expert was a pupil of the famous
jurist Bartolo de Sassoferrato (1313/14-1357), in his time the author of the first
large medieval treatise about usage rights, property rights and liability law in
the context of meandering rivers. 52 The legal situation was complicated, because
the mill operator’s private usage led to damages for the commune, whose
costs were transferred to the general public by means of taxes. Nevertheless,
the expert acquitted the mill operator of indemnity claims. 53 However, the
flooding problem remained virulent and at intervals it caused severe, sometimes
catastrophic damage to the course of the Arno. During the course of the
next two centuries, institutions specialising in building infrastructure, such as
the above-mentioned Ufficio di Torre, among others, worked to combat the
consequences of flooding. Although the term “security” is not explicitly used in
the sources here, we can talk about a kind of “security policy” in the Florentine
republic. Just as Lorenzetti’s allegory of securitas implicitly addresses the
responsibility of the Buon Governo of the Nove for the infrastructure in Siena,
the responsibility of the republic of Florence for the bonum commune in the
city and Contado becomes perceptible.
After the Medici came to power in 1530, taxes were regularly levied on
draught cattle in order to finance the costs of building infrastructure. 54 This was
justified with reference to the economic benefits of using streets and bridges for
trade, and the duty of the Medici government to the felice stato. 55 Stato is not to
be understood as the modern state; the term has an overtone here that can perhaps
be expressed in English as “state” in the sense of “situation, circumstances”,
or as “public welfare” – the rulers were under obligation to create a
state of contentment within the community. This wording should not hide the
fact that the cattle tax primarily affected not the traders in the city, but the
regional farmers. However, land owners also benefitted from repair and adjustment
measures. After a flood in September 1557, for example, the property
belonging to the heir of Ottaviano de’ Medici on the river Marina, just before it
joins the Bisenzio, was damaged. The commune of Florence examined and
52 Significant edition: Cavallar 2004.
53 Edition of the expert opinion in Cantini 1800, 119-122.
54 Cf. for general issues Mannori 2005, 59-90; on the history of administration of infrastructures
under the Medici cf. Spini 1976; Pratilli 1998; Vivoli 1998.
55 Cf. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di parte guelfa, numeri rossi 105, fol. 299v
(1533), fol. 311v (1545); ibid., Senato dei quarantotto, 14, fol. 56r (23 July 1549), Volendo
l’illustrissimo et eccellentissimo s(ign)or il s(ign)or Duca di Fiorenza per remedio
all’infiniti danni che fanno et farebbono e fiumi del suo amplissimo et felice stato se e’ non
vi si obviassi et advertendo che di tal suo desiderio e non se ne può vedere facilmente
l’effecto senza qualche buono et certo assegnamento di denari […]. The republic had
charged fees as well but in most cases limited in duration or location.
220

epaired the damages in this zone. 56 From the middle of the 13th century onwards,
the Republic of Florence, later the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, at first
reacted to the threat posed by floods to security, infrastructure and prosperity
with commissions that were formed ad hoc, then in the course of time, due to
the expansion of the territories and the growing complexity of the state system,
with specialised administrative units. 57 Despite certain tendencies towards
centralisation, the actions of the Florentine administration were mostly just
reactions. Private economic interests, political-military expansions, natural
hazards and security requirements drove this development. The interplay of
local requirements and the reaction from Florence had a formative effect on
administration and ‘state’. 58 In line with recent research, one can speak here of
“empowering interactions” between the sociopolitical “below” and “above”. 59
It was only in the period of the Medici that this trend towards a type of refeudalisation
was broken. 60
However, the provision of security could also take place on other levels,
which are discussed in more detail in historical research due to their (reputedly)
typical “Medieval” character. For example, from the middle of the 14th until
the 17th century, the commune of Florence was accustomed to ask for divine
help in the case of bad weather, earthquakes, epidemics, war, religious or political
unrest, or for intercession and mercy in view of these afflictions, by
carrying out processions in honour of and with a picture of the Madonna from
nearby Impruneta. 61 Moral wrongdoing was namely seen as a cause of threats
to security, even those posed by natural hazards. This was supported by a widespread
school of thought based on the theological concept of punishment,
which saw analogies with the biblical Flood in the sense of a “peccatogenic
cause study”: God was cautioning or punishing the sinful world by means of a
disaster. 62
Soon after a devastating earthquake turned thousands of houses into rubble
in the Mugello valley north of Florence in the night of 12th to 13th June 1542,
the senate forbade sodomy and blasphemy in unusually clear language, seem-
56
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Capitani di parte guelfa, numeri neri 960, no. 87 and the
drawing between nos. 248 and 249: Report by Dominico di Zanobi on damage to the property
of Filippo Arrighetti and Carlo Strozzi. It probably refers to the former property of Ottaviano
de’ Medici (1484-1546), father of the later Pope Leo XI (1605).
57
See comments above, notes 51 and 54 and Guarini 2000, passage 2.
58
Nicholas 1997, 156 even characterises the late medieval Italian city administration as
“overgoverned”.
59
On this concept see Blockmans et al. 2009.
60
Cf. Rombai 1994, 4.
61
Casotti 1714; Trexler 1972; Processions might be a kind of ritual to calm God’s anger.
62
Groh et al. 2003, 20, mentions “peccatogene(n) Ursachenforschung”.
221

ingly owing to this sign of God’s wrath. 63 The Florentine senate was under the
control of the Medici family, who originally came from the Mugello valley.
Even though Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici himself seems to have rejected an
interpretation of the occurrence along the lines of the theological concept of
punishment, as a letter reveals, nevertheless the government of Florence clearly
held itself responsible for the moral “state” (stato) of the community. 64 Thus,
processions, moral obligations and bans on luxury items could be understood as
contemporary security policies.
This was not only the case in Florence. When the earth moved in Strasbourg
in 1357, but without causing much damage, the Strasbourg City Council forbade
its citizens from wearing gold jewellery not befitting their social status. In
addition, the City Council specially decreed an annual procession of penitents,
which had the explicit purpose of pacifying God’s wrath and can therefore be
understood as a type of appeasement ritual. 65 This procession was to be repeated
yearly and was connected with a sacrifice in honour of Mary, the patron
saint of the city, and with alms given to the city’s poor. This so-called “Saint
Lucas procession” was in fact continued until the first third of the 16th century
as a type of admonitory memoria of the earthquake. The decree of alms additionally
represents a demonstration of Christian virtues such as caritas and
misericordia. 66 The aim of this was evidently to spell out the duty of the rich to
take care of the poor. As was the case with the ban on gold jewellery, the correct
social order, i.e. the relationship between the social upper and lower class
that prevailed despite all differences, is thereby choreographed. The objective
of the portrayal is thus the establishment of the order willed by God as a condition
for the security of the whole community.
Nevertheless, this provision of security by means of actions was by no
means socially inclusive, but rather the opposite. For one thing, it aimed only
symbolically, not materially, at a social balance. For another, it also allowed
communities to react to the actual or perceived threat to their security by
searching for scapegoats. In historical scholarship, this is discussed using the
example of the Jewish pogroms of 1348 as a reaction to the plague (Jews as
well-poisoners) and the witch-hunting as a reaction to the worsening of the
climate and the crop failures of the Little Ice Age. 67 Both examples are not
without their problems, however: The Jewish pogroms very often had other
63 Cf. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Senato dei Quarantotto 5, fol. 7v-9v, 33r+v; ibid., Senato
dei Quarantotto 14, fol. 56r; on the earthquake Bellandi and Rhodes 1987, 1 and the Catalogo
dei forti terremoti d’Itali, dated June 13, 1542.
64 Letter: Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato, Filza 4299, fol. 253r. On the
theology of punishment cf. Ildefonso 1785, 251-253 with regard to bad weather in 1511.
65 Cf. Schenk 2010, 516-517.
66 For the presence of the virtues in daily life cf. Nari 1991.
67 Cf. with differences in detail Graus 1988, 335-340, 377-389; Behringer 1999.
222

causes – for example, economic, political, or religious. 68 There are also arguments
against drawing parallels between the worsening climate and witch
hunts: The accusations of weather-related magic were frequently rooted in, for
example, familial, neighbourly or sociopolitical conflicts and only had serious
effects when a particularly zealous inquisitor was in the area. 69 Nevertheless,
there are connections between catastrophic weather events, the increase in the
number of accusations of weather-related magic and witch hunts. A causal
connection between strong precipitation, a landslide and the persecution of
Jews can even be attested to in at least one case (Ravensburg 1430). 70 This
form of social security provision by means of persecuting “guilty” fringe
groups thus had an extremely excluding character. With the cultural anthropologist
Mary Douglas, one can suspect that a common cultural model underlies
both the moral obligations and the search for scapegoats, namely a culturespecific
perception of purity that is threatened by sin in the form of deviant
behaviour or maladjusted groups. 71 It is still to be clarified to what extent this
search for culpability and culprits after a disaster is rooted more in cultural than
religious conditions and to what extent it is culture- and epoch-specific.
Caritas as a kind of elementary care for the members of a society who were
in need was more widespread in the Middle Ages than it appears at first glance.
Survival was part of human security, while the securing of this survival was a
duty of the government, even if all too often the means did not suffice for this
purpose. This was also the case in connection with disasters. In the summer of
1529, the Upper Rhine Plain was struck by a flood disaster. Hundreds, perhaps
even thousands of refugees made their way to Strasbourg and found acceptance.
The city brought them to a Barfüsserkloster and other religious establishments,
fed them, and let those fit for employment work on the city fortifications.
72 Contemporaries suspected that not only the weather, but also flaws in
the water engineering of the smaller rivers Ill, Bruche, Zembs and Brunnwasser
had caused the flood disaster. The Strasbourg bishop, Wilhelm (III) von
Hohnstein (1506-1541) formulated this very clearly, as a letter from 28th September
1529 reveals. 73 He was a member of a cooperative which since the start
of the 15th century had been dealing with improvements to watercourses as
68
Cf. the overview of previous research in Toch 2003, 59-67, 110-120.
69
Cf. especially with regard to Alsace Behringer and Jerouschek 2000, 9-97.
70
Cf. Wolff 2008, 486-487. I owe this evidence to Karel Hruza.
71
See Douglas 1992, 3-121.
72
Cf. Winckelmann 1922, 150; Jütte 2005, 231-233; Jörg 2008, 264, 340.
73
Strasbourg, Archives de ville, série VI 209 (33), No. 4: “Ersamen wÿsen lieben getruwen
und besondern gut frundt, wir stehend jnn dheinen zwÿfel, euch sÿge unverborgen unnd jnn
gutem wissen, wie die größe unnd uberfluß der wassern des Rheins, Ÿll, Zems unnd Brunwasser
disß vergangnen summer den gemeinen man, dern lantz ort von Colmar oben herab
bisß gein Straßburg ein mercklichen schweren unnd verderblichen schaden zugefügt hatt …
dwil wir dann vernemen, das sollichs die groß mercklich nodturfft erfordert, domit unuberbringlicher
verderblicher schad verhütet blibe”.
223

transport routes, the regulation of competing rights of use (fishing, mills, irrigation)
and preventive measures against floods: the so-called Illsassen. 74 The
earliest still existing contract between residents and persons holding rights in
the watercourses, with a duration of 10 years, dates from the year 1404. The
residents subsequently formed a cooperative and established an official river
regiment dealing with rights and duties, the construction of dams and canals,
bank reinforcement, inspections, penalty clauses, arbitration processes in the
case of conflicts, etc. As stated in an Ill regulation of 1459, the union took
place with the purpose of gemeines nutzes und notdurfft (common usage and
emergency aid). 75 In other words: The Ill cooperative, with public welfare and
the elimination of hardship as its objectives, represents a further type of institutionalised
security provision in the Late Middle Ages.
The complex development of the Ill cooperative can only be mentioned
briefly here. Besides the bishop and the Strasbourg cathedral chapter, the cities
of Strasbourg, Schlettstadt and Kolmar, Ebersmunster Abbey, the Rappoltstein
family, the Herrschaft Rathsamhausen and numerous small communes, among
others, were involved in the cooperative during its first phase. As early as the
15th century, damage prevention is mentioned as a task of the cooperative in
connection with river regulations; finally, in 1531, there are concrete discussions
about the “prevention of future ruinous damages”. 76 In the years of crisis
after 1530, the cooperative formed an einung (union) with detailed instructions
that were summarised in a wasserordnung (water regulations). In the long run,
this Ill cooperative was to become a political factor, but above all it played an
important part in resolving conflicts, and ultimately, at the start of the 17th
century, referred to its 29 members (incorrectly according to the law) as “Illstände”
in the emerging corporative state. The Ill cooperative only came to an
end with the French occupation of Alsace, whereby even the French intendant
referred to the old rules, which were still to be taken as an approved basis. 77 In
reality, the administration, which on the surface was highly centralised, seems
to have been structured in a subsidiary manner.
In contrast to the situation in Florence, a pragmatic culture of adjustment established
itself here amid converging and competing interests. The Illsassen,
organised in a cooperative, carried out their tasks for centuries with some suc-
74 Only basically known through Sittler 1952; and Eichenlaub 1990, 189-195. The author is
preparing a detailed study on the Ill cooperative.
75 Quotation: Strasbourg, Archives de ville, série VI 209 (1, 4); on ‘gemeiner Nutzen’ (common
usage) in the friction between authority and cooperative cf. Eberhard 1986.
76 Strasbourg, Archives de ville, série VI 209 (33), no. 11: The council of the bishop writes to
the councillor of Strasbourg on November 6, 1531 on the extension of tasks to the river:
“Zembs sampt anderen nebenflusßen mit besichtigen und nach jren guten gewißnen ordnen
sollen, wie sie am nutzlichstenn zu furkhemung verrer verderblicher schadenns achtenn
mogenn […]”.
77 Cf. Sittler 1952, 145-146; Eichenlaub 1990, 193.
224

cess. In this context, it is almost certainly possible to speak of a type of statebuilding
from below, which led to characteristic forms of regional politics with
a subsidiary character. This political-legal concept of regulating a river for
economic reasons is no exception, but is rather the rule in the Late Medieval
and Early Modern Southwest of the empire. 78 In the empire to the north of the
Alps, the cooperative organisation of public interests represented a substantial
line of tradition in dealing with common goods as well as the political organisation
of public welfare and the provision of security in town and country.
Here the term ‘security’ does not appear in the sources either, but can be interpreted
descriptively. The differences between Tuscany and the Upper Rhine
Valley with regard to the public organisation of security issues can be related to
the specific historical development of the communities south and north of the
Alps, but can also result from different legal traditions and last but not least,
socioeconomic conditions. The differences as well as their reasons would deserve
a detailed analysis.
Conclusion and Hypotheses
In Renaissance Europe, the provision of security represented a significant task
of many different political communities. This encompassed firstly the concern
for individual salvation, meaning that it searched for certitudo in faith. On a
pragmatic level though, the provision of security was also the concern for protecting
citizens from violence, war, injustice, hunger, price increases, disasters
such as epidemics; the concern for public welfare (salus publica, gemeiner
nutzen – the common good) 79 and thus ultimately also the concern for public
services, i.e. food and infrastructure. The leaders legitimised their actions by,
among other things, at least symbolically taking care of this security. The
unique and early allegory of securitas in Lorenzetti’s fresco stands at least for
this symbolic responsibility of a Buon Governo. Evidently only very modest
instruments were available for this purpose in comparison to the present day.
However, it needs to be stated that already prior to the beginning of the Early
Modern period and maybe starting from the Italian town republics in an unique
amalgam of ancient and medieval traditions a new, pragmatic concept of “security”
began to develop. Without being mentioned explicitly, it represented one
of several reasons for the development of specialised institutions which were
supposed to take care of e.g. infrastructure, buildings, protection from misery
78 Of importance are e.g. the “Runsgenossenschaften” and the “Schuttergenossen” east of the
river Rhine, with a “Schutter” court to resolve legal issues and quarrels. Cf. Mone 1852 for
the east of the Rhine; Gerlach 1990, 45, for the river Main 125-129.
79 Cf. Eberhard 1986.
225

and violence and the maintenance of law and order. 80 In the Late Middle Ages,
the provision of security itself displays an astonishing plurality of forms. It
took place at the most diverse levels, from the emerging gute policey and the
developing legal system to city statutes and sovereign regulations. Politically, it
tended to be organised from above, as was the case in Florence, but in certain
sectors there was also interaction between above and below, as the example of
the Ill cooperative shows. André Holenstein coined the term “empowering
interaction” for this and characterised the related effects as “statebuilding from
below”. 81 The question of who provided security in the encompassing sense
mentioned, and in what way, has a place at the centre of political debate.
In 1981, the economic historian Eric Lionel Jones identified the specific
connection between environment, the capitalist economic system and political
structure as a significant basis for the “European miracle”. He especially makes
a strong case for the argument that in Europe a particular ability to combat
disasters in the form of politically, economically and technologically organised
protection of society from the environment was developed as early as the European
Middle Ages. 82 Although this appears questionable in its exclusivity –
societies outside of Europe also knew how to protect themselves from disasters
– nevertheless, the combination of political legitimisation with institutionalised
provision of security as an interrelated strategy of rulers and the ruled could be
unique to Europe.
References
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Cantini, Lorenzo, ed. Legislazione Toscana raccolta e illustrate vol. 2. Florence:
Pietro Fantosini, 1800.
Casotti, Giovan Battista. Memorie istoriche della miracolosa imagine di Maria
Vergine dell’Impruneta, Florence, 1714
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233

Storage and Starvation: Public Granaries as Agents of
Food Security in Early Modern Europe
Dominik Collet �
Abstract: »Horten und Hungern: Öffentliche Getreidespeicher als Agenten
frühneuzeitlicher Food Security«. The development of the ‘food security’ concept
in the 1990s marked a significant change away from state-centred strategies
that focused on food availability, towards policies aimed at food access
and strengthening individual ‘entitlements’ (A. Sen) to food. This essay applies
the food security approach to early modern food regimes, drawing on the example
of the state-granary system in 18th century Prussia to investigate their
agents, zones of conflict, and limits. The evident failure of technology-centred
approaches raises questions about established periodisations, and modernisation
narratives on the ‘great escape’ from hunger. The granary as a ‘technology
of risk’ illustrates the social construction of ‘security’ through the labelling of
security providers and security takers as well as the performance of exclusion
and inclusion.
Keywords: Food security, famine, granary, Prussia, Frederick II of Prussia,
food regime, security regime, entitlements, exclusion.
Food security is a relatively recent addition to the political concerns governing
development, nutrition and human rights. The concept rose to prominence
alongside ‘human security’ during several UN-sponsored conferences in the
late 1990s. It marked a decisive shift away from earlier strategies that had
focused not on food security, but on food availability. These earlier approaches
considered food access only in terms of physical accessibility, resulting in
programs to raise global food production and to ensure rapid deployment of
stored grain during emergencies. By the 1990s, however, it had become depressingly
obvious that the physical availability of foodstuffs alone did very
little to prevent malnutrition and starvation. Even though per-capita production
of food has grown, hunger has not gone away. 1
� Address all communications to: Dominik Collet, Graduiertenkolleg Interdisziplinäre Umweltgeschichte,
Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte, Universität Göttingen, Platz
der Göttinger Sieben 5, 37073 Göttingen, Germany;
e-mail: dominik.collet@phil.uni-goettingen.de.
1 Hall 1998. The development of the ‘food security’ concept is closely related to that of
‘human security’, sharing its shift away from state-focused approaches to a wider scope of
providers or ‘agents’ of security, analysing multi-polar ‘governance’ instead of state ‘policy’.
Translated into political action, it has also been accused of sharing the latter’s neocolonial
undertones, facilitating the de-legitimisation and circumvention of non-Western
governments.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 234-252

Accordingly new approaches began to focus less on physical and more on
economic and social access to food. These policies highlighted poverty, inequality
and the shifting ‘entitlements’ (A. Sen) to foodstuffs. They would look
at individual rather than household provisions, reconsidering the skewed distribution
of food according to gender and age. They would identify cultural barriers
to certain foods and distributive practices, and analyse the wide range of
environmental challenges to food access. In short: the concept of food security
shifted the focus away from technological towards political, socio-economic
and cultural factors. 2
Significantly for the historical sciences, this shift challenges established demarcation
lines between contemporary and pre-modern societies. Railroads, for
example – once cherished as the ultimate weapon against famine – are no
longer regarded as crucial prerequisites to food security. In fact they have frequently
been shown to exert a negative impact, facilitating outward as well as
inward flows of food during shortages. 3
In most historical narratives, however, it is still improved storage and transportation,
silos and railways which delineate the advent of supposedly ‘modern’
and ‘secure’ food regimes. Historians have by and large ignored the challenge
of development economics and held on to established modernisation
narratives. Accordingly, they have focused predominantly on technological
developments that supposedly mark a clear break, ‘the great escape’ to use
David Arnold’s term, from the pre-modern cycle of perpetual subsistence crisis:
demographic growth, climatic disaster, famine, and population decline. 4
This essay will test the reach of the ‘food security’ concept on one prominent
example of early modern society’s food regimes that figured strongly in
historical debates as well as in later narratives: the public granary. I will briefly
sketch its genesis, focusing especially on late 18th century Prussia, where they
were widely regarded as a cure-all to food insecurity. In a second part I will
discuss some of the conflicts that surrounded these structures and try to explain
their ultimate failure to provide secure food access by looking at their socioeconomic
and cultural role in early modern societies. Finally, I will use these
observations to speculate on the more general issues of security and risk as well
as their periodisation.
The Ecology of the Granary
For most of the developed world, hunger resides in the past. In 2006 a study
claimed that the 800 million clinically obese people now slightly surpass the
2 Hall 1998, Chapter 3: The History of Food Security.
3 Davis 2002, 26-27, 332.
4 Arnold 1988, 68-72.
235

numbers of malnourished humans living on our planet. 5 This ‘balanced’ picture,
however, cannot mask the fact that food deficiency has never left us,
neither in the so-called developing world, nor in the industrialised nations. In
fact, one of the reasons politicians in the West have embraced the ‘food security’
concept is the possibility of re-labelling the increasing number of poor
people in Western, industrialised countries as ‘food insecure’, thereby avoiding
the politically far more damaging term: hungry.
Even though the ‘right to food’ has only recently been incorporated into
many national laws, the protection from want has always been a policy cornerstone.
Indeed it lies at the very heart of why humans form a society. To secure
access to food for his people is the prime responsibility of any ruler and a
foundation of legitimate government. Some of the oldest written documents
describe grain supply as a crucial statecraft. Chinese texts from the 5th century
BC reckon that provisions for 9 years are advisable while 3 years are necessary
for any government to survive and that only “when the granaries are full [the
people] will know propriety and moderation.” Similar provisions abound in
Roman scripture and the Bible. 6
Public granaries can be found in most complex societies. The growth of
towns constituted one of the driving factors for ever larger granaries. The ruins
of ancient Rome’s public storehouses or the massive Chinese ‘ever-normal’
granaries continue to amaze people today. 7 Europe’s earliest surviving buildings
date from the heyday of medieval cities. Later public granaries followed
the increasing division of labour to the sites of mines, manufactories and military
garrisons that often lay too far away from farming resources to support
their residents. In the 17th and 18th centuries, granaries rapidly expanded
alongside the early modern state and its growing populations.
Early modern granaries occupied increasingly massive structures (Illustration
1). They were designed to support heavy weights and to protect the grain
from fire, moisture and rodents, storing it in waist-high boxes, often on multiple
low storeys with a raised ground floor and double walls to keep out humidity.
8 Their solid appearance also reflected positively on their communal or
noble patrons, visualising their respective commitment to the support of subjects
or citizens, very much helped by the fact that granaries had to be placed in
easy reach of large populations and were often situated right in the city centre
(Illustration 2). A prominently positioned granary also marked and illustrated
security claims in opposition to other providers of relief such as the church or
5
BBC, “Overweight ‘top world’s hungry’” 2006.
6
Cf. Will and Wong 1991, 2, 15, who also consider the establishment of a comprehensive
public granaries system in early modern China as a consequence of the Quing conquerors’
increased need for legitimisation.
7
Cf. Rickman 1988.
8
On the structural design and the turning and preservation techniques of early modern granaries,
cf. Dinglinger 1768.
236

private charity. Granaries only lost their prominence when improved transportation
made it possible to store grain close to the producer and free precious
city space during the 19th century. Even in today’s distributed markets, however,
the German government still keeps a strategic ‘Bundesreserve’ (federal
reserve) of grain, stored in secret locations according to the ‘Ernährungssicherstellungsgesetz’
(food securitisation law) which last provided uncontaminated
food supplies during the Chernobyl fallout of 1986. 9
Illustration 1: Vertical Section of an Ideal Granary (1768)
Dinglinger 1768, Table 1 (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen).
This brief sketch of the granary’s genesis already hints at some zones of
conflict. Many depots originated not from the need to provide secure food, but
to store tribute grain – grain constituting not just a food resource but a form of
currency in pre-monetary societies. 10 The appearance of granaries in towns,
mining villages and the sites of factories illustrates the momentous inequalities
in supply between producers and consumers. Similarly, the construction of
storage for military purposes foreshadows conflicts of access and precedence,
relief and war. Finally many granaries, such as the Roman storehouses, started
as private enterprises and became ‘public’, that is controlled by the authorities,
only through coercion or forceful appropriation – a process that indicates di-
9 These reserves cover only a few weeks demand and would thus have met with strong
disapproval from ancient China’s statesmen. Cf. Horn 2005.
10 Cf. Karl Polanyi’s concept of the storage economy and ‘Staple Finance vs. Market Finance’
in his pioneering work on the cultural anthropology of economics: Polanyi et al. 1957, esp.
243-270.
237

verging interest between private trade, governments and consumers. 11 Granaries
occupied a strongly contested field, divided between the state and private
actors, military and humanitarian interests as well as fiscal and charitable policies.
Illustration 2: Mauthalle, Nuremberg,
Built by Hans Behaim the Elder as a Public Granary in 1498-1502.
Photography: Andreas Praefcke.
The Prussian ‘Granary State’
All these ruptures are visible in what is possibly the most daring and most
highly publicised European endeavour at a comprehensive storage system: the
Prussian state granaries of the 18th century. Contrary to what a host of accompanying
tracts claimed, their origins lie not in the people’s welfare or economic
policy. Instead they owe their existence to the effects of the ‘military revolution’.
The need to support a large, well-disciplined and increasingly mobile
army without damage to the growing fiscal state required an extended provisioning
system. 12 However, the enormous costs of their upkeep in peacetime
quickly generated ideas about additional uses.
11 Rickman 1988, 164-173.
12 Cf. Atorf 1999, 66-67.
238

Grain deficits were common in Prussia as in most of Europe. The effects of
the Little Ice Age and rapid demographic growth resulted in large parts of the
population going hungry or living close to subsistence level. Three major harvest
failures in 1709, 1740 and 1771 as well as the aftermath of the Seven
Years’ War led to all-out famines, with population losses of up to 10%. But
even in normal years, grain prices fluctuated and rose steadily the longer the
harvest had passed, indicating that few people could afford to stockpile provisions
in autumn. 13
Eminent cameralists such as Justi, Bergius or Sonnenfels argued that the finances
tied up in state granaries could be put to use by employing them as
price-balancing mechanisms. By releasing grain when the price was high, and
buying when the price was low, they could support grain producers and city
consumers in turn through a ‘just price’. 14 Others petitioned for the granaries to
artificially inflate prices, thereby supporting grain producers and preventing
servants and labourers from becoming “willfull and unruly” in times of abundance.
15 Many more lobbied for low prices in order to stimulate trade and industry
and assist city artisans or even the poor. 16 Some scholars pointed to the
success of contemporary fire insurance and argued for an extension of granary
schemes to cover the whole population, thereby exterminating the hated grain
traders often denounced as ‘Corn-Jews’. 17
The 1709 famine spurred some of these plans into action in Prussia, but
when another harvest failed in 1721 most of these new granaries were found
empty. 18 Prussia’s granary schemes finally gathered momentum when Frederick
II became king in 1740 during yet another catastrophically failed harvest.
He immediately realised the granaries political potential and dramatically
opened Berlin’s magazines to coincide with his accession ceremonies (Illustration
3). A fresh spell of new granaries followed, leaving Prussia with 32 major
state magazines at the beginning of war in 1756.
While they served the Prussian war effort well during the extended campaigns
of the Seven Years’ War, they also helped to combat the sharp price
hikes that followed the military clashes. 19
13
Von Münchhausen 1772, 118 and Abel 1972, 34-37.
14
Cf. Bergius 1777 and Justi 1771, 4, 22 and 96; Sonnenfels 1777, 376-381.
15
D. V., “Untersuchung“ 1752, 136.
16
Justi 1771, 75-78, 102.
17
D. V., “Untersuchung” 1752, 136 and Wehrs 1791, 142.
18 Atorf 1999, 124.
19 Atorf 1999, 182, 214.
239

Illustration 3: Johann David Schleuen, Berlin’s Grain Magazines are Opened
During the Famine of 1740 on Occasion of the Oath of Allegiance to
Frederick II
In: Schultz 1988, 44.
Their biggest challenge, though, was still to come. In 1770 a sharp winter
with snow that lasted until June followed by catastrophic rainfall destroyed
crops all over central Europe. 20 What ensued has been branded by Borussophile
historiography as an “immensely successful fight against famine”, “an example
of superior social policy” 21 that transformed Prussia into “an island of security”
22 , thereby following the assessment of Frederick II in his famous ‘political
testament’:
20
A comprehensive study of this momentous disaster is still lacking. An overview can be
found in: Abel 1972, 191-266.
21
Atorf 1999, 385 closely following the assessment of Naudé 1905, 178.
22 Hinrich 1933.
240

In the year 1770 frost destroyed all crops. Fresh suffering threatened the people
[....]. The King, however, had great granaries in Silesia and other places.
These wise measures protected his people from famine [...]. The agony experienced
by the subjects of other states was due to the fact that no country
save Prussia had [sufficient] grain magazines. Only here was one prepared for
emergency and could resolve it by policies dictated by reason. 23
Historical sources covering grain and food supply abound, as their supervision
resided at the core of early modern government. In the case of Prussia,
however, a critical rereading of the sources is complicated by substantial
losses, the limited governmental perspective of surviving documents and the
political spin the administration deliberately introduced to embellish their own
efforts. 24 This tendency is further aggravated by the fact that for the ordinary
consumer the bakery, not the storehouse, constituted the point of contact with
governmental food regimes.
However, even the few surviving records show that at the start of 1770 the
granaries lay half-empty. King Frederick’s repeated appeals to his administrators
to buy grain during the bumper crop of the previous year had been futile.
Most of them were military men who saw few merits in this laborious task
during peacetime. 25 They were supported by local landowners eager to avoid
the strenuous transport to outlying depots. Cunning merchants even managed to
convince the authorities to support the export of grain, as the recent war had
supposedly shrunk the population and “led to a higher percentage of children
who need less food”. 26 As the state benefited from export taxes and was itself
one of the largest producers of grain, permission was granted promptly. Accordingly,
all through 1770 Prussia continued to export large quantities of
grain. When the central administration finally realised the extent of the shortfall
and closed all borders, the Frisian territories had already managed to sell the
largest share of their reserves at good profit to the prosperous Dutch states
rather than the state granaries. 27 The King was soon petitioned for magazine
23 Volz and Oppeln-Bronikowski 1913, 63-64.
24 As large parts of the Preussische Kriegsmagazinsverwaltungsakten have been lost, most
modern studies had to fall back on Skalweit’s edition of documents, often, however, without
reflecting on their tendentious and highly selective nature. A prominent example is
Atorf’s dissertation (Atorf 1999) that credulously echoes Skalweit’s benign assessments.
For a rare critical assessment of Frederick II poor policies see: Kluge 1987.
25 Cf. Cabinet Orders, Berlin Dec-Jan 1769/79, in: Skalweit 1931, 258-259.
26 Nor did the report from Silesia fail to mention potatoes and meliorations, two favourite
projects of the Prussian sovereign: Skalweit 1931, 267.
27 Correspondence of the General Directory with the Chamber of East Frisia, in: Skalweit
1931, 268-287. The reports illustrate the scope for strategic disinformation by local parties
with trading interests. Harvest predictions only changed from “quite good” to a catastrophic
“loss of 50%” when challenged by the centre. Similarly, Magdeburg’s petitions to continue
free trade in order to acquire grain from abroad were soon suspected of being pretexts for
internal grain speculation. Accordingly, the administration had to resort to sending out in-
241

supplies from all regions. Quite unusual for his time, Frederick II dealt with
many of these supplications personally. His focus, however, was centred firmly
on provisioning the army and the capital city. Rural petitioners were addressed
in Frederick’s usual candid style: “I have nothing to give, go and buy on the
market” or “What an evil letter! They are a restless and riotous people”, or
“They must be mad, in Saxony grain stands at twice the price” or “The village
is right on the border, they must have sold their grain to the Saxons, and now
they dare expect it back from our magazine!” 28
When the harvest catastrophically failed for a second and even a third time
in 1771 and 1772, complaints reached the King of his famished subjects being
reduced to eating unhealthy food substitutes for sustenance. Storage grain was
accordingly provided for soldiers and their families, who constituted a large
part of the population in Prussia. 29 Supplies, however, largely failed to reach
the poor, who were expected to pay ‘normal’ grain prices at a time when they
had spent their assets, often including all their possessions and even their
clothes. 30 At the same time, many soldiers and well-to-do citizens were able to
resell magazine grain to rich city consumers at substantial premiums. 31 As the
magazines emptied rapidly, the administration stepped up campaigns against
scapegoats: “Corn-Jews” who supposedly hoarded grain, distillers, rich foreigners
or the “lazy”, “idle” or “incompetent” tradesmen who failed to provide
relief. 32
In this situation the king chose to move his troops deep into neighbouring
Poland under the pretext of erecting a safety cordon against epidemics raging
there. This strategy proved successful in two ways. It provided forage for the
large number of soldiers involved and yielded, through force, intimidation and
requisitioning, fresh grain supplies for the King’s granaries. The move efficiently
turned the granaries from storehouses into clearing-houses of Polish
grain. 33 While it exported the famine eastwards, it allowed the King to uphold
spection teams of their own recruited from the military: Skalweit 1931, 269, 278-279 and
Cabinet Orders to the Ministers Hagen and Derschau, Sep. 26th, 1770, Skalweit 1931, 271.
28
Skalweit 1931, 275, 307-308.
29
Skalweit 1931, 109.
30
While the intention to provide for the poor (“die Armuth”) was occasionally mentioned,
specifications for handouts listed soldiers and their families only. See Skalweit 1931, 273.
The administration certainly hoped that provisioning the military – often more than 30% of
Prussia’s urban consumers – would reduce market pressure with benefits to other consumers.
The inflexible demand for grain, however, resulted in sharp price hikes even during
smaller shortfalls, quickly pricing the poor out of the market.
31
Skalweit 1931, 312.
32
Skalweit 1931, 281, 285-286, 291, 309 and Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
I. HA, Rep. 96B, Nr. 72 (1771), 441 and (1772), 395.
33
Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, I. HA, Rep. 96B, Nr. 72 (1771), 146, 163,
261, 308, 324, 333, 342 and (1772), 61, 140-141. The famine eventually proved consequential
for the ensuing First Partition of a weakened Poland in 1772. Frederick II’s eager enquiries
about the magazine supplies of his rivals illuminate the extent to which he regarded
242

the well-publicised fiction of granaries as sources of food security, even though
they served only a selected few, had been plagued by neglect, and encouraged
complacency, profiteering and misappropriation.
Illustration 4: The Great Granary in Berlin-Kreuzberg (1801-1805)
Engraving by T. Barber. Landesarchiv Berlin / Photography Marburg.
At the height of the crisis the price of grain almost tripled, a disaster for a
population that regularly spent two-thirds of their income on food. It resulted in
a serious rise in deaths from starvation, exhaustion and disease as well as a
significantly reduced rate of marriages and offspring. Indeed, fear and desperation
had become so widespread that even two average harvests in 1773 and
1774 failed to improve the situation. Many countrymen anxiously held onto
their food, leading to a renewed wave of accusations against suspected “Jewish
mischief”. 34
granaries as part of warfare rather than provisioning: Volz 1913, 354, 400, 472, 584, 673.
At a ministerial request for rural aid he replied: “My war magazines are not built with the
intention to supply subjects with bread, fodder and seed [...] To feed the country as well [as
well as my soldiers, D.C.] is simply impossible.” Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
I. HA, Rep. 96B, Nr. 72 (1771), 37.
34 Skalweit 1931, 309, 651-653 and the reports about famine victims and population decline in
Prussia in: Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, II. HA, Tit. CCLXV, Nr. 6,
Vol. 1, 108-109 and I. HA, Rep. 96 B, Nr. 72 (1772) 15. Based on notoriously unreliable
243

The Prussian experience, however, was far from unique. In a second step I
will therefore try to map four areas of conflict for granary-based food regimes:
I. The Politics of Inequality
As in the case of Prussia, granaries were often imagined and publicised as tools
of redistribution. What they illustrate, in fact, is the high levels of inequality,
the distorted distribution of risk, security and entitlements in a stratified society.
Food shortages pitted rich against poor, the military against civilians, producers
against consumers. They put country folk against town people, smaller
cities against larger cities, and larger cities against capitals. 35 Elsewhere, the
local communities on Lake Constance and the Rhine struggled hard against the
superior purchasing power of the Swiss and Dutch communes draining their
food stocks. Similarly, the Leipzig authorities justly feared that the advent of
the spring fair in 1771 with its influx of affluent traders would result in a famine
amongst the town’s poorer inhabitants. 36
When the Prussian administration tried to fill their storehouses, they too became
subject to competition along those divisions. Even in famine times, Berlin’s
distillers turned grain into spirits to cater to the wealthy. Prussian regions
such as Silesia, Pomerania or Minden boycotted the centre’s ‘national’ agenda
and stopped the delivery of granary grain, while rich neighbours and private
traders continued to buy up supplies at prices the Prussian agents could no
longer afford to pay. 37
More often, however, the state reinforced and strengthened asymmetrical
power relations: it prioritised the gentry, people close to the king, such as the
Oder colonists, and above all the military (“Meine Truppen müssen leben”
[“my troops must live”]). At the same time the rural population and the urban
poor remained excluded from direct support. 38 Civil granary distributions in
Prussia, as well as elsewhere, remained firmly focused on the capital. 39 When
deciding on granary interventions in the periphery, the King and his administration
dealt not with individuals but with communal representatives. Accordingly,
granary handouts never discriminated between the needs of well-off
artisans and working poor, large landlords or smallholders, thereby supporting
demographical material Prussia’s population losses in 1770-1772 have been estimated at
7%. Kluge 1987, 77.
35
Examples of such conflicts persist even in the carefully selected edition of Skalweit 1931.
See 286, 291, 322.
36
Cf. Schmidt 1994, 252-272; Skalweit 1931, 284.
37
Skalweit 1931, 285, 289-290, 310, 329.
38
Skalweit 1931, 81, 294-296, 302, 312.
39
Skalweit 1931, 271; Atorf 1999, 132. For non-Prussian examples see Will and Wong 1991,
511; Kaplan 1984 or Revel 1975.
244

and even deepening social divisions. 40 Means-tested distribution schemes, as
advocated by Enlightenment thinkers such as Justi or Georg Friedrich Wehrs,
failed to materialise as did the contemporary obsession with a disinterested
state, levelling the playing field or a “just” or even a “natural” price suitable for
producers, consumers, rich and poor alike. 41 Instead, magazine schemes enacted
regimes of exclusion that mirrored rather than mellowed the inequalities
of a stratified society.
II. The Government of Fear
It is little wonder that under these circumstances, panic and fear of inadequate
individual food supplies could be triggered easily. Unlike other natural disasters,
crop failures develop slowly, allowing plenty of room for speculation and
rumours. Extended spells of unfavourable weather quickly fostered panic buying
and hoarding. As a result, it was often the fear of shortages, not shortages
themselves that led to rising prices and famine. 42
Granaries performed poorly as instruments of price balancing or as backbones
of food supply. What granaries did, however, was to act as confidence
measures. They constituted “the best security against danger” and panic. 43
Examples can be found as far back as Roman Antiquity. Emperor Augustus
was known to have warded off imminent panic by publicly destroying granary
grain, supposedly in order to make room for the imminent arrival of fresh
stock. His celebrated ploy allegedly ended grain hoarding and opened up the
cities’ frozen grain markets. 44 A similar confidence trick is reported in the
1770s from Neuwied, when the strong rains “had led the common man to be
afraid and fear a famine”. People reacted immediately by reporting inflated
figures of their demand and lowered ones about their supplies to the local
Duke. The Duke, however reacted by “making it known in his city to the sound
of drums, that fresh supplies were under way, and that until they arrived every
man was free to take whatever he needed from the public granary” – an offer
that supposedly restored public confidence to such an extent that only a handful
40
Differences in the market share play an important role in a famine economy. Accordingly,
in 1771 price hikes meant that large estates actually managed to increase their profits even
though the production total had fallen. At the same time flocks of small-scale farmers were
forced to ‘sell’ future harvests at cut prices to their well-off neighbours in order to feed their
families, thereby perpetuating their disadvantages. The King, however, regarded the
‘Landmänner’ as a homogeneous group. Skalweit 1931, 302 (memorandum of the Mindener
Kammer, 26.6.1772) and 307 on the refusal to deal with individuals.
41
Cf. Wehrs 1791, 144; Bergius 1771, 22 and Justi 1771, 83, 104-105.
42
Münchhausen 1772, 21, 41 and 167. See also Rau 1862, 291, 295; Justi 1771, 111 and more
generally: Ferrières 2002.
43
Münchhausen 1772, 170.
44
Garnsey 1988, 223-224.
245

ever took up his offer. As the Duke’s publicist remarked proudly: “We have
created grain, without producing it.” 45
Of course, the use of the granary for political spin could turn in other directions
as well. Emperor Augustus was also known to create artificial famines,
only to relieve them by opening up his granaries in order to stage himself as a
saviour of the Roman people. 46 Similarly, many 18th-century scholars voiced
their concerns about the high public profile of granaries as an encouragement to
abuses. They warned that their prominent position in public policy could lead
people to carelessly sell on their own provisions, expecting them to be replenished
and alimented out of public stores. Large parts of the population also
bought into official rhetoric that opposed good granaries to evil trade, eagerly
supporting calls for the denunciation of supposed ‘Corn-Jews’. 47
Granaries therefore amount to much more than physical sources of food.
They constituted the nodes of a ‘security regime’ that governed food consumption
not just in materialistic terms, but through public discourse, scientific
rationalities, emotions and disciplinary measures.
III. The Moral Economy of Hunger
While these discourses undoubtedly helped to shape the perception of food
security and risk, they did not go unchallenged. The sources list numerous
forms of deviance, appropriation and resistance, famously described in E. P.
Thompson’s seminal study on the ‘Moral Economy’. 48 Granaries suffered from
persistent thefts and misappropriations by their labourers. People used fake
identities and documents to apply for higher rations. Inflated or twisted supplications
to the granaries were common and, as the Prussian records show, often
successful. Many town dwellers managed to turn granaries into a source of
regular supplements rather than emergency relief. 49
While such collaborative actions mark the fringes of food regimes, critics
have also pointed to the fact that they served a small number of well-organised
people who were able to enter into a process of negotiation. 50 Indeed, for many
of the disenfranchised poor, alternative sources of relief remained crucial. The
churches, fraternities, guilds, neighbourhoods and extended families continued
to be the key provider of aid and charity. Additional strategies focused on a
rich tradition of substitute foods, sub-market economies, temporary migration
45 Anonymous 1787, 485-486, 496.
46 Garnsey 1988, 220.
47 Cf. Gailus 2001.
48 Thompson 1971.
49 Wehrs 1791, 138.
50 Stevenson 1987, 218-238.
246

or even drug abuse – practices that have led Piero Camporesi to speak of a
“culture of hunger” that effectively subverted official food regimes. 51
IV. The logic of corruption
In addition to the play of security discourses and the practices of resilience,
granaries faced significant structural problems. Management issues posed
serious challenges: While the public held the sovereign accountable for providing
secure food access, the day-to-day administration of the granaries was
organised by local authorities, who were well aware of this distinction. 52 Even a
mid-sized granary such as the one in Rohrschach had a staff of 98 people: a
director, cashiers, clerks, sworn surveyors, carriers and drivers, many with
work that left them ample room for personal gain. 53 The competing and often
ambivalent targets of granaries – balancing prices, providing relief, securing
military operations – gave administrators further leeway to pursue their own
interests. Granaries were simultaneously expected to keep grain prices high to
support farming and to keep them low to support city labourers. They were
charged with regulating market prices, without, however, damaging the grain
trade that swelled the state’s tax coffers. They were asked to keep stocks for
times of dearth, while being expected to sell their stocks to pay for their own
upkeep. 54 Such inconsistencies opened granaries up to corruption and favouritism.
Accordingly, complaints about skewed measurements, biased price fixings,
bribery, and sleaze abound. 55
The scale of corruption resulted not least from the enormous sums involved.
While grain might not have carried the same stigma as money, it was certainly
worth as much. Prussia spent huge sums of its tax income on granaries. However,
the total value of food consumed by its population vastly exceeded the
early modern state’s financial capabilities. China – a veritable ‘granary state’ –
devoted 25% of its total tax revenue to pay for granaries, an enormous amount
that nevertheless bought less than 3% of annual consumption. 56 Under such
circumstances comprehensive control of food markets remained out of the
reach of the early modern fiscal state. The considerable sums involved, however,
served to attract fraud and misappropriation.
51
Camporesi 1989.
52
Cf. Shiue’s discussion of Chinese granary (mis-)management which raises more general
points on storage administration, asymmetrical information flows and competing targets:
Shiue 2004. For the ‘loyal non-cooperation’ strategy of local elites, see: Skalweit 1931,
284.
53
Rau 1862, 288.
54
For examples of conflicting and often mutually exclusive targets, see Wagemann 1802,
266, 270 and Schreber 1772.
55
Cf. Wagemann 1802, 272; Bergius 1771, 28-30; Wehrs 1791, 143; Skalweit 1931, 68.
56
Shiue 2004, 105.
247

Furthermore, the state’s actions generated a string of unintended consequences.
Paradoxically, more security measures can encourage more risky
behaviour. 57 The protection offered by public granaries was prone to result in
the reduction of private stocks, the delay of agricultural investment and the
discouragement of trade, effectively increasing rather than decreasing the need
for public grain supplements. Liberal donations of subsidised granary grain
only tended to be bought up by affluent traders and resold elsewhere at higher
market prices. Carefully controlled handouts, however, cut into the margins of
local merchants, thereby damaging rather than supplementing essential markets,
resulting in even greater shortfalls. Granaries could even create artificial
famines by deterring the import of grain with their submarket price fixings or
by driving up prices through purchases in a volatile market with an inflexible
demand. As Reimarus briskly put it in 1770: Granaries “never produced security,
disturb the trade, and do more harm than good.” 58
Considering the potential for political conflict, the likelihood of corruption,
the consistent spending necessary for their upkeep and their detrimental sideeffects,
the granaries’ limited impact is hardly surprising. In fact, there are
numerous reports of granaries that had been initiated at the height of famine but
at the onset of the next crisis were found to have been abandoned or even “disappeared”.
59 While public granaries undoubtedly benefited prioritised parts of
the population and played an important declamatory role in the symbolical
construction of security and good government, they failed as agents of food
security in the modern sense.
Food Security?
There are obvious flaws in the technology-centred narrative of ‘the great escape’
from hunger. Food availability does not secure food access. Even in early
modern Europe, starvation is regularly the result of “people not having enough
food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat” –
to quote Amartya Sen again. 60 Participation, inclusion and ‘entitlements’ to
food are what the malnourished were missing, not food per se. The examples
discussed here strongly suggest that the eventual reduction in famines was due
less to agrarian ‘revolutions’, improved and bigger storage, railways or market
57 Cube 1990.
58 Reimarus 1772, 1070. For examples of granaries deterring trade and creating even greater
shortfalls, see Skalweit 1931, 293, 305. For Justi’s verdict that granaries constituted “Säugammen
der Faulheit”, fostering idleness, see: Justi 1771, 75 and Jacobi 1773, 1517.
59 Rau 1862, 293; Atorf 1999, 80, 124; Monahan 1993, 35. Rome, with its long-lived ‘Annona’
system of price control and public storage, was certainly exceptional in its scope
though less in its ineffectiveness. See Reinhardt 1991.
60 Sen 1981, 1.
248

integration, than rather to changes in participation and strengthened entitlements
to food – a result that raises questions about the traditional periodisation
focusing on food availability and technological change.
It has become obvious, in fact, that public granaries are more than just a
storage technique. They occupy a central position in a security regime that
aimed at governing public discourse, emotions and discipline. In a marked
departure from earlier approaches, the security it was hoped to foster was conceptualised
as universal. 61 Its advocates saw the granary as a crucial technology
of risk that helped societies “sich wegen der Zukunft in Sicherheit zu setzen”
(secure themselves for the future). As a concept, this is strikingly reminiscent
of Anthony Giddens’ ‘colonising the future’ – not least because putting it into
practice was fraught with uncertainty, exclusion, and the creation of new
risks. 62
Embracing the ‘food security’ approach can therefore prove instrumental in
identifying hidden zones of conflict, reassessing state-focused approaches,
encouraging a critical rereading of partial source material and discovering
additional agents of security that are easily masked by modernisation narratives.
However, it has also become evident that the ‘food security’ concept employs
‘security’ in the far too limited sense of ‘safety from harm owing to protection
from or the absence of danger’. While an institution such as the granary
might have failed to provide safety from hunger, it was certainly instrumental
in encouraging a feeling of security that – far from being a mere “security
theatre” (B. Schneier) – could itself become an effective deterrent.
‘Security’ in this sense is a social construction that could manifest itself in
public discourse and practices as well as in buildings. The creation of a granary
constituted a symbolic act that visualised political claims and secured food
policy against competing institutions. It constituted a policy by marking its
patrons as security conveyors and its customers as security takers, while simultaneously
illustrating social distinction via the constant performance of inclusion
or exclusion. Even though it did not deliver physical access to food, it was
thus intimately tied to the ruler’s claim to power and constituted an important
part of pre-modern security regimes. In the words of the Duke of Neuwied: It
created security without producing it.
61 Rüther, “Sicherheit im Mittelalter” [forthcoming].
62 Jacobi 1773, 1517 and Giddens 1991, 117, 133.
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252

Insurances as Part of Human Security,
their Timescapes, and Spatiality
Cornel Zwierlein �
Abstract: »Versicherungen als Element von Human Security, ihre Zeitregime
und ihr Raumbezug«. In the present discussion on ‘Human Security’, Insurances
have been only lately involved. The contribution starts with the assumption
that Insurances are historically an especially fruitful object of research for
the general question of the history of security regimes. It shows that, contrary
to some suggestions held in risk sociology, early Mediterranean maritime insurances
are to be judged rather as something completely different than the
modern insurances from the 17th century onwards managed by merchants’
companies and states. The latter belonged to a secular process of constructing a
‘normal secure society’ during enlightenment. The relationship between
Timescapes, Spatiality and Insurances is analyzed: are Insurances per se an instrument
of colonizing ‘the future’ because they are instrumental in calculating
and constructing clearly defined ‘risks’? or is that future orientation just one
element, but is perhaps the wider socio-political context with its prevailing
timescapes in which the insurance operations were embedded a changing one
from pre- to postmodernity? Asking those questions the article contributes to
an approach of using ‘human security’ as a heuristical device to explore the
history of security production.
Keywords: Insurances, Insurance history, fire insurance, risk, conceptions of
time, spatiality, timescapes, colonial perceptions, normal secure society, Sun
Fire Office, microfinance.
Insurances do not play a great role in the standard discussion of ‘Human Security’:
Even though the core element of the concept is the dismissal of a statecentered
perspective on security politics, for a great deal the problems treated
under that notion are situated in quite classical fields of political thinking and
international relations: consequences of asymmetric wars, responsibility to
protect, Crime and Violence. 1 Still, we always think of the providers of Human
Security rather as actors in the larger sphere of politics (UN, states, state affine
NGOs). Only with the general idea of microfinance, starting with the microcredit
system linked habitually with Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad
Yunus and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the sphere of private economics
� Address all communications to: Cornel Zwierlein, Faculty of History, Ruhr-University
Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany; e-mail: cornel.zwierlein@rub.de.
I thank Rüdiger Graf for helpful critics on that paper.
1 E.g. Hampson and Penny 2008, 539-557, stress the proximity of human security and the
discourse of human rights; Verlage 2009; UNHSP 2007.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 253-274

was included to a certain degree into the realm of developmental security
agency. Since about 10 years, the notion and practice of ‘micro-insurance’ is
making its way in developmental politics: health and food security should be
provided to a certain degree by insurance mechanisms also for the poor which
are normally not to be addressed by profit seeking insurance companies. Even
micro-insurances (crop and drought insurance) against outcomes of climate
instabilities are discussed with special catastrophe insurance schemes. 2 Because
instruments of micro-finance do address specially the poor, and so ‘everyone’,
not only the rich or large collectives, they would fit well into the larger framework
of the Human Security approach. But not including insurances into the
broader human security framework seems rather an error of the conceptual
framing than a logical consequence of the notion: that is illustrated by the fact
that nearly all data about global natural catastrophe statistics is borrowed by the
UN and other institutions from the big Reinsurers MunichRe and SwissRe. 3
The most sensible observer of natural disasters is the insurance market. So,
what seems to be a rather marginal element of contemporary security politics is
in fact central if we follow the direction of the notion of Human Security by
which we have to abandon for a good deal the classical distinction between
internal and external affairs, between the different spheres like politics and
economics to get an encompassing view of how human security could be provided.
At this point, insurances seem to be a very good object of investigation
into the history of security regimes, especially if we ask for the relationship
between insuring practices or, more comprehensively, security regimes and the
division of history and the present in epochs with different characters.
I. Security Regimes and Modernity
As said in the introductory essay to this special issue, the widening of the narrow
political and state security into Human Security after the end of the Cold
War is sometimes seen as a part of a return to a pre-Westphalian state of affairs
or as a ‘new medievalism’, a coexistence of governmental, sub- and nongovernmental
actors and hybrid regional-politically integrated systems instead
of the clear definition of an international system where the only actors are
sovereign states and no sub-governmental institutions, organizations or individuals.
4 The metaphor of ‘new medievalism’ implies a certain neo-cyclical
view of history: classical modernity becomes sandwiched between premodernity
and postmodernity which are structurally similar. That would also imply
2 Cf. Hochrainer et al. 2009.
3 Cf. UNHSP 2007.
4 For some uses of the metaphor of ‚new medievalism‘ cf. Bull 1977, 240-271; Anderson
1996; Anderson and Goodman 1995; Marquand 1997, 110-137; Mathews 1997; Arend
1999, 165-188; Gamble 2009; Khanna 2008
254

that the widening of the notion of human security today would be similar to the
very wide notion of security politics during enlightenment. 5 Emma Rothschild,
a distinguished historian of political theory 6 , finds similarly the liberalism and
cosmopolitanism of rights directed towards the individual of the late Enlightenment
and revolutionary wars of circa 1770 to 1820 to be the template of
current developments. 7 Even if the first attempts of investigations into the
history of ‘human security’ by political scientists start with the idea of a certain
recurrence in history (see below), they tend to tell a linear history of the notion
from antiquity to the present. 8
Like the historical narrative of human security discourse, risk sociology as
the field of social studies mostly concerned with the insurance principle has
established its historical narrative also in a three-fold structure which at first
seems to follow a linear, not a neo-cyclical structure: 9
- Premodernity: god-given threats, closed future
- First / High Modernity: calculability of risks, open future
- Second / Late Modernity: manufactured uncertainties, unknown unknowns,
extended present
Ulrich Beck, Helga Nowotny, Gerda Reith, Barbara Adams and others suggest
that three-step consecution of time, of risk, of security production. Beck
holds that the insurability of hazards by private insurance companies is the best
indicator of the borderline between ‘first modernity’ with its normal industrial
society and ‘second modernity’ with its ‘risk society’ where we are constantly
undertaking risks that are not manageable and where the state has always to
play the role of the insurer of last resort. 10 But that argument, which implies a
whole historical narrative of the distinction between the last two epochs, is
quite loosely elaborated and it is not well combined with a clear vision of how
insurances emerged as a new instrument of security production in earlier times,
how they were related to the division of public and private in the long history
of the separation between those fields in different societies. The distinction
between first / second modernity is not at all aligned with a deeper conception
of the earlier developments. The argument seems even to start with the presupposition
that the normal would be a total cover of given risks by private insurances
– but in the long history since the 14th century the contrary has been
5
Something similar is suggesting Lüdtke 2006.
6
She came perhaps very early in contact with the new concept of security through her husband,
the Peace Nobel Prize Winner Amartya Sen, who became famous for his work on
food security.
7
Rothschild 1995.
8
MacFarlane and Khong 2006.
9
Beck 2007, 62-64, 234-251; Ewald 1993, 541-542.
10
This is the thesis of Ulrich Beck (Beck 1993; repeated in: Beck 2007, 234-251.); this idea
has been criticized with good arguments by Ericson and Doyle 2004.
255

always the normal and so many hybridizations between state and private issues
were the normal – not at least because the differentiation itself between ‘private’
and ‘public’ was a long enduring process.
If we have those two historical narratives in security politics and political
sciences and in risk sociology in mind, the question how time regimes and
security regimes can be related one to each other can be raised with regards to
the aforementioned instrument of security production, insurances. We will ask
if and how we can differentiate between non-modern and modern forms of
insurances and how those differences relate to timescapes and conceptions of
spatiality.
Insurance companies and state-based insurance institutions are, I would argue,
a specific modern tool to produce security. Even if the premium insurance
contract originates already in late medieval Italy and if we can individuate the
medieval corporations and guilds as a second early root of insurance practices,
nevertheless it is only at the very borders of modernity around 1680 that the
insurance principle is fostered by specialized merchants’ companies in England
and by the cameralist state in Germany. 11 It is not the place here to discuss the
myriads of definitions of modernity/modernities. 12 With respect to our purposes
one can identify anyway the moment of diffusion of the prime insurance practice
into society beyond the traditional realm of maritime merchants as a
marker of specific modern security regimes whether one focuses on the first
emergence of that pattern in Europe around 1680 or on the moments of diffusion
into other societies in a process of globalization in the 19th century. 13
Before that shift to modernity in the realm of insurance history, it is even heuristically
appropriate to understand late medieval insurances as something
‘completely different’, as just an accounting trick created in response to the
system of double entry bookkeeping. 14 The time aspect of the insurance contract
does not differ from the time aspect of the other transactions noted in the
account books of double-entry book-keeping. Every transaction noted in the
books has a time index: the expenditures happen at one time – normally earlier
11 Cf. Zwierlein 2010.
12 Still an actually leading concept are the ‘multiple modernities’ stressing the multiple own
ways of different cultures into different modernities while denying the diffusion of an overall
and always equal form of Western Modernity: Eisenstadt 2000. Nonetheless, Eisenstadt
uses implicitely a double notion of modernity, one stable that defines modernity as an overall
measure valid for all societies if one wants to call a society ‘modern’, one fluid and plural
for the diversity of possible phenotypes of modernity. There are still new theories of ‘the
modernity’, corresponding to the former part of Eisenstadt’s theory, e.g. Wagner 2008, who
argues that ‘modernity’ has a unifying core denotation, the “commitment to autonomy”.
The different classical sociological approaches are analyzed by Martuccelli 1999.
13 For early Insurances in England cf. Dickson 1960, 1-16.; Raynes 1964, 70-83.; Cockerell
and Green 1976, 26-28; for the early development in Germany cf. Zwierlein 2010, chap.
A.III, D.I.2. and Zwierlein 2009, 235-260.
14 Cf. for that argument Zwierlein 2011.
256

– and the earnings happen at another time – normally later. It is true that the
content of the insurance contract is special because it focuses on the possible
occurrence or non-occurrence of a future event, while the content of a transport
contract also aims at a future event, but just at one to be effected. Nevertheless,
that difference is minimal and does not legitimize to understand medieval insurances
as ‘colonizers of future’ in a definitely modern sense. If we contextualize
the insurance polices and the little insurance entries in the merchants’
ledgers with the rest of their world of communication as we can reconstruct it
from the rest of commercial communication still extant in the archives, we
should imagine the late medieval Mediterranean merchant encapsulated in a
dense web of incoming and outgoing letters carried by relay couriers. The hubs
of the Mediterranean communication and trading network from about 1380 to
1500 were Florence, Pisa, Genova, Venice, Rome, Naples in Italy, the islands
of Majorca and Ibiza, Valencia, Barcelona, in Spain, Perpignan, Avignon,
Paris, Marseille, Montpelier in France and Bruges in the Netherlands; the latter
figured as the only Mediterranean foothold in the northern maritime trading
centers. Therefore, the 153000 letters in the Datini archive for a mere twenty
years of communication of one single merchant family, the Datini, show that
the merchants sent and received letters daily and hourly. 15 The mental world of
the late medieval and Renaissance merchant is, certainly, temporalized in the
new Le Goffian sense of the merchant’s time, orientated towards the hours of
the city clocks 16 , but it is also a new orientation of a networked space, a space
clustered with some 20 important knots; it is space that divides the knots from
each other and it is the crossing of space that brings with it the rischio expressed
in the insurance polices. The main emotional focus inscribed into the
new insurance contract was the fear concentrated on that insecure space, it was
rather not something with an emphatic orientation on the future in the sense of
Koselleck’s ‘open future’. That was only the case when the insurance principle
became being reflected in an abstract way beyond the narrow circles of maritime
merchants and lawyers. The principle became incorporated into institutions
– state departments or specialized commercial companies – and by that it
was widened and abstracted.
Even if our sources on the first broader insurance schemes of the 17th century
are always very scattered, they show that in both lands where insuring
became already at that date a major force, in England as well as in Germany,
there was an idea of progress and ‘improvement’ behind it: The first published
insurance scheme in England from 1679 by Augustine Newbold was entitled
‘Londons Improvement’ and rejoined by that the early modern discourse on
improving agrarian and economic situations, the precursor of full modern progressive
ideology. Similarly we have some evidence that Nicholas Barbon, the
15 Cf. Melis 1973, 389-424.
16 Cf. Rossum 1992.
257

founder of the first Fire Office in 1681, belonged to the very rare pre-18thcentury
economic thinkers who believed in economic growth and progress. 17
Leibniz who, in Germany, first, in 1680, transferred the thinking on insurances
in a wider horizon in an important advising letter to the emperor Leopold envisioning
a fire insurance for the whole Holy Roman Empire, also understood
insurances as an instrument of economic growth or at least of production of
security and of stabilization of the balance of happiness of a given society. 18
So, only in those late 17th-century contexts of early enlightened progressive
state and economic thinking, we find insurances embedded in a vision of an
open future; they respond now to problems of a world which is projecting itself
in an imagined and pre-formed futurescape trying to make things (society,
economy) greater and larger. In contrast, here before the single contracts were
rather an accounting technique in a world where economic exchange was not
embedded in a perception of possible growth of the whole, where it was rather
the spatial dimension of the open sea that attracted the fears of merchants, of
insured and insurers.
If we concentrate in the following on fire insurances, we do that because the
first and most important type of ‘modern’ insurances in the sense outlined
above has always been, until the end of the 19th century, the fire insurance
sector.
II. The Construction of the ‘Normal Secure Society’
in the Enlightenment
It is indeed only with the age of enlightenment that an ideal of a completely
secure society is emerging. The ‘normal secure society’ is a product and a
construction of enlightened thinking and administration. Only now the hitherto
every-day threats and natural hazards were seen and experienced as violations
of the expected normal: the statuses of normality and exception were reversed.
It is the eudemonistic foundation of enlightened visions of state and society
which led unto that end, and insurances were one of the most important elements
of a normal, secure, happy society: Let’s hear one of the 18th century
cameralists who promoted in 1756 the inauguration of territorial fire insurances
as a part of ‘big politics’:
The state is a society where many have assembled to maintain and promote
their common good. Consequently all its members must participate according
17 Ullmer 2007; and specially Finkelstein 2000, 95-97, who asks whether the progressive
thinking of Barbon is inspired by his heterodox millenarist descendence (his father was
probably a preacher of the Fifth Monarchy Men, perhaps he read Giordano Bruno). For an
actual re-contextualization of the Fire Office and Barbons activities cf. Zwierlein 2010,
chap. D.I.1.b.
18 Leibniz 1986, 421-432; Zwierlein 2010, chap. D.I.2.b.; and cf. Zwierlein 2008.
258

to their measure in the common happiness which is her aim […] A prince is
obligated according to the main duties of his vocation to make the common
happiness the main aim of his care and preoccupation and to maintain that
happiness with the aid of the nearest, easiest and surest instruments. […] Furtheron,
because all members of the state are obligated to maintain the common
happiness by the virtue of their social life, according to their christians’ and
citizens’ obligations, they are also obligated that one carries the burden of the
other – especially there, where those burdens may cause the ruin of some
members or of the state as a whole or at least in some of its main parts. 19
Justi, who is well known as the perhaps most straightforward eudemonistic
cameralist 20 , treats the topic of insurances in his ‘State economy [Staatswirthschaft]’
under the main rubric ‘About the prince’s methods and measures to
maintain and increase the wealth of the state promoting by that way the happiness
of the subjects”. 21 Besides the fact that the orientation at happiness was
generally the all overarching topic of cameralist thinking in the 1750ies, for the
insurance theorists it was intrinsically important because insurances were
thought of as ‘institutions against accidents [Anstalten wider die Unglücksfälle]’
22 – accidents, Unglücke, like blazes and conflagrations, were just the
reverse of Glück, the happiness at which the state aimed. At this point, the old
notion of the casus fortuiti was still shining through all its metamorphoses,
from the narrow sense in the Roman law of impairment of performance to its
application to a realm beyond the law of obligations: the law of insurance in the
maritime trade. 23 Unglücke like floods, conflagrations, epidemics were a minus
in the balance of happiness and had to be prevented.
More general remarks on the place of insurances in a wider model of society
and state are only to be found in later treatises. Ferdinand Friedrich Pfeiffer, a
school friend of Friedrich Schiller an otherwise not important Wurttemberg
public servant (teacher, than secretary of the chamber), started his treatise on
insurances in a half neo-Aristotelian, half Rousseauian way from the very origins
of human society, the association of many for common purposes following
the destiny of man (instinct of self-preservation, necessity to combine forces to
enable human progress).
If the security of a nation is threatened from one side, the whole society is
obliged to remove the danger if possible or at least to share the inevitable misfortune
that hit every single man because from now on no one lives for him-
19 Anonymous, Vorschlag 1756, 675, 702.
20 Cf. Engelhardt 1981; Adam 2006.
21 Justi 1758, 284-289.
22 That is a common rubric under which insurances are treated in more general academic
introduction books into cameralism: Pfeiffer 1779, chap. 3 ‚Wider die Unglücksfälle, sind
vernünftige Maßregeln zu nehmen‘, 332-340; Pfeiffer 1783, chap. 32 ‚Von den Verwahrungsmitteln
wider die Unglücksfälle‘, 567-680; similar Jung 1788, 4. Hauptstück ‚Unsicherheit
des Eigenthums durch Unglücksfälle‘, 360-390.
23 Cf. FN 18.
259

self. Without doubt the base of all institutions to insure the property and in a
certain way also the income/profit [Ertrag] lies in the nature of the social contract
because they are founding a greater security of life by ensuring livelihood.
24
Pfeiffer asserts also with proud that only nowadays in enlightened times one
does not aspire [sc. to stabilize] the inner security [of a state] by the external
security but vice versa the external by the inner because it has been realized
that those states where the best possible police institutions were to be found
usually had also the most potential instruments to procure security from external
threats and to guarantee its duration. 25
So, according to Pfeiffer, state-biased insurance institutions like the fire insurances
belong to an enlightenment governmentality which reverses the primate
of foreign affairs into a primate of domestic policy. Pfeiffer at this point is
not citing Rousseau’s Du contrat social but Emile:
Natural man is everything for himself. He is the numerical unit, the absolute
whole, accountable only to himself or to his own kind. Civil man is only a
fractional unit dependent on the denominator, whose value is in his relationship
with the whole, that is, the social body. Good social institutions are those
that know best how to denature man, to take away his absolute existence in
order to give him a relative one, and to transport the “me” into a common unity
so that each individual no longer regards himself as one but as a part of the
unity and is sensitive only to the whole. 26
The difference between natural man and citizen enrooted in the social contract
is expressed here by Rousseau in a mathematical manner, as it is often the
case in his political theory. Pfeiffer is citing this ‘mathematical’ version of the
social contract in relationship to the insurance institutions because in those
institutions, the ‘conversion’ of subjects, buildings, cities into numbers was
most evident. The numbers and sums of insured property prevailed in the perception
of the world as capital. The construction of a ‘secure normal society’
went hand in hand with a conversion of society into numbers. 27 In nearly all
texts published from the 1750ies onwards the big promise which enlightened
administrators found in the insurances lay in their potential to increase ‘credit’.
In one of his contributions to insurance theory, Justi arranged the passage on
insurances explicitely under the rubric ‘Of the country’s credit’: as one of the
most important instruments to promote ‘circulation’ – one of the main aims of
enlightened economic vision 28 – the country’s credit had to be as perfect as
possible. He divides into 1) the prince’s credit, 2) the public credit of the country
which means a) the credit of the whole country with other nations, or b) the
24 Pfeiffer 1780, 2.
25 Pfeiffer 1780, 3.
26 Rousseau 1969, 249, cited by Pfeiffer 1780, 2.
27 Cf. for the prehistory of such processes Crosby 1997.
28 Cf. Schmidt and Sandl 2002.
260

credit of the estates and their exchequers, or c) the credit of a big common
commercial society which represents the whole nation, 3) the particular credit
in the country which for Justi seems to mean the average easiness for particular
people to get a private loan. 29 Natural hazards diminish the wealth and credit of
particulars. But insurances do not only help to balance the deficit at plus minus
0, the dream of enlightened thinkers was that they could double the particular
credit in a certain way, because insured houses were much more mortgageable
and would enable hereby a greater circulation of capital. Here reflections typically
start with the topos that uninsured houses are to be perceived as future
piles of ashes, whereas insured houses are like a second ‘virtual’ house, the
rebuilt house in the future, added to the capital of the owner. Or in nowadays
economic language: Insured houses enable an intertemporal transfer of propriety
and were counted among admitted assets. 30
It is a truth affirmed by experience that the security with which we can enjoy a
thing much increases its value and vice versa that the value of a thing decreases
to the same degree as we are exposed to greater and manifold threats
in respect to that thing […]. So it is natural that also buildings have to receive
a much higher value if they are not exposed to fire hazard or, which is the
same, if in the case that they perish in a conflagration an indemnity will be
paid. […] So, many well off people will decide much easier to build or buy a
house if they are sure that their invested capital does not perish through a conflagration.
As the value of the buildings increases, also the fortune of every
proprietor increases and in consequence the fortune of the whole state, of
which the buildings form an important part. With the fortune there also progressively
increases a country’s credit. 31
So, enlightened thinking and practice of insuring firstly founded the normal
secure society which was also a society of wealth, of growth and a society of
numbers.
29 Justi 1758, 276.
30 Someone who insures his house has „also in der That noch ein Haus in der Casse, oder sein
ietziges Haus sicherer, und dieses wird dadurch ein solideres Stück seines Vermögens, dieses
aber dem Werthe nach eben darum erhöhet.“ Uninsured houses are to be seen „als einen
Brandhaufen im voraus“. On insured houses one can borrow money with greater security,
so an insurance is an instrument to increase the wealth of a city (Georg Heinrich Zincke:
Vorrede zum Siebenden Bande der Sammlungen. Von den nöthigen Policey-Anstalten in
Städten, wegen derer Folgen und Wirckungen der Unglücks-Fälle, die man nicht verhüten
können; insonderheit aber denen Feuer- und Brand-Cassen, in: Leipziger Sammlungen
1751, III-LIV, XXVI. The topos of the uninsured houses as possible or future piles of ashes
also Anonymous, Gedanken 1751, 294; Anonymous, Vorschlag 1756, 675; Moser 1754, 3;
Schaeffer 1791, 1v; Waser 1778, 5.
31 Gäng 1792, 20.
261

III. Timescapes and Spatialities of Insuring
in High-Modern Times
Contemporary risk sociology understands Insuring always as a man’s tool to
‘colonize the future’ using the notion of Torsten Hägerstrand rendered famous
by the systematization of Anthony Giddens: 32 Insurance is a child of modernity
because by calculating probabilities of hazards, threats hitherto experienced
helplessly as Acts of God are converted into clearly delineable parts of a future
which can be planified. The calculable and colonized ‘future’ is isomorphic
with the present, a present just not yet here.
Guided by those ideas, insurance history was always combined with the history
of sciences and the history of probability, a theme rendered very wellknown
by the historians who had studied that what they had called the 18th
century ‘probabilistic revolution’. But probabilistic mathematical theory did
play a role in insurance practice only in the realm of Life Insurance and only
very lately at the end of 18th century in Britain. The most important branch of
the fire insurance operated nearly until the 20th century without any application
of probabilistic theory. So, how much ‘taming of future’ is visible in the practice
of insuring in classical modernity? Let’s look at the work of 19th century
insurance agents of the then world’s oldest and biggest fire insurance company,
the Sun Fire Office, founded in 1720: from 1835 on and strongly after 1850
that insurance company as other British companies spread over the world in a
breath-taking quick process of globalizing business. Indeed the company’s
agents did collect local fire data and extrapolated from past fire distribution
into the future, but always very roughly, never using probabilistic theory. Fixing
the primes was a process of trial and error or rather of imitation and falsification
following the first insurances installed on the site and then trying out
what rates would function durably.
We have a very precious genre of sources in the archives of the Sun Fire Office
besides business balances, management minutes and some correspondances
to study the globalization of business, the so-called ‘memorandum
books’. Those about 300 volumes, each with some 200 to 400 pages consist of
detailed reports on foreign agencies, describing inter alia the extent of local fire
insurance, fire brigade provision and recent notable fires. Usually the volumes
were compiled on the inspection of an agency by visiting members of the Foreign
Department (often by Francis Boyer Relton, Foreign Superintendent from
1868 and George Saward Manvell, Clerk in the Foreign Department from
1864). Along with hand-written analysises by the men at place and by the
members of the Foreign department in London, the volumes often contain
32 Hägerstrand 1988; Giddens 1991, 109-143; Reith 2004.
262

sketch plans, photographs, newspaper clippings, 33 printed circulars and statistics.
Those volumes functioned as a sort of steadily growing special encyclopedia
and in-house knowledge ressource of the London headquarter. It was strategic
orientative knowledge about the hundreds of places on the globe where
the insurance was active, a certain kind of a global economic memory. 34 They
already were used by Dickson in his monograph on the Sun Insurance 35 but
they still contain a huge bulk of unused material. The agency made them accessible
to the public not before 1994 when they were handed out to the Guildhall
Library London. 36
What forms of perception, of timescapes and spatiality do we find expressed
in the writings and analyses of 19th century insurance agents? For the agent
Woods who analyzed where in Istanbul the Company should engage, only the
6th district, being the area of the city elected for modernization, seemed to be a
secure starting point for insurance business. Woods provided himself with a
German map of the 6th district of 1861 (with French inscriptions). Already in
the original print, ‘Muslim’ and ‘Christian’ blocks of streets were divided visually
(grey vs. pink areas) according to the habitual division which reigned in
the city. 37 Woods now walked through the whole district, analyzed all the
streets and marked in red the blocks where the building stock was in his opinion
good enough to be insurable: in any case this only applied to Christian
blocks according to Woods. 38 In Pera and in Galata – in the latter quarter,
nearly all houses were built of stone – he applied yet another criteria of discrimination:
I have rejected these portions of Galata & Pera where there is either a great
mass of very inferior wooden buildings or where the Houses, stone or woo-
33
Unfortunately, the clippings not always reveal all source information (name of the newspaper,
date, page).
34
As to my knowledge, at least for British and German insurances and with the exception
perhaps of the Phoenix material in the Cambridge University library, there exists no other
comparable big corpus giving insight into the logistic and cultural orientation of a globalizing
insurance company in 19th century. Today we can find some similarly constituted archives:
The Natural risk department of the MunichRe, Germany, for example disposes of a
suspension file archive on global regions from the 1950ies onwards which parallels the 19 th
century precursor, but certainly – as belonging to a Reinsurer – it does not contain information
about agencies.
35
Dickson 1960, 162-233.
36
Guildhall Library London [hereafter GLL] Ms 31522 vol. 257 to 266.
37
„The colors Brown & Pink characterize respectively the Turkish & Christian quarters as
nearly as possible, but as the map was made several years ago, some portions of the brown
might now be colored pink.” (GLL Ms. 31522 vol. 258, 72).
38
The map in GLL Ms. 31522 vol. 257, Appendix: ‘Plan der zum 6.ten Communalbezirk
vereinigten Vorstädte Galata, Pera und Pancaldi von Constantinopel […] ergänzt […] bis
ins Jahr 1861 durch C. Stolpe [...] / Plan des Faubourgs de Constantinople Galata, Pera et
Pancaldi [...]’. A grey reproduction is to be found under (accessed August 7, 2010).
263

den, are devoted to drunkeness or debauchery – for the former reason I have
omitted to color nearly the whole of the district which lies on the north side of
the Grande Rue de Pera for the latter reason, I have omitted several blocks
which are entirely given up to people of bad character. 39
The heuristics of insurability thus spatially extracts the supposedly secure
christian-european, stone-built and morally civilized ‘modernity’ out of the
aggregate of the closely contiguous plurality of ‘nationalities’ and cultures. In
1865, a huge fire destroyed large parts of the Muslim quarter of Istanbul
(Stamboul) and seemed to confirm the prejudices of the insurance company.
But only five years later another big fire destroyed exactly the quarters of the
European 6th district in Galata and Pera where the company had engaged
largely: all the prudent labours of agent Woods to cut out the pretended secure
space revealed fruitless.
A similar but inverse story happened in Bombay; again, the Sun Fire Office
gave directives oriented on limitations of cultural space:
[…] but it is considered a point of great importance, to limit our Insurances
strictly to those for European Firms & of the best Class of Buildings only. Our
rule of business must, for the present at least, altogether exclude insurances
for native Firms & be confined as to locality to the European part of the Port
& Colaba on the same terms as the Imperial – say 18 annas pr C for the former
& 14 annas pr C for the latter. 40
The firm aimed strongly at a precise definition of the space where insurances
were to be taken and where not following a very strong orientalist dichotomy
between ‘native’ and ‘European’:
First, as to the definition of the term ‘Native Town’, we think that this term
should be applied only to that part of the island inhabited exclusively by natives
and which you will find marked ‘Native Town’ in the small map accompanying
the Times of India Calendar forwarded to you by last mail. We do not
as a rule, recommend the acceptance of such risks, but your Managers might
have us a discretionary power in the matter, in that case we should use the
greatest caution, and with regard to the rates we submit that they should be the
same as those charged by the Alliance & Phoenix, in preference to that given
by the North British. 41
But after some years of engagement in India, the Sun realized that things
were very different on that subcontinent in comparison with all their experiences.
The insurance company tried again to get a very precise definition of the
‘good European’ space to insure and of the ‘bad native’ space to be avoided.
They drew up maps indicating thoroughly the limits between both spaces, in
1893 even the general assembly of all Insurance company agents acting in
39
GLL Ms. 31522 vol. 258, 72.
40
Sun Fire Office London an die Agenten Leckie & Co., Bombay, 12.8.1852: GLL Ms.
18249, vol. 13, f. 14v.
41
Ibid., 258.
264

Bombay (Bombay Association of Fire Insurance Agents) came up with a formal
consensus about those limitis between native and european distributing a
map only of those limits among all agents. The companies were suspicious
against the native way of building: all houses were built “with a very heavy
proportion of wood-work, in a large number of cases the frame work, the floors
and roofs are finished before a wall is commenced either external or internal”.
Map of Bombay from the /Times of India/ 1866 (GLL Ms. 31522 vol. 152, p. 127).
265

1893 Consensus of all Insurance agencies on the borders of the insurable ‘European town’ in
Bombay (GLL Ms. 31522, vol. 152, p. 127; vol. 156, p. 324).
But after some twenty years of business in India with permanently low
losses they were surprised “how few fires there are either in the Fort or thickly
populated native town, and still more surprising when a fire does occur, how
very rarely it is known to spread to the adjoining houses”. 42 An author in the
Bombay Gazette uttered his astonishment still in 1883:
We have never been, in a large city, so exempt from serious fires as Bombay.
In one year a greater destruction of property from this cause takes place in
New York than we have known in 35 years in Bombay. We confess that we
are unable to explain the comparative immunity of Bombay in this particular.
The agents noted that the “natives, who, encouraged by the immunity from
Fire which Bombay has so long enjoyed, prefer to take their chance rather than
pay the heavy rates asked for.” 43
There were many cumulative reasons for the missing of major conflagrations
in the three important British-Indian cities Bombay, Calcutta and Madras:
teak wood and the refractory chunam mortar is much less inflammable than
42
Extract from report by Messrs. Scott & McLelland [1872], GLL Ms. 31522, vol. 153, p.
112-113.
43
Ibid.
266

normal European wood and mortar, the monsun occupying nearly half of the
year is producing such a humid climate that the outbreak of fires is much less
probable. If modern cities are cities free of the danger of big conflagrations,
perhaps the traditional Indian cities were in a certain way since a long time
‘modern’ even if they seemed to a European visitor in many other respects
completely unmodern – one empirical data to enforce Eisenstadts argument of
the multiplicy of modernities. 44
The two examples of late 19 th century analyzing processes by insurance
agents in the age of globalizing business do teach us some general lessons: We
are in front of two disoriented seemingly empirical and rational ‘high-modern’
Western perceptions of different largely non-European cities – disoriented,
because the spatial division between European and Muslim zones in Istanbul
did not function as a valid marker of higher or lower risk: the risk was much to
high in both areas; disoriented, because the similar spatial division between
European and native zones in the Indian cities had not any sense being no real
fire risk in both zones. The failure of those pre-formed schemes of perception
shows that under conditions of globalization the previously seemingly universal
distinction between ‘Tradition’ and ‘Modernity’ is reduced to a rather arbitrary
labeling depending on the standpoint of the attributing person; what remains
is pure diversity with no given epochal index. 45
Analyzing the schemes of perception, we see that the guiding principle is
rather not a general mood of future orientation, even if perhaps a general conviction
of progress is behind the big movement of globalization. The agents did
not use much time-related vocabulary when they analyzed a new site for an
agency. On the contrary, a deeply spatialized vision of the cities in question
and of ‘insurability’ was frequent, the zoning of risk followed that pre-given
division of spaces. Surely, insuring was still a business selling the security of (a
well defined part of) one own’s ‘future’. 46 It was still a modern instrument in
the sense we defined it in the first part in contrast to the late medieval notion of
insuring. The orientation of preoccupation, care or even fear was not concentrated
and even mingled with the open space of the sea and with the wandering
of goods through that space as in the Mediterranean case, insuring was not just
an accounting trick but a tool of ‘taming the future’ to vary the formulation of
Ian Hacking. But the zoning of risk reintroduced a heavy mood of spatial orientation
and segregation of the fears on which insurers and insured were concentrated.
Insurance having become a sober routine, the agents did not show much
44 Eisenstadt 2007.
45 Stichweh 2000, 207-219.
46 To clarify this, we could distinguish here between a ‘future1’ and a ‘future2’, the former
meaning the operational orientation of insurances on well-defined risks (the burning of
houses), the latter meaning the broader social, political and economic timescape in which
the insurance processes as a whole are embedded.
267

conviction to act as promoters of progress as it was the case with the enlightened
pioneers establishing the first insurances in 18th century when they contextualized
the functions of insurances in broader schemes of the progress of
society, state and its economy. Insuring one’s property’s future was less linked
with Insurance as an agent of the future orientation of states and societies
themselves or that link was bracketed and neutralized in the daily practice. If
spatial zoning was not functional in dividing West/Non-West and as such between
‘Modernity’ and ‘Tradition’, insurance and insurability itself failed to be
a marker between ‘epochs’; so, the Overvaluing of Spatiality led to a certain
presentisme (re-)conquering the practice of insuring.
If in those examples the frontiers of insurability are crossfaded with the
frontiers of Westerness in a deeply counterfactual way, that what is coined
‘uninsurable’ is not the unthinkable and uncalculable mega-catastrophe, it is
just the non-western part of the world. Beck and others think that the measure
of ‘insurability’ is also a tool of distinction between first and second modernity,
between high and post-modernity, but we could not find that well documented
in the material. Surely the argument was rather that dangers like a maximum
credible accident in nuclear power plants or like effects of terrorism are never
insured as risks, that those types of dangers transcend the frontiers of accountability,
that with those ‘new’ technological dangers like the nuclear ones we are
facing signs of a new age and a new epoch which are completely beyond the
imagination of traditional normal modern institutions like insurance companies.
But that thesis is not convincing probably on multiple levels. One argument for
the contemporary situation is that the frontier of insurability has always been
enlarged and extended and that, for example, even terrorism has been insurable
to some extent. 47 Another argument looking at the examples given from 19 th
century modernity would be that the frontier of insurability has been always
traced by the insurance agencies along some preformed divisions like that
between westerness and non-westerness without any strong empirical backing
as has been shown. So, the uninsurable is not necessarily the unmarked space
of the great unknown, and in an auto-reflexive way, ‘insurability’ is a marker
of selected forms of cultural spaces and their frontiers.
IV. Insuring at the Edges of Late Modernity
Facing the global ‘new’ risks or uncertainties of climate change in a world
divided into a changing ‘multiple West’, ‘developing’ countries, and future
leading states, insurances are more and more at the center of interest and discussion
as actors of global security production. The enlightenment had constructed
the secure society as the normal ideal, as a promoter of wealth and
47 Ericson and Doyle 2004.
268

progress and, vice versa, states of unhappiness and misfortune as the exception.
In late modernity the notion of ‘insurability’ has gained more and more importance
as a contested marker of the boundaries between normal modernity and
the unmodern; having had a closer look at that boundary we have seen that it
was rather a purely self-referential boundary of ‘westerness’ without defining
really the boundaries of empirical insurability.
In the contemporary world, the concept of ‘insurability’ is used as a heuristic
instrument transferred from insurance theory to the discussion on sustainability
governance. It is argued that from the existing relation between technological
innovation, risk definition by insurers and sustainable development, the
expertise of insurance business in defining insurable risks can be used as an
indicator in analyzing the ‘borderline’ between nation-states and private business
as actors, but also the ‘borderline’ between sustainable and unsustainable
technology, presuming that uninsurable technology is also unsustainable. 48
Only actions of which the risk of environmental destruction is measurable and,
in case of necessity, manageable or avoidable, can claim to be legitimate from
a sustainability perspective. Similarly, an insurer would sign only risks which
are measurable and, in case of necessity, payable without ruining the company.
In other contexts, analysts of climate politics do ask for “Innovations in insurance”
and they express that “New thinking will be needed to push back the
boundaries of insurability”. Only if insurers will create new products, the state
as insurer of last resort will be discharged. Only new products of microinsurance
can help to penetrate the developing world and to increase the overall
degree of ‘human security’. 49 So, in a certain way, insurances are objects of
hope; even sociologists like Anthony Giddens who subscribe like Beck to the
vision of a late or post-modernity as a new and different age in contrast to the
classic ‘modernity’, judge that by pushing back the boundaries of insurability,
some ground will be gained for humanity.
In a certain way one may judge that the fact that insurance and reinsurance
giants are nowadays actors on a same level of importance for the management
of global catastrophes as whole states. That shows that the enlightenment vision
or utopia of a normal secure society is, to a certain extent, realized or is, at
least, still present as a vision, perhaps an utopia, but at least as a directing idea.
Asking for new insurance innovations for developing countries, like Giddens is
doing, seems to be in a good continuity to that enlightenment vision. But studying
the insurance practices of classical 19th century modernity with its strong
emphasis on cultural spatiality and the multiplicity of forms and outcomes, it
seems rather that the somewhat steady binarity and dichotomy of secure spaces
48 Stahel 2003; Dahlström et al. 2003.
49 Giddens 2009, 172-174; cf. also Stern 2009, 88-89.
269

and unsecure spaces is continued or even re-enforced today. 50 If we look at the
notion of insurability depending rather on preformed schemes in the 19th century
and if we have in mind how that expertise in delineating the borders of
insurability was completely erroneous, one may wonder if one is well advised
to use that ‘knowledge’ on so many levels: on the level of sociological theory
to divide epochs; on the level of sustainable economics to define environmentally
prudent actions; on the level of climate politics to enlarge the secure
world.
Classical modern insurance practices in the context of globalization seemed
to have lost much of the mood of ‘colonizing the future’. May we close with
the idea that the process of globalization itself was active in a certain detemporalization
of insuring? Hartmut Rosa has written on the process of ‘deceleration’
(Entschleunigung) as the general outcome of globalization, Helga
Nowotny has underlined that an ‘extended present’ is increasingly replacing the
open future of classical modernity in the globalized world. Perhaps, the practice
of modern insuring that was formerly linked with that open future as a
particularly significant instrument of ‘taming’ and calculating that future would
be more and more an action oriented dominantly in timescapes of presentness
and would follow the fixation on ‘zoning’. 51 Future-orientation would be
shrunk down to presentedness? or to something like a ‘project time’ with a
fixed future which would resemble more the closed future of premodernity than
the open future of classical modernity. 52 Thus, our investigation seems to consolidate
the three-step form of time regimes and spatialities in the realm of
insurance practice and theory. But, from a historical perspective of the comparison
between different epochs, it also casts doubt on the validity and importance
of ‘insurability’ as a mighty theoretical and practical tool of measurement
in different contexts. In this way, the article should have contributed to the
history of human security or the use of ‘human security’ as a heuristical device
in historical research by concentration on the relations between timescapes and
spatialities as correlates to regimes of security: analysing those elements and
dimensions and their interrelations together may be a step to a more formalized
practice of transepochal comparisons and a transepochally arguing history of
human security that would not just be a research on the ‘prehistory’ of patterns
of human security.
50
Slums are still burning down uninsured in the growing mega-cities with its ‘western’ centers
well insured: Davis 2007, 129-136.
51
Cf. for the practice of spatial zoning in the context of insuring also the contribution of Uwe
Luebken in this volume; cf. also the yet unpublished Bochum Master thesis of Christoph
Wehner on the practice of risk zoning in the context of insuring elements of nuclear power
planes.
52
That’s the argument or the pleading of Dupuy 2004, 175-197, following the ideas of Hans
Jonas on future ethics.
270

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274

Governing Floods and Riots: Insurance, Risk, and
Racism in the Postwar United States
Uwe Lübken �
Abstract: »Zur ‘Beherrschung’ von Überschwemmungen und ‘Riots’: Versicherung,
Risiko und Rassismus in den USA«. In the late 1960s, the United
States Federal Government resorted to publically funded insurance systems to
deal with two quite different problems: floods and riots. Both programs were
administered by the same agency, both relied heavily on the spatial mapping of
risk, and both were haunted by problems of moral hazard. Curiously, and most
importantly, however, riots as well as floods were viewed as “environmental
hazards” by the insurance industry and the government agencies involved. The
underlying assumption was that social problems could be treated as quasinatural
hazards, i.e. as a homogeneous and unpredictable force that could be
contained by actuarial means. Yet uprisings, civil commotions, and riots are
not “acts of god” that are located outside of society (and neither are floods).
This article discloses the origins of both programs, it describes their communalities
and differences, and it reveals the views of those who were subject to
racist steering practices.
Keywords: Insurance, Risk, floods, riots, Redlining; racism, USA.
Mr. Jones.
Our companies could not insure the same properties under the same
underwriting conditions and at the same rates. Now, if it’s insurable
property and there are no environmental conditions, it would be insured
under the FAIR plan.
Ms. Gear.
What does ‘environmental condition’ mean? […] I’ve heard that so
much. You know, what is ‘environmental condition’? What do you
classify as ‘environmental condition’? Maybe then I could give you
a reply, because I need to know what that is. 1
On February 28, 1980, the Subcommittee on Insurance of the Committee on
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate, gathered to review
“the progress of the flood, crime, and riot reinsurance program and to consider
new authorization”. During congressional hearings a year before, questions had
been raised as to the continued need for these programs and about whether they
� Address all communications to: Uwe Lübken, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and
Society, Leopoldstrasse 11a, 80802 München, Germany;
e-mail: Uwe.Luebken@carsoncenter.lmu.de.
1 U.S. Senate “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 324.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 275-288

“were operating in full accordance with congressional intent”. 2 Invited to give
statements before the committee and to submit reports were, amongst others,
State insurance commissioners, representatives of the insurance industry, the
Administrator of the Federal Insurance Administration, and “other knowledgeable
persons concerned about hazard litigation, protection of the environment,
and revitalization of the Nation’s neighborhoods”. 3
What at first glance appears to have been (and most likely was) a long and
exhausting congressional hearing unworthy of further scholarly research, raises
a couple of interesting questions if we take a closer look. Why, one might ask,
were such highly diverse topics such as floods and riots dealt with in the same
hearing in the first place? Secondly, why was insurance the chosen means to
cope with these problems? Finally, if insurance was the preferred tool to solve
these problems, why was the Federal government involved at all and why
wasn’t the whole matter left to the private insurance industry, as was the case
with the actuarial management of so many other hazards such as theft, fire, car
accidents, or death? Ultimately, the question is why the United States government
decided to use publically funded insurance systems to deal with both
social and natural problems.
The Problem: Floods
In the United States, as in almost every other industrialized country, flooding
became more and more of a problem over the course of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. With the increasing utilization of the floodplains for agricultural,
urban, infrastructural and industrial purposes, riverine and coastal
settlements grew ever more vulnerable to high water levels of rivers and
oceans. Several devastating river floods in the first three decades of the twentieth
century along the Mississippi River, the Ohio River, and in New England
had clearly disclosed this vulnerability. The main response to this challenge,
however, had remained the same ever since the Army Corps of Engineers had
firmly established its so-called “levee-only doctrine” in the late nineteenth
century: physical protection from flooding by dams, levees, and, later on, also
reservoirs. With total flood damages steadily rising despite these earthen and
concrete devices, 4 it became increasingly clear, however, that structural measures
were insufficient to relieve the financial burden of the state and the suffering
of the people. 5 Disaster relief – a Federal task since 1950 – only added to
2 U.S. Senate “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 1.
3 U.S. Senate “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980.
4 See Pielke et al. 2002, 56.
5 “Insurance and other Programs for Financial Assistance to Flood Victims”, A Report from
the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the President, as
required by the Southeast Hurricane Disaster Relief Act of 1965, 8 August 1966, 40, United
276

the costs of flooding and, in addition, diminished the awareness of personal
risk: “Whenever a major disaster strikes anywhere in the United States today,”
the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) noted in 1966,
“substantial public help and relief are available.” 6 Together, these developments
were not sustainable and called for new approaches to the flood problem.
For several reasons, insurance seemed to be an ideal solution for this problem.
Not only did it offer financial help to flood victims after a disaster (provided
they had signed a policy), it also transferred risk and financial liability
from the state (in the form of a moral or legal obligation to provide relief payments)
to those potentially affected by floods. Furthermore, insurance schemes
applied different premium rates to different regions of risk and thus encouraged
a prudent utilization of the floodplain. The only problem was: flood insurance
was not provided by the insurance industry.
Unlike other hazards, extreme natural events such as earthquakes or volcanic
eruptions are in most cases confined to a more or less demarcated geographical
space which limits the number of potential customers who demand
protection by insurance. It would be next to impossible, for example, to sell
avalanche insurance to people in the Baltic region or, for that matter, insurance
against tidal inundations to someone living in Switzerland. As a consequence,
insurance companies specializing in natural hazards attract a large number of
“bad risks”, which makes these companies extremely vulnerable to extreme
events because too many insured persons might be affected at the same time.
But it is not only the distribution of natural risks over space that creates problems
for insurers; their distribution over time can be equally problematic because
of the “highly unfavourable, if only temporary, ratio of claims to premiums”
immediately after a devastating event. 7 In California, for example,
earthquake premiums in 1994, the year of the Northridge disaster, amounted to
$500 million while $11.4 billion had to be paid out for property damages. 8
Flood insurance suffers from the same structural problem. 9 The demand for
financial protection from floods is extremely volatile. As a rule, it rises tremendously
after a major flood event while people lose interest in signing policies
after a couple of years without floods. Thus, private flood insurance companies
have been made bankrupt again and again by severe inundations. In one extreme
case in 1899 even the office buildings of one insurance company were
washed away by a flood in Cairo, Illinois. 10 Even if a company survives, the
States National Archives, College Park, MD, Record Group 311, Entry 2, Box 44, 40. See
also Rozario 1999, 70.
6
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Insurance and other Programs”
1966, 54. See also Platt 1999.
7
Smith 1996, 91. See also Lübken 2008.
8
Smith 1996, 91.
9
See Langbein 1953.
10
Grutzner 1955.
277

“pattern of large claims following years with few losses makes premiumsetting
difficult and the funding of claims unpredictable”. 11 With the damage
potential in the floodplains (both coastal and riverine) growing at tremendous
rates after World War II, the burden on the federal budget was increasing correspondingly
and new methods of dealing with this problem were sought.
The Problem: Riots
The lack of insurance coverage by private companies was also a key component
of another, quite different post-war problem in the United States: the decline
of American inner cities and the resulting uprising of impoverished people
living in dilapidated housing conditions. After the end of World War II,
millions of African-Americans left behind a legacy of poverty and racism in the
South and migrated to the urban centers in the North, Northeast, Midwest and
far West. 12 This process was accompanied by “white flight” to the suburbs. The
suburban population, which was and continues to be mostly Euro-American,
jumped from roughly 35 to 75 million between 1950 and 1970. 13 Suburbanization,
officially supported by the Federal Government, allowed white Americans
to leave “what deteriorated into inner-city reservations of racialized poverty”. 14
Thus, these processes established a unique form of post-war urban segregation
and fostered the equation of being black with being poor and with living in a
pathological ghetto space.
One important but often overlooked fact in the history of inner-city ghettoization
in the post-war United States is the role that racial steering practices of
lending institutions and insurance companies played. For decades, as Gregory
D. Squires has pointed out, “U.S. central city residents, particularly in minority
areas, have often been unable to obtain property insurance at affordable
rates”. 15 The National Inspection Company, for example, a consulting firm
which catered mostly to insurers, bore witness in a 1958 report on Chicago to
the “encroachment of Negroes” and held that the “Puerto Ricans, Mexicans,
Japanese and ‘Hillbillies’ have worked into some colored areas, particularly on
the fringe of the cheaper or poorer districts and, in some cases, are in the same
category with the lower-class Negroes”. As a consequence, the report, heavily
resorting to racial and class stereotypes, demanded that any “liability in the
areas described should be carefully scrutinized and in case of Negro dwellings,
11 Smith 1996, 91.
12 Wilson 2005, 21.
13 Avila 2004, 4.
14 Avila 2004, 5.
15 Squires 1979, 80-81.
278

usually only the better maintained, owner-occupied risks are considered acceptable
for profitable underwriting.” 16
The availability of property insurance, however, is a key component of the
status of housing conditions and of a community’s overall situation. “Insurance
is essential to revitalize our cities,” a 1968 report to President Lyndon B. Johnson
stated. “It is a cornerstone of credit. Without insurance, banks and other
financial institutions will not – and cannot make loans.” Thus, the renovation
and improvement of property became more difficult and mortgages were hard
to obtain. The report gloomily continued that
new housing cannot be constructed, and existing housing cannot be repaired.
New businesses cannot expand, or even survive. Without insurance, buildings
are left to deteriorate; services, goods and jobs diminish. Efforts to rebuild our
nation’s inner cities cannot move forward. Communities without insurance are
communities without hope. 17
The availability of reinsurance, on the other hand, “influences the capacity
of the primary insurers to underwrite” and “permits underwriters to assume a
larger volume of risk than would otherwise be possible.” Furthermore, “it enables
the insured to accept a larger amount of exposure in a particular area or
kind of area.” 18 After the violent clashes between residents of urban ghettos and
national security forces in the 1960s, a direct result not only of dilapidated
housing and ridiculously high rents, but also of unmet demands by the Civil
Rights Movement and the assassination of key figures within the movement, an
already bad situation took a turn for the worse. The economic damages resulting
from these riots were staggering. In Watts, Los Angeles, for example, the
1965 riots resulted in insured losses of $38 million; the 1967 Detroit riot
caused $41.5 million and the 1967 Newark riot $11 million. 19 These huge (insured)
losses led many insurance companies to give up property insurance in
these areas altogether.
Flood and Riot Insurance
Thus, at first glance, floods and riots seemed to create similar problems in the
postwar United States: The amount of financial damages they caused was increasing
tremendously and demanded special solutions; in both cases, the private
insurance market failed to deliver the protection deemed necessary and, as
a result, the Federal government took the initiative and created state-sponsored
systems of risk management.
16 Quoted after Squires 1996.
17 President’s Advisory Panel, “Meeting the Insurance Crisis of Our Cities” 1968, 1.
18 Statement submitted by James E. Jones, Jr., Alliance of American Insurers, in U.S. Senate,
“Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 283.
19 “The Central City Insurance Crisis” 1971.
279

First attempts of the United States government to intervene in the flood insurance
business date back to the early 1950s when record floods in Kansas
and Missouri induced the Truman administration to take a more active course.
In 1956, the Federal Flood Insurance Act was enacted, which envisioned a
system in which the Federal government acted as a kind of reinsurer for flood
insurance companies, but Congress refused to appropriate substantial amounts
of money. 20 Ten years later, however, Hurricane Betsy, which devastated large
parts of New Orleans, triggered the Southeast Hurricane Disaster Relief Act
which, besides authorizing relief payments to the flood victims, also mandated
a feasibility report on a national flood insurance program. In 1968, the National
Flood Insurance Act was finally passed, which, at least theoretically, made
flood insurance available to all potential flood victims. 21
The 1968 Urban Property Protection and Reinsurance Act, too, was more or
less a direct result of a series of catastrophes. 22 It originated in the urban riots of
the 1960s and was
enacted to keep essential property insurance available in urban areas where the
insurance industry had grown fearful that the riot and civil commotion hazards
made even reasonably well-maintained buildings uninsurable.” 23
In 1968, the Hughes Report by the National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders warned that if nothing was done about this problem, it might grow
worse and affect even more cities in the future. 24 Thus, under the Urban Property
Protection and Reinsurance Act, federal riot reinsurance was made available
to insurance companies in states that established a Fair Access to Insurance
Requirements (FAIR) Plan. The National Flood Insurance Program
(NFIP) worked in a similar way. Municipalities could participate in the NFIP
(and hence their citizens could benefit from federally funded flood insurance)
if, in turn, they agreed to establish zoning laws and building codes in order to
guarantee a thoughtful utilization of the floodplain. 25
The two programs were institutionally joined in their first year of existence
when in 1968 the Federal Insurance Administration (FIA) was established
within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on August
1, 1968, to administer federal flood, riot, and crime insurance programs. The
20
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Insurance and other Programs”
1966, 65; King 2005, 6-7.
21
See U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Insurance and other Programs”
1966.
22
Statement submitted by James E. Jones, Jr., Alliance of American Insurers, in U.S. Senate,
“Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance”, 283.
23
Statement by Gloria Jimenez, Administrator, FIA, in U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and
Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 21-22.
24
Statement submitted by James E. Jones, Jr., Alliance of American Insurers, in U.S. Senate,
“Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 283.
25
Cf. Bernstein 1971.
280

FIA was later transferred to the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) but has retained autonomous status under its new umbrella organization.
Besides being administered by the same agency, the two programs also
had a lot in common in a functional sense. Both were based on mapping regions
of risk. This is, of course, a standard procedure for almost every branch
of the insurance business, but the geographical containment of hazards acquires
special importance where the spatial distance between (real or imagined)
“good” and “bad” risks is often only a few feet up the hill to higher ground (as
in the case of floodplains) or one or two blocks (as in the case of redlining
practices). The NFIP mapped the flood risk by publishing Flood Insurance
Rate Maps (FIRM), while the riot reinsurance program had to identify hazardous
urban areas. 26
Furthermore, both programs were haunted by moral hazard and fraud. With
the Federal government acting as an insurer of last resort and as such assuming
the entire (floods) or at least large parts (riots) of the financial risk, there was a
high incentive for property owners, the private insurance industry, and sometimes
even city officials to actively create or redefine the very events they were
supposed to be protected from, i.e. fires and floods. The riot reinsurance program,
for example, triggered arson. In 1973, the Ohio FAIR Plan Underwriting
Association ascribed eighty percent of its losses to arson or “suspicious circumstances”.
27 Cleveland, Ohio, accounted for no less than 1,593 arson incidents
in 1974 and 1,976 incidents in 1975. Paid claims by the fire insurance
underwriters in that city from November 1970 through September 1973 amounted
to $2,386,457. 28 The American Insurance Association complained that the
1978 amendment to the Urban Property Protection and Reinsurance Act (the
so-called Holtzman amendment), which requested rate parity between conventional
insurance policies and those created under the FAIR Plans, had made the
latter “a dumping ground for high risks,” that “would provide a disincentive for
sound housing management and would encourage arson.” 29
With regard to the National Flood Insurance Program, the AIA warned that
“the program will prove counterproductive because the premium subsidies and
loss payments will actually encourage irresponsible construction and result in
added loss of life and property.” 30 Indeed, one of the most important problems
26
Monmonier 1997. See also Cornel Zwierlein’s article in this volume.
27
Kerr, “Who Burned Cleveland” [forthcoming].
28
Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 7, 1975, quoted after Kerr, “Who Burned Cleveland” [forthcoming].
29
Testimony of George K. Bernstein on behalf of the American Insurance Association, in U.S.
Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 269. See also Senate
Committee, “Arson in America” 1979; General Accounting Office, “Arson for Profit”
1978.
30
Testimony of George K. Bernstein on behalf of the American Insurance Association, in
U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 268.
281

of the NFIP were “Repetitive Loss Properties” (RLPs), i.e. properties that had
been damaged twice or even more often. Contrary to the practices in the private
insurance industry, the NFIP decided to continue insuring such bad risks. Consequently
a huge percentage of all NFIP claims were made by property owners
who had been affected by flooding before (more than 25 percent, for example,
in 1998). 31
Riots as “Environmental” Hazards
The most striking similarity, however, is that floods as well as riots were
treated as “environmental hazards” by the insurance industry and the government
agencies involved. While this is not so surprising as far as floods are
concerned (although the more recent literature on the history of natural hazards
and catastrophes convincingly contests the view that such events are entirely
“natural”), it is remarkable in a policy debate about riots. 32 The February 1980
hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Insurance on the progress of the
flood, crime, and riot reinsurance program is especially interesting insofar as it
not only illustrates the insurance industry’s view on the “nature” of riots (as
well as floods); it also displays the citizens’ criticism and resistance against this
naturalization of social problems.
The American insurance business had originally supported the 1968 Urban
Property Protection and Reinsurance Act. George K. Bernstein pointed out in
1968 that the organization he directed, the American Insurance Association,
“was among the leading proponents of both the National Flood Insurance Program
and the Urban Property Protection and Reinsurance Program”. 33 After
nearly 12 years of operation, however, the industry’s perspective had changed.
James E. Jones, Jr., the AIA’s government affairs representative, now called for
a termination of the Federal program since it had outlived its existence. Jones
acknowledged that the program had been successful in providing “coverage in
urban centers for essential property insurance”. 34 However, he also told Senator
Stewart, who was presiding over the hearings, that “our companies believe that
the potential for riots and exposure to riot losses have greatly diminished. Private
reinsurance is, today, available. We urge you to finalize the liquidation of
the Federal riot reinsurance program.” 35 In a statement prepared for the January
31 Platt 1999, 73.
32 See Oliver-Smith 1999; Mauch and Pfister 2009.
33 Testimony of George K. Bernstein on Behalf of the American Insurance Association, in
U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 265.
34 James E. Jones, Jr., government affairs representative of the Alliance of American Insurers
in U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 277-278.
35 U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 281.
282

1980 hearing, Jones explained that almost four million new and renewal policies
had been issued by FAIR Plans over the last five years.
Yet, a more substantial reason why the AIA demanded the termination of
the program – besides the decreasing threat of riots and the growing availability
of private property insurance in the inner cities – was very likely the fact that
the losses encountered exceeded the premiums earned by more than $11 million.
“When one considers that companies have also incurred substantial expenses
to pay for state premium taxes, agents’ commissions, administrative
costs, etc.,” Jones continued, “state FAIR plans have been an utter disaster for
private insurers, and the losses generated by those plans have prevented the
companies from expanding their voluntary operations.” 36
“Back of the Bus” Insurance
The image that representatives of the insurance industry painted of their role in
the riot reinsurance program was one of generous companies who had more or
less sacrificed themselves in order to offer financial protection to inner-city
residents. Despite the fact that they encountered huge losses, the homeowner
policies they offered under the FAIR umbrella were allegedly equal in both rate
and content to conventional policies. This view, however, was challenged by
those for whom the lack of inner-city insurance coverage was a first-hand experience
and not just the result of a technical report. Juanita Gear, for example,
who represented the South Austin Coalition Community Council, a Chicago
neighborhood organization, questioned the equality of insurance coverage
under the FAIR Plans and conventional policies respectively, and demonstrated
that parity existed in theory only. In practice, FAIR Plans were either more
expansive or they provided less protection than conventional policies. 37
Gear pointed out that clients of FAIR Plan policies often paid two to five
times more than those who were able to insure their property conventionally.
Also, FAIR Plans in most cases did not include theft or liability coverage. And
even after Congress had passed the Holtzman Act demanding rate parity, 11 of
36 Statement submitted by James E. Jones, Jr., Alliance of American Insurers in U.S. Senate,
“Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 285. Jones claimed that in Rhode
Island, $147 of losses were paid to FAIR Plan policyholders for every $100 of premiums
earned. See James E. Jones, Jr., Alliance of American Insurers, to Donald L. Stewart,
Chairman, Senate Subcommittee on Insurance, 26 March 1980 in U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance
and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 296.
37 Statement of Juanita Gear before the Senate Subcommittee on Insurance, ibid., 300. Gear
was also a member of the National People’s Action, a national coalition of grassroots organizations
which had, “for a number of years, been involved in a variety of efforts, both
legislatively and through direct negotiation with insurance companies, to increase the availability
of essential property insurance in urban neighborhoods.” in U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance
and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 296.
283

the 28 FAIR Plans did not comply with this mandate. Insurance companies did
not hesitate, however, to broaden the categories of risk that could be insured
under the new program so that the FAIR Plans, once designed for only those risks
in specifically defined riot affected areas, are now the major insurer of good risks in
neighborhoods that were not then and never have been subject to extreme environmental
hazards.
As a result, in 1980, more than 1,000,000 homeowners and businessmen
were “relegated” to the state FAIR Plans. In Illinois alone, the number of FAIR
insured homes and businesses rose from 44,600 in 1975 to over 76,000 in
1979. 38
The most insulting aspect of the FAIR Plan system, however, was the spatial
segregation it produced. An insurance map of Chicago, for example, showed a
considerable overlapping of areas with high FAIR Plan coverage with predominantly
African-American neighborhoods. “If you notice where the blackout
is, the red, which we indicate as redlining,” Gear pointed out, “is the area
which is predominantly black. OK? To the north, which is predominantly white
[…] the insurance companies write without any problem whatsoever.” When
asked by Senator Stewart whether one could purchase homeowner’s insurance
under the FAIR Plan in those areas, Juanita Gear replied:
Yes, but why should you get FAIR plan homeowner’s [insurance] when you
could have conventional insurance? Why are you segregating us differently
from the conventional world? Why can’t you have complete conventional insurance
if it’s available and there is nothing wrong with your policy? 39
AIA director George K. Bernstein finally acknowledged the existence of differences
between FAIR and conventional plans but tried to explain them with
different loss situations. The separation of different regions of risk was a prerequisite
for a successful operation of the FAIR program, he argued: “And
that’s exactly what FAIR plans are for: to recognize the fact that in key urban
areas you must make a separate market”. 40 Gear did not oppose the creation of
a separate market; she questioned, however, the criteria on the basis of which a
specific property was categorized as a FAIR Plan property. For insurance companies,
she held, the most important factor was not the individual risk of a
building, but its location inside an allegedly hazardous area. “I know for a fact
that insurance companies took zip codes – okay? and placed them on the FAIR
plan because of geographical location or because of the age of the dwelling,”
38 U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 316.
39 U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 301.
40 U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 302. See also Bernstein’s
Testimony on behalf of the American Insurance Association in U.S. Senate, “Flood
Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 268: “The [Riot Reinsurance] Act did
not require that all risks be written voluntarily, but it provided that in return for federal riot
reinsurance, private reinsurers would create a separate market in the form of FAIR Plans.”
284

Juanita Gear explained. 41 Nine out of ten of Chicago’s 76,000 FAIR Plan policyholders
lived in the city’s South and Westside neighborhoods, she continued:
the same neighborhoods that housed, “by no small coincidence,” almost 90
percent of the city’s minority population. 42
Thus, by its segregative effects, the FAIR Plan reintroduced and legalized to
a certain extent the decades-old and prohibited practice of redlining. 43 Even
worse, it had “a definite racial component”, and reminded many African-
Americans of the “separate but equal” doctrine which basically held that segregation
was not discrimination as long as the facilities for different parts of the
population were “equal”. 44 “Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the serious
implications of adopting so naïve a policy as ‘separate but equal’ insurance
availability,” Gear reminded her audience during the hearing in 1980, “is to
point out that residents of my neighborhood now commonly refer to the Illinois
FAIR Plan as ‘back of the bus’ insurance.” 45
Conclusion
The somewhat strange parallels between flood and riot (re)insurance are based
on the assumption that both are “catastrophal” risks, i.e. events with a low
probability of occurrence but a very high damage potential. 46 Unlike car accidents
or theft, these risks are difficult if not impossible to contain by probabilistic
methods and hence extremely hard to model and to translate into actuarial
terms. 47 One of the main problems in dealing with both floods and riots is that
41 U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 302.
42 Gear Statement, U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980,
316.
43 “Insurance Redliners Fined $100,000”, Chicago Tribune, 3 June 1979: “The largest fines
ever imposed by the Illinois Department of Insurance for redlining violations have been
levied against the Insurance Company of Illinois (ICI), and its manager, W. W. Vincent and
Co. Inc., the Tribune has learned. […] The action climaxes a seven-month investigation of
W.W. Vincent and ICI which established what one source called ‘a clear pattern of geographic
discrimination’ in the writing of homeowner insurance. Redlining is the commonly
used phrase for the denial of homeowners’ insurance to people living in certain designated
geographic areas, particularly those characterized as black, Hispanic, ‘changing’, or decaying.
The practice has been prohibited by the Illinois Insurance Code since September,
1977”.
44 Gear Statement, in U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980,
316-317. This view was confirmed by the infamous Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs.
Ferguson in 1896, and only overruled in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education.
45 Gear Statement, in U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980,
317.
46 This view was already expressed in the Advisory (Hughes) Report to President Johnson in
1968. See also Statement submitted by James E. Jones, Jr., Alliance of American Insurers,
in U.S. Senate, “Flood Insurance and Crime and Riot Reinsurance” 1980, 283-284.
47 See Lockett 1980; Greene 1976; Moss 2002.
285

years with huge (insured) losses are followed or preceded by years with hardly
any damage at all. “Civil Disorder Losses”, for example, amounted to $38
million in 1965 and to $67 million in 1967, but to only one million dollars in
1966. 48 Thus, in order to provide insurance coverage for those affected by these
events, the Federal government in both cases stepped in as an insurer of last
resort. 49
Here, however, the commonalities end. Both programs rely heavily on the
geographical mapping of risk but while this is a sound (and indeed indispensable)
policy as far as flood insurance is concerned, it represents a racist strategy
when applied to allegedly “riot-prone” areas. By characterizing whole blocks,
neighborhoods, or even zip code areas as “hazardous”, rather than looking at
individual buildings or businesses, the FAIR Plans and the companies involved
fostered racial stereotypes and severely limited both the quality and quantity of
insurance protection available in those inner-city areas. The underlying assumption
was that social problems could be treated as quasi-natural hazards,
i.e. as a homogeneous, yet unpredictable force that could (literally) be contained
by actuarial ghettoization. From this perspective, every citizen who was
living in one of these specified areas became a potential rioter. Uprisings, civil
commotions, riots, etc., however, are not “acts of God” that are located outside
of society (nor are floods, by the way 50 ) and hence they require other solutions
than racist steering practices.
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the United States, 1926-2000: A Reanalysis of National Weather Service Estimates.
Boulder, CO: UCAR, 2002.
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Events. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999.
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288

From Nuclear to Human Security? Prerequisites and
Motives for the German Chernobyl Commitment
in Belarus
Melanie Arndt �
Abstract: »Von nuklearer Sicherheit zu Human Security? Voraussetzungen
und Motive des deutschen Tschernobylengagements in Belarus«. This paper
analyses the involvement of West German initiatives in Belarus following the
Chernobyl disaster, with special regard to the social construction of human security.
It focuses on the prerequisites for this involvement and the New Social
Movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, in particular the “new” peace and antinuclear
power movement. Based on the change in the emotional regime in
West Germany, where fear was increasingly being openly expressed, civil society
groups committed themselves to mitigating the consequences of the disaster.
The paper explores perceptions and the criteria of security/certainty and,
more specifically, the criteria of insecurity/uncertainty by which those actors
were governed in their involvement.
Keywords: security, Chernobyl, civil society, fear, commitment, atom, nuclear
energy, New Social Movements.
“We need another profound transition in thinking – from nuclear to human
security”, postulated the United Nation’s Human Development Report in
1994. 1 Thus it marked the new challenges and perceptions which followed the
clear-cut division of the world during the Cold War era. Even if we are far
away from guaranteeing either nuclear or human security, the latter phase of
the Cold War marked a crucial shift in the perception of security not only in the
political realm, but also in civil society. The understanding of security moved
away from a concept which was mainly military and directed at nation states to
a concept which focuses on individual security and the “freedom from fear and
want” 2 as “legitimate concerns of ordinary people (…) in their daily lives”, as
� Address all communications to: Melanie Arndt, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung
Potsdam, Am Neuen Markt 1, 14467 Potsdam, Germany; e-mail: arndt@zzf-pdm.de.
This paper is based on a presentation given at the conference “The Production of Human
Security in Premodern and Contemporary History” in Bochum, 10.4.2010, and Arndt 2010.
I am very thankful for all the helpful comments given during the conference and the critical
eyes of all the reviewers; special thanks to Rüdiger Graf and Cornel Zwierlein.
1 United Nations Development Programme 1994, 22.
2 “Freedom from fear and want” were already key aspects in Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s
Atlantic Charter of 1941 and the preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of the United Nations. Later on they were turned into major components of human
security. United Nations Development Programme 1994, 24.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 289-308

the Human Development Report states. 3 These concerns became especially
virulent and influential after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 which became a
metaphor for many of the challenging processes taking place at the end of the
Cold War.
As early as the 10th anniversary of the disaster, the oft-cited Belarusian
writer Svetlana Aleksievich declared that Chernobyl had already become “a
metaphor, a symbol”. 4 The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident has indeed become
a manifold metaphor for many issues – whether directly related to the
disaster or not. At the heart of these issues lies a deep uncertainty, undermining
belief in technological progress, our ability to control risky technologies, and
the relative security of everyday life. The “symbolic fallout” 5 of the Chernobyl
disaster, as anthropologist Sarah Phillips put it, comprises, among other things:
“anthropological shock” (Beck), the nuclear age, industrial and environmental
disasters, the end of the Soviet Union, radioactive contamination, incomprehensible
(in the most literal sense) afflictions, new forms of adventure tourism,
ambiguity, fear, disability, and disease.
However, Chernobyl has been more than a “semantic catastrophe”, as a
German nuclear physicist succinctly surmised. 6 The disaster not only disclosed
the limits of technical progress, but also the limits of the state’s power to protect
its own citizens. As a “focusing event” 7 Chernobyl changed prior conceptions
of science, technology, security, and citizenship. The disaster 8 accelerated
the breakdown of state socialism 9 , which claimed to have taken on a wide
range of social provision, which had previously been provided by families.
However, Chernobyl did more than just question the authority of scientific
expertise and the Cold War rhetoric of technological progress in socialist systems.
This “politicization of knowing” also produced many laypersons, such as
worried parents, and also experts who began to perceive themselves as citizens
and as citizens with concerns about the environment: what the anthropologist
Krista M. Harper called a “politicization of caring”. 10
While the discussion about the dangers of nuclear energy in the Federal Republic
of Germany had started long before the incident in the Ukrainian nuclear
power plant, on the 26th of April 1986, the hitherto only hypothetical case of
3
United Nations Development Programme 1994, 22.
4
Aleksievich 1998, 25. In the paper I use scientific transliteration from the Russian and
Belarusian languages – with the exception of commonly used terms, such as “Chernobyl”.
5
Phillips 2008, 159.
6
Quoted in Lenk 1996, 363.
7
Birkland 1996.
8
Disaster is here to be understood in the sense of the sociologically dominated Disaster
Studies as process and not merely event.
9
Here I doubt the assertion of Herfried Münkler that the breakdown of the socialist regimes
was a consequence of maximized security and the corresponding perceptions of the population.
Münkler 2010.
10
Harper 2001, 114.
290

the “maximum credible accident” actually occurred, the conciliatory “remaining
risk” became an everyday danger and existential threat. Thinking in terms
of categories of positive security was displaced by a negative understanding of
security – the general certainty that the consequences of the disaster will last,
and the radiation released will cause health threats and limits on quality of life
without the possibility of having concrete certainty about these consequences in
the near, as well as distant, future. This all-embracing uncertainty expressed
itself not least in experiences of paralysis and fear. 11
At the same time, Chernobyl marked a clearly perceptible turning point in
the transnational commitment of civil society. Though it did not immediately
follow the catastrophe, step by step, perestroika opened up methods and forms
of involvement which had not existed in Cold War thinking, but which were at
the same time an expression and result of those processes which had occurred
since the 1970s in the environmental and peace movements. Alongside all the
lugubrious metaphors, “Chernobyl” has therefore also become a symbol of a
movement of solidarity reaching beyond Europe’s borders, a symbol of civil
society involvement consisting of innumerable smaller and larger groups. Besides
the US, Italy and Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany provided the
largest part of private help for the afflicted of Belarus. 12
Since the beginning of the 1990s, more than 1,000 larger and especially
smaller organisations have been established in Germany, which are concerned
with helping the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. They invited hundreds of
thousands of children from radioactively contaminated areas to recuperate
and/or get medical attention for some weeks or months in “safe” and “clean”
environments. Even if the number of children invited has been declining,
around 10,000 Belarusian children still spend their holidays in Germany every
year. 13 At the same time that the recuperation of children was taking place
abroad, recreational centres in “clean” Belarusian areas arose, for example
“Nadezhda” (Hope), which is directed by the German-Belarusian organisation
of the same name. Additionally, the initiatives brought countless trailer-loads
of donations – clothes, medicine, medical and technical equipment, toys and
the like – to the most affected countries. Together with the recuperation of
children, this has represented only the most visible part of the intensive cooperation
between German and Belarusian civil-society organisations. Addition-
11 I prefer the use of “fear” and “anxiety” instead of the highly connotated term of “angst”.
Furthermore, I share Joanna Bourke’s scepticism about the usefulness of the dominant distinction
between “fear” (as referring to an immediate, objective threat) and “anxiety” (as
referring to an anticipated, subjective threat) in historical research and thus will use the
terms synonymously. Bourke argues: “The distinction between fear and anxiety too often
rests on a distinction between the rational and the irrational. However, there is no strict division
between reason and emotion.” Cf. Bourke 2003, 126.
12 Sahm 2006, 108.
13 Ibid.
291

ally, training courses were organised for Belarusian farmers, nurses and doctors.
German citizens’ groups used German money to build entirely new settlements
using alternative energy concepts for evacuees and resettlers from
radioactively contaminated areas in Belarus.
At the centre of this paper is the involvement of German 14 Chernobyl initiatives
in Belarus, which will be analysed with special regard to the social construction
of (human) security. In particular, the prerequisites for this involvement
– which are to be found in the New Social Movements of the 1960s and
the 1970s and especially in the peace and anti-nuclear movement – shall be
presented and historicised. A central issue is the question: by which perceptions
and criteria of security/certainty and particularly insecurity/uncertainty were
actors governed in their involvement? How did they apply the concept of human
security to their actions without even referring to it by name? The paper
starts with a short sketch of the ambiguous nuclear euphoria of the 1950s. The
following section will be a brief outline of the anti-nuclear power plant movement
(anti-NPP movement) and the “new” peace movement, to which the majority
of the initiatives and actors attached themselves. The outline thereby
emphasises the changing perceptions of fear and security as an impetus for civil
societal involvement in the late Cold War phase. After a short survey of the
scale and consequences of the incident at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant,
finally, the German commitment, its supporters, and the motives involved will
be examined.
I assume a very broad understanding of security as a (basic) need and emotion
15 , which will be unlocked by a broad semantic field of complementary
counter- and extension terms (such as certainty, insecurity, uncertainty 16 , threat,
risk, and danger). Fear as a consequence and, at the same time, expression of
insecurity and uncertainty takes on a special position, because it can be neither
regulated nor suppressed on the level of society. In the all-embracing situation
of uncertainty and insecurity, fears not only become increasingly verbalized,
but at the same time also an important engine for political involvement and
civil society mobilization. Fear will be understood not as an anthropological
14 This paper concentrates on West German initiatives, but their East German counterparts are
also part of the larger research project.
15 Febvre 1990, 116.
16 As Bauman correctly stated, the German concept of “Sicherheit” is “considerably more
inclusive” than the English word “security”. It encompasses – at the very least – all the dimensions
of “security”, “certainty” and “safety”. Since the “effects of weakened security,
certainty and safety are remarkably similar” with “symptoms being virtually indistinguishable”,
as Bauman also noted, it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between these
three dimensions and most authors actually tend to use them simultaneously. Nevertheless,
I try to distinguish between these various dimensions (and their respective negations) by
applying “certainty” in reference to positive assurance and confidence in a certain outcome
and “security” in reference to policy-related issues, and the physical realm. “Safety” will be
used in technical terms only. Cf. Bauman 1999, 17-18.
292

constant, but rather as a phenomenon becoming manifest and thus measurable
in different historical and social constellations by its public expression. 17
From Atomic Age to Atomic Angst?
As infernal as the metaphors for the Chernobyl disaster turned out to be, just as
many hopeful pictures were connected to the causa efficiens, the “atom” 18 ,
against the background of devastating World War II experiences and the frontlines
of the Cold War in the 1950s. 19 From today’s point of view, these extended
well into the realm of fantasy and were tied to the enthusiasm for radioactivity
of the 1920s. The peaceful use of nuclear power was promoted as an
“integration ideology” in the 1950s. 20 If nuclear power had served only for
electricity production, the “myth of the ‘atomic age’” would never have
arisen. 21 It was precisely these utopian metaphors which fuelled the enthusiasm
for radioactivity. At the same time they seemed to be a useful means of relativising
the horrible memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and turning people’s
attention to a literally – and, at this time, still positively – radiant future. 22
Apart from some electricity producers, scientists, politicians and writers
were also captivated by the all-embracing use of the atom in biology, medicine,
agriculture, and even tourism. The capabilities of nuclear physics seemed to be
almost unlimited: from the revolution in the chemical industry through radiochemistry
via desalination of seawater and desert irrigation, culminating in the
development of the Arctic. Small nuclear power reactors were planned for use
not only in ships and submarines, but also in aeroplanes, trains, cars and air
conditioners. 23 Thus, such prospects were not limited to hotheads and it was not
just a shallow, media-fuelled phenomenon without further repercussions, as
Radkau proved. 24 While in Germany the population at large, affected by the
Hiroshima pictures, remained rather sceptical and fearful, there were many
17
Cf. Zill 2007; Greiner 2009, 18.
18
The oversimplifying term “atom” corresponds with the use in the period described and
stands synonymously for the whole complex of its capabilities. For a discussion of the
changing usage of the term see Jung 1994.
19
Cf. for the importance of the World War II and Cold War experiences in this development:
Nehring 2004.
20
Rusinek 1993, 14; Radkau 1983, 78.
21
Radkau 1983, 78.
22
Cf. for the French case: Hecht 1998.
23
Cf. Rusinek 1993, 14; Radkau 1983, 79-100; Engels 2006, 344-346; Tiggemann 2004, 54-
57; Müller 1990, 3-12. Recently Microsoft founder Bill Gates attracted attention with his
plans for the resumption of mini-reactors. Cf. “Bill Gates will mit Mini-Meilern die Kernkraft
revolutionieren”, Spiegel online, 23.3.2010.
24
Radkau 1983, 87.
293

supporters, in particular amongst the intellectuals. In the course of this euphoria,
alternatives to the use of nuclear power fell prey to repression. 25
The political reality in the “long 1950s” 26 regarding nuclear power was anything
but free of fear: the threatening and aggressive competition between the
nuclear states involving ever more precarious bomb tests induced a change in
the assessment of nuclear energy in the hitherto passive West German population
in 1956. 27 The Atomic Ministry even spoke of a “psychosis of radiation
fear (…) here and there”. 28 Even if the diagnosis was exaggerated, people did
indeed begin to articulate anxieties, which also opposed peaceful uses and
which started to penetrate into everyday conversation. In the light of the emerging
knowledge of the devastating consequences of American nuclear weapons
tests at the Bikini atoll for uninvolved Japanese fishermen, fear of radioactive
fallout became a topic beyond the “hot” war for the first time. According a
survey in 1959, only a small proportion of the West German population (eight
percent) supported the unrestrained use of nuclear power. 17 percent suspected
that the development of its civil use would one day lead to atomic war. 29
In the 1950s, instead of an undamped euphoria, there was rather atomic
euphoria accompanied by a simultaneous public insight into the dangers connected
with nuclear weapons. 30 Worries about damage to health by released
radionuclides were increasingly expressed – worries that could already have
emerged after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but which only took shape ten years
after. This perceived insecurity found its first institutionalized expression in the
Pugwash conferences against nuclear weapon tests and the Göttingen Manifesto,
where 18 German nuclear scientists warned about the “life-destructing
effects” of nuclear weapons, against which there is no protection at all. 31 While
in 1968 the majority of the West German population still predominantly associated
“atom” with the bomb and only in exceptional cases with nuclear power
plants 32 , in the course of the 1970s the topic became strongly symbolically
loaded and increasingly encompassed the civil use of nuclear energy. Consequently,
the nuclear discourse took a central place in the emerging environmental
debates at a time when “security” became one of the key notions in the
domestic political discourse. 33
25
Radkau 1983, 78-89.
26
Abelshauser 1987.
27
On the change of the emotional regime in postwar West Germany see also: Biess 2009,
215-243.
28
Radkau 1983, 98.
29
Ibid.
30
Radkau 1983, 92. Cf. for a comparison with Great Britain: Nehring 2004.
31
Göttinger Manifest 1957.
32
Cf. Radkau 1983, 435.
33
Cf. Weisker 2005, 211; Nehring 2004, 154.
294

The development of the anti-nuclear power movement, one of the largest
protest movements in the history of West Germany, had passed through four
phases by the end of the 1970s. 34 The early phase started with the building of
the first research reactors in Karlsruhe and Jülich in 1957. This phase lasted
until the end of the 1960s and was limited to the locality. It carried its protest
out through official channels. Mayors and city or municipal councillors were
the leading figures. Initially, they concentrated less on the specific dangers of
radioactivity, and more on general transformations of the landscape and the
local economic structure. With the opposition against the nuclear power plant
in Würgassen at the end of the 1960s, the protest movement expanded beyond
the regional level for the first time and referred increasingly directly to nuclear
power. The threshold to extra-legal methods had not yet been passed in Würgassen.
Only with the anti-nuclear power protest in Wyhl in 1975 did the
movement transform into a mass movement and develop elements of campaign
protest, which today belong to the standard repertoire. 35 Wyhl became a “symbolic
term” 36 for the anti-NPP resistance movement. However, even here the
motives for the protests initially did not directly correlate with the planned
nuclear power plant, but were aimed above all against the creation of a “Ruhr
region on the Upper Rhine”, which was associated with foreign infiltration,
destruction of the agricultural landscape, and deterioration of the Kaiserstuhl
wines by the wafts of mist produced by the plant’s cooling towers.
In Wyhl the local resistance for the first time formed a series of influential
alliances – with the political Left, the sciences (above all Freiburg University)
and the so-called “atomic tourists”. Thus, it succeeded in attracting attention on
a supra-regional level and in formulating new lines of argument against nuclear
energy. Additionally, the movement increasingly addressed the problem of
hazardous incidents – something which reactor safety experts had done long
before, but which had not entered the public sphere. The escalation phase of the
protests in 1976 and 1977 was particularly defined by violence. With the establishment
of the Gorleben “nuclear disposal park”, the protest focused on the
unsolved problem of atomic waste. 37 During this phase, the nuclear power
controversy developed into a central socio-political issue. Numerous publications
appeared, more and more voices could be heard and fuelled a broad discourse
of fear and individual concerns. A mere month before the reactor explosion
in Chernobyl the anti-NPP movement experienced yet another climax in
Wackersdorf on the Easter weekend of 1986. 38
34
The following according to Radkau 1983, 434-455.
35
For details see, for example, Engels 2006, 346-376; Engels 2003, 103-130; Engels 2002,
407-424.
36
Weisker 2005, 210.
37
For details concerning Gorleben and the disposal problems see: Tiggemann 2004.
38
Cf. Kretschmer and Rucht 1987, 134-163.
295

The anti-NPP movement was formed in the context, which Frank Biess described
as the “incubation time of a new subject culture” in the 1960s and
1970s, where a “new subjectivity defined by fear” and an increasingly “ubiquitous
fear” spread. 39 Thereby the “fearful self” of the 1970s reacted to the increasing
number of real dangers in the age of economic recession, ecological
degradation, and terrorism. At the same time, the “new subjectivity” only created
those patterns of perception by which the meanings of these dangers could
be made accessible for individuals. Central to this was the articulation of personal
concern and emotionality in as authentic a manner as possible which – in
contrast to the emotionally silent traditional culture – gave fear a tongue. Thus,
the key concerns of the human security concept, individual “human life and
dignity” 40 , came to the fore. Personal emotional concern and perceived insecurity
could thereby become the trigger for political and societal involvement –
also, and in particular, through anxiety. 41 To be sure, this does not mean that
every single West German citizen felt fear in the 1970s. As Biess showed, fear
was rather just one dimension in the “subjective balance of emotions”, namely
at the normative level of subject culture as well as at the level of everyday
emotional practices. Precisely this increasing acceptance and ability to verbalize
emotional concern were essential preconditions for the involvement with
Chernobyl.
Fear and the perception of insecurity were also central benchmarks of the
“new” peace movement. They appeared almost as a direct response to the
atomic (war) danger. 42 The movement bundled a multitude of fears and fundamental
threats: the fear of a third world war, the threat of environmental deterioration
as well as fear of technology and the uncontrollable consequences of
its use. The campaigners moved beyond pure protest and demanded an alternative
way of life, which should possess more solidarity, be more peaceful, and
be more ecologically appropriate. In this way the peace movement partially
overlapped with the environmental or anti-NPP movement, a development
which found its expression in their self-identification as the “Ökopax” 43 movement.
The “new” peace movement was – in opposition to the so-called “first”
peace movement of the 1960s – ideologically heterogeneous; however, its
protagonists mainly had Christian, pacifist, left-wing or alternative backgrounds.
Because their principles were the far-reaching renunciation of force
and the focus on symbolic actions, they gained credibility and reputation well
39
Cf. Biess 2008, 52.
40
United Nations Development Programme 1994, 22.
41
Cf. United Nations Development Programme 1994, 23.
42
Cf. Schregel 2009, 508; more in detail on the peace movement: Wasmuth 1987, 109-133.
43
“Öko” is an abbreviation of “Ökologie” (German: ecology), and “pax” (Latin) stands for
“peace”.
296

into the conservative camp and could rest on a “thick cushion of sympathy” in
almost all sectors of the population. 44
An important prerequisite for the later involvement in Chernobyl was not
only the increase in “atomic fear”, but also the decrease in “fear of the Russians”.
As a basis for legitimizing the Western armament effort and also partly
because of the discussion of alternative – and in many cases this also meant
communist – concepts of life, its credibility in terms of national security became
increasingly eroded and thus, little by little, tended to be excluded from
the “repertoire of legitimate emotional expressions”. 45
Particularly within the Ökopax movement, fear “as a politicized and politically
accepted emotional condition” merely described an intermediate stage on
the way to action. As a semantic counterpart of fear, campaigners did not elect
the direct negation (“no fear”), but rather made use of allegorical antonyms
such as “bravery” and “hope”, making involvement appear almost compulsory.
46
The Occurrence of the “Remaining Risk”:
the Chernobyl Disaster
Even today not all technical, physical, biological, medical, and psychological
consequences of the reactor explosion of the 26th of April 1986 are disclosed
in detail; only conflicting and imprecise representations are available. 47 What is
certain is that a planned test triggered the explosion, radioactively contaminating
large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia, but also parts of the rest of
Europe and far beyond its borders. Today’s Belarus which, in the public and
scientific perception of Chernobyl, is still in Ukraine’s shadow, received approximately
70 percent of the total radioactive fallout. 23 percent of the Belarusian
territory was contaminated with more than one Curie Caesium-137 per
square kilometre. 48
44 Brand et al. 1986, 263.
45 Schregel 2009, 518.
46 Schregel 2009, 515-518.
47 As introduction see the special issue of the journal OSTEUROPA on the occasion of the
20th anniversary of the disaster or the short introduction by Brüggemeier 2006; Brüggemeier
1998, 7, 33.
48 Caesium-137 with a radioactive half-life of thirty years was the most widely distributed
long-lived radioactive element after the incident. Maps and descriptions therefore usually
refer to it, although it is only one among approximately 40 other radionuclides. The contamination
per square kilometer is given either in the former unit, Curie (Ci), or in Becquerel
(Bq). Both units indicate how much radiation is measured by Geiger counters in
these areas. One Bq is equivalent to one nucleus decay per second. The value “over 1
Ci/km 2 caesium-137” does not in itself indicate how much radiation is absorbed by the people
living in these areas. As experts estimate, people living in an area contaminated with 1
to 5 Ci/km 2 absorb an average of less than 1.0 millisieverts (mSV) per year. mSv and
297

Shortly after receiving the first announcements from Scandinavia, rumours
also circulated in Germany about a Soviet nuclear incident with devastating
consequences. While the federal government urged calm, the federal states
assessed the dangers very differently, partly issuing panic recommendations.
Open-air pools and swimming lakes were to be avoided, children were not to
play outdoors, outdoor shoes were to be left at the front door, and also adults
were not to expose themselves to rain without protection. With every new
directive, insecurity, uncertainty, and disorientation increased. In addition to
the difficulties of measuring radioactivity and its impact on human beings,
radioactive pollution is highly variable and thus complicates risk assessment.
Locally it can vary strongly even within a single settlement. It is out of question
that life could continue in “the normal way” in the most affected regions,
as the Belarusian president Aliaksandr Lukashėnka never tires of stressing. 49 In
Belarus, it is not only the case that settlement patterns have been changed by
evacuation, relocation, and resettlement since Chernobyl – it is also perceptions
of landscapes, nutritional practices, and cultural practices which have altered.
Even more difficult to judge than the radioecological impacts are long-term
medical consequences. Indeed, cancer – and here particularly the previously
very rare forms of childhood thyroid cancer – as well as respiratory, eye, blood,
heart and gastrointestinal diseases, diabetes, immune defects (“Chernobyl
Aids”) and various forms of dystonia (a neurological movement disorder) and
encephalopathy (a collective term for different brain disorders) increased considerably
following the disaster. However, to draw a direct connection to the
catastrophe is often problematic, because there are several other factors which
might have triggered the disease. Furthermore, every human organism reacts
differently to radiation. Expert statements concerning the additional cancer
deaths resulting from the emanated radioactivity fluctuate between several
hundreds and hundreds of thousands because of the different methodical approaches.
50 These imprecise indications, together with the use of consistently
differing numbers and references, form the sounding board of manifold uncertainties,
fears, and also panic.
Sieverts (Sv) are the internationally recognized units used to measure the harmful effects of
radiation on the human body (biologically effective dose). According to most sources, only
when soil contamination is over 5 Ci/km 2 are people likely to absorb more than 1 to 5 mSv
per year. As a comparison: within the European Union, 1 mSv per year is the dose limit for
people living near a nuclear power station. Cf. Internationale Kommunikationsplattform zu
den Langzeit-Folgen des Tschernobyl Unglücks. (accessed August
5, 2010).
49 Lukashėnka 2006. Cf. also Arndt 2006.
50 Cf. Sahm 1999, 191-192.
298

From the Expression of Fear to Involvement
“Fear always demands a counterdraft (Gegenentwurf)”, Bernd Greiner points
out, because in the long run it is bearable neither for individuals nor for collectives.
51 While individuals can sustain psychological damage, societies can meet
the limits of political integration and cohesion if the state fails to fulfil its own
unique task, namely to provide security and freedom from want, fear, and uncertainty.
52 The involvement of German civil society initiatives in the mitigation
of the consequences of Chernobyl in Belarus can be seen as one possible
countercurrent. Thus, from the very beginning, German uncertainty stood in a
mutual relationship with the fear on the Belarusian side. The emotional concern
was linked to a moral commitment to getting involved. Here one ought to consider
that benevolence as “individual pro-social action” contains an accentuated
subjective component. It aims at helping people who, in the eyes of the benefactor,
appear to be needy. Thus, the changeable horizon of values of those
involved is critical. 53
Instead of speaking of a dichotomy between pro-social motives of action
such as solidarity, helping or orientation towards common welfare on the one
hand, and concern about individual welfare, improving one’s self-esteem or
self-realisation on the other hand, it is much more appropriate to look at benevolence
not as a burden, but as a “potential gain” for the initiatives. Thus,
pro-social behaviour and self-interest are not mutually exclusive. 54
Because of diffusion via the mass media, the West was better informed
about the possible consequences and dimensions of the incident, which also led
much more quickly to a perception of insecurity amongst large parts of the
population than in Soviet Belarus. 55 There, the fear of those not directly affected
took shape only bit by bit, as the statement by Henadz’ Hrushavys, the
head of the Belarusian organisation “For the children of Chernobyl” confirms:
Fear did not come immediately. It did not go with the peaceful atom in our
consciousness. Our world view looked like this: the martial atom is a baleful
mushroom in the sky such as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people who burn into
ashes in one second; the peaceful atom in contrast was as harmless as a
light bulb. 56
If, in the very beginning, the involvement in Chernobyl was not a reaction to
a “call for help” from Belarus, an explanation is needed for what it was, in fact,
a reaction to. In the involvement with Chernobyl, one also finds such “positive
51 Greiner 2009, 21.
52 Greiner 2009.
53 Cf. Lingelbach 2009, 14.
54 Lingelbach 2009, 20.
55 For the perceived threat after Chernobyl in Western European countries see the survey
based study of Tønnessen et al. 2002.
56 Gruschewoi 2006, 7.
299

psychological gratification” as significant individual psychological motives,
which Lingelbach elaborated for the West German market for charitable donations:
57 commitment to others – be it by charitable donation or the temporary
accommodation of a “Chernobyl child” – allows the acting out of paternalistically
motivated feelings of pre-eminence. It is accompanied by the affirmation
that one does not belong to those who are in need of help. Involvement can turn
into an effective tool for coping with fears, if those involved put themselves
empathically in the place of those in need and thus identify with the uncertainty
and anxiety of the others (or at least their own perceptions of it). In turn, via
this involvement, feelings of insecurity can be reduced.
“Reconciliation with rolled-up sleeves” is what the journalist Johannes
Voswinkel called the German involvement in Chernobyl. 58 The inception of the
involvement stood in close connection with the partial opening of the Soviet
Union in the course of perestroika and the coming to terms with the crimes
committed by Germans on Soviet territory under National Socialism. Official
Soviet statistics number the deaths at more than 2.2 millions in Belarus alone. 59
The Germans razed to the ground more than 209 Belarusian towns and 9,200
villages/settlements. 60 In 1988 and 1989, the first Protestant pilgrimages into
the still-existing BSSR took place to ask for “peace and reconciliation”. 61 A
large part of the German Chernobyl involvement originated in the Christian
reconciliation work. 62 By this route, the first links to the hitherto unknown
country were made, where the memories of the atrocities of WWII are top
issues even today and often mentioned in the same breath as the memory of
Chernobyl. The vanguard of the Chernobyl initiatives could rely on substantial
experience in reconciliation work, for example in Israel, Poland, or Norway.
Here one can observe a far-reaching impact of the 1960s’ and 1970s’ culture
of remembrance on the actors. The emotionalized, subjective discussion of the
German past was amplified by the increasing media exposure of the issue. 63
Attention to the sufferings of the Belarusian people brought most notably the
broadly recognised 1985 movie produced by Mosfilm and Belarusfilm “Idi i
smotri“ [“Go and look“], which was voted “movie of the month” by the “Jury
of Protestant film work” in West Germany in 1987. Based on the work of the
57
Lingelbach 2009, 400-409.
58
Voswinkel 2003. He referred to the mud brick building project of “Heim-statt Tschernobyl”.
But other associations can also be subsumed under this motto, not least the volunteer
service “Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste” (Action Reconciliation Service for Peace),
which has been sending volunteers to Belarus since 1992.
59
See also Gerlach 2000.
60
Marples 2001, 150.
61
Steinacker 2001, 24.
62
For East German, non-Christian initiatives this aspect obviously did not play such an influential
role. They built their commitment on contacts already established during GDR times,
as the results of a survey show (archive of the author).
63
Cf. Biess 2008, 60.
300

Belarusian writer and later Chernobyl activist Ales’ Adamovich, it tells, dramatically
and through the eyes of the boy Florya, of the atrocities committed by
the National Socialists in Belarus.
The reservations of older Belarusians in particular with respect to the German
donors is an expression of the multidimensional area of conflict “victim of
National Socialism/winner/victim of the atomic disaster versus offender of
National Socialism/defeated/helper after the atomic disaster”, whose further
exploration and historicization through research looks as though it would be
very rewarding. To look at it through the Cold War prism of friend and foe
does not explain it entirely; rather it is necessary to break down the complex
processes of victimization on the one hand and heroization on the other.
Between Knowledge of the Affected and Expert Knowledge
The discussion of the disaster’s consequences within the German initiatives, as
well as their interplay with their Belarusian partners, was from the very beginning
influenced by the tension between the subjective, mainly emotionally
based knowledge of those affected (uncertainty and fear of disease and death),
and the claimed factual objectivity of expert knowledge. 64 Even if, far into the
1970s, the development of nuclear energy in the Federal Republic was presented
as a non-political issue, as determined by factual rationality and expertise
alone, it was extremely difficult to distinguish those who were experts and
those who were not. 65 Even if confidence in experts had decreased during the
course of the development of the “New Social movements” in West Germany,
in tandem with additional uncertainty, the “experts’” opinions gained in power
immensely following Chernobyl. The demand for reliable, reassuring numbers
in a time full of uncertainty and the increasing importance of human security
seemed to be boundless. Statistics on disease, contamination, and deaths
played, and still play, an important role in the arguments of both the helping
and receiving initiatives. It is particularly remarkable with regard to disease
and, especially in this case, cancer statistics. The search for criteria to classify
the non-classifiable and simultaneously to legitimize the honorary involvement
contributed to the amalgamation of highly complex factual arguments with
value convictions. 66 Experts, above all physicians and physicists, were granted
considerable confidence in advance. 67 Statistics became a resource in the competition
for support in Germany, as well as for German assistance in Belarus.
Sometimes it seemed that scientific arguments were of superficial importance
64
For expert culture see, for example, Kurz-Milcke and Gigerenzer 2004; Fisch and Rudloff
2004.
65
Radkau 1983, 14, 85.
66
Cf. Weisker 2004, 416.
67
Cf. Weisker 2005, 203; Weisker 2004.
301

only and could become independent when scientific and humanitarian aspects
were intermingled. The initiatives used the statistics in an appellative and mobilizing
way to gain aid money, supporters or new activists, and to reassure
themselves of the legitimacy of being involved. Cases of overstatement, inappropriate
comparisons or the passing on of stereotypes also occurred. 68
At the same time, the initiatives generated a new group of experts for themselves:
the activists and those involved. According to them, they became the
real Chernobyl experts, with their own eyes and ears. 69
Discourses on health and increasing concern about physical and mental
well-being played an important role in civil society mobilization in the environmental
movement in the 1970s. A paradigmatic change in the area of conflict
between environment and health took place. The definition of health became
much more socio-ecologically induced and linked closely to normative
concepts of security, well-being, quality of life, environmental awareness and
sustainability. Cancer took the central place in these discourses. A discussion
of the “disease of civilisation” occurred in literature, popular science, and science,
and was often accompanied by an autobiographical component and an
understanding of the environment as pathogenic. This development fostered a
sensitization to invisible carcinogenic substances in the environment and in
food. The subjective discussion concerning disease had a strong socio-critical
component; it granted political criticism a new form of “existential exigency
and emotionality”. 70
The “Chernobyl Children”
“When the children come to Germany, they bring along their own message.
Their bodies and souls are the witnesses of the largest industrial disaster of
history and the beginning of nuclear genocide, an unmistakable warning for all
of us. Their message reads baldly and simply: I want to live.” 71 With these
metaphorical and empathic words the former first chairperson of the federal
association “For the children of Chernobyl”, the former Protestant priest
Burkhard Homeyer, described the foundation of the commitment of the largest
German Chernobyl network. By far the largest part of the German Chernobyl
initiatives, numerically speaking, has dedicated itself to the “Chernobyl chil-
68 Thus, one initiative answered on the question of what they are aiming for with their commitment:
“To show the children that there is another life – without vodka, with regular
work and so on.” Archive of the author.
69 Homeyer 2006.
70 Biess 2008, 63. Compare also his notions about the paradoxical consequences of the increasing
medical check-ups, which eventually tend to cause more fear than they reduce.
Biess 2008, 68.
71 Homeyer 1995, 2-3.
302

dren”, as is also expressed in the names of the organisations involved. As in
Belarus, a multitude of initiatives in Germany have chosen almost identical
names. Even today, the organisation of the disputed recuperation holidays is
the most common form of involvement. 72
The amount given as charitable donations in the Federal Republic is, according
to Lingelbach, generally at its largest when it is aimed at the helping of
children. This is also true in the case of Chernobyl, if “donation” includes the
involvement of volunteers. Children are seen as especially “worthy”, innocent,
and vulnerable. They call up instincts of help and patronage. At the same time,
they also produce a feeling of power and feasibility for those involved, which
tends to be much more limited in the case of adults who are in need. 73 In the
external communication concerning the Chernobyl children, there are, on the
one hand, optimistic, pro-life metaphors such as “bridge to peace”, while on the
other hand there is also nihilistic, stigmatising rhetoric such as “children without
future”, “the moribund” or “generation Chernobyl”.
With regard to visual depiction, at times the boundaries of the “pornography
of misery” 74 were overstepped by exhibiting handicapped, deformed children,
who were even naked in some cases, without any need of doing so. 75 Even if
there is a medical-educational motivation behind it, it does not explain why
such pictures are used in non-medical works. The use of such pictures obviously
serves to win attention, which, for the initiatives, is connected with the
hope of inducing others to help.
The classical principle of childcare as an investment for the future is in some
initiatives also connected with political ambitions. With regard to the authoritarian
regime in Belarus, hopes for democratization are particularly resonant
for those involved. Many initiatives hope that the experience the children have
gained with their West German host families will contribute to a democratization
of the political situation in Belarus. To what extent former “Chernobyl
children” have indeed internalized Western democratic values, whether they
really are connected with their stay in Germany, whether those values have
matured into action, and whether “Chernobyl youth” does indeed stand for a
72
The dispute about the usefulness and appropriateness of taking child-recuperation abroad
was – and in some cases still is – divided into defined supporters and opponents. The supporters
stress among other things the importance of the multifaceted (democratic) experience
they gain abroad, while the opponents fear a “cultural shock” and emphasise the advantages
of recreation in “clean” areas in Belarus. Cf. for example: Schuchardt and
Kopelev 1996, 22-38.
73
Lingelbach 2009, 398.
74
Liebel and Wagner 1986, 18.
75
See, for example, the illustration of a paper by Sebastian Pflugbeil with a picture by Igor
Kostin. Pflugbeil 2006, 95. A latest example is the photo exhibition “Chernobyl – living
with a tragedy”, photos by Rüdiger Lubricht and Gerd Ludwig, 18.9.-30.10.2009, Loftgalerie
Berlin.
303

democratic public as some initiatives explicitly aspire to in their aims, still
needs to be investigated.
Summary
There can be no understanding of the German Chernobyl commitment without
taking into account the development of the New Social Movements in the
1970s and 1980s, particularly the anti-NPP movement and the “new” peace
movement. The “new culture of expressive emotionality” 76 , which was closely
intertwined with an increasing sense of ecological insecurity, had a decisive
influence on the forms of action, self-interpretation, and the communication
styles of the associations. East and West were thereby united in some respects:
The commitment to the mitigation of the disaster’s consequences was not
solely based on the perception of the direct consequences, which were in any
case not entirely comprehensible, but were also based on a general feeling of
insecurity, uncertainty and an increasing sensitization during the “environmental
age”. As has been shown, the expression of fear – in particular fear of
disease and loss of well-being − played a central role. Fear became capable of
being verbalized and displayed, contrasting and intermingling with expert
knowledge, and thus developing its potential for mobilization. The underlying
shared assumption of the necessity of human security, taking individual anxieties
and concerns seriously, thus enabled action and social practices beyond the
framework of conventional understandings of security. Human security, with
its proclaimed focus on the actions of non-state actors and the protection and
empowerment of individuals 77 , impedes efforts to establish clear cut divisions
between the different dimensions of security and actually tends to offer an
opportunity to include all of them. Thus its meaning becomes even vaguer.
This, however, might still be a fitting reflection of the complex processes taking
place in the “environmental age”.
At the same time, the change in the emotional regime also affected the remembrance
culture, which gave a crucial, albeit indirect, stimulus to the commitment.
The majority of the associations define themselves not only as initiators
of reconciliation, but also – and often in the same breath – as reminders of
the atomic disaster. They were successful in taking the threats of the use of
nuclear energy far into the provinces. Furthermore, the transnational consequences
of the disasters and the commitment automatically heightened awareness
of Europe as a geographical space where ecological hazards do not stop,
even when they run up against an iron curtain. Ecological security is not a
76 Biess 2008, 53.
77 Cf. Commission on Human Security 2003, 6.
304

matter of nation states and cannot be dealt with using conventional concepts of
security.
The various forms of civil society commitment and the formation of transnational
alliances at the level of civil society, partly even with state financial
support, can be read as a new form of security and foreign affairs within a
global civil society. In this global civil society the perspective of the mass
media is dominant and the active commitment of non-governmental organisations
weakens the competences of the state. The focus of this global civil society
is human security, concentrating attention on the (security) needs of individuals
instead of states, and closely linked to discourses on civil and human
rights as well as international development. The social networks which were
manifested following Chernobyl not only led to transnational interpersonal
contacts, but also developed skills on all sides for coping with situations of
uncertainty and thus strove for something which might be called human security.
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308

Transatlantic Environmental Security in the 1970s?
NATO’s “Third Dimension” as an Early
Environmental and Human Security Approach
Thorsten Schulz �
Abstract: »Transatlantische “Umweltsicherheit” in den 1970er Jahren? Die
“Dritte Dimension” der NATO zwischen Umwelt- und menschlicher Sicherheit«.
This paper deals with the early stages of NATO’s “Committee on the
Challenges of Modern Society” (CCMS), established as environmental “Third
Dimension” of the Alliance in 1969. It discusses “environmental security” as a
prime CCMS motive, assuming that the early CCMS-pioneers already projected
global environmental uncertainty factors as security threats to the Atlantic
Alliance. NATO’s environmental concept already showed elements of environmental
and human security being considered in the face of the
environmental crisis. The interrelation between both is examined by means of a
knowledge-based history approach on the example of the CCMS “Road
Safety” project (1970-1974). In the course of the project, NATO’s environmental
security assumptions turned into a technological leitmotif dealing with
technically controllable environmental risks as well as basic human and individual
needs for security in a technological society. Therefore, the CCMS provided
technical solutions to environmental and security policy problems and,
finally, did not develop any political patterns of acting as a risk orientated environmental
alliance.
Keywords: Environmental Security, Human Security, Transatlantic History,
NATO, Environmental History, Environmental Conflict, Environmental Problems,
Road Safety, Knowledge Development, Knowledge Society, Knowledge
Transfer, Scientification, 1970s.
In July 1969, Apollo 11 discovered another unexpected spacecraft during its
spectacular moon landing mission: Planet Earth. The pictures from outer space
showed mankind impressively that the blue planet was a unique and tremendous
“spaceship”. 1 But it was also a highly fragile planet, as scientists and
doomsday prophets alike warned at the same time. Trained in the art of prediction,
they opined grimly that a worldwide environmental crisis would lead to a
global environmental breakdown within a few decades. 2 Simultaneously, social
movements such as the New Left challenged the political system as well as the
� Address all communications to: Thorsten Schulz, Universität zu Köln, Historisches Seminar,
Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Köln, Germany;
e-mail: thorsten.schulz@netcologne.de.
1 Höhler 2008, 65.
2 Hünemörder 2004, 209-221.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 309-328

economic and social order of Western societies with their ecological rhetoric
and critique of consumption. 3
In this tense atmosphere of environmental insecurity, the newly elected
American president Richard Nixon introduced the idea of a new transatlantic
task to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On April 10, 1969, the foreign
ministers of NATO celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Atlantic Alliance
in Washington DC and Nixon used his home advantage in order to take
his audience by surprise. In addition to its political and military tasks, he stated,
the alliance was missing out on a “third dimension” – the social and natural
human environment:
The industrial nations share no challenge more urgent than that of bringing
20th century man and his environment to terms with one another – of making
the world fit for man, and helping man learn how to remain in harmony with
his rapidly changing world. 4
In order to master this task, Nixon proposed the creation of a NATO
“Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society”, which was eventually
established in November 1969 and later became known as the CCMS.
The following paper deals with the creation of the CCMS and examines
whether its work contributed to the emergence of an environmental security
regime. 5 Moreover, it analyzes how human security tied in with environmental
concerns. At the onset of the 1970s, “environmental protection” and “environmental
policy” were almost synonymous items. “Environment” was equivalent
to the livelihood of man and covered the natural as well as the social human
sphere. 6 Since this implied a strong anthropocentric component, the paper uses
this contemporary meaning of “environment” in order to ensure that contemporary
and today’s connotations are not being intertwined. According to Jakob
von Uexküll, the natural and social interdependency of “environment” was
interpreted as that surrounding influences are deeply relevant to the life and
3 Zelko 2006, 26-28.
4 The White House (Office of the White House Press Secretary), “Address of the President at
the Commemorative Session of the North Atlantic Council, April 10, 1969”, in Public Record
Office, CAB 164-642, 4/130.
5 It is part of a larger project on “Environmental Security in international European politics,
1969 to 1975”, which uses the examples of the Federal Republic of Germany, the United
Kingdom and the United States as a point of reference in order to examine the development
of early environmental security regimes within NATO, the European Union, the United Nations
and the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The PhD is mentored by
Professor Jost Dülffer at the University of Cologne and was supported by the German Historical
Institutes in London (2007) and Washington, D.C. (2008). Since 2009, the author
has been a PhD fellow of the Schmittmann-Wahlen Foundation, Cologne, supported by the
Schmittmann-Wahlen Foundation and the University of Cologne (2010-2011). The dissertation
will be published in 2011.
6 Hartkopf and Bohne 1983, 2-4.
310

survival of a biotic community (Lebensgemeinschaft). 7 Against this backdrop,
the paper defines “environmental security” for a state as the absence of threats
against the environmental preconditions essential to the well-being of its population
and to the maintenance of its functional integrity. 8
Researchers have often enquired about Nixon’s motives for putting the environment
on NATO’s agenda. 9 Today, a cluster of reasons appears to be comprehensible,
ranging from the consolidation of the Atlantic Alliance or the
reduction of domestic political pressure evolving from social unrest within
Western societies to the need to establish an effective international environmental
protection regime. The following paper, however, represents the first
attempt to analyze environmental security as a prime CCMS motive, its central
assumption being that the early conceptualization of the CCMS already included
insecurity considerations such as the global deterioration of the natural
environment. In contrast to those political scientists who assume that contemporary
forms of environmental security only emerged with the end of the Cold
War, I argue that they were already being developed at the onset of the 1970s. 10
The second part of the paper focuses on the interrelation between environmental
and human security within the NATO context. While examining the
CCMS project on “Road Safety” (1970-1974) by means of a knowledge-based
approach to environmental history, it pays particular attention to the production
of “human security” and the realization of an early CCMS “environmental
security” concept – the former being interpreted in terms of today’s United
Nations concept which indicates a turn away from state-centered securitization
towards new threats to “human security” such as crime, health, migration,
poverty, unemployment etc. – and finally, environmental destruction. 11 In 2003,
the Commission on Human Security (CHS) acknowledged that “people’s security
around the world is interlinked” and defined “human security” as an individual
approach
protecting people from critical and pervasive threats and situations, building
on their strengths and aspirations [… by] creating systems that give people the
building blocks of survival, dignity and livelihood […] It complements state
security by being people-centered and addressing insecurities that have not
been considered as state security threats. By looking at ‘downside risks’, it
broadens the human development focus beyond ‘growth with equity’. 12
7 von Uexküll 1909, 5.
8 Frédérick 1999.
9 Blaney 1973, 236; Kyba 1974, 256; Train 1974, 167; Sudarskis 1976, 69; Bungarten 1977;
Krusewitz 1985, 33-47; Ditt 2003; Hünemörder 2004, 141-147; Humblin 2010, 54.
10 For example, Matthew 1999; Dyer 2001, 441; see also the contributions to the “17. Forum
Globale Fragen” discussing the worldwide implications and risks of the global climate
change: Auswärtiges Amt 2007.
11 United Nations Development Programme 1994, 22-40.
12 Commission on Human Security 2003.
311

On the face of it, “human security” appears too vague to be of analytic
value. However, international organizations such as the United Nations pursued
the concept further and states such as Canada or Japan fell into line with it,
which reflects a recent shift in social moral concepts and a rethinking of today’s
globally interconnected human security issues. 13 I argue that the firstgeneration
projects of the CCMS already produced some decisive aspects of
human security. This paper examines the way in which this production of security
knowledge interlinked human with environmental security.
“… Are we prepared to see New York underwater?” –
CCMS Pioneers and the Environmental Crisis
The head of the West German CCMS delegation, the parliamentary secretary
Ralf Dahrendorf, opened the first plenary session of the committee in December
1969 by stating that “the very fact that this Committee has been created
shows that for us security depends as much on the vitality of our societies as it
does on the strength of our armies.” 14 Indeed, security was an intrinsic factor of
CCMS considerations from the beginning, although NATO itself only used an
extended security definition officially from 1991 15 and the first concrete CCMS
study dealing with “Environment and Security in an International Context” did
not appear until 1995. 16
On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that the considerations of
1969 already foreshadowed the findings of the 1995 study. Since in 1969 the
term “environment” was defined as social and natural human environment, 17
the predicted global environmental crisis was perceived as an urgent threat to
the vitality of Western societies. Or, as the NATO Information Service argued
in 1970:
The survival of human society as we know it – perhaps the survival of Man
himself as a species – is threatened now by a new factor: the rapid deterioration
of the globe itself as an ecological system […] The world-wide ecological
crisis (for crisis it is) has […] the components of potential breakdown. 18
This NATO perception of the global ecological crisis as an uncertainty factor
for mankind stems from one of the spiritual fathers of the CCMS – Nixon’s
13 Daase 2009.
14 “Statement by State Secretary Dahrendorf at the first Meeting of NATO Committee on
Challenges of Modern Society on 8 December 1969 in Brussels”, in United States Government
Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Papers of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Part I,
Richard M. Nixon Administration, 1967-1972, Subject File, I:292.
15 Ziegerer 1998, 33-35.
16 Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society 1999.
17 Concerning the contemporary perception of the environment as a social and natural issue,
see also Uwe Lübken’s paper in this volume.
18 Huntley 1972, 11-12.
312

presidential counselor on urban questions and head of the US Delegation at the
CCMS Preparatory Committee, Daniel Patrick Moynihan – the “number one
‘Urbanologist’ … in the White House”. 19
Moynihan was the driving force behind the CCMS, although his assessment
of the CCMS’s role and importance differed markedly from Henry Kissinger’s
approach to NATO’s third dimension. 20 Kissinger perceived the environmental
subject in the first place as a promising way to consolidate the transatlantic
alliance. 21 Therefore, beyond all intentions to protect the environment, the
CCMS was indeed a primary vehicle to achieve a cohesive transatlantic policy.
In the face of France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military structures in 1966
and the credibility dilemma of NATO’s leading member state USA, 22 at least
the political cohesion was meant to be strengthened by the agreeable “soft
politics” of the environment, “adding internal strength to our external security”.
23
Moynihan, in contrast, assessed NATO as the appropriate platform to fight
the social and natural environmental problems of the industrialized nations. 24 In
terms of world policy, he perceived the environmental question as one of the
most urgent international political issues, although he acknowledged internally
that the environmental issue did not have enough integrative power to keep the
Atlantic Alliance alive without any military-political functions. 25
19 Joseph Glazer, “An Urbanologist in the White House”, in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B 142-
5009; “Daniel P. Moynihan, biographic Data”, in “Behandlung von Umweltproblemen
durch die NATO”, September 1, 1969, in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B 142-5009; Katzmann
1998, Appendix A: Biographical Facts Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 181-195.
20 Russel E. Train (EPA) to Henry Kissinger (Secretary of State), “Future of the NATO
Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society”, November 21, 1973 (confidential), in
National Archives and Records Administration. General Records of the Department of
State, RG 59, Political and Defense Files, 150-66/67-2899.
21 Kissinger 1968; Memorandum Kissinger to Nixon, “Clarence Streit Letter on Atlantic
Union”, August 27, 1969, in National Archives and Records Administration. Nixon Presidential
Material: President’s Office, President’s Office Files, Handwritings Box 2.
22 Haftendorn 1994; Nixon 1968, 805; “Die Zukunft der NATO” 1969, 46; Brosio 1967, D23.
23 Department of State, “Memorandum for Mr. Henry A. Kissinger. Your Meeting with
NATO Secretary General Manlio Brosio, July 3, 1969 / Briefing Memorandum”, July 2,
1969 (secret), in National Archives and Records Administration. General Records of the
Department of State, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, 150-64/65-3160.
24 Moynihan to Nixon, “Memorandum for the President: NATO Committee on the Challenges
of Modern Society”, September 16, 1969 (confidential), in National Archives and Records
Administration. Nixon Presidential Material: President’s Office, President’s Office Files,
Handwritings, Box 3; Memorandum Moynihan to Nixon, “Report on CCMS”, March 21,
1970, in National Archives and Records Administration. Nixon Presidential Material: The
National Security Council (NSC), Central Files, NSC-CenFiles-312.
25 Memorandum Moynihan to Nixon, “Report on CCMS”, March 21, 1970, in National
Archives and Records Administration. Nixon Presidential Material: The National Security
Council (NSC), Central Files, NSC-CenFiles-312.
313

With regard to the CCMS’s conception, papers of its Preparatory Committee
(PrepCom) reveal that security aspects already played a prominent role in
the creation of the new organization. In the PrepCom Moynihan defined as the
challenges of modern society
to protect individuals and society from the unheeded effects of technological
change [, …] to minimize the harmful effects that arise from imperfect use of
technological developments, to achieve a more effective use of technology
and more human forms of complex systems to the end of extending welfare
and freedom of individuals and strengthening the bases of world peace. 26
He concluded that “the stability and well being of nations rests fundamentally
on the success with which they face these challenges”. 27 His statement
formed the basis of the North Atlantic Council’s report on the proposed CCMS.
For the first time, the Americans cited concrete examples of this new type of
environmental insecurity factor. As Moynihan wrote to Nixon:
We pointed out that at the expected rate of release of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere by fossil fuels, the temperature of the atmosphere could rise 7 degrees
by the year 2000. [...] Carbon dioxide has the same effect of glass in a
green house [and ...] this [...] could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. What
then would become of London, Hamburg, Amsterdam, [and] New York? 28
Essentially, he resumed some specific recommendations of the President’s
Science Advisory Committee of 1965, which had informed President Johnson
that “marked changes in climate, not controllable through local or even national
efforts” 29 could occur. In comparison, Moynihan created a more complex worst
case scenario. The inversion of his arguments reveals that he expected social
and political instability, deterioration of the quality of life and the environment
and finally a threat to all world peace efforts.
In terms of the domestic environmental policies of NATO’s members, this
interdependence manifested a more complex dimension than conventional
environmental efforts so far ever realized. The PrepCom assessed the environmental
destruction as a global uncertainty factor concerning NATO’s integrity
– a theory the Western diplomats were confronted with for the first time. 30
26 “Report of the Chairman on the Discussion in the Preparatory CCMS on Subjects which the
CCMS might consider”, September 16, 1969, in National Archives and Records Administration.
Nixon Presidential Material: President’s Office, President’s Office Files, Handwritings,
Box 3.
27 Ibid.
28 Moynihan to Nixon, “Memorandum for the President: NATO Committee on the Challenges
of Modern Society”, September 16, 1969 (confidential), in National Archives and Records
Administration. Nixon Presidential Material: President’s Office, President’s Office Files,
Handwritings, Box 3.
29 President’s Science Advisory Committee 1965, 9.
30 Moynihan to Nixon, “Memorandum for the President: NATO Committee on the Challenges
of Modern Society”, September 16, 1969 (confidential), in National Archives and Records
314

Moreover, Moynihan already calculated costs resulting from environmental
risks in comparison with the CCMS expenses. He summarized that the actions
would cost a vast sum – but in the face of the environmental threat, capital
spending appeared unavoidable: “If we conclude that the carbon dioxide projection
is sound, are we prepared to see New York underwater?” 31 With this in
mind, Moynihan worked along the same lines as scientists on both sides of the
Atlantic, such as for instance Paul Ehrlich who was criticized in the US as a
doomsday prophet because he discussed the global greenhouse effect 32 or Sir
Frank Fraser Darling in the UK who explained the causal relationship between
the environment, technology, and potential security threats to posterity. 33 Darling
argued that it was a dangerous misconception that only later generations
would have to deal with environmental problems. As Moynihan consulted
Darling’s results, 34 his CCMS concept assessed the critical environmental
situation in a symptomatic way. In October 1969, he told the North Atlantic
Assembly that the threat of a “nuclear holocaust” had been regarded so far as
the ultimate disaster to humanity. But now “it has come to be perceived that
this would be only the most spectacular of the fates that might await us. […]
An ecological crisis is surely upon us; and developing at quite extraordinary
rates.” 35 As CCMS pioneers like Moynihan considered Western society and
mankind as such to be endangered by the global environmental deterioration,
the CCMS of 1969 expressed a programmatic shift from state to societal-based
security, as Christopher Daase explains. 36 Therefore, the development of the
CCMS shows vividly that society substituted the state as main security interest
at the onset of the 1970s, gradually shifting in the dimension of space (from
national to global level), danger (from threat to risk), point of reference (from
state to society to the individual) and subject (military, economic, ecological
and finally human security). 37
Administration. Nixon Presidential Material: President’s Office, President’s Office Files,
Handwritings, Box 3.
31
Ibid.
32
McCormick 1989, 69-73; Hünemörder 2004, 219-221.
33
“Not with a bang but a Gasp”, The New York Times, December 15, 1969; McCormick 1989,
129.
34
“Remarks by Daniel P. Moynihan on the Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society”,
Brussels, December 8, 1969, in United States Government Library of Congress, Washington
D.C., Papers of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Part I, Richard M. Nixon Administration,
1967-1972, Subject File, I:292.
35
“The NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society. Address by Daniel P.
Moynihan, North Atlantic Assembly”, Brussels, October 21, 1969, in United States Government
Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Papers of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: Part I,
Richard M. Nixon Administration, 1967-1972, Subject File, I:292.
36
See Christopher Daase’s paper in this volume.
37 Daase 2009, 138-149.
315

For all these reasons, security was an intrinsic factor of CCMS considerations.
NATO’s environmental concept already showed elements of environmental
and human security being considered in the face of the environmental
crisis. However, since we cannot take our present knowledge as a yardstick, it
would be wrong to regard the CCMS concept as a matter of course. Images of
destruction such as the “Deepwater Horizon” disaster or scientific reports on
global warming were not established in the collective consciousness. Regarding
the level of experience and science at the end of the 1960s, Moynihan did not
present generally agreed facts – rather, he and other CCMS pioneers advanced
a working hypothesis for NATO’s environmental initiative. What Moynihan
and the North Atlantic Council did was not to create or complete an environmental
security paradigm. It was a thought process which aimed at the combination
and investigation of environmental and security factors under NATO
conditions. CCMS projects were to show to what extent environment and security
really were interconnected and to combine technical, ecological, and social
factors with the political courses of NATO’s actions. In this respect, the Third
Dimension was really a new political initiative which marked a period of transition
in NATO’s political strategy from conventional concepts of “peace” and
“security” to an early form of environmental security.
“… Tens of thousands of scarce engineering man-hours” –
Road Safety Knowledge and the Production of “Human
Security”
In 1970, eight CCMS projects started in a new type of pilot-copilot model on
Disaster Relief (USA), Road Safety (USA), Air Pollution Control (USA), Open
Water Pollution (Belgium), Inland Water Pollution (Canada), Work Satisfaction
in a Technological Era (UK), Scientific Knowledge and Political Decision
Making (FRG), and Regional Planning (France). 38 The pilots expected an extensive
transatlantic environmental technology transfer. Almost every operation
aimed at the exchange and development of environmental technology. The
United States in particular attracted large technological projects, which promised
economic and national benefits closing the apparent mutual American-
European “technological gap” in the environmental field. 39 Business journals
38 Pilot nations of the CCMS projects are listed in brackets. If interested, one “pilot” nation
took up a certain environmental problem and led a corresponding research project. Thus,
the pilot was responsible for its planning, financial expenditure, organization and results.
Within the project, “copilot” nations were able to establish subprojects on more concrete
problems.
39 “Examples for U.S. in meeting the ‘Challenges of Modern Society’”, February 2, 1970, in
United States Government Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Papers of Daniel Patrick
Moynihan: Part I, Richard M. Nixon Administration, 1967-1972, Subject File, I:292;
316

predicted expanding environmental technology markets while economists
considered the environmental sector as the “next big industry”. 40 Such technological
innovation appeared only feasible in cooperation with national industries
and companies. Thus, the CCMS projects gave American and European
industry the opportunity to improve in the field of environmental engineering. 41
As the example of the Road Safety project illustrates, industrial science and
engineering facilities became heavily involved in the CCMS research and technology
exchange.
To analyze the scientific process of the CCMS and the production of security
knowledge within its projects, this paper historicizes the sociological concept
of “knowledge society” (Wissensgesellschaft). 42 The concept assumes that
knowledge-based actions such as information processing, expert systems, and
symbolic analysis permeated societal processes and relegated traditional factors
of reproduction to the background. 43 The review of the Road Safety project
pays special attention to the former aspect. According to the sociologist Nico
Stehr, it was the growing significance of science after 1945 which enabled
society to influence itself, its social institutions and its relations to the natural
environment. 44 With regard to environmental history, critics have complained
that this view was too euphoric about scientification and neglected “nonscientific
knowledge” and its “non-professional producers” such as the environmental
movement. 45 Nevertheless, since the CCMS projects were run exclusively
by a group of scientists and experts, a historically reconsidered definition
of Stehr’s thesis is worthwhile. In the context of the CCMS, “knowledgebased”
chiefly signified engineering and the natural sciences. Overall, as I
Memorandum Dr. DuBridge to President Nixon, “The Technological Gap”, February 19,
1969, in National Archives and Records Administration. Nixon Presidential Material: The
National Security Council (NSC), Central Files, NSC-CenFiles-442; Memorandum Dr.
DuBridge to President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, “Cooperation in Science and Technology
with Europe”, February 20, 1969, in National Archives and Records Administration.
Nixon Presidential Material: The National Security Council (NSC), Central Files, NSC-
CenFiles-442.
40 “Gewinnchancen für eine bessere Umwelt”, Business Week, April 11, 1970; Quinn 1971,
120.
41 Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Science and Technology Department (Ronald Arculus),
“NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society: U.S. Study on Road Safety: Proposal
on Air Bags (Passive Restraints Systems)”, April 23, 1970, in Public Record Office,
CAB 164-643: 42; Moynihan to Bundeskanzleramtschef Horst Ehmke, June 10, 1970, in:
United States Government Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Papers of Daniel Patrick
Moynihan: Part I, Richard M. Nixon Administration, 1967-1972, Subject File, I:292.
42 Concerning the methodical advantages of the concept see Szöllösi-Janze 2004, 277, 310-
313.
43 Wilke 1998, 161.
44 Stehr 1994, 220.
45 Uekötter 2006, 102, 104-107; Uekötter 2006, 145, 147-148; with regard to scientification in
the environmental field – especially concerning the “amateurish knowledge” of the environmental
movement – compare Radkau 2002, 309.
317

argue, the Road Safety project produced a CCMS-specific environmental
techno-science knowledge which dealt with security risks in traffic and mobility
and defined individual human security for driving and, thus, living conditions.
The project on Road Safety 46 was once again the brainchild of Patrick
Moynihan. Throughout the 1960s, he pursued a new approach to the subject,
stating that “traffic accidents constitute one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest,
of the nation’s public health problems.” 47 He criticized the American automobile
industry and government for their reluctance towards an efficient road
safety methodology. There was no relevant data available, nor had any scientific
and technological projects been pushed ahead:
The only moderately reliable statistic that exists is the number of persons
killed […] It is hardly a complicated matter to conceive what basic national
data ought to be collected: rates for deaths, injuries, and accidents; geographical
and temporal distribution as such; types of vehicles involved; types of
driver failure; types of vehicle failure; types of drivers involved; types of
roadway and environmental failures […] To repeat: none of this data now exists,
save the death rate. 48
Moynihan advocated not only producing adequate cars but also developing
traffic systems able to minimize potential accidents. In this respect, he raised
the question of individual risk limitation and individual security in a technological
society. With this in mind, he defined road safety, in the first place, as a
scientific task and not only as a matter of bureaucracy.
However, NATO’s road safety project went far beyond this projection. It
aimed at the combination of automotive engineering, human and ecological
factors as well as accident prevention and investigation to produce a “highly
effective format … bringing all dimensions of the problem and their interrelationships
into sharp focus.” 49 In order to harmonize Western road safety standards,
it intended that all interested states should be able to draw conclusions
from a catalogue of technological insights. 50 This matrix consisted of six subprojects
on (1) emergency medical services, (2) road hazards, (3) increasing
use of seatbelts, (4) alcohol and driving, (4) passive restraints, (5) accident
investigation and most importantly, (6) the development of an Experimental
Safety Vehicle. 51
46
Accredited by the North Atlantic Council in February 1970; see NATO Doc. C-R(70)5,
February 13, 1970.
47
Moynihan 1966, 10, quoted according to 20.
48
Moynihan 1966; italics used in the original text.
49
“Road Safety. Summary of proposed pilot study” 1970, 19; quoted according to 22.
50
United States Department of Transportation, “US Pilot Study on Road Safety for the Committee
on the Challenges of Modern Society. Proposed Agenda, Implementation and Working
Plan”, February 6, 1970, in Public Record Office, FCO 55-451: 2.
51
Huntley 1971, 23-26.
318

Mobility and traffic are important parts of the anthropogenic environment.
Consequently, it was not as peculiar as it seems at first sight that the CCMS
developed traffic guidance systems, airbags or safety cars. Contemporary figures
showed that in the United States 55,000 road deaths and 3.5 million injured
persons were estimated in 1968 alone. 52 In 1965/66, the death toll from
traffic accidents numbered 111,000 NATO-wide – almost as much as the losses
suffered by the UN forces in the Korean War. 53 In addition to driving safety,
the subprojects covered important environmental matters such as the development
of a pollution-free car and better emission measurement technology. In
this way, Road Safety was directed at reduced CO2 emissions and less urban
smog. 54
The number of growing cooperation partners indicates that no major automotive
nation wanted to miss the technology transfer within the project. The
Europeans were particularly interested since the American National Traffic and
Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 set new motor vehicle safety standards in the
US. 55 Car and motorbike manufacturers such as AMF, Ford, Fairchild Industries
and General Motors (USA), Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, BMW
and Porsche (FRG), British Leyland (UK), Fiat (Italy), Peugeot, Renault and
Citroen (France), Nissan, Toyota and Honda (Japan) as well as Volvo and Saab
(Sweden) worked in subprojects on safety measures, new kind of propulsion
methods and Experimental Safety Vehicle prototypes (called ESV in the following).
Road Safety turned out to be a big business investment: By 1974, the state
and private capital investments for the ESV subproject itself amounted to 250
million US dollars. 56 The same year the project presented 13 different ESV
variants, designed corresponding to mass production standards and the purchase
interests of prospective buyers. 57
International conferences, trade fairs and car exhibitions such as the Frankfurt
Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (IAA) (1970), the ESV conferences
in Paris (1970), Stuttgart (1971), Washington, DC (merged with the transport
fair “TRANSPO ’72” (1972)) and Ann Harbor (1973) formed an extensive
“space of automotive engineering knowledge”. 58 Within this knowledge space,
government officials, state facilities, non-governmental organizations and
actors alike met and established a horizontal and vertical cooperation between
national departments of transportation, federal agencies, car and insurance
52
“Road Safety. Summary of proposed pilot study” 1970, 19.
53
Huntley 1971, 23.
54
“NATO move to encourage pollution-free cars”, The London Times, October 20, 1970.
55
US want air bag safety at 85₤ car”, The London Times, July 8, 1968; “American safety laws
criticized”, The London Times, March 29, 1971.
56
Blaney 1974, 236; Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society 1974, 5.
57
Blaney 1974.
58
The concept of “Wissensraum” (knowledge space) is interpreted according to Ash 2000,
235.
319

associations, independent and government-sponsored research institutes as well
as research facilities of the world’s most important car manufacturers.
Throughout the project, technical engineers of the car industry dominated
the scenery and established an environmental knowledge concerning the style
of the ESV. As a result, there was no competition between different scientific
knowledge systems, but rather cooperation among the prevailing fields of the
project. Up to 1977, the number of scientists, experts and government representatives
integrated together in such CCMS projects increased to an annual average
of more than 1,000 persons meeting at 30 conferences and workshops. 59
Within the projects, scientists and engineers established subject-specific communities
and networks extending beyond the operations, as three former CCMS
experts explained:
During the pilot study, the ‘community’ of experts communicate directly with
each other, often by telephone. These connections […] often continue even after
the conclusion of the pilot study. […] The interaction within the scientific
‘communities’ is the real medium of reciprocal transmission of technology
[…] and it is the CCMS’ greatest achievement and greatest success. 60
Owing to these networks, the national boundaries set by the CCMS pilot
model became blurred, and researchers and experts exchanged their views and
results inside and outside “their” scientific community. In consequence, transnational
collaborative company and research interconnections developed, for
instance exchanging experiences on airbag or catalytic converter know-how. 61
The Road Safety community obtained its knowledge mainly from experiments,
for example crash tests and experimental emission measurements, as
John A. Volpe explained:
Auto design engineers […] have thrown themselves into the ESV task with
unparalleled enthusiasm. Top company managements have unhesitatingly
committed millions of dollars to the ESV program. They have allotted tens of
thousands of scarce engineering man-hours to the project and have constructed
and equipped extensive new test facilities. Governments have come to
the support of these efforts by undertaking new research at government centers,
as well as underwriting a great deal of private research. 62
59 Özdas 1977, 20.
60 Ward et al. 1980, 19; Paul von Ward was the US coordinator of the CCMS between 1977
and 1979; Glen Kendall und James Bresee collaborated on several CCMS US pilot projects.
61 “US Car giants study anti-pollution system”, The London Times, December 8, 1971; Foreign
and Commonwealth Office/Science and Technology Department (Ronald Arculus),
“NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society: U.S. Study on Road Safety: Proposal
on Air Bags (Passive Restraints Systems)”, April 23, 1970, in Public Record Office,
CAB 164-643: 42.
62 John A. Volpe (Secretary of the United States Department of Transportation) on the occasion
of the third ESV conference and international transport fair “TRANSPO ’72” in Washington,
DC, May 1972, in U.S. Department of Transportation 1972, 1-5.
320

The experiments of the “test facilities” formed the arsenal of information
through which the CCMS experts legitimized “their” redefined environment
before science, politics, and society. 63 While “scientists” produced new knowledge,
“experts” reproduced it as a feasible subject. At the ESV conferences and
car exhibitions, automobile and traffic experts made their technical knowledge
available to an expertise-demanding clientele in politics, bureaucracy, industry
and the media. 64 Because of their ability to transform the flood of information
and data into scientific insights, products, and expertise, the automotive engineers
and technical-administrative experts possessed a powerful knowledge of
interpretation and orientation.
Road Safety experts coined the image of the technological as the “environmentally
suitable” know-how. As this kind of environmental techno-science
knowledge evolved in the course of the projects, the CCMS’s idea of environmental
protection shifted in line with market conditions towards a predominant
technology-centered approach. For example, American, European, and Japanese
engineers worked on the environmentally most suitable and most profitable
propulsion method. They presented Catalytic converters and new types of
propulsion such as turbine engines, electric and hybrid drives as well as a revised
sterling engine. 65 The project’s experts established the eco-friendly automobile
as being market-conforming, announcing that “the ‘clean car’ of 1975
will also have to be a ‘safe car’”. 66
Simultaneously, this CCMS techno-science redefined “environmental
threats” as technologically controllable “environmental risks”. Specific mechanisms
of risk limitation were anticipated in a kind of a “safeguarding technology
complex”, closely corresponding to Ulrich Beck’s sociological concept of
“risk society” (Risikogesellschaft). 67 Although it is questioned by environmental
historians for various reasons today, 68 some of its sociological ideas are
still worthwhile in a historicized way. 69 According to Beck, environmental risks
are basically invisible and based on causal interpretations. They are extremely
dependent on experts’ knowledge as they are influenced by social processes of
definition. 70 In the case of the knowledge production within the CCMS projects,
transatlantic researchers and experts dealt with regionally invisible envi-
63
According to Gooding 1989, 16.
64
In general: Szöllösi-Janze 2004, 282; in the context of the Road Safety project: Huntley
1972, 25-26.
65
Huntley 1972, 25-26; Train 1974, 177.
66
Huntley 1972, 28.
67
Beck 1986; for the latest definition of risk society see Schubert and Klein 2006.
68
Engels 2006, 32; Brüggemeier 2006, 56.
69
From a historical perspective, it rather encourages questions about historical safety philosophies,
as Joachim Radkau suggested: Radkau 1999; Radkau 1990, 345, 357; Radkau 1989,
130.
70
Beck 1986, 29-30.
321

onmental risks such as the greenhouse effect or acid rain. 71 Besides these,
visible risks such as road accidents appeared on the research agenda. Beck
excluded “road accidents” from his analytical risk pattern, arguing that they are
“attributable to the individual” and “chanced voluntarily”. 72 However, the
historical reality differed as the development of road safety represented a concrete
attempt to control social risks of modern technology and society. Joachim
Radkau correctly pointed out that the 20th century’s rise of mass motorization
in particular accepted social and individual risks to a high degree. 73 With this in
mind, conventional automobiles and the extensive postwar highway networks –
such as the one created by US town planners on the assumption of endless
cheap fossil energy 74 – appeared as uncertainty factors to an increasingly mobile
automotive society.
Against this backdrop, the Road Safety project created, in a bottom-up process,
a post-modernist risk management of social and individual human mobility.
Experts’ reports and feasibility studies demonstrated technological prospects
in the control of potential human security threats such as the “road
accident”. Therefore, the project exemplifies a process of professionalization,
indicating that the 1970s’ production of human security was still centralized in
the hands of a few experts who generated and consolidated new realities in
everyday life. 75 At the onset of the 1970s, this techno-science culture of environmental
innovation participated in standardization and harmonization processes
and thus influenced automobile design and culture. Whether it concerned
airbags or seat belts, pedestrian protection devices or crash systems, catalytic
converters or engine design – American and European car buyers of the 1970s
and 1980s were confronted with a new kind of functionalist safety car design
shaped by state legislation, scientific experts, consumer demands for safety and
environmental features, and a new type of overall technological safety philosophy.
76
Conclusion
The analysis has shown that early CCMS pioneers such as Patrick Moynihan or
Ralf Dahrendorf already anticipated present scientific and political environmental
security discourses. Unlike other contemporary observers, they were in
the position to formulate a first environmental security thesis for NATO’s
71
US Secretary of State to all NATO Capitals, “US Précis for NATO/CCMS Air Pollution
Pilot Study”, December 5, 1969, in Public Record Office, CAB 164-642, 40P.
72
Beck 1988, 266.
73
Radkau 1989.
74
McNeill 2005, 87.
75
According to the “technological momentum” assumed by Hughes 1975, 358-384.
76 Gartman 1994, 213-215.
322

environmental activities, which failed for two reasons: On the one hand, the
prevailing mood within the Alliance towards the CCMS initiative was “responsive
in principle but cautious in practice”. 77 Important allies such as the United
Kingdom were not enthusiastic about NATO’s new third dimension for financial
reasons, because of duplication of work with other international environmental
organizations and conceivable political implications such as the impression
of a bloc-to-bloc politicization within the environmental field. 78 Therefore,
the CCMS focused its attention in a top-to-bottom process upon technological
options rather than political grand designs. The nature of the Alliance was too
restricted to provide political or scientific answers for global environmental
problems. 79 On the other hand, assertive large-scale projects like the Road
Safety project established a prevailing techno-science culture of environmental
innovation which left its mark on the CCMS’s objectives. The CCMS as such
did not steer the “eco-technological policy line” all by itself. Rather, it was the
knowledge production within the projects which developed an efficacious
power of definition and promoted environmental technology only in a bottomup
process. Whether it was oil tanker design, disaster relief, contingency plans
or air pollution control: At the end of the day, this power was so decisive that
“the heart of the NATO CCMS programme was […] to stimulate a significant
exchange of technology amongst a major group of industrialized nations of the
world”. 80
Consequently, the CCMS projects of 1970 did not examine the global environmental
security hypothesis projected in 1969. In a tacit understanding, all
projects took a technological turn, leaving “environmental security” virtually
aside. The Road Safety project demonstrates that the task of investigating environmental
and security factors under NATO conditions very quickly turned
into a technologically dominated leitmotif dealing with basic human and individual
needs for security in a technological society. The activities established
77 Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Western Division to Cabinet Office, “NATO and
Environmental Problems. Visit of the Secretary General on 26 June”, June 23, 1969 (confidential),
in Public Record Office, CAB 164-642, 12M.
78 Foreign and Commonwealth Office to Prime Minister’s Office, “Note for the Prime Minister
on how Nato came to be involved in environmental problems – Nato and environmental
problems”, August 5, 1969 (confidential), in Public Record Office, CAB 164-642: 25;
Moynihan to Nixon, “Memorandum for the President: NATO Committee on the Challenges
of Modern Society”, September 16, 1969 (confidential), in National Archives and Records
Administration. Nixon Presidential Material: President’s Office, President’s Office Files,
Handwritings, Box 3.
79 Antoine 1973, 1-6; Sudarskis 1976, 71 on “Limits of the CCMS”.
80 Robert Brenner, scientific head of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) at the fourth CCMS plenary session, Brussels, April 19-20, 1971, in: Committee
on the Challenges of Modern Society, “Summary Record of a meeting held at the NATO
Headquarters, Brussels, on 19th and 20th April, 1971”, NATO Doc. AC/274-R/7, July 23,
1971, in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B 106-25901.
323

international and transnational bodies which produced specifically safeguarding
knowledge and expertise in their field of research. If “technology” is defined
as manufacture and application for a specific purpose, the project aimed
at individual human security. It linked road safety to the security of the individual
by exploring the environment from a technical perspective. Basic human
needs such as the freedom to move were redefined in terms of a general technological
safety philosophy. As a first major international organization dealing
with road safety and individual security, NATO anticipated present human
security discourses such as the United Nations Habitat “Global Report on Human
Settlements 2007” which explicitly defines road safety as a human security
issue while bringing together security and safety in one urban policy concept.
81
In the face of the CCMS pioneers’ ambitious vision, NATO’s environmental
committee nevertheless produced a sobering outcome. Although its projects
indicated for the first time the complexity of “environmental security” and
“human security”, these two elements were not integrated into a political
framework of action. Rather, the specialists of the CCMS provided technical
solutions to environmental and security policy problems. Even if individual
human security was considered, at no point did the CCMS projects develop an
analytical pattern of environmental or human security combining technical,
ecological, and social uncertainty factors and risks with political courses of
action. Owing to this, NATO and its environmental projects did not develop
any political structures or objectives of acting as a risk-orientated environmental
alliance. Only at the end of the 1970s did NATO discuss that it had to
bear in mind ecological, scientific-technological and social factors on a global
and long-term basis. 82 However, as the Cold War heated up again, NATO’s
environmental dimension lost significance. Once more Western diplomats
fought on familiar terrain and focused on military-political matters. It was not
until the lifting of the Iron Curtain that NATO’s policy-makers retrieved the
environmental security dimension assumed by their predecessors and revived,
unknowingly, Moynihan’s idea of 1969 as an integral part of the Atlantic Alliance.
81 United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) 2007.
82 Cleveland 1978, 14.
324

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328

Between National and Human Security:
Energy Security in the United States and Western
Europe in the 1970s
Rüdiger Graf �
Abstract: »Zwischen Sicherheit und Human Security: Energiesicherheit in den
USA und Westeuropa in den 1970er Jahren«. The article examines, on the one
hand, the changes to the concept of energy security in the second half of the
twentieth century, particularly in the 1970s, and on the other hand, the influence
of these conceptual changes on the overall change to the perception and
architecture of “security”. It argues that the concept of “energy security” lost
its close connection to state and military security while being extended with
respect to its spatial scope, reference object, issues, and classification of dangers.
This extended the notion of energy security and, in turn, exerted a crucial
influence on the overall extension of the security debates from state to human
security via the Brandt, Palme and Brundtland Commissions, which tried to
address global security issues. Thus, in the 1970s our current energy and security
constellation emerged, partially superseding the logic of the Cold War.
Keywords: energy, energy security, security, USA, 1970s, oil crisis, oil embargo,
United Nations, Brandt Commission.
1. Human Security and Energy Security –
Concepts and Historical Analysis
Since the publication of the Human Development Report in 1994 the concept
of human security has undergone an impressive career. Today, many texts
celebrate the term as setting a new political agenda in the post-Cold War world,
but almost as many bemoan its vagueness that allegedly precludes both thorough
political analysis and concrete policy-making. 1 Despite major disagreements
over the contents and usability of the term, there is a consensus at least
about a core meaning of human security. The term extends classical notions of
security that dominated in the 20th century or even, as some argue, since the
creation of the so called Westphalian System. These older conceptions of security
considered the state to be the primary subject and object of security. 2 In
� Address all communications to: Rüdiger Graf, Faculty for History, Ruhr-Universität Bochum,
Universitätsstraße 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany; e-mail: ruediger.graf@rub.de.
For critical suggestions I thank Moritz Föllmer and Cornel Zwierlein.
1 Hampson and Penny 2007; Study Group on Europe’s Security Capabilities 2004; Paris
2001; King and Murray 2001-2002.
2 Ogata 2001.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 329-348

contrast or rather in addition to state security, human security focuses on individual
human beings and attempts to guarantee and expand their vital freedoms,
encompassing freedom from fear and freedom from want. 3 Therefore,
human security also concerns new types of threats that were not at the center of
state security, such as economic risks or environmental hazards. Moreover, it
expands the number of possible conveyors of security from states to international
and non-governmental organizations.
In general, ‘human security’ is mostly used in order to describe the security
of the basic core of people’s livelihoods which may be threatened by civil wars,
natural disasters, or failing states. Because of its empowering dimension, however,
it is far from clear where the scope of human security ends. As Roland
Paris enumerates, depending on the context, human security may refer to:
(1) economic security (e.g. freedom from poverty); (2) food security (e.g. access
to food); (3) health security (e.g. access to health care and protection
from diseases); (4) environmental security (e.g. protection from such dangers
as environmental pollution and depletion); (5) personal security (e.g. physical
safety from such things as torture, war, criminal attacks, domestic violence,
drug use, suicide, and even traffic accidents); (6) community security (e.g.
survival of traditional cultures and ethnic groups as well as the physical security
of these groups); and (7) political security (e.g. enjoyment of civil and political
rights, and freedom from political oppression). 4
Today, the extensive use of energy and especially the burning of fossil fuels
are essential to several of the above-mentioned dimensions: Economic security
depends on the access to sufficient energy resources and, above all, on the
continuous flow of oil; food security has largely been achieved by the use of
artificial fertilizers which are based on hydrocarbons; environmental security is
threatened by the extensive burning of coal and oil, and even political and thus
personal and community security are endangered by military conflicts which
are fought over the access to natural resources. However, the concept of energy
is conspicuously absent from both the 2003 Human Security Now Report and
the 2004 Human Security Doctrine for Europe. 5 The former only vaguely acknowledges
the necessity of securing everybody’s access to sufficient natural
resources and sees this access – particularly in the case of water – as a potential
source of conflict. The latter even argues that, while older conceptions of security
had focused on strategic assets such as oil, today human security concentrates
on “five key threats to Europe: terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction, regional conflicts, failing states, and organised crime”. 6 En-
3
Commission on Human Security 2003.
4
Paris 2001, 90.
5
Commission on Human Security 2003; Study Group on Europe’s Security Capabilities
2004.
6
Study Group on Europe’s Security Capabilities 2004, 8.
330

ergy and oil, however, do not seem to be related to Europe’s major security
questions.
Because of this discrepancy, I will examine the relationship between energy
and security in Western Europe and the United States since the Second World
War in greater detail. This analysis is complicated by the changes to “energy”
and “security” on both a conceptual and a factual level in the period under
scrutiny. On the one hand, the global economy of oil and energy and its conceptualization
underwent fundamental changes in the second half of the twentieth
century which accelerated significantly in the 1970s as a consequence of
the oil embargo and the oil price increases. On the other hand, security regimes
changed and, as Emma Rothschild or Christopher Daase have shown, the concept
of security was extended from a narrow understanding of state to the
broader idea of human security. 7 In Christopher Daase’s analysis the widening
took place in four different dimensions: with respect to the spatial scope, the
reference object, the issue area, and the classification of dangers. 8
Owing to these conceptual changes, my questions point in two directions:
On the one hand, I will ask how energy supply and demand were situated
within the context of the changing debates on security in Western Europe and
the United States: When, how and why was energy supply perceived as a matter
of state and military security? When was it related to broader concepts of
security and when was it even considered to be an element of human security?
On the other hand, I will ask if and how the rising importance and politicization
of energy and especially oil in the 1970s influenced the conceptual change
within the discourses about security: Did the emergence of “energy security” as
a central political category influence more general conceptions of security and
the discursive change from national to human security?
While the first set of questions uses “national” and “human security” as analytical
concepts in order to examine the changing perceptions of energy and
energy security, the second set tries to elaborate the influence of changing
energy regimes on the conceptual change from national to human security. The
simultaneous use of terms as both analytical and source concepts poses severe
problems for historical analysis. In attempting to write a theoretically informed
contemporary history, however, it is hardly possible to avoid using terms of the
neighboring disciplines while at the same time historicizing them. So far, historical
theory has not addressed the problems arising from this constellation for
contemporary history in a satisfying way. While this article is not the place to
develop a theoretical account of how to deal with concepts from neighboring
disciplines, it still tries to explore how it might be done.
Moreover, it deals with a crucial period in the history of Western security
systems in which détente led to an easing of East-West tensions while simulta-
7 Rothschild 2007, 2.
8 See Christopher Daase’s paper in this volume.
331

neously new threats arose. With the emergence of energy security as a central
concern of political decision-making on all levels, the logic of the Cold War
that had prevailed since 1945 seemed to be in question and was even partially
superseded. New lines of confrontation between the First and the Third World
or rather the producers and consumers of raw materials emerged which, for
many observers, foreshadowed a new world order. As both energy systems and
security architectures were globalized, their transformation in the 1970s
changed the perception of the world and one’s own position within it, anticipating
the post-Cold War debates of the 1990s. Hence, focusing on “energy” and
“security,” the 1970s appear as a crucial transformative period in the history of
Western industrial countries, heralding the beginning of our time.
2. Energy – from National and Military to International
and Economic Security
In the First World War, oil emerged as the essential resource for the successful
conduct of warfare. From then on national security, understood as military
security of a nation state, depended on the availability of sufficient amounts of
oil in order to fuel warships, planes, tanks, and other military vehicles. 9 The
importance of oil as a strategic resource became even more apparent in the
Second World War when it propelled Germany’s Blitzkrieg, motivated the
Japanese decision to attack the USA, and was decisively lacking after the failure
of the German armies to capture the oil fields in the Caucasus. 10 In the
course and the aftermaths of the wars, and especially after the Second World
War, the United States and its allies placed access to sufficient oil reserves at
the center of their national interests. 11 In the postwar world these oil reserves
were increasingly found in the Middle East, which became a highly contested
region. The importance of oil for the security strategies of the Western alliance
became particularly clear every time its continuous flow was endangered, as for
example after the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951, in the Suez
Crisis in 1956, the Six Day War in 1967 or the oil crises in 1973/74 and
1978/79.
Over the course of the three postwar decades from 1945 to the mid-1970s,
the structures of the global economy of oil and, accordingly, the conditions of
the relation between oil/energy and security changed fundamentally. This was,
above all, owing to the sharp rise in demand in Western industrialized countries.
The postwar economic boom required growing energy supplies which
9 Yergin 1991, 167-183.
10 Yergin 1991, 303-388; Barnhart 1987, 215-234; Eichholtz 2006.
11 Stoff 1980; Painter 1986; Kapstein 1990. But, as early as “the 1940s, Secretary of Interior
Harold Ickes and other government officials recognized that oil was strategically important
not only for the military, but the national economy as well.” (Beaubouef 2007, 3).
332

were increasingly met by oil, substituting coal as the primary source of energy.
12 Apart from mass motorization and residential heating, more and more
parts of the economy became dependent on the continuous flow of oil, while
the oil industry presented itself as the basis not only of economic growth but
also of modern civilization and its social and political stability. As Halliburton
asserted in an advertisement in 1959, oil was the “energy for civilization”:
The needs of civilized man have increased throughout the ages based on desires
of increasing populations to live better. Oil and its energy making components
have been and will continue to be part of this progressive program of
civilisation which guarantees function and preservation of this ideology. On
this theme the future of democracy will forever depend. Halliburton’s extensive
research and development programs are devoted to this progressing civilization
... through scientific application of Halliburton services and techniques,
our tomorrows will be better ... because of oil. 13
The growing dependence of Western industrial nations on oil and especially
oil imports from the Middle East did not necessarily pose a problem for their
national security. Energy experts carefully distinguished between “dependence”
and “vulnerability”. As long as the United States remained the world’s
largest producer of crude oil and had a significant surplus production capacity
at its disposal, energy imports did not produce national security risks. In fact,
advocates of oil imports argued that foreign oil would enhance US national
security as it would spare oil reserves at home. 14 As late as during the Six Day
War in 1967, the United States could counter an embargo attempt by OPEC
countries by simply augmenting its own production. Owing to increasing domestic
demand, however, this possibility ceased to exist soon afterwards and
the security of oil supplies and especially the possibility of intentional oil supply
interruptions became a matter of great concern to the governments of Western
industrialized countries. 15
How far did these developments influence or change the conception of energy
security in itself? Traditionally, energy and particularly oil security had
been linked to a conception of national security that was largely understood in
military terms. According to this narrow conception, national security was
guaranteed as long as the state was able to provide sufficient oil supplies for its
armies in order to defend itself. In 1971 the independent analyst and former
member of the Army Nuclear Power Program with the US Atomic Energy
Commission, Carl Vansant, produced a late and, at the time of publication,
almost anachronistic expression of this view analyzing the “strategic energy
supply and national security”. Vansant argued that energy sources were “fun-
12 Chick 2007.
13 Halliburton 1959.
14 Chick 2007, 16.
15 Yergin 1991, 598-599.
333

damental to a nation’s strength” and that they had to be secured, above all, by
military and political means. 16 But even Vansant acknowledged that there was
more to energy security than its military dimension:
From a military point of view, it is important that the energy supplies for military
forces be designed for, and maintained in, a secure posture. It is even more
important, however, that national systems for energy supply be built on secure
foundations of political, technical, and economic policy; for, in fact, it is
the civil structure of energy systems that underlies and braces strategic security.
17
In general, energy experts as well as experts of national security acknowledged
the rising importance of oil for the functioning of industrialized economies
in the postwar world and, therefore, broadened the concept of energy
security, which was essential not only to the conduct of modern warfare but to
the vital functions of economy and society as a whole. This conceptual change
was to a large extent induced by political actors, national governments, and
international organizations. Still bearing in mind the Suez crisis and facing
threats to a continuous flow of oil throughout the 1960s, the countries organized
in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
tried to coordinate their oil and energy policies in order to achieve security
against interruptions of supply. In May 1960 the Council of the OECD recommended
that its member countries should “prepare, in advance, plans that will
enable them to introduce prompt and effective reductions in consumption of
petroleum products if an oil supply emergency should occur”. 18 In order to
review the degree to which these plans had been developed and implemented,
the OECD Special Committee for Oil sent detailed questionnaires to the governments
and in turn distributed the results of these surveys to all member
countries in 1963, 1966, 1970, and 1972. 19 In the member countries these questionnaires
raised attention to oil and energy issues and induced national activities
in these fields. The efforts mainly aimed at politically motivated short term
supply interruptions and were intended to guarantee the ability of the states to
sustain their vital functions and military capabilities. However, in the late
1960s and early 1970s the relevant ministries in most Western industrialized
countries started to develop plans to restructure their energy sectors in order to
secure the continuous availability of sufficient energy sources at low prices,
which indicates a diversion from the close connection between energy and
military security.
16 Vansant 1971, 7, 47-74.
17 Vansant 1971, 83.
18 OECD. Council: Recommendation of the Council Concerning the Apportionment of Oil
Supplies in an Emergency, 5.5.1960, National Archives of the United Kingdom (NA UK),
POWE 63/642.
19 OECD. Oil Committee Reports, NA UK, POWE 63/642.
334

In this process the concept of energy security was broadened in exactly
those dimensions that Rothschild and Daase observed for the overall development
of the concept of security: Energy and especially oil supply security was
not only related to military ability and strength but also to economic development
as a whole and, thus, the issue area of energy security was widened. It
was fundamental for economic, but also for political stability, as the legitimacy
of Western democracies depended on delivering a high standard of living and
sufficient consumer goods. Accordingly, energy security concerned not only
the well-being of the state but also of individual human beings in the industrialized
countries, i.e. the reference group was significantly extended. As the oil
economy was a global system and Western industrialized countries became
increasingly dependent on oil imports from the Middle East, threats to energy
security ceased to be domestic and regional – they became increasingly globalized
and therefore the geographical scope of energy security widened. Among
the central and most disturbing experiences of the oil crises in the Western
world in the 1970s was the perception that the decisions and actions of rulers in
remote regions of the world who seemed to be irrational and hard to control
had an almost immediate effect on the everyday life of the people in Western
Europe, Japan, and the USA. Moreover, categorization of dangers moved from
direct threats to discussions of vulnerability and risk. Finally, for various reasons
states had only limited capacities to influence the flow of oil and to secure
their own supplies. Thus, several looked for internationally coordinated strategies,
for example within NATO, the European Community or the OECD, in
order to achieve energy security. Accordingly, the number of possible providers
of energy security increased as well.
This tendency towards the widening of the concept of energy security and
the loosening of its connection with military and national security became
apparent in the workings of the United States National Security Council in the
early 1970s. In order to assess the consequences of the changes in the global
economy of oil for the national security of the United States, the Security
Council issued two National Security Study Memoranda (NSSM) that influenced
US strategy and decision-making in the field of energy throughout the
so-called first oil crisis: NSSM 114 on the “World Oil Situation” was produced
in 1971 and NSSM 174 on “National Security and US Energy Policy” was
composed in the spring and summer of 1973. 20 NSSM 114’s aim was to answer
the question of how the changing world oil situation – that is the increasing
prices due to OPEC and the producing countries’ demands of sovereignty over
their mineral resources – affected “US security, political, and economic inter-
20 National Archives and Record Administration, Nixon Library (NARA), NSC Institutional
Files (“H-Files”), Box H-180 and Box H-197.
335

ests”. 21 It distinguished between two different positions: On the one hand,
experts judged that the growing dependence on oil from the Middle East posed
a severe security risk for the USA and NATO. While the oil import control and
domestic resources put the USA in a comparatively good position, NATO
partners only had petroleum inventories for about three months which would be
used up much faster in the case of East-West tensions. This might cause serious
problems, but the Department of Defense did not believe that “US military
operations in Southeast Asis [sic] would be seriously endangered by an oil
crisis – in the event of a Libyan or Persian Gulf shutdown.” On the other hand,
experts thought that even these fears were exaggerated because politically
motivated interruptions of supply were very unlikely, as the producing countries
were primarily concerned about prices and most of them could not afford
supply interruptions. 22
Two years later, NSSM 174 was commissioned by Henry A. Kissinger as a
“study of the national security implications of world energy supply and distribution”
in order to “define and discuss the national security aspects of the
prospected situation and propose alternative policies”. Compared to NSSM 114
it expressed a greater sense of urgency concerning the security of oil supplies
while at the same time diminishing the military aspect of the problem. Projecting
energy supply and demand up to 1985, it judged that the USA would “become
increasingly vulnerable” to oil supply disruptions that might be caused by
three factors: a non-nuclear war, a war in the Middle East or a politically motivated
embargo. In all cases military security was the smallest problem. Experts
argued that the Department of Defense’s “needs for oil would be greatest in a
general non-nuclear war involving NATO. However, these needs would be
only about 10 percent of US domestic production and could be met, on a priority
basis, solely from our domestic production.” Rather, they suggested that the
“major effect of a supply cut-off on our military capabilities would likely be
indirect: the adverse effect on our economy as a whole and the pressure which
cutoffs would create for diversion of military oil supplies to civilian use.” 23
Because of the different degrees of dependence on oil from the Middle East,
the oil question might also cause frictions within the Western alliance and thus
weaken its security structure. All in all, NSSM 174 concluded that “the energy
question does not stand in isolation from our major monetary, trade, environmental
and national security issues facing this country. It is intrinsically related
to these issues.” 24
21
NSSM 114: World Oil Situation, January 24, 1971, NARA, NSC Institutional Files (“H-
Files”), Box H-180, 17.
22
bid., 41.
23
NSSM 174: National Security und U.S. Energy Policy, August 1974, NARA, NSC Institutional
Files (“H-Files”), Box H-197, 17.
24
Ibid., 57.
336

In October 1973 the Organization of Arab Petrol Exporting Countries announced
overall oil production cuts and a full embargo against the United
States and the Netherlands in order to pressure Western governments to assume
a pro-Arab stance in the conflict with Israel, which had again become violent in
the Yom Kippur War. Supported by oil price increases unilaterally implemented
by OPEC as a whole, the so-called first oil crisis confirmed expectations
of the possibility of an intentional supply interruption. However, even in
the European countries and Japan, which were much more dependent on oil
from North Africa and the Middle East, the oil crisis had consequences not for
military but for economic, social and, thus, political security. Already in preparation
for oil supply emergencies, the British Central Policy Review Staff and
an interdepartmental group of officials headed by the Department of Trade and
Industry developed strategies to secure energy supplies not because of the
expected military but because of the general economic effects of an oil shortage.
25 When the oil crisis coincided with a miners’ strike at the end of 1973, the
conservative Heath government introduced a state of emergency and announced
a three-day working week. Even the gloomy Joint Intelligence Committee
Report of December 5, however, did not see Britain’s or NATO’s military
capabilities endangered. Yet it argued that a prolonged embargo might lead
to international tensions, military conflict and even superpower confrontation.
Thus, it suggested that an oil shortage might have severe consequences for
Britain’s national security, but also for the (as we might say human) security of
people around the globe. 26 As in Great Britain, neither the state planning commission
in France nor the Expert Council on the Assessment of Economic
Development (Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen
Entwicklung) in Germany saw the oil embargo and the oil price hikes as
threats to national security and military capabilities. 27 However, they diagnosed
significant consequences for economic and social development and suggested
alternative energy strategies.
The only constellation in which the oil crisis seemed to endanger military
capabilities occurred at the beginning of November 1973 when the Saudi Arabian
government imposed a secondary embargo on those countries from which
the American fleet, which was distributed around the globe, obtained its oil. 28
Noting that the oil embargo’s effect on the United States was not severe
enough, the Saudi Arabian government had requested that Aramco obtain the
25 Central Policy Review Staff: An Energy Policy for Great Britain. Summary and Recommendations
for 1973 and 1974, 2.5.1973, NA UK, PREM 15/1847; Interdepartmental
Group of Officials: Report on Oil Policy, January 1973, NA UK, POWE 63/848.
26 Report by the Joint Intelligence Committee (A), JIC (A) (73) 34 CAB 186/15, 5.12.1973.
27 Centre des archives contemporaines, Service du Premier Ministre, Commissariat General
du Plan, 19890617, Art. 99-101; Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen
Entwicklung 1973.
28 US Congress. Senate. Committee on Government Operations 1974.
337

elevant data for a secondary embargo from its mother companies in the US:
Exxon, Texaco, Mobil and Standard Oil. Despite the fact the American fleet
was on strategic alert because of the seemingly impending superpower confrontation
in the Middle East in the course of the Yom Kippur War, executives of
the multinational corporations complied without hesitation to Aramco’s demands
and supplied Saudi Arabia with the data. In the ensuing hearings in front
of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, the Democratic Senator
Henry A. Jackson asked:
Didn’t anyone say ‘Look, boys, we are in the midst of a strategic alert.
Shouldn’t the Secretary of Defense, the highest people in the government, be
advised of the October 31 wire and what do we do about it?’ Wouldn’t that be
the thing an ordinary stiff would understand? 29
As it appears, none of the executives had had this idea; instead they called
the Pentagon only shortly before the end of the deadline set by the Saudi Arabian
government in order to make sure that they could not be sued for giving
out the data.
Even this incident, however, did not cause a serious impediment to US military
security. However, the oil embargo and the oil price hikes as a whole
changed the perception of energy security. Even though energy security had
been an important concern of OECD governments throughout the 1960s, in
most countries it was only the energy crisis of the early 1970s that established
it as central field of political activity. The awareness of energy as a basis of
economic and political life rose as experts constantly talked about it in the
media and the highest government officials received weekly, and at times even
daily, reports on the energy supply situation in their countries. Experiencing or
rather expecting a lack of oil supplies, governments restructured and centralized
energy competences and some sought international cooperation in the field
of energy, which led to the Washington Energy Conference in 1974 and to the
establishment of the International Energy Agency. However, energy security
did not become a central concern because oil was needed for military purposes,
but because it was closely connected to economic development and the wellbeing
of the people. Contemporary fears concerning the possible consequences
of supply disruptions for the economy and the people in Western industrialized
countries were magnified as the oil crisis coincided with general worries about
the exhaustibility of mineral resources. Criticizing American-style consumerism
and arguing that the German economic growth rates in the 1960s had depended
on the unlimited availability of cheap oil, the German weekly magazine
Der Spiegel, for example, declared that the oil crisis heralded the coming end
of “affluent societies” and of the age of abundance in the West and painted the
future in dark colors. 30
29 US Congress. Senate. Committee on Government Operations 1974, 900.
30 “Mit knappen Vorräten sorglos geaast,” Der Spiegel, November 19, 1973.
338

Reading drastic depictions like these, the discourse on energy security in the
1970s appears almost as a discourse on human security avant la lettre. Of
course, in the industrialized countries energy supply interruptions did not pose
such severe limitations to people’s vital freedoms as wars or ecological disasters,
which are commonly associated with the concept of human security. Yet,
“security” and especially its emotional components are relative to the achieved
living standard and, therefore, threats to embargo Europe and to wreck its
economies could engender significant fears concerning the security of the people
in Western industrialized societies. 31 Moreover, less-developed countries
were hit much harder than industrialized countries that could afford higher
prices more easily, and the plight of the people in these countries for whom a
lack of oil could indeed affect very basic freedoms was discussed intensively as
consuming countries used them as an argument against OPEC. 32 Finally, as the
above-mentioned British Joint Intelligence Report argued, the structure of
energy regimes had severe implications for the security of the international
system. Particularly advocates of alternative energy paths, such as Amory
Lovins, suggested that the current, highly centralized energy systems that relied
heavily on fossil fuels would foster undemocratic political structures and destabilize
the international order, thus affecting conditions we deem essential for
human security worldwide. 33
3. The Energy Crises of the 1970s and the
Changing Perceptions of Security
As I have shown so far, due to increasing oil consumption, the notion of energy
security changed over the course of the postwar decades and especially in the
1970s. While it had been closely connected with conceptions of military capability
and national security, it gradually widened and encompassed economic,
social, and political security. In certain respects the discussions on energy
security even resembled later debates on human security. Thus, I will now
continue to scrutinize whether the widespread discussions on energy in the
1970s, and especially the broadened notion of energy security, influenced the
widening of the overall discourse on security: Did energy security contribute to
the conceptual change from state and military to human security?
31
See for example Muammar al-Gaddafi’s interview in Le Monde, October 23, 1973, quoted
in: Middle East Economic Survey 17 (October 26, 1973), 11: “We’ve made all the preparations
– and so have the other Arabs – to deprive Europe completely of oil. We shall ruin
your industries as well as your trade with the Arab world.”
32
Jungblut 1973. See also NA UK, FCO 15/1866, Effects of Energy Crisis in South East
Asia.
33
Lovins 1976.
339

Most authors consider the emergence of “human security” and the widening
of the security concept as a product of the post-Cold War era when the confrontation
between the United States and the Soviet Union lost its dominant position,
but its beginnings can be located earlier. While Emma Rothschild traces
ideas of human security back to the Enlightenment, she depicts the 1970s as a
formative period for contemporary conceptions of human security. 34 In the
same vein, Christopher Daase argues that the awareness of threats to national
security other than military attacks rose in response to the economic crises in
the 1970s and that, therefore, the contents of the concept of national security
widened. 35 Indeed, in the 1970s economic stability and growth became essential
elements of national security concerns; in the opinion of the democratic
Senator and later US Vice President Walter F. Mondale “the risk that the operation
of the international economy may spin out of control” even overshadowed
the dangers arising from nuclear armaments and superpower confrontation. 36
For this change in the perception of threats as well as the feelings of insecurity,
the Arab oil embargo and OPEC’s oil price increases of 1973/74 were crucial.
As the American President Richard Nixon put it when addressing the Washington
Energy Conference of non-communist oil-consuming countries in February
1974, for Western politicians it had become evident that “security and economic
considerations are inevitably linked, and energy cannot be separated
from either”. 37 In a similar way, the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt argued
in front of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London in
1977 that the economy was first among the “new dimensions of security”.
Schmidt continued that if there was one single most important question for the
economic security of the West, it was the energy question for which, in turn, oil
was essential. 38 This assessment was shared throughout the political spectrum.
As the Christian Democrat Manfred Wörner had already declared at the Munich
Security Conference in 1975, NATO was not autarchic any more in providing
security to its member states. Following Karl Kaiser, Wörner held the
view that, while NATO could span a nuclear umbrella to shelter its members, it
could not offer an umbrella of raw materials. 39 For both Schmidt and Wörner,
the oil embargo of 1973 had been the event that sparked this insight and, therefore,
Wörner even called it a “fundamental watershed” and the “key event of
the Western world in the second half of the 20th century”. 40
This appreciation was shared and to a large extent produced by political scientists
and foreign policy experts, who wrote in the aftermath of the embargo
34
Rothschild 2007, 3-4, 7-11.
35
See Christopher Daase’s paper in this volume.
36
Mondale 1974.
37
Nixon 1974.
38
Schmidt 1979, 627.
39
Wörner 1979, 593.
40
Wörner 1979, 590, 594.
340

and the oil price hikes and constructed them as a turning point in world history.
41 Reviewing the contemporary literature on energy security and foreign
policy for the newly founded journal International Security, Linda B. Miller
argued that since 1973 the close connection between energy and security as
well as the impossibility of guaranteeing national security by military means
alone had been obvious to everybody. 42 According to Miller, the oil crisis and
its aftermath from 1973 to 1975 had already become a new paradigm case for
the study of world politics. This paradigm suggested that state-centered views
were insufficient because the complex interactions in the fields of energy and
other resources involved a multitude of non-state actors. 43 In the same vein,
Joseph S. Nye discussed the prospects of collective security in 1974 and argued
that it was insufficient to treat it as a military question but rather that one also
had to integrate economic stability. As economic security was a matter of degree,
Nye suggested that it could be severely endangered by resource supply
disruptions and advocated international structures on a mutually beneficial
basis for producing and consuming countries. 44 In the discourse on oil/energy
and national security after the first oil crisis, only a few authors still concentrated
on the military aspects of the question, such as Bo Heinebaeck. 45 Apart
from the geopolitics of scarce resources and their importance for economic
development, authors dealing with “energy” and “security” also discussed
nuclear proliferation, military preparedness, the possibility and risk of a military
confrontation at the Persian Gulf and the consequences of energy policies
for conflict behavior. 46
At the beginning of the 1980s, however, the economically widened notion of
security, and the essential importance of energy and particularly oil in this
context, had been firmly established as the majority view. 47 Thus, Philip
Odeen, who had been a staff member of the National Security Council during
the preparation of NSSM 174, preached to the already converted when he argued
that the essential connection between energy and national security had
been neglected too long and that energy had to be put at the center of US national
security concerns. 48 This had become the official US strategy at least
with the announcement of the Carter Doctrine, according to which the United
41
Vernon 1976.
42
Miller 1977, 111. By contrast, Joan Edelman Spero argued in 1973 that for twenty years
energy self-sufficiency had been at the center of US national security concerns, which had
already been guided by a wider notion of security (Spero 1973, 123).
43
Miller 1977, 114.
44
Nye 1974.
45
Heinebaeck 1974.
46
Deese 1979.
47
Krapels 1977; Dafter 1979; Deese and Nye 1981; Nye 1982; Blair and Summerville 1983;
Fesharaki 1983; Luttwak 1984.
48
Odeen 1980.
341

States understood any attempt to change the power structure around the Persian
Gulf as an attack on its vital national security interests. 49 The Carter Doctrine
points at another dimension in which energy and security became linked and
which also contributed to an extension of the security concept: Energy and
security were not only closely connected because supply interruptions endangered
the economic, social, and political security of the people in the consuming
countries, but also because the fear of supply interruptions might engender
military conflicts or resource wars. As Richard H. Ullmann observed in 1983,
“‘resource wars’ (as some call them) [had] figured prominently in the doomsday
literature for more than a decade”. 50 This understanding that the heavy
reliance on fossil fuels and particularly oil posed a primary international security
risk can still be found today in both scholarly treatises and the popular
media. 51
Another influence of oil and energy on the broadening of the security concept
was exerted via the debates on international development and on the establishment
of a fairer economic world order. Since the late 1960s and throughout
the 1970s there had been intensive discussions among the developing countries
to take OPEC and the oil embargo as an example and turn other natural resources
into strategic assets in order to achieve more favorable terms of trade
or even a New International Economic Order. 52 These claims of permanent
sovereignty over natural resources voiced by so-called Third World countries
raised significant fears in the Western world 53 and led to the establishment of
various commissions and discussion groups in order to avoid confrontation,
such as the Euro-Arab dialogue. These groups aimed at the establishment of
more secure living conditions in both the developing and the developed countries.
At the level of the UN or at least inspired by the UN, several commissions
dealt with global security issues and constituted important precursors of
the 1990s debates on “Human Security” within the United Nations Development
Program: From 1977 to 1980 the “Independent Commission on International
Development Issues” (the so-called Brandt Commission) produced the
report North-South – A Programme for Survival; two years later the “Independent
Commission on Disarmament and Security” (Palme Commission)
published Common Security, and from 1984 to 1987 the “World Commission
on Environment and Development” (Brundtland Commission) worked on the
report Our Common Future. 54
49 Horowitz 2005; Hakes 2008.
50 Ullmann 1983, 140.
51 Klare 2001; Rutledge 2005; Seifert and Werner 2005; Gelpke and McCormack 2007.
52 Murphy 1984; Rahman 2002.
53 Bergsten 1973.
54 Hampson and Penny 2007.
342

Named after the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who had headed the
commission, the Palme Report dealt mostly with questions of military security
and – particularly nuclear – disarmament. Characteristically, it turned the already
established connection between national and economic security around,
suggesting that a common security structure between the East and the West
would reduce the costs of military armaments and thus free financial capacities
for achieving social and economic security. 55 However, the Palme Report also
advocated a wider notion of security, arguing that security could not be
achieved by military means alone. 56 Yet, on its priority list of how to reach the
new “common security”, economic issues were only ranked at the sixth and last
spot. 57
By contrast, the Brandt Commission had set itself the broader task of “securing
survival” and, accordingly, laid much greater emphasis on the importance
of addressing economic and especially energy questions in order to overcome
the contemporary worldwide dangers and security risks. The focus on energy as
the crucial factor for the global security situation is not surprising if we look at
the biographies of the members of the Brandt Commission, which first met in
1977. Several of them had held high government positions during the first oil
crisis and had thus experienced how disruptive an imagined or real shortage of
oil could be to both economic life and international relations: Willy Brandt
himself had been Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Edward
Heath the British Prime Minister, Haruki Mori the Japanese ambassador in
London, Olof Palme the Swedish Prime Minister, Layachi Yaker the Algerian
minister of trade and Jan P. Pronk the Dutch minister for developmental cooperation.
On the basis of their first-hand experience of the oil crisis, they argued
that the world economy was in severe danger because of the huge differences
in wealth between the North and the South. If nothing changed and developments
simply continued, they envisioned ecological disasters, hunger and poverty
in the developing world, inflation and high deficits in the industrialized.
Considering the exceptional position of oil in the international economy and its
use by OPEC in order to voice Third World demands, they saw energy as the
decisive issue that had to be addressed in an “Emergency Programme” in order
to “secure survival”. 58 While secure oil supply at a reasonable price concerned
the standard of living in industrialized countries, it affected the basic life
chances of people in the least developed countries. The “Emergency Programme”
therefore recommended that oil-producing countries should pledge
not to decrease or interrupt supplies, oil-consuming countries should reduce
demand, oil prices should be fixed at a fair level, and the international commu-
55 Palme 1982, 9.
56 Palme 1982, 20.
57 Unabhängige Kommission für Internationale Entwicklungsfragen 1980, 158-192.
58 Unabhängige Kommission für Internationale Entwicklungsfragen 1980, 201-215.
343

nity should invest in collaborative research and development of alternative
energies. 59
With its goals to secure survival and distribute life chances more equally or
at least to secure basic necessities of human life for everybody on this planet,
the Brandt Report already resembled later visions of human security which
were formulated in the 1990s. The central trigger for the formulation of the
report, however, was the changing energy scene of the 1970s and its consequences
for both the security of living conditions in Western industrialized
countries and the lives of people in least developed countries which might be
threatened by lack of resources, future resource wars or even the ecological
consequences of the burning of fossil fuels. Ecological problems and the threat
they posed to worldwide survival but also to economic well-being and security
were the main issues of the “World Commission on Environment and Development”,
which was headed by the former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro
Harlem Brundtland, who had also been a member of the Brandt and the Palme
Commissions. The report argued that the traditional concept of security which
concerned political and military threats to national sovereignty had to be extended
because of the increasing influence of environmental pollution on a
local, national, regional and global level. 60 In this respect, energy, understood
not as a single product but as a combination of products and services, was
essential: On energy, the report maintained, depended the well-being of the
individual, the sustainable development of the nations, and the life-sustaining
capacities of the world ecosystem. 61 With the upheavals of the oil economy in
mind, the report argued that oil was crucial in the field of energy.
4. Conclusion: Energy Security as Human Security?
This article pursued the twofold goal of examining, on the one hand, the
changes in the concept of energy security in the second half of the twentieth
century and, on the other hand, the influence of these conceptual changes on
the overall change to “security”. Following Emma Rothschild’s and Christopher
Daase’s theses that the concept of security was significantly extended in
the postwar world, that this extension accelerated in the 1970s, and engendered
current conceptions of human security, I showed how the scope of “energy
security” increased in a similar fashion. As oil became increasingly important
for modern industrialized economies in the postwar world, more and more
often discourses on “energy security” did not treat oil as a strategic resource
necessary to fuel the war effort, but rather as the foundation of economic, so-
59 Unabhängige Kommission für Internationale Entwicklungsfragen 1980, 347-348.
60 Hauff 1987, 22.
61 Hauff 1987, 204.
344

cial, and political life in Western industrialized countries. Owing to its vital
importance for a wide variety of economic processes, even short supply disruptions
or minor price increases posed threats to economic development, to the
social cohesion of consensual democracies, the stability of political institutions,
and thus to national security. In drastic depictions of the consequences of a loss
of oil supplies for the industrialized, but especially for the developing countries,
as well as in the debates concerning the destabilizing effects that the
world energy economy might have on the international system and the increasing
risk of military confrontations, discourses on energy security anticipated
later discourses on human security.
This resemblance is not coincidental, as the flourishing debates on energy
security in the 1970s directly influenced the extension of the concept of security
in the postwar world from state-centered military to human security. The
challenge of energy security during the oil crises of the 1970s opened the security
debates up to the appreciation of new risks, their global nature, and thus
also the relevance of international cooperation, the importance of non-state
actors, and the acknowledgment of individual people whose livelihood was to
be secured. The Brandt Report in particular focused on energy, as it aimed at
securing survival on the planet by bringing about a fairer world order. Against
the backdrop of the 1970s oil crises, high government officials, who had experienced
the economic and political upheavals a lack of oil supplies or even
rising oil prices could cause, judged that energy was the crucial issue that had
to be addressed in order to achieve ecological, economic, social, and political
stability. In its broadened conception of security the Brandt Report already
resembled later UN reports on Human Security. From the point of view of the
twenty-first century’s discussions on climate change and resource wars, its
diagnoses and recommendations appear to be surprisingly up-to-date. However,
it would be exaggerated to describe the Commission as prescient. Rather, the
changes in the energy and particularly oil economy in the 1970s had cut
through the traditional Cold War structure of threats and security, which was
ultimately abolished in the years around 1990. The oil crises of the 1970s
thereby created a situation in which several of the most fundamental political,
economic, and cultural problems emerged which continue to occupy us today,
so that they appear as an important watershed in the history of Western industrial
nations.
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348

Mixed Issue
Cliometrics
No. 134
HSR Vol. 35 (2010) 4

Environmental Challenge in the Canning Industry:
The Portuguese Case in the Early Twentieth Century
Maria Eugénia Mata �
Abstract: »Ökologische Herausforderung in der Konservenindustrie: Der Fall
Portugal im frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert«. Fish-canning industries are
closely-linked to, and have an impact on environmental conditions, bringing
great challenges to optimality. While entrepreneurship perspectives focus on
the survival and profitability of firms, social utility perspectives focus on collective
welfare and long-term sustainability. This paper illustrates the theoretical
puzzle of the fish-canning industry in examining the historical experience
of Portuguese public policies from the point of view of industrial economics
and collective welfare.
Keywords: Portuguese canning, environmental challenges, fishing sustainability,
regulation.
Fisheries and the Ecosystem Equilibrium
Fishing has been a well documented economic activity in Portugal since ancient
times, as limited agricultural potential coupled with a long Atlantic sea
coast offering ample fishing resources. 1 Commercially valuable species have
supported a labour-intensive fishing industry along this coast from Roman
times until today. 2 The historical record of fisheries in Portugal and their role in
the exports of fish-preserves continue on through medieval and modern times. 3
Fish stocks offering valuable commercial opportunities remained comfortably
abundant for many centuries, but the depletion of resources following industrialisation
brought strong incentives to study efficient levels of harvesting in
fisheries and critical thresholds among valuable species. According to the tools
of environmental economics, there is a stable relationship between the growth
� Address all communications to: Maria Eugénia Mata, Associate Professor, Universidade
NOVA de Lisboa, Faculdade de Economia, Campus de Campolide, 1099-032 Lisbon,
Portugal; e-mail: memata@fe.unl.pt.
I am grateful to John Huffstot for correcting my English, José António Pinheiro and Patrícia
Xufre for analytical support, and Joseph Love for bibliography. Any error that remains is
mine.
1 Parreira, 1938.
2 There are abundant historical vestiges at Tróia, an archeological site south of Lisbon.
According to excavations, this was one of the most important fish-salting and preserving
centers of the Western Mediterranean in the first century.
3 On the virtues of fish in the human diet, see Jorge, 1938.
Historical Social Research, Vol. 35 — 2010 — No. 4, 351-372

of fish populations, the size of the fish populations and the scale of fishing and
canning activities. 4
As fisheries and canning were labour-intensive sectors, seaports were nests
of marine and industrial jobs that supported local commerce, exports, consumption,
standards of life, and intensive urban growth phenomena. Major threats to
fisheries were also major economic threats to local urban activities. At the
same time, business prosperity and growth were perverse to ecosystem destruction,
and were severe threats to marine-life. In Portugal, strong fluctuations
occurred in the availability of alternative species for canning, the most important
of which were sardines, tuna and mackerel. These species occupy niches in
the food chain in such a way that an abundance of tuna means a scarcity of
sardines and mackerel. 5 If the stock of the prey species is more abundant, this
implies a scarcity of the predator. Cycles for canning different species matched
the needs of the canneries and provided a good answer to business and commerce
opportunities, as well as to employment. Balancing the effects of booms
were ecosystem difficulties arising from wastes, pollution, and sanitation problems.
Depletion effects on the ecosystem also brought great difficulties for
maintaining the scale of production. Conservation and protection of wildlife
habitats became decisive features of production in vertical integration strategies
of canning and fishing for long-term double-edge equilibrium.
Canning Industry: Scale and Depletion
Traditional preserving technologies were based on drying and salting, two
methods to support exports and specialisation. The exceptional climatic conditions
and the abundance of commercially valuable species for fishmeal activities
explain why so many generations embraced this sector using traditional
technologies. Sterilisation methods became widespread only in the second half
of the nineteenth century, benefiting from the Appert method. 6 Evidence on the
introduction of sterilisation technology in Portugal is available for sardine
canning since 1855, achieved by boiling the cans at high temperatures after
soldering them closed. 7 The world exhibition of Paris in 1855 presented showcased
brands of sardines canned in olive-oil, from Portugal. 8 Plants belonging
to Feliciano António da Rocha and Manuel José Neto introduced the method
for canning sardines in oil in the city of Setúbal. A third brand, belonging to
Gustavo Carlos Herlitz & Company was operating in 1861. 9
4
Tientenberg, 2007.
5
Brandão, 1938.
6
On the presence of germs and bacilli, see May (1938).
7
On the safety of sterilisation methods, see Lepierre, 1938.
8
Moura, et al, 1957, p. 57. Parreira, 1938.
9
Mata, 2009.
352

As preserving technologies improved and the average revenue per capita
grew, the consumption of canned fish increased throughout Europe, the main
international market for Portuguese produce. The continued abundance of
fishing resources off the Portuguese shores must mean that the reduction in the
stock due to out-migration, mortality and fishing was compensated by increases
resulting from in-migration and growth of the fish populations. 10 Fishing is
predation and is sustainable if and only if the catch harmonizes with the specie’s
growth rate, that is, the maximum sustainable yield for a specie’s population
is “the largest catch that can be perpetually sustained”. 11
Some problems occurred because of certain species’ erratic migration routes
in the Atlantic. In the 1880s sardines were scarce on the French and Italian
coasts and some canning entrepreneurs moved to Portugal. An industrial inquiry
in 1880 revealed that only twelve factories for food industries existed in
Portugal at the time, and among them only five were devoted to canning fish.
Four were on the Southern coast (Parodi & Roldan, S. Francisco, belonging to
Francisco Rodrigues Tenório, Santa Maria, and Sebastião Migoni) and one on
the western coast (Santos, Cirne & Cª). 12 In the space of a decade the number
of factories devoted to food industries increased to 52, and among the 45 which
were devoted to canning fish, 11 belonged to foreigners who came to Portugal:
Victor Tortrais, Emile Roullet, Wenceslau Chancerelle, F. Delany, Joseph
Pierre Chancerelle & Cª, Sebastian Stephan, Jalma & Seguena, Frederico Delary,
J. Labrouche, Domenico Migone, and Angelo Parodie. 13
Delocalisation to Portugal brought new opportunities to foreign firms, more
jobs in the Portuguese seaports, and dramatic competition to Portuguese producers.
14 Canning became the dominant industry along the coast, outstripping
the importance of salt production, but shoals could disappear from the coast for
unknown reasons. Fishermen’s wages were not paid on a piecemeal basis, so
demand and supply could adjust their revenues in the fish auction market, but
poor catches always meant social problems. 15 If shoals changed their movement
along the coast, fishing had to adjust, but the species’ movements were
difficult to predict, in spite of practical knowledge on the colour of the sea
water to discover their location. To offset these difficulties, oceanographic
studies were undertaken by the end of the nineteenth century. 16 Scientific observation
discovered the species’ main routes and habits. Frequently public
10
Schaefer, 1957.
11
Tietenberg, 2007, p. 219.
12
Ministério das Obras Públicas, Comércio e Indústria, 1880.
13
Ministério das Obras Públicas, Comércio e Indústria, 1890; Archive of the Portuguese
Ministério das Obras Públicas, Comércio e Indústria, Sociedades Estrangeiras.
14
Mata, 2009.
15
Only in codfishing were wages paid on a piecemeal basis.
16
Difficulties in locating shoals still exist today, in spite of the modern technologies employed.
353

authorities charged the cost of this research to public institutions. Portuguese
Royal Navy vessels devoted efforts to marine biology and oceanographic research,
particularly from 1896 to 1906, and provided valuable information for
the potential future development of fishing and canning industries. 17
As massive sums were invested in the fishmeal industry, the depletion of
ocean resources continued: The massive extraction of sardines contributed to
disappearance of tuna, as the 1st level of the food chain was destroyed. 18 The
danger of species extinction was already visible in the 1920s, as tuna moved
away from the coast.
International Competition, Cycles and Times of War
Factories required hygiene, and required much washing for beheading and
cleaning the fish. Wastewater from canning was a challenge, beaches became
dangerous places to swim or play, and canning seaports became toxic dumpsites.
The floor of the plants needed to be cleaned and washed frequently because
of the residues and smell. Plants needed abundant water supply, sinks
and systems for draining waste water, even though they might be nothing more
than light constructions along the beaches. Waste water was typically drained
into the sea. Scaling the fish was avoided in order to preserve their fresh appearance
and minimize the residues. The fishmeal industries’ impact on the
environment was a managerial challenge in increasing costs because of the
blood-water and stick-water resulting from the production process, as these
proved to be among the worst pollutants. 19
The canning industry was soon driven by foreign firms located in Portuguese
seaports. Of course, newcomers faced some entrance barriers resulting
from the operation of the established producers. They had to struggle for market
shares and learn about local conditions. 20 Local producers could also react
by adopting better technologies and marketing their brands to retain consumers’
loyalties and defend their market shares against the newcomers’ competition.
21 However, the new entrants also had their own brands in their home
markets or were established even in the global market of consumers. 22 Technological
improvements were introduced among the established firms through
new investment, providing innovation and scale, and increasing barriers to new
entrants. 23 Moreover, business practices might also have reflected some deter-
17 D. Carlos, 1899.
18 Sousa, 1938.
19 Clarke, 2008: 67.
20 Schmalensee, 1981.
21 Ferguson, 1974.
22 Cubin, 1981.
23 Stigler, 1968. Dixit, 1980.
354

ence effects, both in exhausting raw material and in lowering prices of the
final product, in order to squeeze out competition. 24 Following a strategy for
growth and internationalisation under high-quality standards, profits and reinvestment
meant expansion into geographically diverse locations for factories. 25
Some firms managed to achieve vertical-integration to reinforce their positions.
26 Ramirez family and Júdice Fialho were successful entrepreneurs who
followed this strategy from 1892 to 1934, and obtained positions among the
eight largest producers in the 1950s. 27 Fishing by steamship was an important
technological improvement that helped the Ramirez plants benefit from scale
economies, a feature that increased deterrence effects. 28 Fialho’s factories were
vertically integrated with their own fleet of fishing vessels, which were built
and serviced in the firm’s own shipyard. Ramirez today boasts its status as ‘the
oldest cannery in the world’, as it is now one of the few fifth-generation business
families in Portugal). 29
As it happened, deterrence effects against newcomers were blurred by foreign
markets. 30 The increased scale of production after the 1880s thanks to new
units belonging to foreign competitors worried the established canners, although
one must consider the competitiveness consequences on the locally
established producers, who could raise entry barriers to the newcomer. 31 The
number of factories in Portugal increased during the war from 116 in 1912 to
188 in 1917. 32 Increased consumption resulting from the military demand during
the First World War brought new opportunities for all producers. Food
scarcity on the battlefields and in civilian markets increased the international
demand, and most of the cannery entrants were European firms. 33 Increased
production coupled with technological innovations linked to the use of steampower
to boil and sterilize the cans increased social welfare in the European
and Latin American countries, due to higher overall demand. However, for
such a large number of plants and scale of production, the urban equipment
could not assure hygiene.
24 Caves & Porter, 1977.
25 Soares (2005), p. 40. On the brand Cocagne see pp. 42 and 45.
26 Spence, 1977.
27 The other six large producers were Algarve Exportador &Cº, Ângelo Parodi Bartolomeo,
Lopes da Cruz &Cº, Conservas Unitas, João Gargalo Herdeiros, and Francisco Alves &
Filhos. Moura et al, 1957, p. 74. Fialho’s traditional brands were Marie Elisabeth, Falstaff
and Désirées. Faria, 2001, p. 44-45.
28 Soares, 2005: 34, 35. Spence, 1980.
29 Soares (2005), p. 27.
30 Stigler, 1968; Schmalensee, 1978.
31 Demsetz,1982.
32 And employed 14,679 people. Moura; Dubraz; Dores; Gonçalves; Chaves; Oliveira (1957),
pp. 57-58. The estimation at Soares (2005), pp. 42, 45 is too optimistic.
33 Dowell, 2006.
355

Hygiene and Health Problems.
Environmental Effects
Running plants produced large quantities of harmful residual wastes that were
tragic to ecosystems, both on land (near the urban core or residential shore
zones in canning seaports) and in the sea, where fetid emissions were emptied
directly into the bays. Although sanitation was a fashionable issue, there was a
lack of piping for carrying sewage into septic tanks. In Portugal, fishmeal
plants existed alongside the living quarters in the cities, and plants accumulated
deposits of wastes on neighbouring lots. 34 As the cans were made of tin-plate,
the terrain around the fish-canning factories littered with very dangerous sharpedged
metal waste. Such pollution coupled with the destruction of the ecosystem
to threaten the sustainability of the fish-canning industry. 35 Overfishing
was also a problem. Discarding fish on the beach to rot or throwing them back
into the sea also aggravated environmental problems and provoked poor public
relations.
Economic booms sometimes translate into ecological setbacks or even the
extinction of some species. 36 Not only were some species being seriously overfished,
but pollution from fish cleaning and canning increased the amount of
pressure that was being put on the catch because industrial residues made it
ever more difficult to harvest the decreasing stock of fish, as species moved
away from the increasingly polluted coastal waters. Moreover, there was the
need to avoid contaminating the potable water supply. 37
For reasons that are perfectly clear, the fish-canning industries were very
concentrated. As fresh fish were quickly perishable, proximity to beaches,
seaports and auction markets for fisheries was critical for the provision of fresh
raw-material, and avoiding transportation costs, (and refrigeration systems,
later on). Concentration was (and still is) the rule for canning industries. The
same occurs all over the world, and the higher is the concentration, the more
impressive is the environmental challenge, with strong effects on health problems.
38 The estimation of concentration coefficients for the location of canneries
in Portugal reveals that they are similar to those in the UK and US (0.68 in
1940 and 0.63 in 1950, in Portugal, against 0.66 in Great Britain and 0.70 in the
USA). 39 However, for the districts of Setúbal on the western coast and Faro on
the southern coast the coefficient attained very high levels (4.2 and 12.6, re-
34
Brandão, 1923.
35
Archive of the Portuguese Ministério das Obras Públicas, Comércio e Indústria, Sociedades
Estrangeiras, Emile Louis Roullet. Stavins, 2007.
36
Perman, R.; Ma, Yue; McGilvray, J., Natural Resources & Environmental Economics, New
York, Longman, 1996.
37
Lemos, 1991.
38
Clarke, 2008.
39
Moura et al, 1957, p. 61.
356

spectively, in 1954). 40 The higher the concentration, the greater was the proliferation
of dirt and noxious odours.
Billowing factory smokestacks characterized the typical canning city of the
nineteenth-century, and the unpleasant atmosphere represented a deterioration
of living conditions, which also were unhealthy because of epidemics. Cholera
and typhus killed 9,000 in Lisbon in the winter of 1855-56 and re-appeared in
1865. By the end of the century, smallpox was endemic in densely populated
quarters, killing over 200 people annually in Oporto, and bubonic plague hit
this city in 1899. 41 Jobs attracted labour from agricultural regions to canning
seaports, exacerbating the demographic explosion. Contagious diseases were
responsible for 44.2% of the deaths in the country, and tuberculosis was especially
common among industrial workers. 42 The 1919 influenza epidemic alone
killed 100,000 people in Portugal. In spite of citizens’ complaints, the medical
authority for factory inspections was not enough to control unhealthy industries.
Local metropolitan authorities were overwhelmed, as resources were
insufficient to meet public expenditures. Central state controls might have been
effective, but petitions failed to bring intervention.
As a consequence, intense pollution arising from the canning industry dominated
the cities’ skylines. The number of factories increased from 188 to 400
from 1917 to 1925, but this depleted fishing resources. Government regulation
sought to ensure that fisheries supporting the canning industry would become
ecologically sustainable in perpetuity.
Public Regulation
Maximizing the net benefits from the use of the biological resources is a good
definition for economic efficiency allocation, considering the associated costs
and benefits. From a static perspective, an efficient sustainable yield is a catch
level that will produce the highest annual net profit, if maintained perpetually. 43
Such a static-efficient sustainable yield allocation to canning has constant net
benefits for constant catches, species’ populations, and effort levels.
If fishing effort increases, a maximum sustainable yield will be attained for
identical levels of net benefits, catches, and species’ populations. 44 In a longrun
perspective, fishing is motivated to increase until profit becomes zero. To
maximize profit, a fisherman increased his fishing effort until marginal cost
equalled price. As ocean fisheries were common-property with open-access,
entry barriers did not exist, deterrence effects could not take place, leading to
40 Moura, 1957, p. 62.
41 Ferreira, 1990.
42 Cascão, 1993.
43 Tisdell, 1994: 240-242.
44 Tientenberg, 2007: 217-240.
357

increased effort levels (Figure 1 presents thousand gross-registered tons of
fishing boats).
th.grossTons
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1896
1900
1904
Figure 1
BOATS th.grossRegTons
1908
1912
1916
358
1920
1924
year
Source: Valério, 2001, pp. 241, 242; 246, 247, quoting Estatística das Pescas Marítimas from
1896 to 1945.
Thanks to the technological improvements before the First World War, the
marginal cost of fishing declined. The new equilibrium corresponding to the
higher effort level must have been associated with increased catches, lower
species’ populations and higher net benefits.
Too much fishing effort with too many boats and too many fisheries was
leading to overexploitation of resources and decreasing fish stocks damaging
the future level of activity and profits of coming generations.
Many things may be done to avoid unrestricted access to valuable species.
The rationale for government intervention rests on the adverse economic consequences
of depletion and overexploitation, as this implies lower income for
fishermen, depression, and social crisis. 45
The link between the economic and biological aspects is illustrated in the
following equations:
where C a, t is the amount of canned fish of age α at the year t , and F a, t the
fish catches of age α at the year t . Note that
45 Morais, 1938.
1928
1932
1936
1940
1944

dC
� 0
dF , because stocks are abundant in the beginning, and because fresh-fish
consumption is subject to satiety.
2
d C
� 0 2
dF , because the system is pressed by new-entrants, (as entrance barriers
were not efficient to prevent newcomers to canning), and because of the large
international demand for canned fish, which war periods increase still more.
where P t + 1 means the effect of pollution effluents, and Ct is the amount of
canned fish of any age at the year t . Note that
dP
� 0
dC , because canning produces effluents that are highly toxic for fish species.
2
d P
� 0 2
dC , because investing in hygiene and recycling were managerial abilities
to help in decreasing the pollutant effects on the sea.
where E t + 1 means the effects on the effort level, and P t means the effect of
pollution effluents from year t . Note that
dE
� 0
dP , because increasing pollution requires increasing effort levels to compensate
the negative effects on the survival of fish species.
2
d E
� 0 2
dP , because efforts must be very increased in introducing not only more
(and larger) boats, but also more efficient technology (such as steamships and
oceanographic studies).
for a given fish stock St. Where Fa, t the fish catches of age α at the year t and Et means the effort level
in year t. Note that
dF
� 0
dE , because more and (or) larger boats combined with more efficient
technology can increase the fish catch.
2
d F
� 0 2
dE , because there are always technological constraints to consider (as
no-freezing possibilities for harvesting too far away, at the time).
As a result, the four equations close a model. It represents a cobweb. Depending
on the shape of the equations, the adjustments to face the challenges
359

expressed in each one of the four equations may lead the system to increasing
or decreasing levels of fishing and canning.
The case of increasing levels of fishing and canning, that Figure 2 represents,
require that the birth rate of the species may benefit from highly efficient
reactions to avoid pollution, and also accommodate the highly efficient effort
levels, so that the stock may provide higher catches.
Note that
where S t+1 means the fish stock at the year t+1, S t means the fish stock at the
year t, Bt means fish births in year t, F t fish catches in year t, and D t fish deaths
in year t.
P
Figure 2
The case of decreasing levels of fishing and canning, that Figure 3 represents,
will occur whenever highly efficient reactions to avoid pollution are not
enough for reaching the birth rates that can accommodate the predation that
results from the higher effort levels. (Decreasing levels of fishing and canning,
that Figure 3 represents, also will occur if less efficient reactions to avoid pollution
and less efficient effort levels are adopted).
C
E
360
F

P
Figure 3
Unless regulation will be adopted, the consequences will translate into business
failures, unemployment, setbacks of economic activities, and social problems
in the urban life of seaport cities.
Sardine scarcity afflicted the Portuguese canneries during the 1920s (1927,
1929 and 1933 were the most severely affected), after the rapid expansion it
experienced throughout the First World War and thereafter. 46 This difficulty
brought high opportunity costs for jobs in a context of military demobilisation
and political uncertainty, as well as for the exports and trade balance, as the
Portuguese currency depreciated sharply from the end of the War until 1924.
The temptation to not interfere and not regulate sanitary conditions resulted
from the favourable effects of the sector on exports and the trade balance. The
government’s prospect of earning high tax revenues from the industry may
have had the same effect. 47 However, fish scarcity and falling production gave
the policymakers their opportunity to choose. The crisis in the fish-canning
industry led to heated debate in the Portuguese political circles. In 1927 a Congress
on fisheries and canning was held, which led to the prohibition of founding
new factories. 48
Soon the Great Depression of 1929-33 provoked even graver difficulties,
and the number of fishing workers declined, as Figure 4 illustrates.
46 Valério, 2001:317-318.
47 Coutinho, 1938.
48 Decree 15581 of 15 June 1928.
C
361
F

Thousand fishing workers
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1896
1899
Figure 4
Th.Fishing Workers
1902
1905
1908
1911
1914
1917
1920
362
1923
Year
1926
1929
1932
1935
1938
1941
1944
1947
Source: Valério, 2001, pp. 241, 242; 246, 247, quoting Estatística das Pescas Marítimas from
1896 to 1945.
Although prices declined, exports fell by 38% from 1930 to 1933. 49 Note
that reactions for adjustments that would invert the trend could not work properly
because disruption of international trade meant not only market lacunae,
but also lack of raw-material for production, such as olive oil, which was another
problem. The disruption of international trade had dramatic consequences
for the fishmeal industry, raising the hope of increased consumption of canned
fish, domestically and in the colonies, as Colonial territories only absorbed 1 to
2% of the Portuguese canning production, a luxurious consumption for the low
local per capita average revenue. 50 To distinguish between private and social
costs, a definition of property rights must be introduced to share the existing
scarcer rent, because each new fishery and canning activity should enter until
cancelling the rent.
The government aims were to maximize production and exports in a sustainable
way, to create jobs, and implement economic growth. The solution
settled on, was to reorganize the whole sector in 1933 under the government
philosophy of Corporatism, after António de Oliveira Salazar, the Prime Minister,
visited several factories and published a report on canning (when he was
the Minister of Finance). 51 The state wished to enact and enforce a reorganisation
for canneries under a bureaucratic structure. This is an inherently
political issue that the Republican regime (1910-1926) could not manage, not
49 R., J. M. V. 1996.
50 Moura, et al, 1957, pp. 57-58, 83.
51 Published in Diário de Notícias, 8 December 1931. Rodrigues, 1996:196. Salazar, 1935. For
Corporatism and codfish, see Garrido, 2003.

only because of its short longevity, but also because of the overall political
instability resulting from the short duration of governments.
Beginning in 1931, and according to decree nº 20521, the idea was
to extend the beneficial effects of the government intervention to a larger field
of industrial activity (…) being necessary to protect the national industry from
the competition that the foreign industry is doing or might do, through skilful
manoeuvres.
Such protection was beneficial for the largest producers, but many companies
went bankrupt or were bought by larger firms. The general framework
introduced institutional constraints that affected new-entrants. Industry was
subject to government control, as all new units needed authorisation from the
Minister of Commerce and Industry (with the exception of the Atlantic Islands,
where fishing resources were abundant and the number of point-source pollutants
was small). Existing firms also needed authorisation if they wished to
increase their production. 52
The decree nº 24947 of 10 January 1935 protected the existing operators and
forbade the creation or transformation of existing firms into joint-stock companies,
unless other companies exited. This obligation might be considered as a
constraint on free enterprise, free market competition and free location. Moreover,
the preservation of free access to commercial biological resources would
mean initial higher catches at the expense of a lower steady-state profit level.
Small units (having fewer than 5 workers) were not subject to government
control and were free to innovate, grow and move, but canneries were labourintensive
factories employing dozens of workers.
Government intervention in policing ports, inspecting factories, or enforcing
maximum permissible catch levels, always meant higher costs. The surveillance
of these activities was attributed to the association of fishermen and canning
producers (Grémios) in order to avoid ruinous competition, stimulate cooperation
in grouping them to produce some brands together, and regulate
maximum and minimum prices (for both fishmeal and canned fish) to avoid
predatory practices. 53 The cooperation received from the police and the customs
clerks was a decisive element. 54 As a result, the number of plants decreased
from 203 in 1933 to 179 in 1954. By then, 6% of the firms (the largest)
accounted for 28% of the production. The Gini coefficient showed a 20% concentration,
as the survivors were the major producers – the only ones who
could respond to the need of research for technological improvement and quality
control, taking advantage of scale economies and government protection.
52 Decree 21623 of 27 August 1932.
53 Decree nº 40787, Diário do Governo. Salazar, 1953.
54 Decree nº 24947, (10 January 1935), Articles 78 and 86.
363

Alternative Regulations
Today it is common that a politicisation of the aquatic ecosystems addresses
the regulation of coastal waters to avoid or limit the access of foreign fishing
vessels to national waters, demanding public expenditure for naval surveillance
and intervention. In Portugal, the adoption of Corporatism solutions sought to
respond to several problems resulting from simple quota-systems for fishing or
canning.
Alternative systems could include a control mechanism based on raising
taxes, or one based on individual quotas. 55 Taxation might be seen as an approach
to protect ecosystems, but it is inefficient, because of the perverse incentives
to fish and work for more hours, to operate with more boats or
enlarged plants or to adopt better equipment to increase fisheries and canning.
If producers dislike taxation control-systems, they also eschew individual auctioned
quotas. Producers who fail to reach their quota limits will sell them to
others, who, having lower costs, soon discover that they may increase profits
by enlarging their scale of production. It may be true that such a regulation
system can improve technology, because those producers feel encouraged to
adopt or introduce new cost-reducing equipment. 56 In any event, producers will
always trade (transferable) quotas until market equilibrium is reached, and all
obtainable rent is realized by that generation of producers, unless the government
decides to auction the quotas and appropriate the whole rent for the central
state. Systems for controlling these practices are expensive and may encourage
evasion and/or bribery. Bribes, corruption of deputies (or
congressmen), and lobbying may have the same effect of defending the interest
of producers, with externalities for the smaller ones. Moreover, the aim of
government should be to help industry to reach and sustain an efficient level of
catch and allocation to canning to sustain a perpetual industrial activity.
The system adopted in Portugal in the 1930s did not solve all of the problems.
Canning was a seasonal activity and this fact had consequences on the
labour force, which was idle for much the year. Sardines, for example, have a
better quality for canning during the five months around November. In 1935
the government forbade canning sardine from 1 January to 30 April in canneries
located in the North of the country, 16 January to 15 May in canneries located
in the centre, and 1 February to 30 May in canneries located in the
south. 57 This policy defines seasonal bans on fishing and processing, Vedas, as
well as off-loading fish on weekends. The largest producers could take advantage
of the down-time for repairing ships and nets, or improving production
techniques, to make fishmeal an extremely profitable venture.
55 Tientenberg, 2007: 230.
56 Stigler, 1968.
57 Decree nº 24947 (10 January 1935) , article 78.
364

To protect the species’ reproduction, regulation was enacted defining the
minimum length of fish for canning (sardines no smaller than 12cm, for example,
a two-year old fish). This control was already in place in the 1880s and
continued throughout the twentieth century. 58 Government management of
wharves and docks provided an opportunity for more surveillance over sanitary
conditions of fish for canning, without onerous bureaucracy.
Port captaincy licences to fish was also an alternative way to regulate the
sector. However, there are many negative effects in such a system. As fishermen
were paid according to the quantity of fish off-loaded, no wages were paid
if they remained on land and no money was available for shops and markets in
the communities. 59 The policy of seasonal bans on canning mainly affected
women, who were the dominant gender in this work, as they were more devoted
to cooking activities, docile, and less well-paid. 60 Women made up more
than 80% of the labour force in canneries in the 1950s and 99% of the seasonally
recruited labour force. Women were competing with men even to solder
the cans, thanks to the introduction of new technology for this purpose. In
Portugal, as in the USA, the loss of men’s jobs to machines and women
brought success to unions and gender conflicts in the industrial labour-market,
from the early twentieth century to the Second World War. 61
Some factories also canned other foods, namely vegetables and meat in
olive oil, or fruits in sugar, as profitability criteria were dominating survival
and business rationale. These policies stimulated managerial solutions to overcome
the inconvenience of closed seasons. Following a diversified-product
strategy, Fialho’s factories coupled fish canning with agricultural production
and animal husbandry, and the subsequent canning of the vegetables and fruits,
all “produced on his 16 farms, using cans that were made in his own locksmith
workshop, and decorated in his own lithography shop to be packed in wooden
crates from his own carpentry workshop”. 62
Public Policies versus Managerial Initiatives
The Consórcio Português de Conservas de Peixe, (re-named União dos Industriais
e Exportadores de Conservas de Peixe, by the Decree 24947) was the
institution comprising all producers and exporters, watching over and improv-
58
Ministério das Obras Públicas, Comércio e Indústria, Direcção Geral do Commercio e
Industria, Repartição do Trabalho Industrial (nº2), (Lisbon, Imprensa Nacional, 1905), p.
94.
59
Morais, 1938.
60
Moura et al, 1957 p. 66 mentions that the average female wage was about one half of the
male average wages in the 1950s: 14$25 and 26$00, respectively.
61
R. 1996: 196. For the USA, May, 1938.
62
Mata, 2009: 52. (Faria, 2001, cap. III). This firm survived until 1988, when it was bought
by the American Heinz.
365

ing production to ensure quality, establish minimum prices for domestic sales
and exports, avoid predatory managerial policies, and decide on producers’
shares in the market. It also introduced strict rules on hygiene, preserving the
environment, decreasing operation costs, and contributing to rationality and
collective welfare. Other very important missions for The Union were the efforts
in marketing, branding, protection against unfair competition, defining
rules for labour-force protection, and the regular apportioning of raw-material
to the sector. 63 The enforcement was assured through a regime of severe penalties
that included fines, temporary suspension of activity, or even forced closure.
64
The Portuguese seaports with canneries developed an exporter bourgeoisie
from middle-class origins that became a genuine local oligarchy. Literature
addressing historical cases in other countries observes that local oligarchies
were living in elegant quarters of nearby regional capital cities, doing little
effort to improve local conditions in the cannery seaports. 65 Contrary to these
situations, in Portugal most of the nineteenth-century canning families lived in
the coastal cities where their factories were located. 66 Canners made some
efforts to improve the ecological impact of the fishmeal plants or improve
social infrastructures. If not, the Portuguese cannery communities would have
been slums, unacceptable to the wealthy families owing the firms. 67 Fishwashing
water was recycled to produce oils, although they had limited use
(because of odours acquired), but were used as lubricants for ships’ masts,
animal harnesses, in the soap industry. 68 The fish waste was also recycled in the
production of fertilizers. 69 However, collection and storage were in the open
air, not always far from residential areas. Ca(OH)2 was added to accelerate the
decomposition into humus, so that it could be used to fertilize soils. The Portuguese
seaport of Setúbal, for example, had large stores of this kind of fertilizer,
and even Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, had one. 70 Government regulation also
stipulated that fish wastes should be removed daily from the factories in the
Portuguese seaports, in order to improve the urban centres’ sanitation. 71
The tin-waste, mentioned above, was also re-cycled. Using a pitchfork, the
small pieces were collected in a cubic wooden box and beaten down with a
63 On the advantages of firms’ coordination in clusters, see Chandler et al, 1998: 325.
64 Chapter X (articles 95-99) of the Decree 24947.
65 Clarke, 2008.
66 The Spanish-origin Ramirez & Cº Ltd always lived near the family plant, The Cumbrera &
Cº,from 1853 on, Soares (2005), pp. 28, 30, 32.
67 Reis, 1988.
68 Ferreira (1906), p. 181.
69 Ferreira (1906), pp. 179, 180 for evidence on the period before 1914. Moura et al, 1957, p.
64 for twentieth-century evidence.
70 Fertilizer was sold at a price of about £3.1/ton ($15/ton or 14 milreis/ton) at the Pereira
Lima fertilizers.
71 Article nº 82 of Decree 24947 (10 January 1935).
366

mace. Two men were enough in the port city of Setúbal, the largest canning
centre in Portugal until 1936, to do this. 72 Removing the sides of the box revealed
a cubic foot of compressed tin-plate pieces to be melted down and exported
to produce toys. 73 The polluter-pays-principle was at work. 74
To appraise the effects of government regulation of the 1930s, many features
related to explicit and control costs must be weighed. 75 Portuguese historians
long discussed the public regulation policies. As the 1920s were a very
unstable period, the1930s’ abundant legislation, which imposed severe government
regulation, must be studied and interpreted according to the tools of
industrial and environmental economics. 76 Most of the industrial sectors were
included in the entrance-deterrence law that sought to limit excessive competition
to Portuguese industries. 77 This kind of regulation is frequently identified
as a negative measure, because protection is inefficient. Historians also point
out that the 1930s government policy resulted from the political power of industrial
families in Portuguese society, and lobbying is recognized as a restriction
to the market structure, reducing collective welfare, in comparison with
free-entrance. 78 Fish canning received special attention from the regulatory
authorities. 79 The 1930s regulation was imposed from the perspective of employment
and social justice for disadvantaged groups, preventing competition
to defend the firms’ survival in the Great Depression years and its aftermath. 80
Moreover, economics literature shows that an oligopolistic market with firms
generating high-quality products to compete among themselves for market
share, and lobbying to try to overcome their rivals in looking after higher profits,
can improve growth and welfare under general-equilibrium conditions,
depending on the adjustments in the labour market. 81
From an international perspective, in the 1930s, the greater the difficulties
facing the Spanish, French and Moroccan producers vis-à-vis the Portuguese
canners, the better it was for the largest Portuguese firms. It is well-known that
one country’s production constricted the other countries’ market shares, and
vice-versa. The Spanish Civil War was a new opportunity for exporting Portuguese
canned goods, as was the Second World War. Not only was the main
competitors’ production ravaged, but the increased international demand
72
Matosinhos would take the first position from then to now. Moura et al, 1957, p. 62.
73
Tin plate waste was sold at the price of £2.7/ton (about$13/ ton or 12 milreis/ton). Ferreira
(1906), p. 183.
74
Tisdell, 1993:240, 242.
75
Callan & Thomas, 2000: 237-250.
76
Field, 1997:179-190.
77
Decree 19354 of 01-03-1931.
78
Brito, 1989. Confraria, 1992.
79
Decree 24947 of 01-10-1935.
80
On moral aspects and justice see Chapman: 79.
81
Pereto, (1996, 1998). Júlio, 2008.
367

ought in a new boom for Portuguese canners. 82 In the next decades, regulatory
inspections became ineffective, bureaucracy grew out of control, and historians
recognize that public policies failed, as the factories implemented their
initiatives without authorisation. 83 This means that external and agglomeration
economies could work, as operators were enacting independent decisions to
expand along the Atlantic coast and to relocate in the Portuguese seaports,
according to Krugman’s analysis. 84 The petitions for government authorisation
reflected this desire to benefit from clustering, and the authorisations granted
simply confirm the trend. 85
Conclusion
As the size of fish stocks is jointly determined by oceanographic biology and
management decisions for production levels in the fishing and canning industries,
technological improvements impacted the rate of depletion of ocean resources.
The species of fish particularly desirable for canning were overfished
in some periods, threatening the ecosystems in a variety of ways, including
depletion and pollution (land, air and sea), and giving origin to business crises
in the sector. Technological improvements stimulated economic links, particularly
to the shipbuilding industry, and entrepreneurs’ pursuit of profits put
ecosystems under great stress, as booms and contractions were extended from
the fishmeal industry to shipyards. The First World War stimulated canning so
strongly that mature open-access fisheries were severely exploited, putting
Portugal into the rankings of fishing and canning nations. Fishing and canning
represented an assault upon the ecosystem resources and polluted the coastal
bays through the run-off of blood from the factories.
The need to reduce the pressure on biological resources and sustain the economic
activity in the long run is obvious. Fishermen, canners, local authorities
and central government were the main actors, using their own strategies. Entrepreneurs
bought larger boats, built more plants, reinvested in raw-materials,
promoted the marketing and branding of their high-quality produce, and took
measures to control refuse. 86 The government performed a role in regulating
and organizing the sector for business survival, shortening fishing seasons,
minimizing damage to the ecosystem, and preserving jobs. The methods to
reach these goals were difficult to implement and control by government, but
business rationality always created managerial abilities that overcame the challenges.
82 According to Barbosa, 1941, WWII brought a local 41 thousand tons maximum of exports.
83 Brito, 1989. Confraria, 1992. Brito, 2004.
84 Krugman, 1995.
85 Moura et al, 1957, pp. 73-74.
86 Vernon, 1973.
368

Producers performed an important role in disposing of human and industrial
wastes and building local infra-structures to control pollution, such as sewer
systems and potable water provision. Canning was thus an inventive sector.
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