A system of pre-industrial resource exploitation

The starting point for this book was the formulation of three overarching questions.

• • What were the main forces stimulating changes in the exploitation of North Sea herring in the period between approx. 1600-1860. In other words, what were the dynamics of this particular historical system?

• • What was the role of the natural environment in this regard?

• • What caused the long-term decline of the Dutch herring fisheries?

An assessment was then carried out to determine the potential of marine environmental history and historical ecology as a tool in answering these main research questions. Much of current environmental history is occupied with the human perception of the natural environment and the politics of dealing with environmental issues. By comparison, marine environmental history is more ambitious, aiming towards historically-based studies and assessments of interactions between human society and natural resources.

These interactions are best understood by applying adapted methodologies from the world of marine science. When it comes to the scientific study of herring, long time series – and thus a historical approach – have been advocated since as early as 1879, when Ljungman proposed his aforementioned sun spot theory to explain the mechanism behind the occurrence of Bohuslen herring periods. The historiography of historical ecology has demonstrated that the use of long time series is a longstanding tradition within herring studies, that has been especially popular during the last few decades, with climate related research at the centre of attention and marine ecologists attempting to construct long time series to assess fish stock fluctuations. The HMAP approach used in a great number of research projects around the globe is one practical example of this phenomenon. This particular study is the most in-depth historical reconstruction of the spatial and temporal fluctuations of any European herring stock in the pre-statistical era.

In order to conceptualize the methodology behind this study, the triangular relationship between Cognition, Production and Resource was applied to the exploitation of North Sea herring between approx. 1600-1850. One of the common denominators of history and ecology is that they both study change and stability within a set time and space, or – to put it in different terms – within a historical system.