Bo Poulsen

The future of the oceans past: Towards a global marine historical research initiative

Historical research is playing an increasingly important role in marine sciences. Historical data are also used in policy making and marine resource management, and have helped to address the issue of shifting baselines for numerous species and ecosystems. Although many important research questions still remain unanswered, tremendous developments in conceptual and methodological approaches are expected to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the global history of human interactions with life in the seas. Based on our experiences and knowledge from the “History of Marine Animal Populations” project, this paper identifies the emerging research topics for future historical marine research. It elaborates on concepts and tools which are expected to play a major role in answering these questions, and identifies geographical regions which deserve future attention from marine environmental historians and historical ecologists.

Estimating levels of numeracy and literacy in the maritime sector of the North Atlantic in the late eighteenth century

Abstract This paper reconstructs comparative levels of numeracy and literacy for seamen of different ranks from 14 countries in the eighteenth century using the British Prize Papers. Results show how skill was rewarded in the maritime labour market, where captains show higher levels of numeracy and literacy than lesser officers and ordinary sailors. The levels of numeracy and literacy among ship masters and Scandinavian sailors are among the highest found anywhere, while Dutch, French and Spanish sailors were at par with the common labour force. This is discussed in light of the migratory and competitive character of the maritime sector.

Perspectives on Oceans Past: A Handbook of Marine Environmental History

Marine environmental history analyses the changing relationships between human societies and marine natural resources over time. This is the first book which deals in a systematic way with the theoretical backgrounds of this discipline. Major theories and methods are introduced by leading scholars of the field. The book seeks to encapsulate some of the major novelties of this fascinating new discipline and its contribution to the management, conservation and restoration of marine and coastal ecosystems as well as the cultural heritages of coastal communities in different parts of the world.

The Renaissance Sea: Perceptions in Danish and Norwegian Topography

The sea was what held together the dual kingdoms of Norway and Denmark. Both were seafaring nations, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the king claimed jurisdiction over the entire North Atlantic region. The sea, rivers and lakes provided the natural conditions for such human activities as trading, warfare, hunting, fishing and whaling. So how were these physical conditions perceived in the century around l6oo? One way to answer this question is to look at two contemporary accounts of the topography of the two countries which show that each had a distinct maritime identity. 1

Surprisingly gentle confinement: British treatment of Danish and Norwegian prisoners of war during the napoleonic wars

ABSTRACT The Napoleonic Wars saw the British capture and incarcerate thousands of sailors in disused Royal Navy ships, the so-called prison hulks. Many Danes and Norwegians – navy personnel, privateers and merchant sailors – were thus interred. This article uses a new data source, the official record books kept in the National Archive at Kew, to test whether the prison hulks were as bad as popular perception might suggest. In doing so, we provide the first rigorous quantitative assessment of the Danish and Norwegian sailors’ prisoner experience. We find that death rates were surprisingly low, suggesting the quantity and quality of food and medical care was reasonable. Prison hulks were not ‘floating tombs’. The records also show which prisoners were released and exchanged, and when. Officers did well, reflecting the age old system of a gentleman’s honour. Privateers did worse than merchant sailors: those who took up arms were likely to serve longer as prisoners.

Imitation in European herring fisheries, C. 1550–1860

For no less than 300 years, c. 1550–1860 the Dutch way of fishing was the envy of neighbours in the North Sea area and looked upon as the undisputed best practice. However, it turned out that the perception of the Dutch Golden Age of fishing outlived the reality by at least 150 years. This paper explores the consequences of the image of Dutch dominance, as seen through 41 different attempts to build a fleet and run fishing operations similar to the Dutch. Most of them were short-lived, and some never made it to the fishing grounds before going bankrupt. When reviewed one by one, they all have unique reasons for lacklustre performances. Privateering, warfare, bankruptcy, and bad fishing luck are all valid explanations at the level of politics and short-term events. However, when looked upon in connection to each other, some recurrent features of more-or-less sound policies appear, as well as structural, social, and natural conditions for varying degrees of success and failure. Two waves of imitation emerge from this comparison. In the mid-1600s and then again during the 1760s–1770s there was a particularly strong Europe-wide interest in emulating Dutch fisheries.

Human Archives: Historians’ Methodologies and Past Marine Resource Use

This chapter shows how historians’ methodologies and approaches are being used to reconstruct marine ecological phenomena of the past. In terms of the use of history in historical marine ecology, a number of examples are presented of how past species abundance and spatial aggregation as well as long term catch rates has been investigated through the use of past paper documents, including photographs.

Global Marine Science and Carlsberg - The Golden Connections of Johannes Schmidt (1877-1933)

In Global Marine Science and Carlsberg Bo Poulsen examines the life and work of the renowned Danish marine scientist, Johannes Schmidt (1877-1933) who made landmark discoveries such as the breeding place of the Atlantic eel in the Sargasso Sea while working for Carlsberg.

Of Seascapes and People: Multiple Perspectives on Oceans Past

Human interactions with the sea date back millennia. But until a few decades ago historical information did play a negligible role in the analysis, conservation and management of marine ecosystems. Similarly, marine issues hardly played a role in historical research. This changed from the late 1990s on with marine sciences taking a historical turn, while historians began to become involved with the sea in a new, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary manner. Also driven by the increasing public awareness of marine resource depletion, marine environmental history developed as an own discipline with distinct topics and methods. This development has greatly promoted the systematic research of historical marine resource exploitation.

The Natural World

In the large woods of Scania and Halland, long-established administrative units, such as the herreder, enjoyed communal rights to the almindinger. In the early medieval period, most Danish woodland was comprised of beech. Some localities also supported oak, birch, hazel, and alder, while heather and oak scrub grew on man-made moorland. Woodland was the most important biotope that was subject to medieval colonization. Apart from the Pannage Area there is not much indication of a massive conversion of abandoned arable land into pasture. Denmark is surrounded by water, salt water, accessible along an extensive coastline. It appears that generally speaking the pronounced maritime orientation of settlements was quite new in the Middle Ages. In their 1995 report, the United Nations climate panel IPCC WGI concluded that the two periods commonly known as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were more complex geographically than had been assumed hitherto.Keywords: almindinger; arable land; Danish woodland; early modern period; Halland; Little Ice Age; man-made moorland; medieval colonization; Medieval Warm Period; Scania