History of the North Sea

The North Sea has an extensive history of maritime commerce, resource extraction, and warfare among the people and nations on its coasts.

Archaeological evidence shows the migration of people and technology between Continental Europe, the British Isles, and Scandinavia throughout prehistory. The earliest records of Roman explorations of the sea begin in 12 BC. Southern Britain was formally invaded in 43 AD and gradually assimilated into the Roman Empire, leading to sustained trade across the North Sea and the English Channel. The Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from Frisia and Jutland began the next great migration across the North Sea during the Migration Period, conquering, displacing, and mixing with the native Celtic population in Britain. The Viking Age began in 793 and for the next two centuries saw significant cultural and economic exchange between Scandinavia and Europe as the Vikings used the North Sea as a jumping off point for raids, invasions, and colonization of Britain, France, Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic.

From the Middle Ages until the end of the 15th century, before the development of good roads, maritime trade on the North Sea connected the economies of northern Europe, Britain, and Scandinavia with each other as well as with the Baltic and the Mediterranean. The Hanseatic League, a confederation of merchant guilds and market towns, dominated sea trade in the North Sea and Baltic, establishing outposts in all major ports and stimulated the growth of maritime trade in Northern Europe.Dollinger 1999: 62

By the 16th century, states were beginning to overshadow the less formal reach of the Hanseatic League in power and importance, with the Dutch Republic the first to exploit overseas colonies, a vast merchant marine, and a powerful navy to rise to prominence on the North Sea coast. Conflict with a growing England, which saw its future in maritime trade, was at the root of the first three Anglo-Dutch Wars between 1652 and 1673 each of which saw significant naval action in the North Sea. Scotland emerged as a prominent economic and cultural power during the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century. Militarily, the wars of the 18th and 19th centuries were not focused on the North Sea, though the Napoleonic Wars saw some naval battles, the British Royal Navy generally outclassed its rivals and did not face a challenge to its dominance of the North Sea until World War I. During the First World War the North Sea became the main theatre of the war for surface action. The Second World War also saw action in the North Sea, including the German invasion of Norway, and large scale aerial warfare, though surface actions were very restricted.

After the war, the North Sea lost much of its military significance because it is bordered only by NATO member-states. However, its economic significant grew when in the 1960s states on the North Sea coasts began full-scale exploitation of its oil and gas resources. The North Sea continues to be an active trade route. The countries bordering the North Sea all claim the of territorial waters within which they have exclusive fishing rights. Today, the North Sea is more important as a fishery and source of fossil fuel and renewable energy, since territorial expansion of the adjoining countries has ceased.

Naming

One of the earliest recorded names was Septentrionalis Oceanus, or "Northern Ocean" which was cited by Pliny the Elder's Natural History. However, the Celts who lived along its coast referred to it as the Morimaru, the "dead sea", which was also taken up by the Germanic peoples, giving Morimarusa.Akin to Welsh môr "sea" and marw "dead"; the -sa suffix is a Proto-Germanic form akin to English sea. This name may refer to the dead water patches resulting from a layer of fresh water sitting on top of a layer of salt water making it quite still.Oskar Bandle, Kurt Braunmuller, Lennart Elmevik, and Gun Widmark, The Nordic Languages: An International Handbook of the History of the Northern Germanic Languages (Leiden, Netherlands: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), 596. Names referring to the same phenomenon lasted into the Middle Ages, e.g., Old High German mere giliberōt and Middle Dutch lebermer or libersee. Other common names in use for long periods were the Latin terms Mare Frisicum, Oceanum- or Mare Germanicum as well as their English equivalents, "Frisian Sea", "German Ocean", "German Sea" and "Germanic Sea" (from the Latin Mare Germanicum).Other names were Amalchium Mare, Britannie ef Frisie mare, Fresonicus Oceanus, Magnum Mare, Occidentale Mare, Occidentalis Oceanus. In all adjacent territories, the local name for the North Sea refers to the northern quarter of the compass, even though the sea is actually south of those areas. Danish and German however use or have used a translation of 'West Sea' as well.

Early history

Prehistory

Archaeological findings indicate that the area that now comprises the North Sea may have been a large area of plains in prehistoric times, until around 8,000–6,000 BC. The data suggests the area was inhabited before being flooded by rising water at the end of the last ice age. In 2008, a finding of approximately 28 Stone Age handaxes in material from the bottom of the North Sea strengthened the evidence of human settlements in the area.

Roman Empire

The first historically confirmed intensive use of the North Sea was by the Romans in 12 BC, when Nero Claudius Drusus built and launched a fleet of over a thousand ships into the North Sea conquering the indigenous tribes, including the Frisii and the Chauci. By 5 BC the Roman knowledge of the Sea was greatly expanded as far as the Elbe by a military expedition under Tiberius. Pliny the Elder describes Roman sailors going through Helgoland and as far as the northeast coast of Denmark.

Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain in 55 BC and 54 BC were intended to punish those tribes who had supported the rebels in Gaul and with the later conquest of Britain by Aulus Plautius in 43 AD, regular trade began between Rome and Britain via ports in Gaul. Using Roman naval support along the North Sea coast of Scotland, Gnaeus Julius Agricola continued the invasion and exploration northward into the Scottish Highlands. This traffic continued to some extent even after Emperor Honarius abandoned responsibility for defending Roman Britain in 410 AD.

Migration period

In the power vacuum left by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes began the next great migration across the North Sea. Having already been used as mercenaries in Britain by the Romans, many people from these tribes migrated across the North Sea during the Migration Period, Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain mixing with the native Celtic and Romano-British populations.

Around the 7th century a wave of Frisian migrants moved to several islands in the North Sea, and a second wave moved to what is now Nordfriesland in northern Germany and South Jutland in southern Denmark in the 11th century.

Vikings

The attack on Lindisfarne in 793 is generally considered the beginning of the Viking Age. For the next 250 years the Scandinavian raiders of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark dominated the North Sea, raiding monasteries, homes, and towns along the coast and along the rivers that ran inland. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle they began to settle in Britain in 851. They continued to settle in the British Isles and the continent until around 1050.

Alfred the Great, who is counted as the first English king, was the first to mount significant opposition to the Vikings. Eventually he relegated them to the Danelaw, carving out his own Kingdom of England. Harthacanute of Denmark and England was the last Viking king to rule over a territory spanning the North Sea. After Harthacanute's death, the kingdom broke apart.

With the Norman Conquest the North Sea began to lose its significance as an invasion route. The new order oriented most of England and Scandinavia's trade south, toward the Mediterranean and the Orient. The Baltic Sea became increasingly important for northern Germany and Scandinavia as well as the powerful Hanseatic League began to rise.

Hanseatic League

Though the Hanseatic League was centered in the Baltic, it also had important Kontors on the North Sea, including Bergen, the Steelyard in London, and Bruges.

The rise of Bruges as a center of trade and a corresponding revival of the North Sea economic importance began in 1134 when a storm tide created a deeper waterway to the city allowing the entry of large ships to port. A lively trade sprang up between Bruges and London, mostly in textiles. Bruges became the end point of the Hanseatic East–west trade line that began in Novgorod and was very important for maritime connections between France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands and the Hanseatic regions of Northern Europe. The Hanseatic league monopolised trade of the Northern Isles during this era.

in 1441 the Hanseatic League was forced to recognize the equality of the Netherlands as Antwerp had risen as an economic power and tied itself to Denmark. After the so-called Count's Feud, a war of succession in Denmark, the Dutch were able to encroach upon the League's monopoly on Baltic trade and the reign of the Hanseatic League was at an end as the Netherlands became the center of the Northern European economy.

Renaissance The Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 14th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe. The majority of commerce took place via maritime shipping due to undeveloped roadways between the 16th and 18th centuries. The east coast of Great Britain operated several ports for intercontinental trade. The European coastal ports supplied domestic goods, dyes, linen, metal products, salt and wine. The Scandinavian and Baltic shoreline provided fish, grain, naval goods, and timber. The Mediterranean area traded dyes, premium cloths, fruits and spices. The Burgundian Netherlands, French Netherlands, Spanish Netherlands and Austrian Netherlands and German lands were a central focus situated on the banks of the North Sea or the English Channel. Antwerp experienced three booms during its golden age, the first based on the pepper market, a second launched by American silver coming from Seville (ending with the bankruptcy of Habsburg Spain in 1557), and a third boom, after the stabilising Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, in 1559, based on the textiles industry becoming the second largest European city north of the Alps by 1560.

Early modern history

The Netherlands

In the 16th century, the Dutch Republic became the preeminent economic power in the world. For the Dutch merchant marine the North Sea served more as a starting point for their oceanic voyages. It had become the gateway and crucial outlet allowing Dutch merchants direct access to world markets.

During the Eighty Years' War, the Dutch Empire began a heavily invested worldwide trade – hunting whales around Svalbard, trading spices from India and Indonesia, founding colonies in Brazil, South Africa, North America (New Netherlands), and the Caribbean. The empire, which they accumulated through trade, led to the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century. The Dutch fishing industry peaked in the early 17th century. The Herring Buss improved harvest of herring, and the Dutch also expanded to cod and whale fisheries.

In 1651, England passed the Navigation Acts, which damaged Dutch trade interests. The disagreements concerning the Acts led to the First Anglo–Dutch War, which lasted from 1652 to 1654 and ended in the Treaty of Westminster (1654), whereby the Dutch were forced to recognize the acts.