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Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century Author(s): Richard W. Unger Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 253-280 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2120179 . Accessed: 05/04/2012 15:15

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Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century

RICHARD W. UNGER

Herring exports to the Baltic from the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries were closely related to exports of the previous year rather than to aggregate levels of trade. Dutch domination of the European market for salted her- ring in the seventeenth century thus cannot be explained by some external factor but rather by the internal nature of the Dutch fishery: by technology, organization, and the institutions which administered it. Regulation was designed to maximize rents but, as other fishermen gained the skills of their Dutch competitors, that strat- egy turned into one which at first limited sales and then returns to the Dutch indus- try.

... 0, wat een gulden Neeringh en voedsel brengt ons toe de Conincklijke Heringh; hoe menig duysend ziel bij dezen handel leeft en winnende sin brood God dank en eere gheeft.'

THOSE were the words of Joost van den Vondel, the greatest Dutch poet of the seventeenth century, mi adulation of the "royal herring."

As he suggested, the herring was an important commodity in the inter- national trading network of the Dutch Republic. The herring fishery was a transforming industry, a trafiek. Netherlanders caught the fish at sea, treated them using imported salt, and packed them in casks of imported wood. They exported the final product. Herring played an integral part in the "mother trade," the shipping of corn and forest products from Baltic ports to the west coast of France and Iberia to be exchanged for salt, wine, and other goods which in turn were brought back to the Netherlands. Those goods were shipped on to the Baltic in their original form or in some processed form or, in the case of some of the salt, transformed by combination with herring. It was that and related exchanges that made the Dutch Republic unquestionably the leading trading state per person in seventeenth-century Europe. Though it is true that Dutch herring ex- ports were only possible because of the existence of the trading network, the quantity of fish sent overseas was not a function of the quantity of any

The Journal of Economic History. Vol. XL, No. 2 (June 1980). ? The Economic History Associa- tion. All rights reserved. ISSN 0022-0507.

The author is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. The analysis and preparation of this paper depended on the assistance of Virginia Green. The University of British Columbia supplied computer time. The author is indebted to Piet van der Veen for his personal help and to Robert Allen, Don Paterson, Jan de Vries, and especially John Norris for reading and com- menting on an earlier draft.

'Joost van den Vondel, "Lofsangh op den Scheepsvaart," De vernieuwde Gulden Winckel (Amster- dam, 1622), lines 197-200. "O what a golden industry is created for us by that food, the royal herring. How many thousand souls, thank God, live by this trade and earn their living from it."

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or all of the other goods exchanged in the "mother trade." Rather, herring exports depended on factors internal to the Dutch herring fishery and the herring fisheries of other northern European states.

An examination of the short-run relationship between Polish export earnings and Polish expenditure on herring imports shows little causal connection. Grain exports fluctuated widely, depending on the weather, levels of violence, and other exogenous factors. Moreover, Polish land- owners had many things to spend their earnings on other than herring. While over the long term Dutch herring sales in the Baltic showed some connection with Polish exports, year on year the relation was very weak. The principal reason for Dutch success in exporting herring to the Baltic has to be found elsewhere.

Price differentials and profits offer a more complete explanation. Above all, however, it was certain specific technical changes and the develop- ment of certain political institutions in the course of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries that allowed the Dutch herring fishery to gain a dominant position in European markets. Over time, Dutch technical superiority was eroded as competitors developed the same skills. As alternate sources of supply emerged, the Dutch chose to limit production in order to maintain the premium prices their herring commanded. This led first to a decline in the volume of fish exported and then to a decline in value. In these new circumstances, the strategy that had previously led to market dominance and high rents became a contributor to falling total output and falling re- turns. The contraction of the Dutch herring fishery developed into just an- other part of the relative stagnation of the Dutch economy in the eigh- teenth century.

Vondel was not the only writer who was impressed with the value of the herring as a source of food, as a popular medicine, and as the product of a major industry. Commentators both in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe remarked on the size of the Dutch herring catch and its contribu- tion to the economic growth of Holland in the years after 1600.2 By the eighteenth century the Dutch herring fishery had taken on something of a

2 H. Blink, "De Geschiedenis en Beteekenis der Nederlandsche Haringvisscherij," Vragen van den Dag, 45 (1930), 985-86. Adriaen Coenen Zn., Visboeck, Handschriftkamer, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, begun 1577, fol. 15r-16v. In this lavishly illustrated short manuscript on the fishery the author twice pictures the herring with a crown on its head and calls the fish, "our noble herring, the king above all other fish." John R. McCulloch, ed., A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Commerce (London, 1859), pp. 21-22. Sir Walter Raleigh estimated for his king, James 1, the employment which grew directly and indirectly out of the Dutch herring fishery. Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republick of Holland and West-Friesland... Written by John DeWitt and other Great Men in Holland (originally published in Dutch in 1662; London, 1702), pp. 37-42, added recognition of the secondary jobs created in shipping and manufacturing, the value of the fishery as a school for seamen, and the value of herring as an exportable good. His estimate of 19 percent of the population earning their living from the fisheries is too high. Raleigh was also much too extravagant: his claim that the net gain to the Dutch Republic from the herring fishery was 21,500,000 guilders was well above the actual figure of about 2,500,000 guilders. See H. A. H. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij van Holland in den Tijd der Republiek (Amsterdam, 1946), pp. 39, 212. The contribution of the herring fishery to total Dutch output had been stated officially as early as 1476.

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mythical quality for writers-Voltaire, for example-and it is through that myth that historians in later years have come to write about the in- dustry. The claims in some cases go to the extreme of explaining the Dutch navy, the trade of the Netherlands, and the overseas colonies all as children of the North Sea fisheries.3 Even less extreme writers point to the herring fishery as one of the bases of seventeenth-century Dutch prosper- ity, noting the fishery's chief contribution as a commodity-return in multi- lateral trade, as well as its being a direct source of income. Certainly, it was already an important contributor to gross output in the sixteenth cen- tury, when Charles V's personal physician said that the Dutch got more gold and silver by catching and selling fish than other countries did by digging the metal out of the ground. The Dutch government in 1624 called the fishery the gold mine of the republic. The estimates perhaps better embody the moral the authors wanted to draw than they do actual output figures, and so they should not be taken seriously.4 The history of the herring fishery-especially the internal history of the whole range of activities associated with it-has then been typically obscured, the contri- bution of the industry being seen in gross terms and never examined as a result of what went on in the fishery itself.

The method for curing or pickling herring was well known during the Middle Ages. Soon after the herring were caught, the packer eviscerated the fish, mixed them with salt to form a brine, and then packed them into casks with more salt. The contribution of Low Countries fishermen was to adapt this method for use on board ship, which meant that the herring had to be repacked when it was brought to port. By doing the work of pre- serving at sea, Dutch fishermen could stay away from shore longer. That in turn enabled them to seek out and exploit new deepwater fishing grounds off the coast of Scotland, off the Shetland Islands, and off Ice- land. Netherlanders cured herring on board ship before 1400, and in the second third of the fifteenth century market phenomena and government policy combined to allow a sharp nse in the production of salted herring in the Low Countries.' Salt importing began in the fifteenth century. The

I For Voltaire see Gerard Doorman, "Nogmaals: de middeleeuwse haringvisserij," Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 14 (1960), 104. Nels A. Bengston and William Van Royen, Funda- mentals of Economic Georgraphy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1956), pp. 314-15, made the most lavish claims for the importance of the herring fishery. The extreme statement appeared in the first (1935) through the fourth (1956) editions, but was dropped in the fifth (1964) and subsequent editions.

4Robert Fruin, Tien Jaren uit den Tachtigjarigen Oorlog, 1588-1598, 5th ed. (The Hague, 1899), p. 185. McCulloch, Tracts on Commerce, p. 97. The implied comparison was presumably with mines in the New World. In the first half of the seventeenth century, even in the best years for the fishery, spe- cie of a value almost four times that of the Dutch herring catch arrived annually in Spain from Amer- ica. Compare Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 32-35, and Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 133, 212. Nicolaas W. Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland (Leiden, 1946-1964), vol. I, pp. cxv-xvi. The value of the herring catch in the 1630s, one of the best decades for the fishery, was annually about 30 metric tons of silver. Incidentally, in the same decade Spain received an annual average of 140.5 met- ric tons of silver.

'Richard W. Unger, "The Netherlands Herring Fishery in the Late Middle Ages: The False Leg- end of Willem Beukels of Biervliet," Viator, 9 (1978), 335-56.

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herring fishery was the chief consumer of that salt brought from France, Spain, and Portugal. The sea salt, becasue of its relatively high magne- sium sulphate and magnesium chloride content, was well-suited for pre- serving the herring. It was also cheaper than domestic salt which was sup- plied by burning peat from coastal bogs, impregnated over the centuries with sea salt.6 Despite the fact that the transfer to curing on board had been made by 1400, and that supplies of sea salt from the Atlantic coast were available well before 1500, it was not until the seventeenth century that Dutch herring production reached its peak. The explanation for the long delay lies in the history of the fishery itself, in developments in both the economics and the technology of the fishery. Those two factors also help to explain the decline in output after about 1650 and then the col- lapse in the eighteenth century.

The development of technology in the herring fishery extended from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century and took many forms. The wide range of new techniques and new equipment laid the basis for the long-term growth in output. By the time of the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule beginning in 1568, the Netherlands fishery enjoyed a marked superiority in Europe. There was little improvement in techniques during the period of the Republic down to 1795. The technical changes in the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries included, first, improvements in the tech- niques of curing on board ship; second, changes in the organization of the herring fishery; third, improvements in the equipment, in the capital goods; and fourth, the development of political institutions which pro- tected fishing boats and regulated production to maintain quality. Changes in method often set up compulsive sequences whereby one tech- nical development leads to the use of others. In the herring fishery, such a sequence occurred, for example, with the design of ships. Moreover, the long-term process of learning-by-doing gave the Netherlands a large pool of experienced and knowledgeable personnel at all steps in the prepara- tion of herring. The greatest impetus to the use of all the superior methods

6W. Brulez, "De Zoutinvoer in de Nederlanden in de 16e eeuw," Tiydschrift voor Geschiedenis, 68 (1955), 181-84. Johannes van Dijk, "The Technology of Herring Utilization," Report of the FAO Meeting (Bergen, 1950), pp. 224-25. H. de Jager, De Middeleeuwse Keuren der Stad Brielle (The Hague, 1901), pp. 161-62, 190-91. Herman van der Wee, "De groei van de Nederlandse haringin- dustrie en het raadsel van het Zeeuwse Zout, 14e-16e eeuw," De Vier Ambachten (1964-1965), pp. 18-23.

Production in the Zeeland coastal salines seems to have fallen off in the fifteenth century, making the importation of salt from the Atlantic coast of Europe even more advisable. The cause was prob- ably the frequent and disastrous floods. Herman van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy (The Hague, 1963), vol. I, pp. 287-91. The advantages of imported sea salt were partly offset by its higher level of impurities, which meant that it had to be extensively refined. Moreover, it took only four casks of Zeeland salt to treat fourteen lasts of herring whereas it took five and one-half casks of refined sea salt.

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was the presence of a market for the preserved herring and a market that had potential for growth.7

When Dutch fishermen first began to cure herring on board ship in the fourteenth century, the product was of lower quality than fish treated on shore. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, that was no longer the case.8 In fact, in the seventeenth century Dutch herring sold at a pre- mium over herring pickled in France or England. The experience gained over time in gutting and treating the herring at sea may help to explain the improvement in quality. The same may be true for the job of repack- ing the fish in port. Dutch fishermen may have accidentally stumbled on the advantages of leaving part of the stomach, the pyloric caecae, in the fish to promote curing. Those appendices of the stomach contain trypsin, which speeds the curing process and also improves the aroma of the final product. There is some indication that seventeenth-century Dutch fish- ermen did not remove all of the stomach and pancreas simply because the work was done so rapidly. Typical Dutch practice was to gut the fish the morning after they were caught, which minimized deterioration. This made the gutters work quickly, handling up to 2000 fish per hour, and so they may have often failed to remove all of the stomach. An illustration dated 1652 shows gutted herring with parts of the viscera left behind. A modern survey shows that from 10 to 50 percent of herring gutted using the same process still had the entire stomach; therefore, an even higher proportion had at least the pylonrc caecae.9 While Dutch producers may have taken advantage of higher concentrations of trypsin without under- standing their value, it is probable that they did learn by experiment the optimal salt concentrations both for packing on board ship and for the re- packing done on shore.

The shift of the Dutch from coastal to deep-sea fishing for herring also increased the complexity of investment and marketing in the fishery. The increase in the duration of voyages-from overnight to from five to eight weeks-increased the turnover capital requirements of fishing ventures. They required larger and more expensive boats and crews. Under local sea law, the men on board had to be fed at the expense of the investors for the entire trip. More casks and salt were needed for curing. All this was very different from the modest capital demands in the early fifteenth cen- tury when the herring fishery was pursued by small boat owners who re-

I The pattern is similar to that noticed in general for the adoption and widespread use of any tech- nical change. Nathan Rosenberg, "The Direction of Technological Change: Inducement Mechanisms and Focusing Devices," Economic Development and Cultural Change, 17, no. 1 (1969), 1-24; idem, "Factors Affecting the Diffusion of Technology," Explorations in Economic History, 10 (Fall 1972), 7- 28.

8Eric Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere en France: Etude d'historie &onomique et sociale (Paris, 1941), p. 153. Ysbrand N' Ypma, Geschiedenis van de Zuiderzeevisserij (Amsterdam, 1962), p. 40. Van der Wee, Growth of the Antwerp Market, vol. I, p. 278.

9Gerard Doorman, "Het Haringkaken en Willem Beukels," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 69 (1956), 373. Luijpen, De Invloed, pp. 37-39, 61-73.

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lied on brokers for financing and marketing, all for about 5 percent of gross income. By the mid-fifteenth century the brokers were becoming owners and operators of ships as well. They were merchants with an inter- est in more assured supplies of preserved fish. They usually divided the functions in a partnership, one partner acting as broker-merchant and an- other as skipper. Other merchants, ship chandlers, and even individuals with no direct connection with fishing could and did invest in the boats and their supplies. The status of the fishermen changed, too, from being owner-operators of boats to being wage laborers. The trend toward con- centration of capital and of marketing in the hands of a smaller number of men continued in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ownership was vested increasingly in the hands of greater merchants in the large ports on rivers and inland seas with international trading connections.10 After about 1600, financing was subjected to even greater specialization. In- creasingly, single fish merchants replaced partnerships supplying all of the capital as impersonal investors lost interest in the herring fishery. At the same time the international herring traders became more interested in gaining control over supplies." The seventeenth-century Dutch fish mer- chant pressed vertical integration to the point where he supplied all the capital and owned the product from the time it was caught, through proc- essing and shipment, until it was sold to the final consumer.

Such concentration was not common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It occurred in the Duch herring fishery for a number of reasons. Falling capital costs-the average herring boat cost less over time-and rising merchant incomes combined to put ownership of the vessels within reach. By owning the boats and paying a wage to fishermen, merchants took the risk of failure into their own hands. But with the catch rising, risks were falling. The merchants effectively appropriated any rent which the fishermen might have earned. There were advantages to extending in- vestment into production and also good reasons for merchants to extend their interest in the other direction, into marketing. As the final consumer became more distant from the producer, access to knowledge of markets and prices became more critical. A well-informed merchant was in the best position to sell the catch and to get the highest possible price. The

'?Coenen Zn., Visboeck, fol. 20v. Renee Doehaerd, "La Genese d'une entreprise maritime: les pecheurs de Wenduine au XVe siecle," Contributions a l'Histoire Economique et Sociale, 1 (1962), 9- 25. Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 55-56, 86-92. H. A. H. Kranenburg, "Het Visserijbedrijf van de Zijdenaars in de 15e en 16e Eeuw," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 62 (1949), 328-32. Towns estab- lished rules to protect investors from unscrupulous skippers who might not pay them what they de- served. For example, Klaas Heeringa, Rechtsbronnen der stad Schiedam (The Hague, 1904), p. 245. Also, H. de Jager, De Middeleeuwse Keuren der Stad Brielle, p. 162, paragraphs 6, 7.

" The van Adrichems, a prominent Delft business family of the late sixteenth century, is a good example of these structural changes. Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Archief van Adrichem, 12, 13, 126, 127. H. Enno van Gelder, "Gegevens Betreffende de Haringvisscherij op het einde der 16de Eeuw," Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap, 32 (1911), 1-62, publishes 3 of the 29 surviving accounts of the van Adrichems' herring fishery ventures. Kranenburg, De Zeevissche- rij, pp. 61-71, 117-25.

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work on land, the repacking of the herring, was important to the quality of the final product. Having a resident merchant who was in a position to organize and oversee that work was necessary for the success of the entire operation, from catching to selling the fish. Above all, though, the herring industry was subject to integration because it was a transforming industry relying on imported raw materials and on overseas markets. Greater mer- chants dominated the industry because they had access to information about and control over the prices and supply of inputs and of output.

Improvements in equipment for the herring fishery were made mainly in the principal capital good, the boat. Low Countries shipbuilders around 1400 developed the herring buss, a vessel specifically suited for use in the deep-sea fishery. Herring busses were much more efficient than the small, flat-bottomed, keelless boats of the coastal fishery. Busses, pur- pose-built for the herring fishery, were certainly in widespread use in Hol- land in the 1440s. They were large enough to survive North Sea storms and to carry all the necessary gear including the big nets and the casks. There was space on board for men to work at gutting and packing the fish. Over time, builders modifed the buss so that by the early sixteenth century it was a three-masted vessel with sharply curved bows. There was a full deck with cover for the crew and for the empty and full casks. A ship with a relatively high ratio of length to breadth is better able to keep pressure on a long drag net when fishing, so busses were designed with higher ratios-usually about 4.5:1-than other seagoing ships.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the buss underwent signifi- cant changes, making it even more efficient. The flat stern was replaced with a rounded one which increased the ships' manageability. The three sails, one on each mast, were orignally square and remained so until early in the eighteenth century when rigging changed completely. The three masts were reduced to two, and one of those carried a fore-and-aft sail which needed fewer men to handle it. In general, herring busses were highly durable, lasting on average more than twice as long as cargo ships of similar size. A cross-section of the hull near the center would give the impression of an oblong rectangle with the corners not quite square. That shape and the high ratio of length to width gave the buss sizable carrying capacity for its length compared to similar boats. Carrying capacity grew over time as well. In the early fifteenth century busses were probably about the same size as coastal craft, but by the sixteenth century busses of 60 tons were not uncommon. The maximum feasible size was about 200 tons, and in the late sixteenth century busses of about 140 tons were typi- cal. In the seventeenth century, however, builders and fishermen found that 60 tons and lengths of less than 20 meters overall were optimal. The smaller vessel cost less to build and much less to operate since the crew was only about 13 men instead of between 18 and 30. The change to smaller busses may have also been a result of increased specialization in shipping, with busses used exclusively for fishing and not carrying cargo

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in the off-season. While the ability to earn in alternative employment may have eased the adoption of the buss at the outset, by about 1600 the type was fully job-specific. The increasing efficiency of the buss contributed to the greater effectiveness of Dutch fishermen going after North Sea her- ring. The Dutch government demonstrated its recognition of the contribu- tion of the buss design by consistently prohibiting the export of busses.'2

Political institutions emerged to provide protection for herring fish- ermen because the busses, being equipped solely as fishing boats, were highly vulnerable to attack. In the fifteenth century herring fishermen or- ganized convoys for mutual protection, and they fitted out vessels to de- fend the convoys. By the 1440s town governments were cooperating in the convoying of fishing vessels from the coastal provinces of the Low Coun- tries. By the mid-sixteenth century the government of the Low Countries had assumed responsibility for supplying protection for the herring fleet, assessing taxes, and administering and paying for warships doing convoy duty.'3 Convoying continued under the Dutch Republic and became much better organized. The attacks of Dunkirk privateers and the increas- ing capabilities of defending warships broke down residual opposition to convoys and convoy charges. In the seventeenth century Dutch convoys were effective against most privateers and enemy warships, except in cer- tain wars and at certain times. Convoys served a valuable purpose: they allowed Dutch fishermen to range widely without as much fear of attack and they allowed shipbuilders to construct even more job-specific fishing vessels.

Government in the Low Countries also developed an elaborate set of regulations governing all phases of the production of herring. The legisla- tion was directed largely at maintaining the quality of the domestic prod- uct. The body of rules first began to develop in certain port towns, and in

I2Jan van Beylen, Schepen van de Nederlanden Van de late middeleeuwen tot het einde van de 1 7e eeuw (Amsterdam, 1970), pp. 135-41. The earliest trustworthy illustration of a herring buss dates from 1504 or 1540. The change from a flat to a rounded stern on larger busses has been dated to be- tween 1600 and 1650. Nicholaes Witsen, Architectura Navalis et Regimen nauticum ... 2nd ed. (Am- sterdam, 1690), pp. 186-87. Johannes E. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling van de Nederlandsche Haring- visscherij in den Loop der Eeuwen," Het Nederlandsche Zeewezen, 16 (1917), 66-67. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 15-18, 56-58, 200-01. J. Ploeg, "Speurtocht naar Haringbuizen," Mededeelingen van de Nederlandse Vereniging voor Zeegeschiedenis, 25 (1972), 25-31. Two-masted busses apparently ex- isted as early as the sixteenth century but did not dominate the three-masted type until after 1700. Coenen Zn., Visboeck, said that busses of his day could land 30-36 lasts of herring, a last being made up of fourteen casks each containing about 900 fish.

13 Roger Degryse, "De Omvang van Vlaanderens haring- en zoutevisbedrijf op het einde van het Frans-Bourgondisch conflict (1482)," Acadimie de Marine de Belgique, Communications, 15 (1963), 37-38. Rudolf HApke, Niederlandische Akten und Urkunden zur Geschichte der Hanse und zur Deuts- chen Seegeschichte (Munich, 1913-1923), vol. 1, #14, #115, #628. Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Archief van de Rekenkamer der Domeinen van Holland, 4990, is an account, dated 1523, for the fitting out of 11 warships for protection of herring boats. Roger Degryse, "De Konvooieering van de Vlaamsche visschersvloot in de l5de en de l6de eeuw," Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Neder- landen, 2 (1948), 1-24. Roger Degryse, "Het tucht- en politiereglement voor de Hollands-Vlaamse krijgsvloot van buiskonvooiers van 1547," Acadimie de Marine de Belgique, Communications, 15 (1963), 17-30.

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1424 the province of Holland started its regulation of the herring catch, salting, packing, and the size of casks. Apparently, governments were of- ten inspired to greater regulation by complaints from overseas;'4 thus the rise in regulation after 1424 was partly attributable to the growth of her- ring exports. In 1519 Charles V issued the first general law dealing with the entire Low Countries herring fishery. The law, which continued in force with minor changes into the nineteenth century, subjected the fish- ery for the first time to one undivided authority.

After the Revolt the States of Holland carried on the policy, leaving in- tact a standing committee, first set up in 1567, of representatives from the major producing towns. The committee, the College Van Commissarissen van de Groote Visscheriy, was originally intended by the States to advise lawmakers on the best legislation for the herring fishery. By 1600, though, the committee had acquired the power to lay down laws limiting the oper- ation of the deep-sea fishery, and it used that power to systematize the va- riety of existing rules. The frequently expanded legislation dealt largely with fixing precise dates for the fishing season and preventing the use of inferior materials in packing. The committee was also responsible for or- ganizing convoys, paid for by a tax on salt imports. Although producers were independent, each of the many individual firms was subject to the precise rules of the College. Moreover, each producing town took on the job of enforcing those regulations, and so surveillance was close. Size of casks and the minimum weight of fish per cask were fixed, as was the vol- ume of salt used in packing. Casks had to be branded by inspectors, the brand serving to differentiate Dutch from other herring. The College met annually at Delft at the start of the herring season and issued licenses to busses. A boat could not go out for herring without this license; thus, reg- ulation effectively controlled production. The College combined rules to dominate European markets and manipulate production and price, as best it could, to the advantage of all Dutch producers. To do that it forced the producers to act in consort, like one producer."5 Regulation certainly lim- ited the scope of activity for Dutch fishermen but it enabled them to com- mand a higher price for their herring than could competitors.

Essentially a federation of producers' representatives, the College tried

'4Rijksarchief in Noord-Holland, Verzamling aanwinsten, L. 504, fols. 99r-lOOr, is a set of rules established by Duke Philip for the herring fishery, both deep-sea and in inland waters. J. A. Fruin, De Oudste Rechten der Stad Dordrecht en van het Baljuwschap van Zuidholland (The Hague, 1882), vol. II, #229, is a town ordinance on herring selling and packing dating from 1494. Heeringa, Rechtsbron- nen, pp. 232-50, is a town ordinance on the proper practice of commanders of herring boats and on packing and salting the herring dating from 1434. S. Haak, "Brielle als vrije en bloeinde Handelsstad in de l5de eeuw," Bijdragen voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 4th ser., 6 (1907), 36- 37.

1s The government of the Netherlands began its first tentative regulation of the herring fishery in 1509. Nelly Gottschalk, Fischereigewerbe und Fischhandel der niederlandischen Gebiete im mittelalter (Bad W6rishofen, 1927), pp. 16-19. J. Travis Jenkins, The Herring and the Herring Fisheries (London, 1927), pp. 68-75. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 73-79, 151-57. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling," 15 (1916), pp. 348-49, 360-63, 371-72; and 16 (1917), 19-20.

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to keep poor herring or poorly cured herring off the market. Its legislation prevented Dutch producers from doing damage to their markets through either overproduction or gaining a poor reputation.'6 Restrcting supplies meant indirectly raising prices, but the market for herring was less sensi- tive to increases in price than it was to decreases in quality. The College on many occasions made rulings about ventjagers, fast ships sent out with the fleet to rush back the first catch which was loaded directly on board from herring busses. Such regulation affected only a very small percent- age of the total herring catch; however, the concern over the dates when herring for the vent~agers was taken is another illustration of the regulat- ors' consuming interest in quality control.'7

The technical changes in equipment, methods, and institutions over the fifteenth and sixteenth centures were the basis for the strong commercial position and the relatively sizable output of the Dutch herring fishery at the beginning of the Republican period. The change in technology con- tributed to and in part induced the long-term rise in output and the long- term rise in exports, which culminated in the record catches and sales of the first half of the seventeenth century.

II

The peak of Dutch herring output and of exports coincided with the peak in Dutch trade to the Baltic. It is difficult to estimate the maximum level of the herring catch. Various contemporary guesses, usually made in the context of polemics, are highly suspect, and official returns are few. All data, however, point to a rise in the number of herring busses and a rise in total production of cured herring from the sixteenth through the early seventeenth century.'8 In the 1630s and 1640s, the fleet of some 500 busses annually caught an average of about 50 lasts of herring each, that is, in their two or, more commonly, three voyages. Total output was then

16 The same goal of quality control to satisfy export markets was recognized in Lubeck regulations of the Scania and other fisheries of 1576. Dietrich Schafer, Das Buch des Lubeckischen Vogts auf Schonen, 2nd ed. (Lubeck, 1927), pp. 132-34.

17 Regulation of ventjagers has certainly been too much emphasized by historians. A. R. Michell, "The European Fisheries in Early Modem History," The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. V (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 152-53. Van Beylen, Schepen, p. 139. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling," 16 (1917), 3-4. Hapke, Niederlandische Akten, vol. II, #1032.

18 The long-term trend was interrupted by the Revolt and the attacks of the Sea Beggars. For a list of overestimates see Hermann Watjen, "Zur Statistik der hollIndischen Heringsfischerei im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert," Hansisches Geschichtsblatter, 28 (1910), 131-32. A 1476 government document in- cludes a figure of 250 for the number of busses in Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland. Kranenburg, "Het Visserijbedrijf," p. 327. An official estimate of 1552 put the buss fleet of Holland at 300 vessels. Hapke, Niederldndische Akten, vol. I, #628. The number was larger when the provinces of Zeeland and Flanders were added, and so the estimate of a fleet of 700 busses for the entire Netherlands in the late sixteenth century seems just possible. Brulez, "De zoutinvoer," pp. 183-84. Also Degryse, "Het tucht- en politiereglement," p. 18. Estimates by contemporaries in the early seventeenth century of a buss fleet of 2000 or more were clearly inflated. The figure of 500 for the province of Holland alone was much nearer the mark. The best modem calculations on herring output are those of Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 25-43. Unfortunately, he limited his estimates to the province of Holland.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 263

at least 25,000 lasts, or more than 32,500 metric tons. Holland fishermen in good years caught and cured better than 200,000,000 herring, which may well have been about one-half the catch of all European herring fish- eries."9 Output, the number of herring busses, and the average catch per buss all fell after about 1650. In the eighteenth century in general the catch was about 6000 lasts annually.

The ports of the Baltic littoral constituted the largest single market for Dutch cured herring. Exports to Eastern Europe began in the fifteenth century, and about 1500 half the herring imported into the port of Gdansk came from Holland.20 The volume increased over time. Betweeen 1562 and 1657 the average annual import of Dutch herring into the Baltic was 5415 lasts. The best years for exporters were from 1600 to 1629, when an average of 8245 lasts of herring entered the Sound in Dutch ships. The Netherlands produced about 82 percent of all herring shipped into the Baltic from Western Europe in the century ending in 1660. About 75 per- cent of the total went in Dutch ships. Dutch producers reached the maxi- mum in 1602, when they sent more than 12,000 lasts of herring into the Baltic. The herring was consumed in Baltic ports or shipped inland along the rivers of Poland and Russia. On average, some 11 percent of the her- ring that entered the Baltic in the first half of the seventeenth century found its way up the Vistula as far as Warsaw.2'

While Baltic markets took about 40 percent of Dutch herring produc- tion, other export markets absorbed about the same amount. Cologne and the Upper Rhine Valley was long an important market for cured fish. So, too, was the North Sea coast of Germany, which took about 20 percent of the total catch. Despite the competition from local fishermen, Dutch ship- pers were even successful in exporting cured herring to ports in Nor- mandy, whence it presumably went on to Paris. In the eighteenth century, however, production and exports fell. The Baltic declined as a destination for Dutch herring as early as the 1660s.22 The domestic market never took

19 Michell, "The European Fisheries," pp. 148-49, 155. Employment in the herring fishery in North Holland alone at the peak was some 3500. Adriaen M. van der Woude, Het Noordkwartier, een re- gionaal historisch onderzoek in de demografisch en economische geschiedenis van westelijk Nederland van de late middeleeuwen tot het begin van de negentiende eeuw (Wageningen, 1972), p. 408. A figure of 10,000 employees for the entire Republic is probably low. Still the total was less than 2 percent of the labor force.

20 Werner Bohnke, "Der Binnenhandel des Deutschen Ordens in Preussen und seine Beziehung zum Aussenhandel um 1400," Hansische Geschichtsblatter, 80 (1962), 27. Victor Lauffer, "Danzigs Schiffs- und Waarenverkehr am Ende des XV. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift des Westpreussischen Ges- chichtsvereins, 38 (1894), p. 44. Klaus Spading, Holland und die Hanse im 15. Jahrhundert. Zur Prob- lematik des uberganges vom Feudalismus zum Kapitalismus (Weimar, 1973), pp. 50-5 . Haak, "Brielle," pp. 40-43. Gottschalk, Fischereigewerbe und Fischhandel, pp. 39-42.

21 Willem S. Unger, "De Sonttabellen," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 41 (1926), 144. Nina E. Bang and Knud Korst, eds., Tabeller over Skibsfart og Varetransport gennem Oresund, 1498-1783 (Copen- hagen, 1906-1953). Compare Bang with Honorata Obuchowska-Pysiowa, Handel Wislany W Pierws- zej Polowie XVII Wieku (Warsaw, 1964), pp. 16-17, tables 44 45. There are a number of years for which data are missing.

22 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 41, 154-55. While the Dutch may have sent as much as 10,000 lasts of herring to Rouen each year around 1600-and the estimate appears high-that was still only

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a large proportion of the herring: even at the height of the fishery, only about 20 percent of total annual output, or at most 5000 lasts, stayed in Holland. The principal market for Dutch pickled herring both at home and overseas was always individuals of relatively high income.

The records of the tolls levied on ships passing through the Sound, the strait between modern Sweden and Denmark, indicate an increase in the already high level of Dutch exports of herring to the Baltic in the last years of the sixteenth century. Figure 1, giving five-year moving averages, eliminates the short-term fluctuations and shows the tendency toward a high level of herring shipment into the Baltic in Dutch vessels in the first half of the seventeenth century. Equally, it shows the decline after 1650 and then the relative decline and stability at a low level in the eighteenth century. That rise in exports in the late sixteenth century is reflected not only in the Sound dues but in the toll records of ports such as Kalinin- grad, Elbl~g, and Gdansk, and in the records of river tolls charged at Warsaw.23

As much as two-thirds of the Dutch tonnage going into the Baltic was unused, for ships went in ballast to Polish ports to fetch grain. Salt and herring were the two principal goods used to fill entering ships' holds, even if only partly. Because the shipment of grain out of the Baltic could pay for the cost of the entire voyage, as it did in the majority of the cases, the marginal cost of shipping herring to Baltic ports could approach zero on any single voyage. The only costs that had to be covered were loading, unloading, and administration.24

III

The boom in Dutch herring shipments coincided with the entry of Bal- tic grain into Mediterranean markets. The harvest collapses in southern

about one-fifth of total imports by all shippers into that Norman port. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 35, 53, 133-35. Hamburg in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century took 3500 to 5000 lasts of herring each year from Holland. Already by the second half of the seventeenth century (1661-1700) the Baltic took only 12-20 percent of Dutch output. H. A. H. Kranenburg, "De Haring- export naar het Oostzeegebied in de 18e eeuw," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 72 (1959), 257-58.

23 P. H. Winkelman, Nederlandse Rekeningen in de Tolregisters van Koningsbergen 1588-1602 (The Hague, 1971). Horst Kempas, Seeverkehr und Pfundzoll im Herzogtum Preussen. Ein Beitrag zur Ge- schichte des Seehandels in 16. and 17. Jahrhundert (Bonn, 1964), p. 369. Franciscus B.M. Tangelder, Nederlands Rekeningen in de Pondtolregisters van Elbing, 1585-1602 (The Hague, 1972). In 1594, 16 of 85 Dutch ships entered carrying herring and in 1602 it was 10 of 55, but the average cargo had almost doubled in those years to 21.4 lasts per ship. From 1605 to 1651 the annual average of herring passing Warsaw was 965.3 lasts, or almost twice the annual average of 504.5 lasts which passed the nearby Wloclowek customs house in the previous century. Obuchowska-Pysiowa, Handel, p. 210.

24 Wladyslaw Rusifiski, "The Role of Polish Territories in the European Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, 3 (1968), 123-25. Aksel E. Christensen, Dutch Trade to the Baltic about 1600 (The Hague, 1941), pp. 369-79. The records of the van Ad- richems of Delft confirm the expectation of low shipping costs for herring going to the Baltic. Dutch shippers even carried bricks and roofing tiles into the Baltic to fill their holds. The decrease in salt shipments from the 1590s to the 1630s is in part explained by the increase in local production near Gdansk.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 267

Europe in the 1590s brought Dutch shippers and merchants to Iberia and to Italy carrying cargoes of rye and also of wheat, grain which originally came from the farms of Poland. Landowners there must have noticed an increase in their incomes. And it certainly would appear to be more than a coincidence that Polish merchants and landowners should increase their purchases of herring just at the time when their incomes were rising from growth in their sales of grain.

To test the hypothesis that the level of Baltic herring imports depended on the income from the sale of grain, calculations were made of the grain sales revenue earned by Polish exporters and also of the payments for her- ring made by Polish buyers. The revenue from grain sales was estimated by multiplying the volume of rye shipped out of the Baltic by the price of rye at Gdansk. Rye was by far the biggest earner for Baltic exporters, with wheat in second place. A similar calculation was made to estimate the rev- enue earned from wheat exports. For expenditures on herring, the volume of the fish passing eastward through the Sound was multiplied by deliv- ered prices in Gdansk. Because Gdansk was the most important port in the Baltic for goods brought from the West, its prices give a reliable in- dication of general price movements throughout the region.25 These esti- mates served for making a preliminary test of connections between short- term movements of grain and herring. For all cases tested, prices were converted to quantities of pure silver. Included were all years between 1550 and 1780 for which a complete set of data exists. The dates cover the entire period of growth, stability, and decline in herring exports.

The Polish balance of payments for all goods and services swung into surplus sometime in the second half of the fifteenth century and remained there until the first half of the seventeenth century. At that point sur- pluses not only became the rule but rose dramatically with the rise in grain exports. Moreover, in the seventeenth century it appears that grain sales in part determined Polish demand for luxury goods; for example, cloth from Western Europe. Baltic grain producers did take out their in- creased earnings in cash, in silver and coin, but they also used their greater power to obtain goods, especially foods to diversify their diets.26

25 The data on goods shipped through the Sound are from Bang and Korst, eds., Tabeller over Skibsfart. For Gdansk prices, see Julian Pelc, Ceny W Gddnsku w XVI i XVII Wieku (Lw6w, 1937), pp. 64-65, and Tadeusz Furtak, Ceny W Gddnsku WLatach 1701-1815 (Lw6w, 1935), p. 152. On the importance of Gdansk, see Stanislaw Hoszowski, "The Polish Baltic Trade in the 15th-18th Cen- turies," Poland at the XIth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Stockholm (Warsaw, 1960), pp. 139-40, 148. Rusifiski, "Role of Polish Territories," pp. 120-21; and Unger, "De Sonttabellen," pp. 147-48.

26 Marian Malowist, "The Economic and Social Development of the Baltic Countries from the Fif- teenth to the Seventeenth Centuries," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 12 (Dec. 1959), 184-87. An- toni M4czak, "The Balance of Polish Sea Trade with the West, 1565-1646," Scandinavian Economic History Review, 18, no. 2 (1970), 118-21. Henryk Samsonowicz, Untersuchungen uber das Danziger Burgerkapital in der Zweiten Halfte des 15. Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1969), pp. 31-35. Astrid Friis, "The Two Crises in the Netherlands in 1557," Scandinavian Economic History Review, 1, no. 2 (1953), 200- 11. Maria Bogucka, "Die Bedeutung des Ostseehandels fur die Aussenhandelsbilanz Polens in der Er-

268 Unger

The results of comparing grain revenues with herring costs do not in- dicate a strong linear relationship between the two. While results are typi- cally significant, the coefficients of determination are low.27 This suggests that the success of Poles in finding grain markets was not the predominant factor in determining the volume of Dutch herring exports to the Baltic. Balance of payments figures derived from prices declared at the Sound show that the value of herring imported into the Baltic was not a consis- tent proportion of the value of wheat and rye exported from the two ma- jor ports of Gdansk and Elbl4g.8 That evidence supports the same con- clusion: the sharp rise in Dutch herring sales to the Baltic late in the sixteenth century and the high level of production and exports in the first half of the seventeenth cannot be explained by the boom in grain sales in the same period. Further confirmation is offered by a comparison of the profits to be made in the Iberian grain trade with total expenditure on herring in Baltic ports.29 Greater profits in the grain trade did not neces- sarily lead to greater herring purchases by the most likely buyers, the landowners, who appropriated the greater part of those grain profits.

The results can in part be explained by difficulties with the data. Smug- gling renders the official returns of volume inaccurate, and probably in- consistently so. For the sake of simplicity the assumption is that all trade between Eastern and Western Europe went on through the Sound, which

sten Halfte des 17. Jahrhunderts," Der Aussenhandel Ostmitteleuropeas 1450-1650, Ingomar Bog, ed. (Cologne, 1971), pp. 47-50. In the first half of the seventeenth century contemporaries complained about a flight of money from Poland to buy foreign luxuries. The conclusion made then was that there was a balance of payments deficit rather than a surplus, which seems the more likely ex- planation. The Netherlands ran an overall balance of payments deficit in the late sixteenth century. W. Brulez, "The Balance of Trade in the Netherlands in the Middle of the 16th Century," Acta His- toriae Neerlandica, IV (1970), pp. 45-48. One writer claims that the Netherlands bought twice as much in value from the Baltic as it sold. Christensen, Dutch Trade, p. 367.

27 V is volume and P is price. The commodities are herring (H), rye (Y), and wheat (W). D in- dicates shipments in Dutch bottoms, T total shipments. N indicates price in the Netherlands, G price in Gdansk. For VHD PHG = f(VyD PyGc), N = 163 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .31. That is, for a sample = 163, the absolute value of R should exceed R @ .05 - .15 in order to reject the hypothesis at the 5 percent level of significance. The results are not as good using data for all herring shipped into the Baltic and all rye shipped out.

VHT PHG = f (VYT PYG) N = 166 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .20.

The addition of wheat shipments also does nothing to improve results.

VHT PHG = fl(VYT PYC,) + (VWT PWG)J N = 46 R @ .05 = .29 R2 = .01. 28 Mgczak, "Polish Sea Trade," pp. 135-36. Using his figures for prices of goods declared at the

Sound and the volume of goods going in each direction the following ratios of the value of herring imports to the value of rye and wheat exports are derived:1565 .040; 1575 .012; 1585 .072; 1595 .105; 1605 .195; 1615 .154; 1625 .233; 1635 .074; 1646 .185. The figures for those representative years show no consistency. The values for grain exports are for the two ports of Gdansk and Elbl4g.

29 N= 31 R @ .05 = .36 R2 = .03. The data are for proifts in the Iberia wheat trade including those made from agio or disagio of the ducat generated by Maria Bogucka, "Merchants' Profits in Gdansk Foreign Trade in the First Half of the 17th Century," Acta Poloniae Historica, 23 (1971), 79- 82. Idem, "Amsterdam and the Baltic in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century," Economic His- tory Review, 2nd ser., 26 (Aug. 1973), 439-47.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 269

of course was not true. Poland carried on an extensive trade through Moldavia with the Black Sea and Turkey; its deficit in that trade affected the power to buy goods, like herring, from the West. Consumption pat- terns changed in Poland over time. It may be true that up to about 1660 Baltic buyers had to pay cash, usually silver coins, for goods brought from the West, but by that date they certainly could use a more complex sys- tem. The ability to negotiate bills of exchange and to settle international debts multilaterally would have tended to undermine any direct relation- ship between exports and imports, and especially on any single trade route.30

The sale of grain surpluses by Polish landowners in the short run ex- plains only a small proportion of the performance of Dutch exporters in finding a market in the Baltic for domestically produced herring. Addi- tional explanation is provided by the volume rather than the value of Pol- ish exports. The proportion of Dutch ships entering the Baltic in ballast fell from two thirds to less than one half by the end of the 1620s. Herring exports certainly made an important contribution to that shift. The corre- lation between the volume of herring shipped into the Baltic and the vol- ume of grain shipped out is as strong as any of the relationships between revenues.3' Not surprisingly, the relationship for all herring going into the Baltic and all rye being exported was not as highly correlated.32 Figure 1 seems to confirm that some long-run connection did exist between the tonnage available going to the Baltic and herring exports from Western Europe. While the results leave a great deal unexplained, they nonetheless indicate that volume was as significant a determinant of Dutch herring ex- ports as the value of Baltic grain sales.

IV

The price of herring or, more specifically, the profit which could be made in the herring trade seems to offer a fuller explanation for the vol-

30Antoni M4czak, "Der Polnische Getreideexport und das Problem der Handelsbilanz (1557- 1647)," Der Aussenhandel Ostmitteleuropas 1450-1650, Ingomar Bog, ed. (Cologne, 1971), pp. 35-45. Bogucka, "Die Bedeutung," pp. 52-55. Hoszowski, "The Polish Baltic Trade," pp. 123-27. Jacob M. Price, "Multilateralism and/or Bilateralism: The Settlement of British Trade Balances with 'The North', c. 1700," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 14 (Dec., 1961), 254-74. John Sperling, "The In- ternational Payments Mechanism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 14 (April 1962), 446-68.

3' N = 207 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .31 for the volume of rye shipped out of the Baltic in Dutch vessels with the volume of herring shipped into the Baltic in Dutch ships. Limited to the period 1600- 1780, the result is slightly better. N = 173 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .34. It was the rye shipped out of the Baltic in any given year that was correlated with herring shipments into the Baltic, not rye exports for the previous year. Herring shipments depended more on tonnage available at a given point in time. For herring shipments compared with rye shipments out of the Baltic for the previous year, where data for both were available and using only 1600-1780, N = 169 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .24.

32 For all cases, N = 210 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .14. For 1600-1780, N = 175 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .18. The addition of wheat to the quantity of grain sent out of the Baltic not only does not im- prove the correlation but it actually decreases the coefficient of determination. For all cases, that is 1550-1780, VTH = f(VTY + VTW), N = 210 R @ .02 = .16 R' = .16.

270 Unger

ume of Dutch herring exports. Presumably, Dutch merchants sent herring overseas because they expected to make money. Profit figures are even more difficult to generate than those for revenue. One estimate for the early fifteenth century suggests that profits for Dutch merchants deliv- ering herring in Prussia were about 60 percent of the sale price. A more sophisticated set of estimates for the first half of the seventeenth century shows consistent profits from selling Dutch-produced herring in Gdansk.33

TABLE I PRICES OF HERRING IN AMSTERDAM AND GDANSK AND PROFITS IN HERRING

TRADE ON THAT ROUTE (in grams of silver/last)

Profit A verage A verage price in Other price in in grams as %

Year Amsterdam Freight costs Gdansk silver total cost

1631 1226 92.52 211 2025 495 + 32 1632 1169 92.52 228 2268 778 + 52 1634 1645 61.68 249 2293 337 + 17 1638 1624 66.82 253 2349 405 + 21 1640 1157 102.80 234 2349 855 + 57 1641 1473 102.80 214 1944 219 + 12 1643 1408 102.80 218 2025 296 + 17 1645 1134 113.08 207 2025 571 + 39 1646 1097 113.08 167 1539 162 + 12 1648 853 77.10 125 1134 79 + 7

Average: 420 + 27

a Charges in Amsterdam about 1.5 percent; Sound toll about 2.5 percent; customs and charges at Gdansk about 8 percent; total of 4 percent of the purchase price + 8 percent of the selling price. Source: Bogucka, "Merchants' Profits," pp. 84-85.

For other commodities the level of profits seems to have affected the volume of goods shipped. For example, there is some indication that the quantity of rye shipped out of the Baltic was related to the difference be- tween the price paid by merchants for rye in Gdansk and what they could sell it for in Amsterdam. In whaling a similar situation prevailed, with the number of ships sent out being closely related to the price of whale oil.34 Apparently the same was the case in the herring fishery, whose structure

33 Bogucka found herring to be the most profitable commodity shipped from West to East, and she probably underestimated profitability. She used Amsterdam prices for full herring which is of higher quality and produced later in the year than matie (matjesharing), for which prices are also available. The revised table here uses prices for matie on the Amsterdam bourse from Posthumus, Inquiry, vol. I, pp. 88-90. Duties and taxes are adjusted to reflect the different herring prices. Bogucka's estimates of freight charges are probably too high as well since she assumes that herring was charged the same as grain going in the other direction, which was not true. For problems with using Posthumus' Am- sterdam herring prices see Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 193-95. He suggests that full herring prices are even suspect, and that they may not reflect the true cost of herring when it left Dutch ports. It is possible that the errors are consistent, however. Bohnke, "Der Binnenhandel," pp. 55-56.

3" Maczak, "Polish Sea Trade," pp. 115-16. Jacobus R. Bruijn and C. A. Davids, "Jonas Vrij De Nederlandse Walvisvaart, in het Bijzonder de Amsterdamse, in de Jaren 1640-1664," Economisch- en Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek, 38 (1975), 150-52.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 271

resembled the whaling industry's. The difference between the price of her- ring in Gdansk and the price of matie on the Amsterdam bourse when compared with the shipments of herring in Dutch vessels into the Baltic shows a coefficient of determination of .43.35 Charges that Dutch herring exporters were dumping, that is, using profits from the grain trade to off- set losses in herring sales, do not appear to have been valid, and certainly not for the seventeenth century.36 It seems that Dutch traders sent herring to the Baltic, and in the quantities selected, because of the profit to be made. Since the sample is small and there are data problems, one cannot place great confidence in the correlation; however, the trend in herring prices from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century is clear.

03500

-3000

-2500

-2000

500

FIGURE 2

HERRING PRICES IN GDANSK IN GRAMS OF SILVER, 1550-1780

Source: Peic, Ceny W Gdahsku, and Furtak, Ceny W Gdahsku.

The price of herring in Gdansk rose in the 1590s to well above the level for the previous two decades. This was followed by yet another rise in the 1620s and 1630s. Prices remained at the same relatively high level until the 1670s, when a long-term decline set in. Presumably herring prices in

35 For VHD = f(PHOG-PHA) where the subscript A refers to the price in Amsterdam, N - 61 R @ .05 - .25. As expected, there is no significant correlation between the Gdansk-Amsterdam price dif- ferential and the total quantity of herring shipped into the Baltic; that is, VTH f(PH-PHA), N - 63 R @ .05 =.25 R2 = .03.

36 Michell, "The European Fisheries," p. 177. Little correlation was found between the rye price difference in the Netherlands and Gdansk and the quantity of herring entering the Baltic in Dutch bottoms, which also contradicts the suggestion that Dutch traders were dumping herring; that is, VHD - f(PYN-PYG), N = 203 R @ .05 = .14 R2 _ .08.

272 Unger

Amsterdam rose in the years around 1600 but, unfortunately, no data from the Bourse exist for those years. Amsterdam prices did fall in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though not as far or as fast as did Gdansk prices. That squeezed profits in the trade and moreover made selling herring at home more attractive. The success of Dutch exporters, it seems, depended on the absence of any alternate lower-cost suppliers. The rise in prices at the end of the sixteenth century coincides with a decline in the Swedish and Norwegian coastal fisheries and, in the third decade of the seventeenth century, with the final collapse of the Scania fishery. With no alternate supplies, Dutch traders seem to have been able to reap the benefits of higher prices, enjoying almost a monopoly. In the eighteenth century prices went down at the same time as the Norwegian and then the Swedish coastal fisheries revived.37 The shipments of herring through the Sound reflect the change: while in the period 1661-1720 the Dutch share of herring imports to the Baltic was still about 60 percent, for the entire period 1661-1783 the figure was only 31 percent; by the 1760s Dutch ships carried less than 10 percent of herring going into the Baltic. Scots and Scandinavians replaced the Dutch as suppliers of herring, albeit in much reduced quantities. Coastal fisheries always enjoyed the advantage of lower capital costs than the deep-sea fishery, which used large seagoing vessels. It was the greater reliability of the deep-sea fishery combined with falling costs due to technical innovation which allowed Dutch producers to overtake Scandinavian competitors and then surpass them in the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries. The greater efficiency of the Dutch, for ex- ample, had been the cause for the shrinking of the Scania fishery from the mid-fifteenth century on. The expansion of the coastal fisheries after the 1670s was in part due to the high prices which they could get for their product, and in part to the fact that those fisheries had been neglected for so long that fish populations had been able to increase. Their competitive position was improved in the eighteenth century as Dutch herring busses became less productive, making two voyages annually instead of three, and bringing back fewer fish each year.38

The correlation of profits with herring sales in the Baltic is more appar- ent than real, however. First, the relationship between the two changed at the time of the wars of William III, that is, around 1700. To that date the price of fish delivered in Gdansk had always been greater-and by a large

37 The fall in herring prices in Gdansk in the late seventeenth century coincided with wars and po- litical crises in Poland which served to dampen demand. Hoszowski, "The Polish," pp. 119-22. Paul Simson, Geschichte der Stadt Danzig bis 1626 (Danzig, 1918-1924), vol. II, p. 500. Schafer, Das Buch, pp. xlii-ix.

38 Willem S. Unger, "Trade through the Sound in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Eco- nomic History Review, 2nd ser., 12 (Dec. 1959), 208-09. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 204-05. Kranenburg, "De Haringexport," pp. 252-57. At least not all Dutch ports suffered from falling her- ring production. Vlaardingen and to a lesser degree Maassluis noted significant growth even if the catch per buss was falling. Witjen, "Zur Statistik," pp. 173-77. Unger, "The Netherlands Herring Fishery," pp. 350-53.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 273

100/.

70/.

] 50~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o/.

30 'I.

.206.

10*/.

FIGURE 3 PERCENTAGE OF HERRING SHIPPED THROUGH THE SOUND IN DUTCH SHIPS,

1562- 1780

Source: Bang and Korst, Tabeller over Skibsfart.

amount-than the price in Amsterdam. In the eighteenth century the Gdansk price was typically slightly lower than Amsterdam's. Second, the export of herring rose as Gdansk prices rose relative to Amsterdam prices, but once a great difference was reached, exports varied widely. The two patterns suggest not one but two relationships, one for the seventeenth and one for the eighteenth century. Tests revealed that in fact there is no significant correlation in those two time periods between the price differ- ential and Dutch herring shipments.39 Moreover, the distribution of obser- vations contradicts the presumption of a linear relationship. Added to that, changes in herring prices from year to year showed little correlation with changes in the shipment of herring.' Herring prices were much lower in Gdansk than in Amsterdam in the 1760s and still herring went from the Netherlands to Baltic ports. In the 1670s, on the other hand, the price difference was the opposite and the volume of herring exported in

39 For 1624-1694, N = 29 R @ .05 = .37 R2 = .1 1, and for 1718-1780, N = 32 R @ .05 = .35 R2 = .20.

4 (VTH)t+ I - (VTH)t = I(PHG)t+I - (PHG)tJ where, for example, (VTH)t is the total volume of her- ring shipped out of the Baltic in year t. N = 147 R @ .05 = .16 R2 = .01.

274 Unger

Dutch ships to the Baltic was also relatively low. The confused relation- ships tends to be confirmed when other, more complete Dutch price series are used.4' Despite the evidence that there were other and more powerful factors at work, extant data show that the herring price differential be- tween Gdansk and Amsterdam was positive up to 1690 and then often negative from 1691 to 1780. The former period coincides with years of a high level of exports, while the latter period coincides with years of de- pressed production and a low level of exports.42 It cannot be shown con- clusively that price differentials were important to output or exports, but it can be shown that both were affected by production history.

V

Unquestionably the most important factor in determining herring ship- ments to the Baltic in any given year was the quantity of herring shipped in the previous year. For herring carried into the Baltic in Dutch ships, the coefficient of determination was higher than for any other relationship examined.43 The pattern is consistent and clear. Dutch traders had at their disposal extensive information about the state of the Polish market. The regular sailings, the large numbers of ships involved, the correspondence between merchants and their resident factors living in Baltic ports all created a massive supply of market intelligence for herring exporters." It was not from ignorance that exporters chose to follow the pattern of the previous year. Rather, what fixed the scope of their trading was the limita- tions of productive capacity set by the state of the industry. Capacity was in turn fixed by the weather and the availability of fish, but especially by supplies of capital, both physical and human, and the state of the art, the knowledge of techniques for the best exploitation of that capital.

By the late sixteenth century Dutch fishermen could produce pickled herring, which was generally recognized to be of the highest quality, and deliver that product to Baltic markets, in the process turning a handsome profit. The long apprenticeship of the herring fishery, the process of learn- ing-by-doing, yielded the high levels of output, the high level of exports, and the high prices and profits. Prices of inputs were under downward pressure as well, since the Dutch trading network-in part a result of the ability to produce high quality herring at competitive prices-supplied the salt, ships, cordage, nets, and so on at or below the prices paid by com- petitors. Moreover, Dutch fishermen knew how to get most from that

4' Posthumus, Inquiry, vol. II, pp. 245-52, 274-82. 42 For 1624-1690, N = 29. For 1691-1780, N = 34 and the differential was negative in 26 of the 34

cases. 43

(VHD)t = l(VHD)t-11, N = 201 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .65. As expected, the results were not as good using all herring shipments. (VHT)t = fl(VHT)t-1], N = 205 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = 59.

" Dutch traders had factors in Baltic ports by the second half of the sixteenth century, by which time their correspondence was already extensive and regular. H. Enno van Gelder, "Zestiende- eeuwsche Koopmansbrieven," Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek, 5 (1919), 136-91. Christensen, Dutch Trade, pp. 215-16, 431-40.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 275

equipment. Certainly the level of capital investment in the herring fishery, both fixed capital in ships and warehouses and working capital in barrels and salted and cured fish, contributed to the comparative advantage of Dutch producers. Capital came largely from the retained earnings of past voyages. It was true despite or perhaps because of the highly flexible fi- nancial arrangements in the fishery. Success in any one year was a signifi- cant determinant of production potential in the following year.

Capital investment, knowledge of markets, internal organization, and institutional arrangements all contributed to Dutch success. The com- petitive superiority of Dutch producers and exporters was a highly fragile one, however. Others could and indeed did copy Dutch curing methods and vessel types like the herring buss. Other producers could and did de- velop the necessary skills in manufacturing pickled herring of high qual- ity. That took time, as did the accumulation of profits needed to capitalize a deep-sea herring fishery. Yet the slow process of accumulation could be sped up by temporary high prices, government protection of domestic markets for domestic producers, direct government subsidies, or by the short-term collapse of Dutch production.

In France, Colbert pursued a policy of supporting domestic production. He established a company to promote technical improvement in the fish- ery and used the company as a conduit for government subsidies. A high tariff was placed on herring imports in 1664 but that was changed to a general prohibition in 1687. The latter never fully worked, and after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 the tariff of 1664 went back into effect. The re- sult of those vain efforts to keep out Dutch herring was to raise French domestic prices and thus allow French fishermen higher earnings which facilitated a long-term rise in domestic production. By 1786 the value of the French herring catch was greater than that of the Dutch, and France imported only about 18 percent of herring consumed in the country.

England's policy was long devoted to protection and direct and indirect support of the fishing industry. The Elizabethans legislated extensively to aid the fisheries and the laws were, if anything, strengthened in the seven- teenth century. English claims to sovereignty of the seas in the reign of James I appear to have had little effect on Dutch fishing. The Navigation Acts, the first dating from 1651, placed stricter limitations on the Dutch selling herring in England. From 1726 direct subsidies, or bounties, were paid by the British government to the herring fishery.

Elsewhere, Sweden offered protection of domestic markets and subsi- dies to its herring fishermen. A company was set up to produce herring in the Dutch manner in 1745, and Frederick the Great of Prussia did the same at Emden in 1769. In each case the goal was to promote a domestic herring fishery.45 The potential for net gains in foreign exchange, amply

4 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 138-40, 152-58. Lawrence A. Harper, The English Navigation Laws (New York, 1939), pp. 28-31. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (New York,

276 Unger

demonstrated by the Dutch for the better part of two centuries, were enough to convince Frederick and other monarchs of the value of a her- ring fishery. Different states had varied success with protectionist legisla- tion. Overall the policies were effective because there was a technology which could be borrowed; general prohibitions of imports, though not to- tally enforceable, raised prices for new domestic producers; and govern- ments were typically consistent in their policies toward the herring fish- ery. With all those expanding fisheries in the eighteenth century, just as with the Dutch earlier, past experience played a significant role in the growth, or decline, of total production.

In the seventeenth century Dutch herring fishermen held a virtual mo- nopoly. They could and did maximize the rent to be earned from that unique position by limiting fishing effort, and therefore production, through extensive government regulation. As with all fisheries, as indeed with all common property resources, they faced declining average product with an increase in fishing effort, the latter denoted by the number of ves- sels (Figure 4). The relationship between the two is assumed to be linear, which does not distort the results. The curves AP and MP represent aver- age product and marginal product respectively. Furthermore, it is as- sumed that the amount of fishing effort does not affect marginal and aver- age cost, which are identical and constant. This curve also subsumes the opportunity cost, that is, the income which the fishermen could earn in al- ternate employment. With a level of costs of OC, production takes place at the point where economic yield is maximized, that is, where marginal cost equals marginal product. OVd boats are then used, and a rent is earned equal to the rectangle ABCD. If the fishery is truly common prop- erty and open to all, new resources, boats, and fishermen will be attracted until the rent is eliminated. The number of boats would rise to OV, with MC equated to AP.' Through regulation the Dutch government limited domestic producers' efforts, presumably trying to maximize rent or at least to keep the number of vessels in the fishery at or below OVm. At that point marginal product would be zero and thus give what is called the maxi- mum sustained physical yield.

Producers from other countries could enter the fishery, moving fishing effort closer to OVt, but the Dutch industry could drive them out by a short-term reduction in price. The cost curve is the average for the entire herring fishery; so Dutch marginal and average costs were at or below

1937), pp. 484-88, 901-03. Smith was distressed about the net loss in gross income from the subsidy, but it seems to have been effective, directed as it was at increasing the production of herring to com- pete with the Dutch product. Staffan Hogberg, Utrikeshandel och sjofart pa 1700-talet (Stockholm, 1969), pp. 168-71. Reinhold Koser, Geschichte Friedrich des Grossens (Darmstadt, 1964), vol. III, p. 257.

4 H. Scott Gordon, "The Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource: The Fishery," Jour- nal of Political Economy, 62 (1954), 129-32. For a summary of the common property equilibrium ap- plied to a fishery see Donald G. Paterson and James Wilen, "Depletion and Diplomacy: The North Pacific Seal Hunt, 1886-1910," Research in Economic History, 2 (1977), 83-86, 118-27.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 277

Marginal Product

Average Product

A \B

c E LID E

MC.AC

, MP jAP

0 Vd Vm Vt Number of Vessels

FIGURE 4

OC. The position of the Dutch, then, was secured not by ownership of the resource-common property is open to all-but rather by technical supe- riority, that is, lower costs, and by continuous and strict regulation of the fishery. So long as Dutch costs were lower than their competitors', they could maintain a virtual monopoly by careful marketing strategy. And so long as consumers understood the Dutch brand to indicate herring of con- sistently high quality, Dutch producers could and did command a rent.

While the potential Dutch supply curve, given their relatively lower costs, was Sd (Figure 5) they supplied herring along the curve S. Z, the quantity of herring supplied by the Dutch, corresponds to Vd (Figure 4). While all other herring suppliers suffered with a supply curve to the left of S, Dutch producers earned a rent, here equal to the rectangle VWXY. OW was the market price of the herring and OV the production cost to Dutch fishermen. But as other producers developed the necessary capital, equipment, and skills, their costs fell. Their supply curve shifted to the right, leading to a decrease in price, from OW to OU, and to an increase in output, from OZ to OT. The Dutch government and Dutch herring fishermen at that point chose not to change the old strategy of trying to maximize their rent. They might be perfectly willing to drop prices in the short run to drive competitors out of their markets, but Dutch producers were not willing to make a long-term commitment to greater fishing effort and larger volume sales at lower prices, that is, below OU. Instead they chose to maintain prices for their product at W, or even raise them above old levels. For example, in the 1670s there were complaints about the

278 Unger

quality of Dutch herring delivered in Gdansk. In response the Dutch gov- ernment made regulation of the domestic fishery even more restrictive. That move raised costs, and so the Dutch supply curve Sd tended to shift to the left. With prices going down, rents were squeezed and profits for Dutch fishermen along with their share of the market decreased. Oddly enough, continuing with a strategy that was initially designed to maximize rents not only served to decrease rents but also led to the long-run decline of the industry in the face of increasingly aggressive foreign competitors. A fall in the demand for herring in the eighteenth century-a shift in the demand curve D down and to the left-penalized Dutch producers more than others since they were trying to keep prices up. The changes in the cost position of competitors, the change in demand, and the market strat- egy of the Dutch herring fishery all contributed to the observed pattern of a sharp fall in absolute production and an even more dramatic drop in market share.

Price So So

d

II ~~~~~~~~D

0 Z T Quantity

FIGURE 5

With the entry of other producers, the fishery, taken altogether, tended to move to equate the average costs of all producers with average product, shown by E (Figure 4). Average product fell. The average return from fishing effort, that is, the catch per boat, went down. That was true espe- cially for Dutch fishermen, even though they were decreasing the number

Dutch Hering, Technology, and International Trade 279

of their boats. While Holland had about 500 herring busses in 1630, there were only a little over 200 by 1730 and 150 by 1780.47

The advantage enjoyed by the Dutch herrng fishery was destroyed by the simultaneous fall in costs for other producers and nrse in costs for Dutch fishermen. The difficulties for Dutch producers in fact started long before the eighteenth century, and well before foreign governments began protecting their own herring fishermen. Wars fought in the North Sea meant an increased danger to the highly vulnerable busses. As early as 1625 Spanish forces began extensive and determined attacks on Dutch herrng boats. From 1652 and the start of the First English War, Dutch fishermen had to face an almost constant threat of violence; at times, for their safety the government would not even let them leave port. In some years the province of Holland alone lost as many as 100 busses to pirates and privateers. The worst Dutch losses came during the wars of William III. In 1703 French warships burned the Enkhuizen herring fishing fleet in the Shetland Islands, a loss of about 100 busses in one day.48 It was that disaster and other sizable if not comparable losses that appear to have de- stroyed the fragile Dutch competitive advantage. After the restoration of peace in 1713, Dutch production and exports did rise again, but the long- term competitive edge that technology and investment in that technology had given Dutch producers was gone. With the foundation built up through the sixteenth century having been badly damaged by war losses, other Western European producers found ways to supplant Dutch pickled herring in their own and in other markets. The decline, like the rise of Dutch herring exports and output, was self-reinforcing.

4 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 138-58, on French attempts to replace Dutch imports with domestically produced herring. Johannes DeVries, De Economische Achteruitgang der Republiek in de Achttiende Eeuw, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1968), pp. 137-41. Anthony Beaujon, The History of Dutch Sea Fisheries: Their Progress, Decline and Revival ... (London, 1884), p. 286. Kranenburg, De Zeevissche- rij, pp. 169-7 1, on the development of competing fisheries. On evidence for a shift in demand for her- ring in the eighteenth century, see Michell, "The European Fisheries," pp. 182-83.

48 Watjen, "Zur Statistik," pp. 142-5 1. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, p. 204. Production per vessel was also subject to greater variation in war years (ibid., pp. 42-43). Jonathan I. Israel, "A Conflict of Empires: Spain and the Netherlands, 1618-1648," Past and Present, 76 (Aug. 1977), 44 48.

280

DICTIONARY OF BRITISH BUSINESS BIOGRAPHY

The Business History Unit of the London School of Economics is undertaking a six-vol- ume Dictionary of Business Biography under the editorship of Leslie Hannah and David J. Jeremy. In addition to presenting the biographies in literary form, the work will provide the basis for a data bank for a more standardized collective biography that may yield an- swers to some of the questions about entrepreneurship in Britain, such as the performance of business leaders in the creation of wealth and society's utilization of business talent. The raw data files will eventually be made available to researchers visiting the Business History Unit.

The editors invite the cooperation, in the form of contributions of raw data or finished biographies, from business, economic, and technological historians. Normal editorial practices and standards of academic journals will apply to the dictionary. Readers wishing to contribute, or who wish to obtain further information, should address Dr. D. J. Jeremy, Business History Unit, Lionel Robbins Building, 10 Portugal Street, London WC2A 2HD.

ECONOMIC HISTORY OF LEISURE AND RECREATION

At the Eighth International Economic History Congress, to be held in Budapest, Hun- gary, August 16-22, 1982, there will be a session on the Economic History of Leisure and Recreation. Papers are invited on economic and relevant social aspects. Authors should indicate whether they might be attending the Congress, but papers will be considered for presentation in absentia. For further information please contact Dr. Wray Vamplew, Eco- nomic History Discipline, The Flinders University of South Australia, Bedford Park, South Australia 5042.

FELLOWSHIPS FOR THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti will award upward of seven stipendiary fellowships for independent study on any aspect of the Italian Renaissance for the academic year 1981-82, to scholars of any nationality, nor- mally post-doctoral and in the earlier stages of their careers. Before November 1, 1980, ap- plicants should send their curriculum vitae and a description of their project to the Direc- tor of the Center at Villa I Tatti, Via di Vincigliata 26, 50135 Florence, Italy; duplicates should also be sent to Professor Walter Kaiser, 401 Boylston Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge 02138. Candidates should ask three senior scholars familiar with their work to send confidential letters of recommendation to the Director by the same date, with dupli- cates to Professor Kaiser.

I Tatti also offers a limited number of non-stipendiary fellowships for scholars working in Florence on Renaissance subjects with support from other sources. Scholars interested in these fellowships should apply as described above by November 1, 1980.

Stipends will be given in accord with the individual needs of the approved applicants and the availability of funds. The maximum grant will be no higher than $18,000; most are considerably less.