Introduction

Around 1600, while still at war with powerful Spain, an astounding rise in maritime enterprise took place in the young Dutch Republic. In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was established. A few years earlier Dutch mariner Willem Barentsz. tried to find a northeast passage to Asia. During his third attempt in 1596, he and his fellow sailors were forced to winter over on the desolate island of Novaya Zemlya, where he died after having suffered many ordeals. In his earlier voyages to the north, Barentsz. had not only discovered the Spitsbergen archipelago and Bear Island. In his reports on the Arctic, he also mentioned the abundance of seals, polar bears and walruses.

Whaling was a maritime enterprise known throughout Europe. Norsemen in the Viking Era hunted whales along shore, developing methods that paved the way for the Basques to carry them out to sea. As early as the twelfth century seafarers from the Basque provinces of southern France and northern Spain had hunted whales. At first these Basque whalemen stayed close to their coast. Later they turned to more remote places, hunting and killing whales off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, providing the European markets with valuable products like whale oil and baleen. Arabs of the Caliphate showed keen interest in obtaining narwhal tusks, considered to be an aphrodisiac when grinded and mixed with other foodstuffs.

Population rose rapidly around 1600. As a result of these demographic developments, prices of whale products increased dramatically. The number of inhabitants of the coastal province of Holland, for example, rose to 675,000 from 275,000 in 1525. Although natural fats from plants were still available, the demand for substitutes exceeded availability. Changes in agriculture were introduced to the effect that more expensive grains were cultivated, providing more expensive oil. Captains of industries such as rope manufacturing and shipbuilding turned their attention to the oils derived from sea mammals. The first decade of the seventeenth century was an opportune moment for the Dutch to undermine the Spanish whaling activities and undertake means to start whaling themselves.