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The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier: A Test Case for Dutch
Water Technology, Management,
and Politics
Author(s): Wiebe E. Bijker
Source: Technology and Culture, Vol. 43, No. 3, Water
Technology in the Netherlands (Jul.,
2002), pp. 569-584
Published by: and the The Johns Hopkins University Press
Society for the History of
Technology
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ESSAYS
The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier
A Test Case for Dutch Water Technology,
Management, and Politics
WIEBE E. BIJKER
"God created the world, and the Dutch created the Netherlands."
The old
adage summarizes?albeit
in an immodest, not to say blasphemous, way?
the popular Dutch view of their relationship to water. There is
some truth
in it: about half the country is below sea level and would be
flooded with
out the dikes that hold back the waters of the rivers and the sea.

But the
relationship is not as straightforward?humans dominating
nature?as the
phrase suggests. It is, for example, mediated in complex ways
by science and
technology. In this essay I will focus on one recent crisis in this
relationship
between the Dutch and the sea, the disastrous flood of 1953, and
its resolu
tion through the Delta Plan, and in particular the building of the
storm
surge barrier in the Oosterschelde.1
Dr. Bijker is professor of technology and society at the
University of Maastricht, Faculty
of Arts and Culture.
?2002 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights
reserved.
0040-165X/02/4303-0006$8.00
1. I am grateful to Martin Reuss and John Staudenmaier for
inviting
me to con
tribute this essay. It allows me to address Dutch coastal
engineering more fully than I did
in two previous publications, which had a primarily
methodological purpose. And, in a

way, it serves to fulfill an old dream. It is only because I did
not want to sit in my father's
classes that I studied physics rather than civil engineering, but
my fascination with the
water sorcerers never faded. This essay gives me an opportunity
to return to this old fas
cination, albeit under the banner of the history of technology.
The term "water sorcerers" was coined by Den Doolaard in Het
verjaagde water. This
1948 novel gives an engaging and historically accurate account
of the 1945 closures of
the dikes that were bombed by British planes to drive the
Germans out of the polders in
the southwest of the Netherlands. The novel, which inspired
Samuel Florman to write his
reflections on being
an engineer, was translated into nine languages, and has
recently
been republished by the Delft University of Technology with
several appendices giving
additional technical and historical information. A. den
Doolaard, Het verjaagde water,
ed. Kees d'Angremond and Gerrit-Jan Schiereck (Delft, 2001);
A. den Doolaard, Roll
Back the Sea, trans. lune Barrows Mussey (New York, 1948);

Samuel Florman, The Exis
tential Pleasures of Engineering (New York, 1976).
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TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE
JULY
2002
VOL. 43
Technology has always played a central role in the relationship
between
the Dutch and the sea. From the earliest mound constructions,
built to keep
farm houses and outbuildings dry during the frequent floods, to
windmills
and steam-driven pumping stations the Dutch have actively tried
to control
their environment with technology.2 But the science and
technology
needed for the Delta Plan, and especially the research and high-
tech solu
tions used in the construction of the Oosterschelde barrier,
constituted a

radical departure from centuries-old traditions.
During the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth
cen
tury, relations between government agencies and private
construction com
panies involved in the building and maintenance of dikes, locks,
sluices,
and other water control structures were
subject
to routines and procedures
that provided for adequate checks and balances. The central
government
agency responsible for the water control system, the
Rijkswaterstaat, typi
cally designed harbors, dikes, sluices, bridges, and so on, and
then con
tracted the construction out to private companies. These
companies sub
mitted bids, sometimes joining together in consortia when the
project was
big and complicated, and the company or consortium with the
lowest bid
received the contract. Once construction
began, the Rijkswaterstaat moni
tored the process. This style of management was radically
changed for the

Oosterschelde project.3
The earliest forms of democracy in the Netherlands were related
to dike
and sluice maintenance and management. From the twelfth
century
on
ward, specialized water boards (waterschappen), supervised by
elected
councils, assumed responsibility for local dikes and sluices.
These boards
constituted a highly decentralized form of democracy in which
all land
owners had voting rights, with the weight of each vote
depending on the
extent of the landowner's property. The Delta Plan can be seen
as a funda
mental change in the balance between local and national water
politics.
The Delta Plan, and particularly the Oosterschelde project,
precipitated
a crisis involving three aspects of the relationship between the
Dutch and
the sea: technology, management, and political culture. I will
argue, how
ever, that in the end that crisis only reinforced the basic
characteristics of
this relationship.

The 1953 Flood
On 31 January 1953, a Saturday night, ebb tide did not bring a
lowering
of the water level as it always does. Then, as the tide began to
come in, a
2. See Petra van Dam's, Arne Kaijser's, and William TeBrake's
articles elsewhere in
this special issue for accounts of early sluice technology, the
implications of windmill
development for political institutions, and drainage technology.
3. On the history of the Rijkswaterstaat, see Harry Lintsen's
essay elsewhere in this
issue.
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2015 14:10:05 UTC
Bijker I The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Hj^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^GK ESSAYS
pHH^^!^
*
^^^W?pll^^"^MM|l^^HJH^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^BBB^^^^^^^^
^^^B

FIG. 1 A broken dike, 1 February 1953. (De Ramp: Nationale
uitgave [Amster
dam, 1953].)
storm pushed the water to higher than normal levels. In the
early morning
of 1 February the sea reached the top of the dikes in Zeeland, at
the south
ern end of the Dutch coast. Waves started to nibble at the back
slopes of the
dikes, which are not armored by stones, undermining them from
the rear,
and eventually the dikes broke. Quickly the breaches were
scoured out by the
seawater rushing into the polders, several meters below sea
level (fig. 1).
Analyses later showed that it had been neither a particularly
high spring
tide nor an exceptionally strong
storm. It had, however, been a long-lasting
storm, and, crucially, one that had changed direction in a very
particular
manner at exactly the wrong moment. A northerly wind had first
pushed
the flood wave along the British coast toward the narrow
channel between
England and the Netherlands. Just as this tidal wave reached the
Dutch

coast the wind veered to the west, sending the water more
forcefully against
the coast.4
It took several days before the extent of the disaster became
clear to the
rest of the Netherlands, as communications with the affected
areas had bro
ken down and there were no helicopters and but few aircraft. In
one week,
1,835 people drowned. More than 750,000 inhabitants were
affected, and
200,000 hectares of land were inundated (fig. 2). The effects
were trau
matic, both for individuals and for the Netherlands as a country.
This
became particularly clear in the 1970s, when political
discussions about
water management
were cast in terms of safety
versus
ecology.
4. Rijkswaterstaat and Koninklijk Nederlands Meterologisch
Instituut, Verslag over
de stormvloed van 1953 (The Hague, 1961).
571

2015 14:10:05 UTC
FIG. 2 Zeeland, In the southeast corner of the Netherlands. The
white parts
were flooded in 1953. (Courtesy Rijkswaterstaat Archief, the
Hague.)
The whole gamut of technologies that had been developed
during cen
turies of keeping the sea out were employed to reclaim the lost
land.5 Time
was a crucial factor. Tidal currents quickly widen any breach in
a dike. The
largest breach in the 1953 disaster was 100 meters wide and 15
meters deep
on 1 February, but within a few months it had grown to 200
meters by 20
meters. If the breaches were not closed before the next winter
season, the
damage might become irreversible. Time was critical on the
scale of min
utes as well as months: currents rage at their fastest where
breaches are at

their smallest, so the right moment to close off a breach in a
dike is during
the few minutes of slack water.
For centuries the key material used to strengthen and repair
dikes has
been sand in jute bags. On the night of 1 February 1953,
sandbags were
made available from emergency depots and played a crucial role
in bat
tling the flood. Sand is readily available and very heavy, but
unpacked
sand would immediately be swept away by the water?hence the
jute
sacks. Only with the enclosure of the Zuider Zee in the 1920s
did keileem,
a heavy clay from glacial moraines, come to be used to build
dikes so large
5. Johan van Veen, a Rijkswaterstaat engineer from the 1920s to
the 1950s, gives a
historical review of early Dutch coastal engineering
technologies in Dredge, Drain,
Reclaim: The Art of
a Nation, 5th ed. (The Hague, 1962). Before 1940 van Veen
developed
several plans to close tidal inlets in Zeeland, and these played
an important role after
1953. Since 1937 he had warned of the deplorable state of dike
maintenance, to no avail.

He appended a critical analysis of the 1953 disaster?under the
pseudonym "Cassan
dra"?to the fifth and last edition of his book.
572
2015 14:10:05 UTC
that sandbags could no longer serve as the feasible core and
beginning of
a dike.
In 1953, as in the centuries before, human power did most of
the work,
in combination with the skills needed to move the sandbags by
human
chains and place them where they would do the most good.
Muscle power
was the only energy source distributed widely enough through
the Dutch
coastal area to act adequately
at short notice. Dredges, tugs, ships,
and

cranes would eventually be called in to close the breaches in the
dikes, but
on that February night everything depended on human hands.
An armored foundation is necessary to build a dike in a gap
where tidal
currents flow. For centuries fascine mattresses consisting of
a net structure
about 50 centimeters thick, 100 meters long, and 20 meters wide
have been
used for this purpose. A series of such mattresses lowered onto
the seabed
provides a foundation for the dike. Until the 1970s the dikes in
the Nether
lands were built on mattresses woven by hand from branches of
willow
trees or similar material.6 The mattresses were fabricated on
land, then
towed out to sea and sunk by carefully dumping quarry stone on
them. This
was done by hand, to ensure that the mattress was lowered
gradually and in
a controlled manner into the right position (fig. 3).
These basic technologies were used to good effect in 1953. In
the

decades that followed, however, radical innovations were
developed and
new high-tech tools created for building dikes, sluices, and
storm barriers.
When one looks carefully, though, the same basic techniques
(usually
excepting manual labor) are still deployed in all hydrological
projects.
Early Water Politics
There are such striking similarities between early water politics
and the
present political culture in the Netherlands that it is
illuminating to briefly
review the history of the political systems that have governed
Dutch water
management since the Middle Ages.7 Around the beginning of
the previous
millennium the first collective organizations developed to
maintain dikes
and sluices. In the twelfth century the water boards were
established, the
first democratic institutions in the Netherlands, which still exist
today.
These statutory organizations were (and still are) governed by
councils

elected by landowners whose voting rights correspond to the
size of their
ESSAYS
6. This is a Dutch technique that was transferred in the
twentieth century to other
countries, where bamboo was often used in place of willow
branches. Without this mat
tress technique dikes have to be built
on a bed of gravel built up of several layers, each
using larger stones than the
one below it, which is much more difficult to construct.
7. See, in particular, Frans
van Waarden, notes from a lecture titled "Truth in the
Stereotypes? Or Hydraulics and Dutch Political Culture and
Institutions," Wassenaar,
1999, copy in the author's possession.
573
2015 14:10:05 UTC

july iggBHlHj^^^^^^^^H^^^^H^^^^H
2002 iIH^B^^H^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^h
FIG. 3 A willow mattress being sunk. (Kees Slager, De Ramp:
Een reconstructie
[Goes, 1992].)
properties. The duties of the boards included such communal
tasks as
drainage, dike maintenance, and sluice management. They
had the power
to levy taxes, and some acquired additional legislative, judicial,
and execu
tive powers. A few times each year they conducted inspections,
and when
parts of the hydraulic infrastructure were found to be out of
order those
responsible were severely fined. Only during the eighteenth
century did a
more centralized system of oversight gradually develop, and in
1798 the
first national agency, the Rijkswaterstaat, was established.8
Dutch political culture still exhibits several characteristics that
can be
traced back to this early history of water politics. First, there is
a certain trust

8. For more details on early Dutch politics and water
management, see Kaijser's and
TeBrake's articles elsewhere in this issue.
574
2015 14:10:05 UTC
in technical solutions and in technocracy?perhaps not as much
as in
France, but more, for example, than is found in Germany.
Indeed, close links
exist between policy makers and scientists (including social
scientists) and
engineers. A sense of vulnerability, because of the centuries-
long threat from
high water, is compensated for by a capacity to react swiftly to
crises. In reac
tion to a crisis, Dutch politics will often take a pragmatic
approach to find
ad hoc and flexible solutions, even when this means flexibly

interpreting reg
ulations.9 The Dutch have a long tradition of planning and
actively shaping
their environment. This applies not only to the physical
landscape of the
Netherlands but also to society; Dutch political culture displays
a general
belief in the malleability of society. Finally, the political
culture of the
Netherlands is distinctly consensual and oriented toward
cooperation and
compromise.10 This is
not to say that there are no opposing interests
or con
flicts. But in the end the Dutch need to cooperate with each
other, under
penalty of being flooded.11 In the 1950s the restoration of the
prewar polit
ical culture strengthened many of these characteristics. In this
essay I will
argue that this strengthening process culminated in the Delta
Plan that was
adopted after the 1953 disaster. However, during the
Oosterschelde enclo
sure, the final step in the Delta Plan, the process produced a
crisis.

Since the end of the nineteenth century the construction of dikes
and
other large infrastructural works had been organized in a
straightforward
manner: the Rijkswaterstaat designed projects and then
contracted with
private companies to carry them out under the supervision of
Rijkswater
staat engineers. The distinct duties and responsibilities of
Rijkswaterstaat
and contractors were clear, and the dividing line between the
two was
unambiguous. Numerous stories convey the almost sporting
relationship
between Rijkswaterstaat inspectors and the chief engineers of
the dredging
companies, both trying
to get the better of the contract.12
ESSAYS
9. Examples that do not concern water are the contemporary
policies related to
abortion, prostitution, and drugs.
10. For a discussion of the implications of this characteristic for
housing politics after
World War II, see Wiebe E. Bijker and Karin Bijsterveld,
"Women Walking through Plans:

Technology, Democracy and Gender Identity," Technology and
Culture 41 (2000): 485-515.
11. An example of such pragmatic cooperation?and rule
stretching?comes from
the final days of closing the breaches made in the dikes in 1953.
It was the beginning of
autumn and time was running out; if the gaps were not closed
quickly the autumn
storms would scour them out beyond repair. The engineers of
the construction company
wanted to make the final move on a Sunday, when the tidal
currents would be at their
weakest. The workers from this region of very strict Calvinists
initially refused, because
that would be breaking the Sabbath. After long talks, and when
they recognized the
hydrological necessity, they decided to cooperate?but only on
condition that they not
be paid. Eco W Bijker, interview by author, Maassluis, 29 June
2001. Eco Bijker, my
father, was one of the young engineers involved in the repair
work; he later became
deputy director of the Delft Hydraulics Laboratory and
professor of coastal engineering
at the Delft University of Technology.

12. Although the distinction between the Rijkswaterstaat and
contractors was clear
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JULY
2002
VOL. 43
This transparent relationship had crystallized after the failure of
Rijkswaterstaat to manage the design and construction of the
Rotterdamse
Waterweg (1857-77), connecting Rotterdam to the sea at Hoek
van Hol
land. The history of the enclosure of the Zuider Zee, the inland
sea east of
Amsterdam, in the 1920s and 1930s added two important
elements to the
set of instruments that related the Rijkswaterstaat to contracting
compa

nies.13 The first was the creation of temporary consortia,
lasting for the
duration of a project, large (and rich) enough to carry the risk
of the proj
ect. Four of the largest Dutch dredging and building companies
joined
forces and established the consortium Maatschappij tot
uitvoering der
Zuiderzeewerken (MUZ) as a limited liability company for the
duration of
the Zuider Zee project. The second innovation, closely related,
was the use
of the raamcontract, or frame contract.14 In a frame contract the
state
agency grants the construction of the whole project to the
building con
sortium without specifying the details of the various individual
structures.
These structures, which together constitute the whole project,
are then
specified in separate
contracts. The private companies thus receive
assur
ances of their long-term involvement, which they need to make
the neces

sary technological investments, and the state agency is still able
to specify
the particulars of the separate subprojects, which is necessary if
it is to exer
cise detailed oversight. The frame contract for the Zuider Zee
project also
specified that the contracting consortium would take all of the
first 6 per
cent of profit or loss, while losses or profits exceeding that
amount would
be shared with the state.
This combination of a legal framework and
a culture of competitive
collaboration between engineers of the Rijkswaterstaat and the
private
companies formed the starting point of the Delta Plan works,
and indeed
culminated during the first phase. But, in concurrence with the
crisis in the
political culture, the balance of power in this relationship
shifted radically
during the Oosterschelde project.
cut, everyone also realized that they needed each other.
Additionally, all civil engineers
were trained in the same school?the Delft University of
Technology?and many who

worked on opposite sides of these construction projects had
been classmates in earlier
times.
13. The Zuider Zee project presents a discontinuity in the
history of the Rijkswater
staat. Instead of granting the Rijkswaterstaat oversight of this
large national project,
a
separate Zuider Zee agency was established and given
responsibility for its management.
See D. M. Ligtermoet and H. De Visch Eybergen, Uitvoering
en uitbesteding: Ontwikke
lingen in de organisatie
van waterbouwkundige werken bij de Rijkswaterstaat, vol. 52
(The
Hague, 1990).
14. The term raamcontract was not used in the 1930s. The
character of the contract
used then, however, is the same as the one used during the Delta
Plan, when the label
raamcontract was introduced. See Ligtermoet and Eybergen.
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The Delta Plan
Three weeks after the 1953 flood, a governmental committee
was
formed. One week later the committee put forward an interim
version of
the Delta Plan that called for closure of all tidal outlets except
the most
northerly and southerly ones, connecting Rotterdam and
Antwerp to the
North Sea.15 As could be expected from the Dutch political
culture?swiftly
reacting to a crisis with pragmatic solutions supported by a
broad consen
sus?the implementation of the Delta Plan started even before
proper
political procedures had been completed. In August 1955 the
Delta Project
unofficially began with the building of two working harbors. On
1 May
1956 a new department within the Rijkswaterstaat that would be

responsi
ble for carrying out the Delta Plan was established. Only in
November 1957
was the Delta Law debated and adopted, by a great majority, in
parliament,
to take effect on 8 May 1958. Formal decisions ran almost three
years
behind material decisions.
When the Delta Law was adopted, some of the planned closures
were
beyond the technical capabilities of the day. The
Rijkswaterstaat engineers
used the phrase "Delta school" to stress that in the course of the
first phases
of the Delta Plan the knowledge, skills, and technologies needed
to make
the most ambitious closures in the last phase possible would
have to be
acquired. One aspect of present Dutch hydrological practice
came to
fruition during the Delta Plan: the integration of scientific
research and
technological design. This development culminated in the
Oosterschelde
enclosure, but crucial first steps were made in the first phases,
and indeed
during the Zuider Zee enclosure.16

The first example of the integration of scientific research with
hydrau
lic engineering dates from the 1920s. The physicist Hendrik A.
Lorentz
was
asked to make mathematical predictions about the tidal effects
caused by
a closure of the Zuider Zee. Empirical research using scale
models began
in the 1930s and intensified following the war. The Delft
Hydraulics
Laboratory, center of this modeling research, received important
financial
support under the Marshall Plan. Scale models developed there
played a
crucial role in the closure of the last breaches of the 1953 flood.
The
closure at Zierikzee, for example,
was carried out many times in the labo
ESSAYS
15. The name "Delta Plan" was invented by the director general
of the Rijkswater
staat, A. G. Maris, renowned for his inventiveness in coining
new words for new con
cepts. H. A. Ferguson, Delta-Visie: Een terugblik op 40 jaar
natte waterbouw in Zuidwest

Nederland, vol. 49 (The Hague, 1988). It acquired such a magic
ring of urgency,
nationwide support, and effectiveness that decades later
politicians could propose a
"Delta Plan" for art restoration or a "Delta Plan" for restoring
the safety of river dikes.
16. For an internal history of Dutch coastal engineering, see
Eco W. Bijker, "History
and Heritage in Coastal Engineering in the Netherlands," in
History and Heritage of
Coastal Engineering, ed. Nicholas C. Kraus (New York, 1996),
390-412.
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JULY
2002
VOL. 43
ratory.17 There researchers, using springs to measure tidal
forces, held the

cables and played the winches holding the last caisson to be
eased into the
gap by the last remnants of high tide.18 (If it was to be finished
before the
ebb tide gained force, the operation had to commence while the
flood was
still strong.) The day came for the breach to be closed, and the
young engi
neers who had practiced in the laboratory stood on deck behind
the older
experienced workmen. When one of the cables snapped and
control of the
caisson was about to be lost, they were able to intervene
because they had
seen that snapping rope a dozen times in the laboratory model
and had
elaborated a scenario to save the caisson. With a series of
unusual com
mands that took advantage of the queer characteristics of the
currents
they had identified in the lab, the last caisson was eased down
into the final
gap during the crucial few minutes of slack water. The breach
was closed.19
During subsequent stages in the Delta school?from the closure
of the

Veerse Gat with caissons (1961), to the closure of the
Haringvliet with a
large system of discharge sluices (1971), to the closure of the
Brouwer
shavense Gat in the Grevelingen with a combination of caissons
and blocks
of concrete dumped by a cableway (1972)?new technologies
developed
hand in hand with further scientific research.20 Eventually only
the last and
most difficult closure remained: the Oosterschelde, 8 kilometers
wide at the
opening, 20 to 40 meters deep, with 1.1 billion cubic meters of
water mov
ing in and out at each tide, four times a day.
A site was selected for the dam that made use of two large
sandbars in
the mouth of the Oosterschelde. The parts of the dam that would
extend
over the sandbars posed only minor problems, leaving three
deep gaps to
be closed. In 1971 it was decided to close these using the
technique that had
been employed in the Brouwershavense Gat: a huge cableway to
drop the

large concrete blocks that would form the core of the dike with
great preci
17. This was done with caissons?except that, since no
sophisticated caissons were
available, old barges were used; these were, quite spectacularly,
sunk with dynamite.
18. For a more general discussion of the
use of modeling in science and technology,
using the same case of Dutch hydraulic coastal models,
see Bruno Latour, Science in
Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through
Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1987).
19. One of these young engineers was my father, Eco W. Bijker.
Model research is
no
guarantee of success, however. For one thing, it depends on
whether you have modeled
all relevant aspects. Though the Zierikzee closure first seemed
a success, a few days later
the caissons started to shift. Since the Rijkswaterstaat and the
building companies had
not wanted to lose time laying
a fascine mattress foundation, the ground
was too slip

pery and the caissons were pushed out of the gap.
20.1 do not list the extra storm barriers, dikes, and locks that
were built at the inland
side of the large tidal basins. These are necessary to control the
water level while allow
ing for discharge of the Maas and the Rhine and ship traffic.
See Ferguson, Delta-Visie,
and Dialoog met de Noordzee: 2000 jaar Deltawerken
(Hippolytushoef, 1991);
R.
Antonisse, De kroon op het Deltaplan: Stormvloedkering
Oosterschelde?Het grootste
waterbouwproject aller tijden,
rev. ed. (Amsterdam, 1986).
578
2015 14:10:05 UTC
sion from a height of some 30 meters. Three independent
cableways were
to be constructed for the three gaps. Twelve pylons were to be
built, at a cost

of 17.5 million guilders, each designed for the conditions at its
position in
the mouth, the tallest reaching some 80 meters skyward. The
last pylon was
to be placed in July 1974.
But then the nationwide support that the Delta Plan had
received in the
1950s started to wear thin. The special quality of the tidal
ecology of the
Oosterschelde was valued more than before: the polluted waters
of the
Rhine and Maas threatened to transform their closed estuaries
from trans
parent lakes into huge sinks, and the butter and wheat
"mountains" in the
European Community diminished the importance of providing
freshwater
to benefit agriculture, since food production did not seem to be
pressing a
problem as it had been immediately after World War II.21 Other
societal
changes in the 1970s affected the project as well. As happened
with so many
other political institutions in the Netherlands, the
Rijkswaterstaat's author

ity was challenged. During the general elections in 1972 the
Oosterschelde
closure became a political issue, and
an alternative plan,
to leave the
Oosterschelde open and increase the height of its 150 kilometers
of dikes,
was
proposed.
The new government,
now
including the social-democratic and leftist
liberal parties, decided to investigate the possibility. A
commission was
formed in August 1973, and in February 1974 it produced a
report recom
mending that a porous flood barrier be built in the mouth of the
Ooster
schelde, consisting of a dam of concrete blocks, that would
allow seawater
to pass through but reduce the tidal difference in the
Oosterschelde basin
by some 50 percent.

The commission's report played a crucial role in opening up the
dis
cussion, although it
was criticized from all directions. Ecologists argued
that the commission had not seriously investigated the "null
option" to
leave the Oosterschelde open. Several other groups concluded
that Zeeland
was left unprotected against the
sea for a much longer period than
was
promised in the Delta Law, and most engineers criticized the
plan for being
technically impossible.22 Whatever the report's technical merits
and short
comings, the option of
a
half-open Oosterschelde
was now on the agenda.
The debate split the Netherlands completely, and the traumatic
experience
of the 1953 disaster only made the controversy more bitter. The
consensual
political culture of the Dutch broke down, with fault lines
running though
all parts of society, from government and parliament through

the commu
ESSAYS
21. For a comprehensive account, with special attention to the
increasing role of
environmentalists and ecological scientists, see Cornells Disco,
"Remaking 'Nature': The
Ecological Turn in Dutch Water Management" Science,
Technology and Human Values
27, no. 2 (2002): 206-35.
22. For one thing, the gaps in the dam would quickly fill up
with cockles and sedi
ments.
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VOL. 43

nity of engineers to provincial and local administrative centers
and down
to the level of individual families.23
The Oosterschelde Barrier
In 1974, with a governmental crisis threatening, parliament
reluctantly
accepted a compromise: to partly close the Oosterschelde with a
storm bar
rier caisson dam?a dam consisting of caissons that are normally
open but
close when a storm approaches. Three additional conditions
were set: (1) the
plan should be technically sound, (2) the barrier should be
finished not later
than 1985, and (3) the extra costs, as compared to a complete
closure, should
not exceed twenty billion guilders. A countermotion to continue
with a
complete closure
was
rejected, 75 votes to 67. Those who favored closure
called this "a purely political decision."24 Quickly it became
clear that the

political compromise was technically impossible. But at the
same time, pop
ular mistrust of the Rijkswaterstaat had reached its height.
Since this agency
had always been in favor of carrying out the original Delta Plan,
including
the complete closure of the Oosterschelde, the parliamentary
decision was
viewed by friend and foe alike as a slap in the face of the
Rijkswaterstaat
engineers. H. A. Ferguson, director of the Deltadienst, the
department
within the Rijkswaterstaat that carried out the Delta Plan,
realized that his
department was?at least temporarily?sidetracked. The people
rejoiced in
seeing the Rijkswaterstaat brought to its knees. It was a
political drama.25
Then the dredging companies stepped in, and
in a new way.26 They
were
given the
contract to codesign the
new barrier, an unprecedented level of
involvement that further blurred the boundary between the state
and pri

vate contractors. This process had begun with the frame
contracts, but
never before had the construction companies been so centrally
involved in
designing a whole project. A single integrated project team was
established
comprising engineers of four building companies, the Delft
Hydraulics
Laboratories, and the Rijkswaterstaat. The team started
scientific modeling
research into several alternative designs.
Model research had been accepted by the building companies
since its
23. In my case: father still gave priority to safety and thus
preferred
a complete clo
sure; sons, young engineering students in Delft, sided with the
environmentalists and
advocated an open Oosterschelde; and mother mediated to keep
the family together.
24. This is of course a rather trivial label for a decision taken in
parliament, but what
they meant was a technically uninformed decision.
25. H. A. Ferguson, interview by author, Voorburg, 15 March
1993.1 did this inter
view with Eduard Aibar and Rob Hagendijk.

26. Age J. Hoekstra, one of the directors of the large dredging
and construction
com
pany Volker, commented on the plan to create a half-open
Oosterschelde: "As
a civil engi
neer I thought it a silly idea, but as
a contractor I saw a great project down the road."
Interview by author (with Rob Hagendijk), Oostvoorne, 31
March 1998.
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^^^^^^^H^Z^^^^^^^H^^^^^^^^^^G^^^^^^^I ESSAYS
FIG. 4 Left: The Delta Plan, 1958. Right: the revised Delta
Plan, 1976. (Courtesy
Rijkswaterstaat Archief.)
contribution to the 1953 closures, and it played a crucial role in
different

stages of the Delta Plan. In physical models, dimensions are
scaled down by
factors of one hundred and four hundred, time is scaled up by a
factor of
forty, sand is scaled down by using finely ground Bakelite, and
water
remains water at a scale of one to one.27 The most complicated
models,
such as the Oosterschelde model, used a combination of salt and
fresh
water. For detailed studies of dikes and constructions, wind and
wave
flumes were used. The organization of this model research was
as difficult
and crucial as interpreting the scaling principles. Managing the
relations
between the Rijkswaterstaat, the Delft Hydraulics Laboratory,
and the pri
vate construction firms was thus as much part of the
Oosterschelde project
as the weaving of
mattresses or the design of the
storm surge barrier.
A final plan was presented to the government and approved in
June
1976 (fig. 4). Debate in parliament descended even to such
details as the

size of the door openings in the construction, the construction
schedule,
and the budgetary controls. If ever a technological system
deserved the
label "designed by committee," this was it. The core of the
adopted solution
was to build a permanent structure in the mouth of the
Oosterschelde
through which the tide would flow four times each day, and
which could be
closed completely in case of a large storm. The principles of
this solution
were in all details different from that which the parliament had
approved in
1974, and even in 1976 most of the research and design work
remained to
be done. The engineers of the Rijkswaterstaat and the
construction compa
nies worked in fully integrated teams toward this end. Next
stages in the
27. Vertical downscaling, for example 100:1, cannot be
as
large
as the horizontal
downscaling, for example 400:1, because water's behavior
changes fundamentally when

flowing in more shallow streams. This is one example of the
complicated principles of
scaling involved in all technological modeling. Consequently,
results from
a model can
not be translated to full scale in any unambiguous or "objective"
way, just as the results
of scientific experiments cannot be taken to provide
unambiguous answers about the
state of Nature.
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JULY
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VOL. 43
design process
were discussed in parliament
as late as 1977. Outside parlia

ment, some crucial decisions?concerning, for example, the
use of caissons
or
pillars?were made
even later. One key decision
was not to use caissons
with integrated sliding doors but rather to hang the sliding
doors between
concrete pillars.28 These pillars, which numbered more than
sixty, were of
cathedral-like dimensions: some 35 meters high, weighing
18,000 tons.
They were built in dry dock and moved to their final positions
by a specially
built vessel. This mode of transport was made possible by the
pillars' buoy
ancy; they were built with hollow interiors, which were filled
with sand
once the pillars were positioned. The accuracy of the whole
operation could
be measured in centimeters.
In 1981-83 a series of further crises in the storm surge barrier
project
developed. Although technological and scientific uncertainties
lay at the

roots of these crises, they took the political shape of predicted
budget over
runs. Clashes between parliament and government resulted in
political
compromises?design changes to make the project cheaper
combined with
acceptance of larger budget
overruns. In a rather desperate last budget cut,
the minister of public works decided in 1984 to use one fewer
pillar and one
fewer sliding door.29 The decision had undesirable ecological
effects, but
budgetary problems had taken priority by that time. On 4
October 1986
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands officially opened the
Oosterschelde
Storm Surge Barrier (fig. 5). Since 1986 it has been used to
counter storm
surges about once a year.30
And the thing still works.
Technology, Management, and Politics
The Oosterschelde barrier plunged the Netherlands and Dutch
water
management into deep crisis. It generated a profound political

conflict that
left no level of society untouched and revealed an
unprecedented mistrust
in the central water authority, the Rijkswaterstaat, thereby
temporarily
eroding
an
important element in the institutional
structure of water man
agement in the Netherlands. It also presented hydrological
engineers with a
challenge they had no idea how to meet. Between 1974 and
1986 this
changed the world radically, or so it seems. Protection against
flooding
28. Frank Spaargaren, chair of the Rijkswaterstaat Project
Bureau Afsluiting until
1979, recalled how uncertainty about the special fluidity of the
Oosterschelde seabed
tipped the balance in this case. Interview by author (with Rob
Hagendijk), Garderen, 19
May 1998.
29. The pillar had already been built, and
can still be seen standing in the dry dock,

next to the visitors center?called Neeltje Jans after its location
on the former island of the
same name?on the barrier. Mountaineers now practice climbing
on the walls of this
dinosaur-like remnant of techno-optimism. See
www.neeltjejans.nl for the visitors center.
30. For an evaluation of the first five years, see Rijkswaterstaat
Directie Zeeland,
Veilig Tij: Evaluatie van de Oosterschelde na 5 jaar
stormvloedkering (The Hague, 1991).
582
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J^^^^^BvYl'If^H ^|p 1 BP^ HB^Mg, ESSAYS
FIG. 5 The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier. (Courtesy
Rijkswaterstaat Directie
Zeeland.)
came to be weighed against ecological concerns. The
Oosterschelde was not

closed, but defended with sliding doors. The Rijkswaterstaat
lost its central
role in Dutch society. The balance of power between state and
private sec
tor shifted, and a unique joint venture of the Rijkswaterstaat
and private
contractors took charge of the project. And, finally, the science
and tech
nology required
were so innovative that even after the barrier was finished
some engineers still could not believe it would really work.31
When we take a close look, however, we can see an argument to
be made
for continuity as well. Nobody questioned the basic safety goals
of the Delta
Law; ecological concerns were added to it. With the help of the
1972 Club
of Rome report The Limits to Growth, which had a particularly
significant
impact in the Netherlands, ecological concerns could also be
translated into
safety terms, but
on a
larger scale.32 All parties involved, including the envi

31. In the beginning the fact that the barrier worked had
surprised some engineers
who were particularly suspicious of the Oosterschelde seabed.
Although they had given
the exceptionally fluid sand special treatment and used extra
foundation mattresses, they
remained afraid that the pillars would shift and the sliding doors
would jam. Now confi
dence has risen, and the barrier is generally expected to hold up
for at least two centuries.
32. Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report
for the Club of Rome's
Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York, 1972). It
sold more than two million
copies all over the world, but the Dutch translation sold more
than a hundred thousand
copies in a single month. Maarten A. Hajer, The Politics of
Environmental Discourse: Eco
logical Modernization and the Policy Process (Oxford, 1995).
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JULY
2002
VOL. 43
ronmental action groups, were after solutions that could gain
broad accept
ance. And thus collaboration reemerged, not only between the
Rijkswater
staat and the building companies but also between the
hydrological engi
neers and the ecologists. The Rijkswaterstaat recuperated after
the slap in
the face and regained control over the process, although for the
contracting
companies the Oosterschelde barrier remained one of the
sweetest projects
ever. Afterward its revival continued, and by the end of the last
century the
agency had recovered its central institutional position in
integrated water
management. The hydrological science and technology deployed
in the
project were indeed radically innovative, but could only be
developed from
the basic techniques of previous centuries through the gradual
learning

process of the Delta school.
No surprise, then, that all involved?including the
Rijkswaterstaat, the
construction companies, environmental action groups, and
politicians?
are now happy with the barrier. Success has many fathers, and
Dutch suc
cess even more so.
584
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http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jspArticle
Contentsp. 569p. 570p. 571p. 572p. 573p. 574p. 575p. 576p.
577p. 578p. 579p. 580p. 581p. 582p. 583p. 584Issue Table of
ContentsTechnology and Culture, Vol. 43, No. 3, Water
Technology in the Netherlands (Jul., 2002), pp. 465-656Front
MatterIntroduction: Learning from the Dutch: Technology,
Management, and Water Resources Development [pp. 465-
472]A Letter from Monique de Vries: Vice Minister of
Transport, Public Works, and Water Management [pp. 473-
474]Taming the Waterwolf: Hydraulic Engineering and Water
Management in the Netherlands during the Middle Ages [pp.
475-499]Ecological Challenges, Technological Innovations: The
Modernization of Sluice Building in Holland, 1300-1600 [pp.
500-520]System Building from Below: Institutional Change in
Dutch Water Control Systems [pp. 521-548]EssaysTwo
Centuries of Central Water Management in the Netherlands [pp.
549-568]The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier: A Test Case

for Dutch Water Technology, Management, and Politics [pp.
569-584]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 585-587]Review:
untitled [pp. 587-589]Review: untitled [pp. 589-591]Review:
untitled [pp. 653-654]Review: untitled [pp. 654-656]Back
Matter
RUNNING HEAD: TWO NICHES 1
TWO NICHES 2
Ayla Flowers

Two Niches
SC235-General Biology
Professor Kincaid
November 25, 2014
In this essay I will be discussing a few similarity and
differences between my two niches. The southeastern and arctic
regions are my niches. Can you imagine living in either or and
changing to the other. If you haven’t thought about it before I
have discussed some important parts of both niches. By the end
of this essay you will know important information about both
the Southeastern and Arctic region.
My personal niche happens to be Florida, which is the
Southeastern region. The United States Environmental
Protection Agency (2013) describes the southeastern region as
generally warm and wet with mild and humid winters. While
our winters are getting warmer every year, the same goes for
our summers. On the other hand Amanda Briney (2010) talk
about how the Arctic region climates are very cold and harsh for
most of the year because of the Earths axial tilts. Because of
this the Arctic region does not receive direct sunlight, instead it
receives solar radiation. In the Arctic region during the winter,
they experience 24 hours of no sunlight while during the
summer it is 24 hours with sunlight. That is a major difference
between the southeastern region and arctic region. Some
similarities between the two are that both regions’ temperatures
reach 86 degree, even though the arctic is almost always
covered in snow. One survival advantage in the Arctic region is
the ability to hunt and fish the wildlife. Hunting and fishing
provide excellent food sources for the people who live in the
Arctic. While here in the southeastern region a lot of our food
sources come from the agriculture part. Many people in the
southeastern region plant crops such as corn, beans, fruits and
vegetable. Humans adapt to the niches by adjusting to their

surroundings. For example, living in the arctic region means
learning to fish and hunt while the southeastern region means
learning to farm. Also living in the arctic people build igloo’s
while here in the southeastern region we build houses. The
difficulty that I would have living in the Arctic is the
temperature, on average the temperature is 50 degree. Another
difficulty that I would have is the lack of food resources,
because of the climate being so cold it does not allow any plant
vegetation life, besides moss and lichens. Also during the
winter the 24 hours of no sunlight would be very hard to adjust
too, as well as the 24 hours of sunlight during the summer. The
type of cultural adaptions that have evolved in my personal
niche is back in the day people would wear animal skin as
clothing were as now farmers grow cotton which is used for
clothing. For the arctic region the cultural adaptions include its
natural resources such as fishing and minerals. For the
southeastern region because of the warm temperature bacteria is
more prone and food poisoning happens more often. Another
example of the southeastern region having biological problems
is how warm it is. With as warm as it is in the southeastern
region many people experience respiratory problems and also
heat related deaths (2013 USEPA). The Arctic region has
problems with global warming; it is causing the loss of many
habitats. Also as the ice melts it is releasing methane, which
will change the climate.
In conclusion, the southeastern and arctic regions are very
different. Not only are they on two different sides of the map,
but also in climate and resources. While the arctic region uses
hunting and fishing as a way to eat, some southeasterners hunt
and fish for fun.
Reference Page:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-
adaptation/southeast.html#impactsecosystem
http://geography.about.com/od/globalproblemsandissues/a/arctic
region.htm

HIST 285, Technology in Historical Perspective
Department of History & Politics
Drexel University
Professor Lloyd Ackert
“Science and Systems”
I. Introduction
1. Second “industrial revolution”
II. The Dye Industry
1. England
A. Aniline dyes of August von Hoffman
August Wilhelm von Hofmann
(1818-1892)
Molecular Model of Methane
B. William Henry Perkin (1838-1907)

- mauveine
2. Germany
A. A new organizational
structure
B. Scientific “mass-labor
1. Universities and Laboratories
C. Patent disputes
Hoechst dyeworks, commencement of alizarin factory, 1869-
1870. Edelstein Collection, Hebrew University. Website
Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz was a professor of
chemistry at the University of Bonn from 1867 to 1896.
D. The Chemists’ war.
1. Poisonous gases
2. Nitrogen

A poison gas attack using gas cylinders in World War I.
John Singer Sargent's 1918 painting Gassed.
Fritz Haber (1868-1934)
The Haber-Bosch process was a milestone in industrial
chemistry, because it divorced the production of nitrogen
products, such as fertilizer, explosives and chemical feedstocks,
from natural deposits, especially sodium nitrate (caliche), of
which Chile was a major (and almost unique) producer.
III. Electricity
1. Thomas Edison
A. “Wizard of Menlo Park”
Edison’s Miracle of Light (CLIP)
B. Electric light
C. Direct current vs Alternating current
2. Westinghouse
A. Alternating current

B. Universal system
3. Competition
A. Harold Brown’s public displays
Smithsonian Article
IV. Stabilizing Large-Scale Systems
1. Financiers
2. Corporations
A. Edison, Westinghouse, and
Thompson-Houston
B. Mergers. Edison: “No competition means
no incentive.”

3. Engineers
IEEE Edison Medal
4. Research labs
The early GE Research Lab team: Steinmetz on the left, the
Hayden Family, It might be Irving Langmuir with the bowtie in
the center. This photo and those on the left were taken in
Steimetz's garage. Website
List of Societies
5. The content of engineering.

A. MIT - 1900-1930s.
1. 1902 - Separate electrical engineering department
2. Dugald Jackson
American electrical engineer. He received the IEEE Edison
Medal for "outstanding and inspiring leadership in engineering
education and in the field of generation and distribution of
electric power”.
Jackson headed the Department of Electrical Engineering of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology for an unprecedented
time, 1907 to 1935.
3. The Technology Plan of 1920. Website
William Walker’s essay
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1644563?seq=3
Dugald Caleb Jackson
(1865-1951)
B. Harold Hazen’s “Network Analyzer” 1920s-1930s
Harold Locke Hazen (August 1, 1901 - February 21, 1980) was
an American electrical engineer. He contributed to the theory of
servomechanisms and feedback control systems. In 1924 under

the lead of Vannevar Bush, Hazen and his fellow undergraduate
Hugh H. Spencer built a prototype AC network analyzer, a
special-purpose analog computer for solving problems in
interconnected AC power systems. Hazen also worked with
Bush over twenty years on such projects as the mechanical
differential analyzer.
Cambridge differential analyzer, 1938
V. Conclusions
HIST 285 - Technology in Historical Perspective
Department of History and Politics
Drexel University
“Instruments of Empire”
I. Introduction

1. Technology and Imperialism
Overseas empires
Reciprocal relationship
Profit in empire?
2. Steamships, telegraphs, railroads
Phases of empire:
a. Penetration
-warships, medicine
b. Consolidation
- public works
Breech-loading rifle
3. “Free trade”
End of the East India Company monopoly.
4. History of medicine
Chinchona tree – tropical diseases

II. Steamships and trade
1. Introduction of steam power.
2. Anglo-Burmese war (1824-1826)
A. Irrawaddy river
-Diana “fire devil”
http://michelhoude.com/
B. mapping as a technology of imperialism
-James Rennell’s Map of Hindoostan (1782) and
Bengal Atlas (1779)

James Rennell (1742-1830)
Hindoostan
Bengal Atlas
C. The Ganges river between Calcutta and Allahabad (1834- )
-Hugh Lindsay (2 80 hp engines, Suez Canal (1869),
Mediterranean, Bombay)
Hooghly River, 1915
Hugh Lindsay
Suez Canal

- Opium
Opium Den in Calcutta
—The following table, compiled from official documents,
exhibits the growth of the three most important sources of the
public revenue of India, namely, land, opium and salt, in the ten
financial years, ending March 31, 1871-80:
http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Lalor/llCy393.html
III. Telegraphs
1. Different contexts:
A. Western Europe and North America

B. India
2 Marquis of Dalhousie
A. cotton in Nagpur for example
B. Network
C. The so-called ‘Indian Mutiny’ (1857)
circa 1850: British politician and administrator James Andrew
Broun-Ramsey (1812 - 1860). Ramsay, the 10th Earl of
Dalhousie, was elected governor-general of India in 1847 and
held the post until 1856. He was created Marquis of Dalhousie
in 1849 but the title died with him. (Photo by Hulton
Archive/Getty Images)
3. Public Works Department
A. Dharwad cotton
B. Royal Indian Engineering School at Cooper’s Hill

Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt's Royal Indian Engineering College at
Cooper's Hill, overlooking the Thames at Runnymede,
IV. Railroads
1. Powerful influence on commerce, politics and society
2. Large banking investments
A. India
B. South Africa
V. Conclusions

HIST 285 - Technology in Historical Perspective
Department of History & Politics, Drexel University
Prof. Lloyd Ackert
“Geographies of Industry”
I. Introduction
A. The Industrial Revolution
B. New industries
C. Industry, class, culture.
D. London, Manchester, Sheffield
http://links.org.au/node/1206
Steel, Steam, Politics
Textiles
II. London:

A. The largest and fastest growing site of industry
B. The canal and dock complex
C. Coal
D. Beer Brewing
1. Porter
2. Watt steam engine
3. By-products and ancillary industries
4. Control of the Market
a. “Pubs” and the Beer Act of 1830
beer

E. Women and children
Industrialization video
III. Manchester (Cottonopolis)
A. Cotton textile Industry
B. Unified cotton factory system
C. Gender issues
D. Ancillary industries
1. Machine builder and iron
James Heargreaves ‘Spinning Jenny’
Arkwright’s Water Frame
Crompton’s Spinning Mule

IV. Sheffield
A. Steel
B. Geography
C. Not a factory system
D. Steam power
E. Ancillary products
The Steel Manufacturers of Sheffield : The Hull or Workshop of
the Razor-Grinder
Razor grinders at work in a steel mill in Sheffield, England,
1866. Flues situated in front of the grinding stones serve to
carry away any harmful dust and metal particles produced
during the grinding process.
IV. Critics
A. Charles Dickens

B. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
C. Luddites
HIST 285: Technology in Historical Perspective
Department of History and Politics, Drexel University
Prof. Lloyd Ackert
Lecture 2: “Techniques of Commerce”
I. Introduction - The Expansion of Commerce
A. The waning of the courts
II. Technology and Trade
A. “Voyages of Discovery”

B. Trading networks
C. Capitalistic, but not industrial
The earliest history of boating?
Case Study: “Dutch Shipping”
The difficulties of writing the
history of shipping.
Two early drawings.
The Rhine River
Methods of construction:

Nicolas Witsen (1641-1717),
- Architectura navalis et regimen nauticum (Naval
Architecture
and Nautical Regimen) (1671)
Two different styles of
ship building described in
Witsen’s work.
III. The Dutch Republic
A. The Dutch Golden Age
1. Natural resources – The Rhine river

2. Shipbuilding
a. The Dutch Herring Buss
- large volume and high quality products
Dutch Herring Busses
(buizen) at sea in the North Sea.
Side-view
b. The Fluytschip
- “an artifact shaped by commerce”
- specialization in design
The Dutch Fluyt.
A round-stern,
Flat-bottom, and
relatively narrow vessel.

Dutch Fluyt. Side and Stern views.
Dutch Warship with 2 Canon Galleries
Engraving by W. Barentsoen (1594)
Stylized Man-of-war.
Whipstaff – for maneuverability!
Reinier Nooms (1624-1664)
Amsterdam Harbor.
IV. Creating Global Capitalism
A. The Dutch East India Company (1602-1798)
B. Innovations in capitalism
1. The Amsterdam Commodity Exchange

2. The 1630s Tulip Bubble
3. The VOC and Fortress-factories
http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/3947.php
C. The Slave trade
V. “The Great Traffic”
A. Traffics, not manufactures

1. Sugar refining, papermaking, brewing, tobacco
processing, shipbuilding
B. Specialized activities
1. Processing dyes and glazes, cutting diamonds,
grinding glass lenses,
and dying broadcloth
C. Not high levels of output, but specialized techniques
and superior quality
VI. Why the Dutch did not dominate in the Industrial Era
A. Raw materials and energy
B. International trade
C. Traffic industries

VII. Conclusions
A. The interrelationship between commerce and
technology
B. Culture
VIII. Discussion
HIST 285, Technology in Historical Perspective
Department of History & Politics, Drexel University
Lecture 1: “Technologies of the Court, 1450-1600”
I. Introduction
A. Course themes
B. Mechanical worldview

C. Court patronage
II. Patronage politics and science/technology
A. Medici family
B. Machiavelli and Da Vinci
C. City States
III. Applications of technology
A. Warfare
B. Entertainment
C. Civil

D. Dynastic displays
Joachim Friess was a German goldsmith who became master
goldsmith in 1610 in Augsburg.Renaissance Augsburg was,
after Nuremberg, the greatest of the German manufacturing and
commercial cities, and a ready supply of silver enabled its guild
of goldsmiths to fashion great numbers of richly ornamented
vessels for export. This automaton, in which the goddess Diana,
designed in late Mannerist style, is seated on a hollow-bodied
stag with a removable head, functioned as a drinking vessel. A
mechanism in the base causes the automaton to roll about on a
tabletop in a pentagonal pattern and then stop; the person before
whom it stopped would have to drain the contents. Diana's
quiver and arrow and the jewels set in the trappings of the stag
are modern replacements.
http://www.wga.hu/html/f/friess/diana_st.html
IV. Characteristics of the period
A. Three dimensional art and technical drawing
1. Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)
B. Perspective technique

V. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)
A. Early life
1. Andrea del Verrochio
B. Florence Cathedral
1. Dome
Da Vinci Biography, cont’d.
C. Ludovico Sforza
D. Luis XII, King of France
E. Francois I
1. Lion automaton

VI. Historical method and resources
A. Da Vinci’s notebooks
1. Francisco di Giorgio
2. Four types of technical projects
B. Da Vinci website:
www.museoscienza.org/english/leonardo
VII. Printing
A. Four components
1. Moveable metal type
a. Johann Gutenberg
2. Paper

3. Oil-based ink
4. Presses
B. Literacy
1. Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation
2. Information explosion
3. Scholastic debates
VIII. Technology and tradition
A. Comparing technology transfer in China and Europe
IX. Mining
A. Prince-practitioners

1. Georgius Agricola, De re metallica (1550)
Economic History Association
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
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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."
253
25 4gUnger
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.
Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 255
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.
256 Unger
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.
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.
258 Unger
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.
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
260 Unger
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.
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.
262 Unger

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.

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