Fishing a Borderless Sea: Environmental Territorialism in the North Atlantic, 1818-1910

• Main Author: Payne, Brian Joseph
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@UMaine 2006
• Subjects: Fishery management; North Atlantic fisheries; Diplomatic History; History; International Relations; Canada; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/970; https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/context/etd/article/1976/viewcontent/PayneBJ2006.pdf

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the North Atlantic Ocean was the scene of intense disputes between diverse fishing interests. Fishermen came into violent conflict with one another, politicians on both sides of the North American border called for defense if not open war, and fisheries scientists and diplomats initiated new agendas for fishery management that challenged traditional assumptions of jurisdictional authority. All of these factors contributed to the emergences of new ideas concerning environmental territorialism in the North Atlantic. Fishermen, politicians, scientists, and diplomats from around the Atlantic world campaigned for a role in structuring managerial policy. Although many historians interpret this conflict as one between American and Canadian fishermen, this dissertation argues that the national policies as articulated by national politicians in both the United States and Canada did not reflect the territorialism demonstrated by the fishermen. Instead, fishermen structured their understanding of proper stewardship according to modes of production. Through an examination of petitions, court cases, government documents, and agency studies this dissertation examines these conflicting claims of authority in the North Atlantic fisheries. It explores cross-border migration of fishing labor, smuggling between fishermen in the borderseas, the development of national and scientific policies for fishery management in both the United States and Canada, conflicts between inshore and off-shore fishermen in the North Atlantic, successful and failed diplomatic maneuvers by policymakers in Washington, Ottawa, and London, and the creation of a legal framework for fishery management. It demonstrates that although governments attempted to structure jurisdiction according to national goals and boundaries, local resource users enforced a territorial authority based on their own conclusions. These local fishermen focused their critique on those who utilized more extensive means of ...