The development of british territorial claims on Spitsbergen between 1904 and 1953

• Main Author: Kruse, Frigga
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: German
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Svalbard; Spitsbergen; claiming; mining; politics; Polarforschung; Spitzbergen
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11370/7533eb65-599c-4f6f-ad78-fb3c50e1c0e4; https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/7533eb65-599c-4f6f-ad78-fb3c50e1c0e4; https://doi.org/10.2312/polarforschung.86.2.111; https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/80567835/Die_Entwicklung_der_britischen_Territorialanspr_che_in_Spitzbergen.pdf.pdf

The English territorial claims of the seventeenth century were forgotten, and Arctic Spitsbergen was yet again a no man’s land, when coal found its way from the archipelago to the Norwegian mainland at the beginning of the twentieth century. An international “coal rush” broke out, which in addition to the British also involved Norwegians, Americans, Russians, Dutch, and Swedes. Based on four British mining and exploration companies, this paper explains how the previously peripheral Spitsbergen gained increasing economic and political importance. In this process, the British territorial claims, which in their heyday comprised a fifth of the landmass, played a decisive role, although Spitsbergen belonged to Norway after 1925. The historical details are currently overpowered by inaccurate representations. As a result, the parallels to today's “Arctic rush” are difficult to recognize, although these should be a lesson for all modern stakeholders.