An extractive base in the Arctic: environment and empire on Svalbard, 1750-1920

• In Event: Commodity Extraction across Transimperial Spaces

Abstract

For centuries, European powers including Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and Germany have used the Svalbard archipelago, a cluster of islands located between the North Pole and the European mainland, as a base for extraction. What began in the early seventeenth century as a regional competition for oil and products from marine mammals such as whales, seals and walrus grew into imperial competition for control of the archipelago by the turn of the twentieth, when Europe’s empires clashed over strategic ownership of the region to access coal and scientific data. 1920 was a pivotal year, when the islands, previously considered terra nullius, were placed under Norwegian ownership as a result of the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles. This presentation examines varying forms of extraction, including hunting, fishing and coal mining on the Svalbard archipelago, looking at how different European powers interacted with the natural world and the transimperial impact on regional ecosystems over two centuries.

Author

• Alina Bykova, Stanford University