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Abstract
This article examines the background of and reasons for a sudden decrease in the Estonian import of Atlantic herring during the Great Depression in 1932. The economic and ideological factors that influenced the process are discussed, including protectionist trade policy measures, customs regulations and nontariff trade measures. We argue that the attempt to replace herring imports by establishing a national herring fishing fleet was grounded in ideological as well as in nutritional arguments. Such protectionist measures were met with confrontation by Estonian foreign trade partners. The case study highlights a complicated interplay between oceanic resource exploitation politics and national ideologies, locating it in the context of regional environmental historical research.
Notes
1. The retrospective analytical bibliography compiled in the Department of Bibliography in the Archival Library of the Estonian Literary Museum, and the portal of Digitized Estonian Newspapers, dea.nlib.ee, have been invaluably useful sources for obtaining material for the present article.
2. We wish to thank the State Archives of Estonia for providing assistance with the documents concerning the Estonian foreign trade regulations of the 1930s.
3. Agriculture included farming, animal husbandry, gardening, fisheries, and forestry.
4. Besides Germany and Estonia, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia also implemented exchange control in Europe.
5. In the autumn of 1928, Estonia introduced two-tier customs tariffs: general customs tariffs and minimum customs tariffs. The goods of the countries that had concluded a trade agreement with Estonia were subject to the minimum customs tariff, while the products of countries that had not concluded an agreement with Estonia were subject to a set of general tariffs. The minimum customs tariff formed approximately 50% of the general customs tariff. For instance, at the beginning of 1931 the general customs tariff on herring was 0.045 kroons per gross kilogram and the minimum customs tariff 0.022 kroons per gross kilogram. It is more meaningful to focus on the minimum customs tariff, as Estonia had concluded agreements with nearly all of its important trade partners. In 1931, Lithuania, Spain, and Albania were the only European countries with which Estonia did not have a trade agreement.
6. Full name of the author is not registered in the Estonian Biographical Database.
7. Full name of the author is not registered in the Estonian Biographical Database.
8. According to archival sources, however, in 1931, the value of salted herring imported from the United Kingdom amounted to 782,392 kroons (ERA.1831.1.4349, 37) and in 1932 to 103,207 kroons (ERA.1831.1.4355, 34). The total value of the import of herring was approximately 0.8 million kroons in 1931 and approximately 0.1 million kroons in 1932 (Pihlamägi Citation2004, 216). The price drop that hit food products during the economic crisis naturally also reduced the value of imports, but the 1931 and 1932 herring prices did not considerably differ.
9. Full name of the author is not registered in the Estonian Biographical Database.
10. Four years earlier, a short notice had appeared in Shipping and Fishery about the “brilliant results” of using aeroplanes in herring fishing that enabled the behavior and location of the shoals to be monitored from the air and the information to be reported back to the flotilla (Citation1928, 270). Estonian entrepreneurs later substituted the planned plane with “pioneer” motor boats as these were much less expensive and technically less demanding to operate.
11. According to the Estonian Biographical Database Tammlaan published under the pseudonym Jänkimees [Yankee Man], which was a general reference to seamen who had sailed across the Atlantic Ocean (cf. Past Citation1936).
12. Full names of the authors are not registered in the Estonian Biographical Database.
13. There is an anonymous news item about the festive screening of the film in Tallinn, published in Päevaleht on October 5, Citation1932h, but there is no record of such film in the Estonian Film Archives, nor are known the full names of the operators. There is a chronicle film dating to 1936 that includes less than 2 minutes of footage about the arrival of the herring fleet in the port of Tallinn. See filmi.arhiiv.ee/fis, search: ‘heeringa’ (accessed April 12, 2012).
14. The conceptualization of Estonians as vikings and Estonia as being part of the Scandinavian area already from times immemorial was a popular idea in the 1930s that was promoted in fiction and nonfiction alike (Kaljundi Citation2013).
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Notes on contributors
Kadri Tüür
Kadri Tüür is a PhD student in the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu. Her research focuses on Estonian nature writing and its analysis. She has published articles in the areas of ecocriticism and semiotics, co-edited several article collections, and co-organized conferences in the fields of semiotics and literary studies.
Karl Stern
Karl Stern is a PhD student in the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Tartu. His research focuses on the application of non-tariff measures in the protectionist trade policies of the Republic of Estonia in the 1930s. He is working in the Internal Market Department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.