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Prehistory

Archaeological findings indicate that the area that now comprises the North Sea may have been a large area of plains in prehistoric times, until around 8,000–6,000 BC. The data suggests the area was inhabited before being flooded by rising water at the end of the last ice age. In 2008, a finding of approximately 28 Stone Agehandaxes in material from the bottom of the North Sea strengthened the evidence of human settlements in the area.

Roman Empire

The first historically confirmed intensive use of the North Sea was by the Romans in 12 BC, when Nero Claudius Drusus built and launched a fleet of over a thousand ships into the North Sea conquering the indigenous tribes, including the Frisii and the Chauci. By 5 BC the Roman knowledge of the Sea was greatly expanded as far as the Elbe by a military expedition under Tiberius. Pliny the Elder describes Roman sailors going through Helgolandand as far as the northeast coast of Denmark. Julius C...

Migration period

In the power vacuum left by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes began the next great migration across the North Sea. Having already been used as mercenaries in Britain by the Romans, many people from these tribes migrated across the North Sea during the Migration Period, Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain mixing with the native Celtic and Romano-Britishpopulations. Around the 7th century a wave of Frisian migrants moved to several islands in the North S...

The Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 14th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe. The majority of commerce took place via maritime shipping due to undeveloped roadways between the 16th and 18th centuries. The east coas...

The Netherlands

In the 16th century, the Dutch Republicbecame the preeminent economic power in the world. For the Dutch merchant marine the North Sea served more as a starting point for their oceanic voyages. It had become the gateway and crucial outlet allowing Dutch merchants direct access to world markets. During the Eighty Years' War, the Dutch Empire began a heavily invested worldwide trade – hunting whales around Svalbard, trading spices from India and Indonesia, founding colonies in Brazil, South Afri...

England

England's climb to the pre-eminent sea power of the world began in 1588 as the attempted invasion of the Spanish Armada was defeated by the combination of outstanding naval tactics by the English under command of Sir Francis Drakeand the breaking of the bad weather. The strengthened English Navy waged several wars with their neighbors across the North Sea and by the end of the 17th century had erased the Dutch's previously world-spanning empire. The building of the British Empire as a domain...

Scotland

Scotland emerged as a prominent economic power during the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century.This era established a great herring fishing industry resulting in Scotland becoming a European leader in that industry.

During the First Schleswig War (1848–51), the Crimean War (1854–56) and the Second Schleswig War (1864), belligerents took steps to reduce or eliminate commerce in the North Sea by their enemies. In the first Schleswig War, Denmark was able to halt maritime commerce by the Kingdom of Prussia in the North Sea and in the second, imposed tolls on ship...

The Dogger Bank Incident

Tensions in the North Sea were again heightened in 1904 by the Dogger Bank incident, in which Russian Baltic Fleet vessels mistook British fishing boats for Imperial Japanese Navy ships and fired on them, and then upon each other. The incident, combined with Britain's alliance with Japan and the Russo-Japanese War led to an intense diplomatic crisis. The crisis was defused when the Russian Empire was defeated by the Empire of Japanand agreed to pay compensation to the fishermen.

The First World War

During the First World War, Great Britain's Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow and Germany's Kaiserliche Marinefaced each other across the North Sea. Due to its numerical advantage in dreadnoughts, the Grand Fleet obtained Naval superiority and was able to establish a sea blockade of Germany's coast. The goal of the blockade was to deny Germany access to maritime trade including war materials and to guarantee the undisturbed ferrying of British troops. Because of the strong defensive fortress of...

The Second World War

The Second World War was, in terms of naval warfare, again mostly a submarine war on the German side. However, this time the main action was not in the North Sea but rather the Atlantic. Also different from the first war, the North Sea was no longer the exclusive territory of the Allies. Rather, it was, above all in the first years of the war, the stage for an intensive coastal war, featuring mainly small vessels like submarines, minesweepers, and Fast Attack Craft.However, despite early succ...

Although de facto control of the North Sea played a decisive role in the political power relationships in north-west Europe since the time of the Vikings, and became a question of world politics after the First Anglo-Dutch War, until after the Second World Warthe bordering countries officially claimed no more than narrow coastal waters. In the last...