Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The near-extinction of the North Pacific Fur Seal at the turn of the twentieth century provides a window through which to examine themes of environmental protection in an era of mass politics. The United States, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Russia ultimately gathered in 1911 to create an international regulatory regime that protected fur seal stocks. The preceding twenty-five years of failed negotiations and political standoffs were shaped by governments that were grappling (some for the first time) with mass electorates who would not accept the loss of their profitable industries and who demanded that their statesmen leave negotiations as the ‘victors’. The first era of globalisation also knitted together flows of commodities (seal skins) and capital in ways that made it difficult for negotiators to untangle their own ‘national’ interests from other countries. Escape was facilitated by, first, the use of an international institution (arbitration in 1893) to deflect blame from national governments, and second, by all the involved powers forming a collective, sustainable sealing regime in which profits were shared. This history, therefore, has intense relevance to our current moment in which the need to protect the environment is complicated by mass politics and globalisation.