History of the North Sea United Kingdom and Germany signed the Treaty of Heligoland. The Cod War of 1893 erupted between Denmark and Britain over fishing territories. Denmark declared a fishing territory of 13 nautical miles (24 km) around their shores which included Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Britain did not acknowledge this claim. Tensions in the North Sea were again heightened in 1904 by the Dogger Bank incident, in which Russian naval vessels mistook British fishing boats for Japanese 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
Harold Innis and the cod fishery World from Spain." Innis shows how the cod fishery was interwoven economically with the slave trade and international markets for such other products as sugar, tobacco and rum. He argues that rivalry between the British and the colonists in New England led to the American Revolution. While his study of the fur trade focused on the continental interior with its interlocking rivers and lakes, "The Cod Fisheries" looks outward at global trade and empire showing the far-reaching effects of one staple product, both on imperial centres and on marginal colonies such as Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England. Biographer, John