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The United Kingdom has one of the longest histories of interest and activity in the Arctic of any country. Merchants, hunters, sailors and scientists have visited the Arctic from the British Isles since at least the 15th Century. Most famous of all were the expeditions to discover fabled marine passages through the north to the lucrative markets of East Asia. Yet while attempts to navigate passage through the Arctic foundered – often tragically as in the case of Sir John Franklin – they facilitated the emergence of whaling, sealing, fishing and fur trapping industries in North America and Russia. Both the Muscovy Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company were founded by English royal charters, and resources brought back from the Arctic were used to feed the expansion of British industry. It is worth noting that by contemporary standards, the UK was an Arctic state until 1880, when it gave up its remaining Arctic territories to Canada.

By the early 20th Century, the nature of the UK’s relationship with the region had changed further. After the search for the Franklin expedition ended, the British government turned away from the Arctic to focus its attention on Antarctica. Overfishing and the declining use of whale oil also led to a reduction in the UK’s long-standing use of Arctic resources to feed its economy (although coal mining on Svalbard was still of interest).  However, the emerging strategic importance of the region during the First World War brought the UK back to the Arctic as the British sought first to support its White Russian allies during the Russian revolution, and later the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The strategic importance of the region would remain high throughout the rest of the 20th Century as the UK became a lynchpin in the defence of Norway and the North Atlantic against the threat of the Soviet Union, and its nuclear-armed submarines patrolled beneath the Arctic sea-ice.

After a period of limited engagement in the 1990s (although the UK was an observer to the Ottawa convention in 1996, attended the first Arctic Council ministerial meeting in 1998, and has maintained a national scientific research programme in the Arctic since the end of the Cold War), interest in the Arctic is growing again, driven by concerns about climate change, emerging economic opportunities, and defence and security. As an island nation, highly dependent on global trade, the geostrategic importance of a new ocean becoming navigable, for at least part of the year, is also attracting interest.

This page was updated on 1 January 2023. If we have missed anything, please contact info@thearcticinstitute.org.