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January 23, 1579, a treaty uniting Holland, Zeeland, Groningen, Gelderland, Friesland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel - Protestant northern provinces of the Netherlands, raised since 1566 against their sovereign English - marks the birth of a new country, the United Provinces.

15 years later, in 1594, out of the harbor of Texel three ships, one from Amsterdam, one of Enkhuizen, the third Zealand. The expedition is led by Willem Barentsz. There will be two more in the same objective: to discover a passage to India, passing north of Eurasia.

Needless to say, these expeditions failed, even if they have the merit of exploring the coast of Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya. The third (1596-1597) has failed even so it resulted in the loss of ships, ground by ice, an impromptu winter on the coast of Nova Zembla, and returned in a rowboat in which Barentsz passes from life to death.

But what remains of these expeditions is the control of the northern seas, totally abandoned by the Portuguese and English explorers, and extremely strong links with Northern Europe. It is on this basis that develops the Dutch power, not only for whaling: the seventeenth th century, Amsterdam is the largest European market for naval artillery, even though the Provinces United have virtually no steel industry - the famous cannon Dutch as archeology underwater fished everywhere are Scandinavian or Russian manufacture.

After the "glorious revolution" of 1688, which saw the arrival on the throne of England Stadtholder United Provinces, the northern tradition follows. I will return one day to the importance of contacts in Scandinavia and Russia in the first industrialization of Britain, which began in the late seventeenth century ^e precisely. From our point of view French, we easily overlook the historical weight of these regions, probably because we're not particularly tempted to spend our vacation - well, I do, but that's another story. * * *

Illustrations: cover Ice jam, shipments of Willem Barentsz (1594-1597) , text prepared and presented by Xavier de Castro Chandeigne / UNESCO 1996; hunting scene whales in the Arctic (1700), Scheepvart Museum, Amsterdam.