Whaling as an interim oil supply industry: The rise and fall of whale oil in the competitive fat and oil markets

Abstract

Whale oil, a general term for products derived from the fats and oils of numerous cetacean species, is a global resource whose purveyors have historically been buffeted by economic, technological, and environmental forces. It remained a viable international commodity in the first half of the twentieth century due to a remarkable shift from its use mainly for lighting and lubrication to one used for food products such as margarine and even explosives, before it quickly faded as alternatives emerged and environmental regulations took hold. While previous studies have illuminated various aspects of this historical trajectory, this paper focuses on previously unexplored aspects of how it has affected the Japanese whaling industry. The initial, lucrative expansion by Japan’s whalers into the Antarctic in the mid-1930s was driven not just by domestic expansionist policies but also by European demand for whale oil. Despite recent narratives that Japanese whaling has always been focused on domestic food production, the country’s whaling conglomerates shifted to procuring meat in the Southern Ocean only after oil manufacture for this foreign trade became unviable. The paper concludes by linking the decline of whale oil to contemporary challenges in global edible oil production. Although conservation efforts ended commercial whaling in the Antarctic, the expansion of the oil palm tree and soybean cultivation has resulted in new challenges such as biodiversity loss. This article was published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Key Points