Salmon War

The Salmon War (German: Lachsfangstreit) of 1736/37 was a political conflict between the confederate Canton of Basle and the Kingdom of France over fishing rights and the location of their state border in the River Rhine.

In 1735 and 1736, at the start of the salmon season, there were again insults thrown and mass struggles between the fishermen of Neudorf, Hüningen and Kleinhüningen.

The conflict became a state-level issue through the news that the Obervogt of Kleinhüningen, Jakob Christoph Frey, an official of the Basle Estate, had been involved in the violence of 1736 and organized it out of his own interest.

A request for support from Basle to the Swiss states failed due to confessional and political antagonism and the influence of the French Ambassador in Solothurn.

The French officials sharply rejected Basle's delegations in Strasbourg and Solothurn and its letters of justification to Paris.

The conflict zone, around 1796/97, east at the top. An arm of the Rhine separates the island of Schusterinsel in the centre from the mainland. Below it, on the left bank of the Rhine, lies the fortress of Hüningen. On the island and the right bank of the Rhine are its outworks. The forked mouth of the Wiese river and Kleinhüningen are right and above right. The 1738 border with Basle is shown as a red line and divides the Schusterinsel and river. (the width of the map is just under 2 kilometres, its height is just under 1.4 kilometres.)
Fisherman at the mouth of the Wiese (engraved by Matthäus Merian the Elder , 17th century)