Juhana Aunesluoma & Susanna Fellman (eds), Från olika till jämlika. Finlands och Sveriges ekonomier på 1900-talet. Svenskt i Finland – finskt i Sverige III

Abstract

The decades immediately before and after 1900 were a ‘take-off’ period in the history of Swedish merchant banks; their total assets rose from 650 million Swedish kronor in 1890 to 3,000 million in 1913. Simultaneously, however, the vigorous industrial expansion offered great opportunities for ingenious private financiers. One of their fields was the financing of innovations or new business combinations which, despite the apparent promise of a prosperous future before them, found it impossible to obtain adequate credit from the banks, owing to continuing uncertainty, or too distant a prospect of profits, or perhaps also to the inadequate personal finances of the men of ideas behind them. A clever and ruthless financier could earn a handsome reward for the support he gave or arranged in return for the considerable risks he ran. The prize was a large and enduring profit if success was not too long delayed, or if he was able at a suitable opportunity to shift the burden on to someone else, but failure could lead to disaster and the bold operator himself needed sufficiently close connections with a bank with large resources and risks spread nationwide. Ernest Thiel was a substantial and characteristic representative of such private financiers, who played a significant role in the history of economic growth in Sweden. One of Thiel's main interests in the 1890s was the largescale exploitation of the iron ore deposits in Lapland and the building up of extensive exports of Swedish ore. All the ingredients were present: a brilliant idea for future development, a poor business situation for those most closely concerned, and an uncertain period before the idea could be translated into economic success. There was room for many participants in the game; Thiel was one of those who profited greatly by it.     

Peasant shipping as a profitable trade

Abstract

Finnish peasant shipping has so far only been discussed in books on local history and in a few rather brief specialised articles dealing with the earlier centuries. Consequently, Dr. Kaukiainen's academic dissertation, published in the spring of 1970, is virtually a pioneering study. He has chosen the period from the Swedish Russian War of 1808-09 to the Crimean War; this was fortunate because Finland was compelled by its new political alignment partly to re-route its shipping.     

Svenskt arbete och liv

Abstract

Among Eli F. Heckscher's works on economic history, his Merkantilismen (first published in Swedish, 1931) and Sveriges ekonomiska historia från Gustav Vasa (1935-50) are the most significant.     

The finnish glass industry

Abstract

In 1948 the Finnish glass industry celebrated the 200th anniversary of its first permanent establishment. Although Finland's first glassworks was built as early as 1681, in Uusikaupunki (Nystad), it was burnt down immediately afterwards and all memory of its existence had disappeared when new plans to build a glassworks were put in hand. This enterprise was the Avik glassworks, erected in 1748, and the pioneer plant in Finland. To mark this anniversary, Prof. Annala has published a two-volume history of the industry during the period of Russian rule (18090–1917). These two volumes form the second part of a larger work, the first part of which, covering the period of Swedish rule, was published in 1931, to mark the 250th anniversary of the Uusikaupunki factory. The recent war and the evacuation of the archives account for the long delay in the completion of the work.     

Earldoms and baronies as economic enterprises in seventeenth century Finland

Abstract

In his comprehensive monograph of nearly eight hundred pages, the first volume of which was published as an academic dissertation six years ago, Professor Jokipii has undertaken to give an account of the brief history of Finnish earldoms and baronies. With two exceptions these twenty-nine large-scale fiefs lasted in all only a quarter of a century (the third quarter of the seventeenth century). Nevertheless, they made their mark on the later development of Finland.     

A case study in German economic imperialism: The colonial economic committee, 1896–1914

Abstract

The most thorough attempt so far made to estimate the population of Finland in the 17th century is that by the Swedish military historian, Major S. Sundquist. The purpose of his investigation was to discover the basis of enlistment in the army of the kingdom of Sweden under Gustavus II Adolphus. Sundquist obtained the number of farmsteads from the Crown terriers of the first decade of the 17th century and from lists drawn up in connexion with a levy raised to buy back the castle of Elfsborg lost to Denmark in the war of 1611–1613. His next step was to assess the average size of households. In source materials from the sheriffdoms (fögderier) of Porvoo (Borgå) and Kymi (Kymmene) an assessment term, näbb, was found. Sundquist interpreted this term as indicating the number of married couples living in a farm household in addition to the farmer and his wife. In the two sheriffdoms mentioned, the number of such additional couples was 1.14 per farmstead. Sundquist changed this ratio into the round figure of one which he applied to the whole country, thus assuming a national average of two married couples per farm. Assuming, furthermore, that the population structure was the same in the 17th century as in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the earliest official population statistics were drawn up, he assumed for each married couple the same number of widows and widowers, unmarried adults and children as appeared in these statistics. In this way he arrived at a ‘probable minimum’ of 350,000 persons; he also calculated a ‘proved minimum’ of 219,000 by assuming that the average number of married couples per farmstead was 2.14 in the sheriffdorns of Porvoo and Kymi but only 1.0 in the rest of Finland. ¹ S. Sundquist, Finlands folkmängd och bebyggelse i början av 1600-talet [Finland's population and colonization at the beginning of the 17th century], Meddelanden Iran generalstabens krigshistoriska avdelning II, Stockholm.      

Origin and rise of the crofter problem in Finland

Abstract

Crofters (Swedish torpare, Finnish torppari) are in Finland and Sweden the peasants whose principal means of subsistence derived from the cultivation of some small part, held in tenancy, of an estate. The crofter paid the bulk of his rent by putting in so many days work on the parent farm.     

Swedish iron and steel, 1600–1955

Abstract

The sources which may be used to shed light upon the history of the Swedish iron industry from the first half of the sixteenth century onwards are, by any criterion, very impressive. Well-preserved series of accounts give detailed information on the activities of a number of iron-works which the Crown began to establish during the reign of Gustav Vasa (1523–1560) and which were carried on until the opening decades of the 17th century. The Swedish kings energetically directed not only their own enterprises but also the production at the many small privately-owned furnaces and forges which continued to be responsible for the major share of the total output; they were also an important object of taxation of which the Crown kept detailed accounts. The state's own iron-working activities were abandoned in the 16205, but central direction of the industry continued and was shortly entrusted to a special department of state, the Board of Mining and Metallurgical Industries (Bergskollegium], The archives of Bergskollegium provide a fund of information on the history of the metallurgical industries looked at from the viewpoint of the central government. The customs' accounts offer primary material for the statistics of exports during the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th. Thereafter, however, the primary material has only been sporadically preserved. But as early as the 17th century customs' accounts were worked up into statistics of foreign trade in order to provide information for purposes of commercial policy.¹ After 1738 they continue as a most impressive series of uninterrupted statistics.     

Finnish foreign trade in the 18th century

Abstract

In this comprehensive study, Professor Alanen deals with Finnish foreign trade and shipping from the opening of the 18th century until roughly the time of Finland's secession from Sweden in 1809.     

The entelechies of mercantilism

Daniel Waldenström's debate article in this issue of the SEHR raises several interesting questions for discussion. I will not comment on his criticisms of Swedish economic historians' publishing practice and their international participation; I will state only that I think economic and business historians in the Nordic countries should increase their international activities and their publications in international journals. In my opinion this concerns particularly scholars in my own country, Norway. Waldenström makes, however, several normative assertions about economic history that concern the discipline as a whole, including the guiding principles of the editorial policy of the SEHR. His normative claims about content and the methodological foundations of economic history deserve an answer.     

Birgit Karlsson,Egenintresse eller samhällsintresse,Nazityskland och svensk skogsindustri 1933–1945

Abstract

In Vol. XV (1967) of this journal, Alan S. Milward and Jorg-Jöhannes Jäger published criticisms of my article on Swedish iron are exports to Nazi Germany.¹ Turning first to Milward's contribution, this is based on the assumption that the German economy was a ‘blitzkrieg war economy’ in the period preceding the attack upon the Soviet Union. This view, which has been expressed before by B. H. Klein, undoubtedly brings a number of valuable refinements into the hitherto exaggerated estimates of the level of German armaments at the outbreak of the Second World War.² But when he goes on to say that ‘in such a war economy all considerations of potential armaments-producing capacity were rejected in favour of present armaments-producing capacity’,³ Milward palpably oversimplifies a complex problem. In fact, the demand for an armaments programme ‘in depth’, to quote General Thomas, did make itself heard long before the autumn of 1941.     

History of Finland's rural trade and tradesmen

Abstract

During the ascendancy of mercantilism, from the beginning of the 17th to the middle of the 19th century, trade in the Finnish countryside was pursued only by city burghers who travelled round on business or attended the fairs held in certain places at definite dates, and by pedlars. Among the latter were the famous Russo-Karelians, immortalised by J. L. Runeberg in his poetical work Elgskyttarne. Resident merchants were not permitted in the rural areas. Alanen shows, however, that liberation of rural trade from mercantilist shackles in the mid-19th century largely amounted to the acceptance by the authorities of changes already effected. Although a few new towns were founded in the interior, most parts of Finland were still very far from any town and the number of rural fairs was reduced in 1821 from 50 to 9. Yet the thriving farmers increasingly consumed in their households more purchased goods, and in consequence must obviously have sold more agricultural produce than before. When St. Petersburg replaced Stockholm as the principal market for Finnish butter and other country produce, the ship-owning burghers of the coastal towns were unable to maintain their dominance as middlemen to the same extent as during the period of Swedish rule. The export trade in eastern Finland gradually came to be handled by farmers who specialised in this work and who travelled with their products, while the peasants no longer made their purchases in towns to the former extent. In the country as a whole the retailing of imported goods came to be managed by, in addition to the burghers, pack pedlars from Russian Karelia and other travelling vendors and, in the large villages, by illicit traders who paid bribes to the authorities for their freedom of action. Had rural trade not already been well developed, the forgotten demands of Anders Chydenius (1729–1803) or the forceful arguments advanced by J. W. Snellman (1806–81) for the liberation of rural trade would hardly have impressed the Senate and the Governor-General. It would otherwise be impossible to understand the fact that permission to trade in agricultural produce and in products of home crafts was granted in rural districts in 1842 during the régime of Baron L. G. von Haartman, a firm opponent of liberalism. Only one condition was made, that no ‘open shops’ should be established.     

The way to industrialisation: A Finnish town history

Abstract

Scientific research on urban history in Finland dates from the end of the 19th century. The pioneer was Professor Carl von Bonsdorff, whose study of 17th century Turku (Åbo) is still a standard work in this field.¹ At the beginning of this century Professor Väinö Voionmaa added to the literature on the old pre-industrial towns his investigation of the rapid growth of Tampere (Tammerfors).² This city, ‘Finland's Manchester’, is a young industrial town; in order to survey its development before the beginning of the 20th century Voionmaa had to take a new quantitative approach. Since then Finnish research on urban history has grown to an extent that is quite out of proportion with the fact that urbanisation here is a late phenomenon. Historical studies now exist of practically every town, generally written by historians with professional training. In Finland historians have perhaps devoted themselves to a greater extent than elsewhere to research in local and thus also town history. The most ambitious attempt to produce a comprehensive history of a town from its foundation to the present is the history of Helsinki on which about ten historians are collaborating, six volumes of which have so far been published.³     

Nordic networks: patent agents and the business of technology intermediation in Sweden and Finland, 1860–1910

ABSTRACT

The article analyses Swedish and Finnish patent agents and their businesses at the turn of the twentieth century. Due to legal requirements, all foreign patent applications had to pass through the hands of patent agents. Despite the central role, this transnational business of technology intermediation has received only limited attention in the scholarship. The article studies the business relationships between the patent agents and their clients, and employs new datasets, which include information about all foreign patentees using a patent agent in 1860–1910. The main findings are that the transnational business relationships affected the specialisation of national patent agents, especially in Finland, where patent agents with a legal background contributed to the inflow of inventions managed by Swedish patent agents. Patent agent services also represented significant indirect costs of the patent systems for their foreign clients.     

Select bibliography of contributions to economic and social history appearing in Scandinavian books,periodicals and year-books, 1982

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a newly constructed database on foreign trade of Sweden–Finland 1738–1805, consisting of all exports and imports that were recorded by the custom houses in this period, and is made available at www.historia.se/Swedish foreign trade 1738_1805.xlsx. The traditional view as presented by Eli Heckscher, who was very critical of the mercantilist policies of the time, was that the overseas trade of Sweden-Finland saw a trend of secular stagnation during the course of the eighteenth century. By contrast, we show that in conjunction with a substantial expansion of the population, total trade nearly increased twofold during the period of study. Despite that, there was a small decrease in the value of exports in relation to GDP, mostly explained by a drop in the relative price of bar iron. The degree of specialisation of Swedish exports saw a declining tendency in this period. While exports from Sweden had a higher degree of specialisation than Finnish exports, imported goods to Finland were more concentrated than Swedish imports. Lastly, the composition of imports did not markedly alter, meaning that a consumer revolution did not take place in either Sweden or Finland.     

Early history of banking in Gothenburg discount house operations 1783–1818

Abstract

For many years Sweden lacked a well-developed banking system. Even by the middle of the eighteenth century, there were no established institutions for the effective mobilising and channelling of capital. However, Sweden's economic development during the eighteen century, when commerce and the production of goods were expanding swiftly, increased the need for some institutionalising of capital movements and the establishment of fixed forms, especially for personal credits. During the latter half of the century, the Swedish Rikshankdid deliberately conduct certain types of operation whose effect was to satisfy a growing demand for capital in some sectors, of the economy. This was effected through such bodies as Manufakturdiskontoen(The Manufacturers' Discount Bank), Generalassistans-kontoret(General Assistance Office), Diskontkompaniet(the Discount Company), Generaldiskontkontoret(the General Discounting Office) and Riksgäldskontoret(the National Debt Office). ¹ On this development generally see Fritz, S., Studier i svenskt bänkväsen 1772-1789, Stockholm 1967 and literature referred to therein.      

Sweden's first bank-notes

Abstract

Sweden's first bank, Stockholms Banco, began to function in 1657. Its name is familiar among economic historians because it was the first bank in Europe to issue bank-notes in the modern sense of the word. It is exactly three hundred years since this issue began, and to celebrate the jubilee the Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) has published a work on the first Swedish bank-notes; its author IS Aleksandrs Platbārzdis of the Royal Coin Cabinet, Stockholm. The book is beautifully produced and richly illustrated.     

Swedish artisans in the nineteenth century

Abstract

The history of the artisan class and of the gild system in Sweden has been dealt with in a number of works, such as Professor E. Heckscher's Sveriges ekonomiska historia [The Economic History of Sweden] and in two of the volumes of the great work of Landsorganisationen ¹ Landsorganisationen, popularly known as ‘L.O’, the Swedish equivalent of the T.U.C. : Den svenska arbetarklassens historia [History of the Swedish Working Class], as well as in Professor E. Söderlund's Stockholms hantverkarklass 1720–1772 [The Artisan Class of Stockholm, 1720–1772]. These topics are of course also touched upon in histories of towns and other literature. However, in those studies which cover the whole country the subject has only been pursued to the end of the 18th century or the beginning of the 19th. The subsequent period is discussed in Henry Lindström's two books Näringsfrihetens utveckling i Sverige 1809–1836 and Näringsirihetsirågan i Sverige 1837–1864 [The Development of Industrial Freedom in Sweden, 1809–1836, and The Problem of Industrial Freedom in Sweden, 1837–1864], but only from a special point of view. Thanks, however, to the good offices of Sveriges hantuerks- och småindustriorgonisation (The Swedish Craft and Minor Industries Organisation), an attempt has now been made, in a work by Dr. Tom Söderberg that has been in preparation for some time, to fill the gap thus existing in respect of the period after 1815. The result, in spite of the relatively limited number of pages, is a very comprehensive exposition, even if the subject obviously cannot be exhausted within the given frame of reference.     

The ‘price revolution’ of the sixteenth century: Some Swedish evidence

Abstract

Since the publication in 1895 of George Wiebe's work, Zur Geschichte der Preisreuolution des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, ¹ the ‘price revolution’ has been a generally accepted concept found in most historical textbooks. By the ‘price revolution’, Wiebe meant the general rise in commodity prices which occurred in western Europe during the 16th century, the primary cause of which according to him was the influx of silver from the new Spanish possessions in America. His explanation also came to be generally accepted, but perhaps an even more significant contribution to the influence which this book has wielded is the fact that he synthesized in readily usable form the price analyses in existence when he wrote, i.e. at the end of the 19th century. In the 1930s his tables still formed the basis of sweeping conclusions and generalizations.