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.     

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.     

Women's opportunities in Swedish society

Abstract

Research in economic history has been accompanied by rapidly developing research in social history. Demographic history, the family and social change, together with popular movements, have been taken up as objects of study. The three Swedish studies discussed here arise from projects in these fields. The studies of Sten Carlsson and Kerstin Moberg form part of projects in the Department of History at the University of Uppsala on ‘the family in demographic and social change in Sweden after 1800’ and on ‘functions of the class society: popular movements’. Gunhild Kyle's study is part of a project in the Department of History at the University of Gothenburg on ‘women in industrial society’.     

Swedish Financial Politics, 1815–18

Abstract

Dr. Per Gudmund Andreen's dissertation deals with a period in Swedish history which is of great interest both to the economic and the general historian. From 1812 to 1834, the year of the final currency reform, the problems created by inflation and by post-war crises dominated Swedish domestic politics; only the great issues of foreign policy engaged more of the government's attention.     

A hundred years of Swedish timber exports

Abstract

This is a memorial publication issued by the Swedish Wood Exporters' Association (Svenska Trävaruexportföreningen) on the occasion of the Association's 75th anniversary. Professor Soderlund of Stockholm University has both edited the work and written the largest single section - the history of the timber exporting industry during the period 1850-19°0. The second half-century has been shared by Miss Annagreta Hallberg and Mr. Jan Sandin, with 1922-23 as the dividing line.     

Is Swedish research in economic history internationally integrated?

Abstract

This paper presents empirical evidence of the international integration of Swedish economic historians. Contrary to the claims of a recent national evaluation of the discipline, the Swedish shares of international publications and conference presentations are robustly below available cross-country and cross-discipline benchmarks. Also considering levels of research inputs, the relative underperformance of the Swedish field is alarming. Four main explanations to this situation are forwarded: 1) being among the largest economic history communities in the world, Sweden has become self-sufficient and almost independent of the international arena; 2) the dominating research language is Swedish; 3) the dominating publication format is the monograph (in Swedish); and 4) Swedish economic historians are reluctant to use modern economic theories and statistical analysis to complement the traditionally dominant qualitative research methods.     

Economic history research in Sweden since the mid-1970s

Abstract

In the Swedish university system, economic history forms an independent subject falling within the faculty of social sciences. Professorships in the subject were established at Stockholm, Gothenburg, Uppsala, Lund and Umeå between the end of the 1940s and the end of the 1960s. A second chair was established at Lund in 1988. Furthermore, resources have been increased step by step through the addition of other kinds of teaching and research services, including a lectureship at Örebro. Teachers from departments of economic history give tuition not only within the bounds of their own subject but also as components of lengthy courses of professional training, for example, for history teachers and economists. AU the departments in the subject provide research training leading to writing of dissertations in economic history. Most of them also offer a licentiate examination as an intermediate stage on the way.     

Dr⊘mmen om tryghed

Abstract

Sources in public archives for Swedish economic history over the last four centuries are more homogeneous, frequently more reliable and, in relation to the subjects treated, more abundant than those of most other countries. For the earlier centuries the reverse is true: source material for economic history is both scantier and less uniform, and the path to quantitative determination is longer and more difficult than in many other countries. Between the two periods the boundary runs, surprisingly sharp and clear, at about the year 1540 when Gustavus Vasa's national monarchy had been in existence for roughly two decades.     

Neutrality and free trade: Sweden and trade liberalisation, 1948–1958

Abstract

This article discusses the Swedish attitude to European economic cooperation, an attitude that has been described as reluctant. The traditional explanation for this has been Sweden's neutrality. This explanation has been challenged by researchers, who have claimed that a nationally self-sufficient social democracy was responsible for the reluctance towards Europe. In this article, neutrality is still seen as the main explanatory factor. Swedish strategies for dealing with European integration linked the concepts of neutrality and global free trade. Nordic cooperation was also seen as a strategy to meet demands for European integration. Swedish activities within the European organisations were limited by neutrality concerns. Within these limits Sweden worked for economic policy solutions, which might be called social democratic.     

Business history as economic history

Abstract

Since economic history became established as an academic discipline in the Swedish universities in the 1950s, more than ISO doctoral dissertations have been published. Of these, about 10% can be characterized as business monographs, while roughly another 10% deal with aspects of trade and industry, relying mainly on business archives. Business history, accordingly, has become an established part of economic history in Sweden. Most of the literature dealing with the history of firms does not, however, appear in the form of doctoral theses, a wide range of books has been published, from sometimes heavy, academic works by established scholars, to glossy anniversary pamphlets lacking scholarly interest.¹     

Book Review

Abstract

The importance of Swedish iron ore to the re-armament and wartime economy of Nazi Germany has been touched upon in a number of writings about the international politics of the period here under review. Erik Lonnroth has demonstrated how the question of continued ore deliveries constituted the flashpoint of Swedish-German relations during the 1930s.¹ Gunnar Häggläf describes the Swedish Foreign Office's balancing act between English and German desires in regard to the ore trade, and their role in the regulating of trade with the two belligerents in the autumn of 1939.² Magne Skodvin has explored the strategic and economic aspects of the attack on Norway and Denmark on 9 April 1940.³     

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.     

Increased international integration is a prerequisite for more and better research in economic history

Abstract

In the article “Is Swedish Research in Economic History Internationally Integrated?” ¹ Daniel Waldenström, Is Swedish Research in Economic History Internationally Integrated?, Scandinavian Economic History Review, vol. LIII, 2005:2, 50–77 , I present new facts on the past international publications and conference participation activity of Swedish economic historians. In contrast to claims made in a recent large public investigation, my data show that Swedish economic historians have not published extensively in international journals, or books, in recent years. This can in part be explained by the custom to write predominantly monographs, to write mostly in Swedish, and to use hardly any quantitative methods or theory-based economic analysis. Naturally, I am well aware that there may also be some other factors at work, and that empirical investigations of this kind are always open to objections. Problems regarding sample selection, variable definitions and so forth cannot be avoided, and to focus mainly on journal article publications in a field where books and anthologies play an important role raises some concern. ² See, e.g., the discussion in my article on these issues relating to the works by Diana Hicks and others. However, my article does not advocate any methodological dogmatism and acknowledges that economic history research can be conducted and presented in many different ways, using several different methodologies. The important thing is to recognise that there is great potential in combining such an open-minded methodological attitude with an active interest and participation in the research that appears in the many international peer-reviewed journals. This would not be to import some foreign (American) methods or views of the field so much as trying to revive the true Swedish economic history in the spirit of Eli F. Heckscher. In my view, this is the most consistent strategy to ensure both more and better future Swedish research in economic history.     

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.     

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.     

Sweden's iron ore exports to Germany, 1933–1944

Abstract

Rolf Karlbom's article about Swedish iron ore exports to Germany during the Nazi era¹ is an attempt to examine a very important problem as yet unsolved—the significance of the Swedish ore deliveries to Germany. His study begins with the following two questions:² 1. ‘How much of the total consumption of this raw material by German industry did Swedish ore cover during these years?’

2. ‘How far was access to Swedish iron ore a sine qua non for the continuance of the armaments programme?’

3. These basic questions indicate the main problems. Karlbom's answers to them are not wholly convincing because of some weaknesses in his approach.

     

The Birkarlians in the melting pot

Abstract

In 1924 the Finnish historian, Jalmari Jaakkola, published a study Pirkkalaisliikkeen synty (The Birth of the Birkarlian Movement) in which he argued convincingly for the theory that the Birkarlians (Pirkkalaiset), who lived in the sixteenth century in the northernmost corner of the Gulf of Bothnia and levied taxes on the Lapps, were of Finnish origin. In Jaakkola's opinion, the Birkarlians were the successors of even older west-Finnish armed Lapland-farers, the men of Kainuu, who from at least the thirteenth century onwards made long hunting treks, chiefly from the parish of Pirkkala (Birkala) in Upper Satakunta, into Lapland and along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, and gradually subjected a great proportion of the Lapps to taxation. This theory has been generally accepted in Finnish historical literature, and a number of Swedish scholars have even given it their blessing with minor reservations.¹ In the summer of 1964, six months after the death of Professor Jaakkola, a complete surprise was sprung from the Swedish side. Birger Steckzén, former keeper of Sweden's military archives, published a 500-page work entitled Birkarlar och lappar (Birkarlians and Lapps). In it, he tried to refute the Finnish theory and made the Birkarlians of the Far North into Swedes. The Swedish word 'birkarls', in his opinion, is an archaic form of the ‘biurkarl’ (biur = beaver in Old Swedish). The Birkarls, i.e. beavermen, were thus, he claimed, Swedish beaver trappers who subjugated the whole of Lapland in the early Middle Ages.     

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.     

A new account of Swedish society since 1668

Abstract

To mark the 300th anniversary of the foundation of the Swedish central bank (Riksbanken) it was decided to publish a broad survey of the development of Swedish society during the period the bank had been operating. Kurt Samuelsson (formerly Reader in economic history, now in sociology) was commissioned to write it and given a free hand. He chose to emphasize the economic, social and powerpolitical aspects of developments, which means that in essentials his perspective is that of the economic historian.     

The transatlantic tar trade

Abstract

The tar trade has been of especial interest to Finnish commercial history, as tar has been regarded as Finland's main export article in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.¹ However, the studies of Professor Aulis J. Alanen suggest that this was no longer the case during the final phase of the Swedish regime, when the boom in shipbuilding for export, the new sawmill industry and the rising incomes from freights reduced the share of tar exports in the balance of payments. The significance of tar production and the tar trade was nevertheless fairly considerable for a long time in Northern Finland.