A study of commercial relations in eighteenth century Finland

Abstract

There has been a noticeable trend in recent research towards the use of private archives in the study of the commercial behaviour of and relations between individual businesses. Previously only public records have tended to be used, and attention has been focused on one aspect of an economy as a whole, or of a region, or a single important town. Even if, for example, the names of importers or exporters have been entered in customs records, official sources cannot provide an answer to anything like all the important questions. Many business histories have been published which have not contributed very much because they have generally not advanced beyond the narrative level, leaving untapped the incomparable material contained in accounts and ledgers. A pre-requisite for the study of private business firms is, of course, that documentary series should have been preserved unbroken for a fairly long period. Farmers did not keep account books, and only through the accounts of the merchants with whom they traded may we examine their businesses. Only a small proportion of merchants’ accounts in North Ostrobothnia from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been preserved; but entries may by even a single merchant in respect of goods bought from or sold to farmers add up over several decades to such an enormous material that some form of sampling is called for limiting him to the classification employed in the official statistics.     

Internal migration and industrialization in Finland, 1878–1939

Abstract

For the economic historian the statistics of population are quite as important as those of trade. To understand the economic development of a country it is necessary to have some knowledge I: 0 of the distribution of population at different periods, 2:0 of what changes have been effected by migration, and also 3 : 0 of the forces influencing migration. The analysis of these forces helps, moreover, to illuminate the nature of man's economic behaviour.     

Swedish foreign trade in the mid-sixteenth century

Abstract

For many years our image of economic conditions in 16th-century Sweden has been that depicted by Eli F. Heckscher: a medieval economy, reorganised by a central government of increasing authority in the person of King Gustav Vasa, and gradually transformed after his death in 1560. Sweden's foreign trade appeared to Heckscher as a particular example of his general rule. Its role in the national economy as a whole was very small: such commodities as were imported in exchange for exports were for the most part luxury goods; the only notable exception was the import of salt, to which Heckscher assigned extreme importance, because a vast consumption of salted food featured in his concept of the Swedish ‘medieval’ pattern of overall consumption. Heckscher saw no reason to postulate any major changes in the form and direction of Swedish trade during the reign of Gustav Vasa himself (1521–60); on the contrary, a theme vigorously argued in his book is that the political liberation of Sweden from the influence of Liibeck in the 1530s did not produce any shift of trade routes: most Swedish foreign trade still went via Lübeck. The customs ledgers of a single year, 1559, had an important influence on Heckscher's views.     

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.     

Wealth and credit in the Finnish countryside, 1850–1910

Abstract

In Finland, the early phase of industrialisation, that period of transition when trade and industry began to assume modern form, commenced around the middle of the nineteenth century. A legislative programme of economic liberalism was implemented: steam sawmills were permitted, the customs system reformed, foreign trade freed from controls and rural trade allowed. The supply of credit to farming was eased by the mortgage credit institute. The Free Trade Act of 1879 was based on completely free entrepreneurial activity. These measures, together with exogenous economic factors, stimulated new economic and intellectual forces.¹     

Contribution to the history of modern patent legislation in the United States and in France

Abstract

The history of patent legislation is the ugly duckling of history. The political historian cannot see anything worth mentioning in this connection; the economic historian will probably confine his attention to the English Statute of Monopolies though he may discuss patents in reference to the industrial revolution of the 18th century; the legal historian regards it as a speciality hardly worthy of the time and space normally devoted to the extensive and traditional subjects of the law. And, finally, the history of engineering does not yet belong to an acknowledged branch of science in which research can be carried out on any significant scale.     

A theorist on basic questions of economic history

Abstract

The author of this slim, essay-like book—now translated into Swedish¹—s-is a leading economic theoretician, noted for his contribution to the development of Keynesian theory and to the theory of the short-run dynamics of the trade cycle, as well as to modem theory of macro-economic growth. He is, however, known to a generation of modern economists above all as a ‘market’ theorist within the Walrasian tradition. In the present book he abandons his role as a strict market theorist, concerned with such things as the ‘existence’ and ‘stability’ of market equilibria, and attempts to explain the historical emergence and development of the market system or economy as an institution or set of institutions. He disarmingly forfeits any claims to expertise on this topic, and I think wisely so; but he is far from being altogether a layman or a newcomer to economic history. He professes an early love of the subject, and although it was a romance that never resulted in marriage, he has, through constant association with leading British economic historians and through his own writings in the history of economic thought, preserved and developed some of the faculties of a historian. Yet, this book-as its title indicates-is essentially theoretical. Hicks develops a set of interpretative hypotheses mainly by a priori reasoning. The empirical references must be looked upon more as illustrations of his theses than as evidence in support of their empirical validity.     

Helge W. Nordvik In Memoriam

Abstract

Professor Helge W. Nordvik died suddenly on October 18, only 55 years old. He was trained both as historian and as economist at the Universities of Oslo and Bergen, and at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. Most of his post-graduate education was spent at the LSE in London, where he obtained his MSc in economic history.     

Scandinavia and the advance of the Hanseatics

Abstract

In chapter IV of The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. II (1952), Professor M. M. Postan has devoted an unusual amount of space and attention to Scandinavian-Baltic trade. Its varying phases are expertly described, its characteristics clearly distinguished, and the Scandinavians are shown to have played a great and important role in the early Middle Ages. Postan is the first historian to have made use of the research of the last few decades into the Viking Age and to have described the Scandinavians, in a general presentation, as something more than mere pirates hostile to culture; he saw them rather as pioneers and active merchants who during the 9th and 10th centuries extended the existing commercial relations of the West with the Baltic, by way of the rivers of Russia, to the civilizations of the East beyond the Black and Caspian Seas, and who in this way ‘left, if anything, deeper trace than the Frisians in the preceding period’ (p. 178). The activities and achievements of their Cerman-Hanseatic successors are described with no less insight and understanding (pp. 184 ff.): by an ‘almost revolutionary’ transformation of commercial life they advanced from the Rhineland and founded a professional merchant class and a rich urban culture.     

Eli heckscher and the problem of synthesis a methodological note

Abstract

If the economic historian Donald McCloskey, well known for his rhetoric and his metaphors, is to be believed, the accomplished exponent of the discipline of economic history ought to possess two vital qualities. The scholar in question must be driven by “the historian's lust for facts and the economist's lust for logic.”¹ In a drastic analogy with the circus world, he likens this scholar to a tightrope walker who, to provoke the applause of the public, forces himself to cycle blindfold over Niagara Falls balancing an eel on his nose! I leave aside the question whether anyone has ever managed to perform this feat or is ever likely to. But the problem is challenging and interesting.     

The growth of population in Norway 1735–1855

Abstract

The rapid growth of population in many underdeveloped countries during recent years has caused widespread concern. It has, not surprisingly, also helped to focus the attention of demographic historians upon the processes of population growth in western societies, during their pre-industrial and early industrial stages. Scandinavia has occupied a central place in the discussion; chiefly, because here, by a happy accident, the industrial revolution was preceded by an administrative revolution. As a result of this we have an unparalleled set of population statistics dating from the mid- eighteenth century. Sweden, in particular, has become something of a Mecca for demographic historians. Of all the nordic countries her statistics are the most comprehensive and through such studies as those of Swaine Thomas¹ Gille,² Heckscher³ and Utterström,⁴ the most thoroughly explored. Although less well known, the Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic material is also of a very high order. Perhaps in the past some of it, in Norway at least, has been accepted too uncritically. Nevertheless, despite the one or two startling errors in the present Norwegian population statistics (they are discussed in the first part of this paper), Norway remains one of the few countries where it is possible to analyse pre-industrial population movements on a statistical basis.     

Illegal quays: Elizabethan customs reforms and suppression of the coastal trade of Christchurch,Hampshire

This article considers deficiencies in the designation and reassessment of Legal Quays (those authorized for foreign trade), and the detrimental impact of these and other Elizabethan customs reforms from the perspective of Christchurch, a small coastal town then in Hampshire. Throttling the flow of merchandise through such places drove trade, and consequently economic growth, to those other places that enjoyed a convenient Legal Quay. In places without such quays, regulation and the farming of customs caused (and also facilitated) the suppression not only of international trade but also of domestic maritime trade. Though otherwise encouraged by Crown policy, entrepreneurial endeavour in Christchurch was stifled by customs regulation, in particular by the logistical burden introduced with remote record‐keeping for coastal trade in the port books. The town seemed unable to break free of Southampton's controlling influence in order to realize its own apparent economic potential.     

The ‘Special’ World: Stalin's Power Apparatus and the Soviet System's Secret Structures Of Communication

ABSTRACT

Two of the most defining trends of the nineteenth century were the growth of international trade and the increased role of government activities in the economy. In the conjuncture between these developments lie taxes on foreign trade. Sweden was one of the examples where customs revenue became the single most important source of revenue before WWI. This article sets out to test how this source of revenue could increase as much as it did. The analysis focuses mainly on trade policy and how tariffs were set and how that affected revenue. The results show that Swedish liberalisation of trade forced a switch in the fiscal structure of tariffs, moving revenue to fewer commodities. Increased importance was given to consumption goods with lower elasticity of demand. Trade continued to increase under fiscal taxation, which led to increases in revenue. During the early period increased revenue was achieved with higher tariffs on a few key commodities. Towards the end of the century tariffs on agricultural and capital goods became more fiscally relevant, which could have clashed with protectionist intentions. The article highlights that more work is needed on this fiscal component of trade policy.     

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.      

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     

Technical change and the ‘technology’ myth

Abstract

In recent years, historians and other English-speaking commentators on technical change and technical functions have often chosen to discuss these matters under the heading ‘technology’. Thus, there have been discussions about such matters as ‘echnological innovation’, ‘technological invention’, and even ‘the imperatives of technology’, ‘the technostructure’ and ‘technological drivenness’.¹ One economist with a special interest in historical matters, Kuznets, has virtually defined a separable condition of ‘modernity’ as the era of ‘technology’ — ‘The epochal innovation that distinguishes the modern economic epoch is the extended application of science to problems of economic production’ alternatively, it is ‘the utilization of a potential provided by modern technology’. An economic historian (Musson) has it that ‘applied science is … the major force behind modern economic growth’. And a prominent historian of the so-called ‘technology’, Forbes, has argued that in ‘our modern world both technology and engineering are branches of applied science’.²     

The ‘annual budget’ of north Finnish farmers at the end of the 17th century

Abstract

The extent to which the 17th-century farmer received money for his produce, for the payment of taxes, and how much he may then have had left over for other purposes is a question which has been but little discussed in historical research either in Finland or in the other Nordic countries. The solution of the problem is made difficult by the defects in, or even absence of, trade statistics for the period, and because it is not known what proportion of his taxes the farmer paid in kind and what proportion in money. Ostrobothnia or, more generally, northern Finland, is the most suitable area for study, especially for the purpose of examining the payment of taxes. It has been possible to show that in Ostrobothnia the taxes of the 17th-century farmers were paid almost without exception by the urban burgher, the very man who provided the farmer with credit. ¹ According to an inspection carried out in 1679. about 80 per cent of the Ostrobothnian fanners did their main business with those burghers to whom they were chiefly in debt. Finnish State Archives (FSA), Crown fiscal records, vol. 9177. Luukko, Etelä-Pohjanmaan historia [History of Southern Ostrobothnia] III (1945), pp. 249–257. A more difficult problem in Ostrobothnia is the volume of the annual exports of the towns in the province during this period. Even if estimates could be made, it would still be difficult to tell how many of the export goods arriving in Ostrobothnian towns originated from the province itself and how many from central and eastern Finland. Moreover, the farmers' own shipping, i.e. the transport of rural produce through the Ostrobothnian towns direct to the staple towns or elsewhere, has also to be taken into account.     

Norway's liberalisation of trade and payments in the 1950s

Abstract

While historical scholarship has focused on the domestic macroeconomic adjustment to trade liberalisation of the 1950s in terms of fiscal, monetary and incomes policies, this study deals with the liberalisation itself. From the perspective of the domestic political economy it provides an account of Norway's policies towards the European trade and payments schemes. It argues that although national ambitions were constrained by multilateral European liberalisation, a successful policy mix of exploiting EPU credits, delaying import quota liberalisation and selectively raising tariffs was pursued. It also argues that the government's sympathy towards the stillborn Nordic customs union in 1954 originated in this policy mix.     

The Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis and Air Pollution in Finland

Abstract

The historiography of mercantilism has been described as a series of disconnected still pictures which reflect the shifting viewpoints of economic thought.¹ However, historians have favoured different concepts of mercantilism not only in response to the shifts of economic science but also because they have held, explicitly or implicitly, different opinions on the problem of how economic ideas are formed and of the role they have played in historical development. The following reexamination of some of those ‘stills’ concentrate on such differences.²     

Denmark and the OEEC, 1948–1959

Abstract

By the late 1940s, the Danish economy was dependent on competitive and specialised agricultural exports to the British and German markets, In the 1930s and 1940s, protective barriers had given rise to a home-market-oriented industry that secured the main part of urban employment. As a small country with low tariffs and a high foreign trade dependency Denmark embraced the Marshall Plan and the OEEC. However, due to its particular structure of foreign trade and the protectionist measures the Danish economy was vulnerable to the imbalances of the OEEC's Trade Liberalisation Programme, The Danish response was to commit the large economies to the legal framework within the OEEC. In the mid-1950s the Danish government turned to a more aggressive strategy combining the advocacy for liberalisation and freer agricultural trade with a deliberate delay of the liberalisation of industrial protection, While the Nordic customs union had little chance of seeing the light of day in the 1940s and early 1950s, inter-Nordic consultations remained a valuable tactical asset in the OEEC. However, in the mid-1950s the plans for a Nordic customs union became an important part of the Danish effort to bolster the country's bargaining position and to modernise and industrialise the economy.