Finnish mortality in the eighteenth century: The sources and the reality

Abstract

Mr. Niels Steensgaard, in his ‘Consuls and Nations in the Levant from 1570 to 1650’¹ referred in note 4, p. 14, to my article on the beginning of Anglo-Turkish relations, and stated: ‘Apparently Horniker is not aware of the existence of the French capitulations of 1569’. There is no point in arguing whether or not I am aware of them, but later on I will give my reasons for omitting reference to them in my article. The implication of Steensgaard's statement, however, is that they were new capitulations, which, of course, they were not. They were a renewal, in the form of a grant,² by Sultan Selim II of the treaty concluded between his predecessor Suleiman I Kanuni and Francis I in 1536.³ Revised capitulations were granted to France in 158l.4 These, and the treaty of 1536, gave the French certain exclusive privileges in the Ottoman Empire. And until 1593, when Elizabeth I of England obtained capitulations which gave her subjects the same privileges as those enjoyed by the French, France was the paramount capitulatory nation in the Levant.     

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.     

English county populations in the later eighteenth century1

When directing the first English census John Rickman was intent not only on discovering the size of the population in 1801 but also on tracing past trends both nationally and for individual counties. He returned to the latter investigation on several later occasions, notably in the 1830s. There have been many subsequent attempts to improve upon his national estimates, but his estimates of county totals have continued to be used extensively, either unchanged or slightly modified. Rickman was aware that his estimates were subject to wide margins of error. For the later eighteenth century it is possible to produce new estimates which are probably substantially more accurate, taking advantage of the fact that after Hardwicke’s Act (1753) the registration of marriages in Anglican parish registers, unlike that of baptisms and burials, was virtually complete. They show that the contrast between population growth rates in ‘industrial’ counties and those in which agriculture continued to predominate were significantly more marked than suggested by Rickman’s estimates. The same exercise that produces county estimates also yields hundredal totals, which will in future allow a more refined account of relative growth and stagnation to be made.     

New light on eighteenth century Sweden

Abstract

The second part of the late Professor Eli F. Heckscher's Economic History of Sweden,¹ with its 894 pages of text, together with notes, tables, diagrams, maps and index, is a large work even by comparison with the first part, which, in 707 pages of text, covered both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In his introduction the author regrets that he was unable to retain the same clarity of layout. In fact, however, too concentrated an exposition would not have rendered justice to the astonishing research and the intensive thought, which have gone into the making of this book, and Heckscher's ability to capture the reader's attention by his lucidity of style and accessible presentation of his subject-matter is here shown to full advantage.²     

Inequality among the poor of eighteenth century Amsterdam

This paper examines nearly 1000 poor to middling citizen households from the city of Amsterdam with a view to assessing their place in the larger wealth distribution of the city as preliminarily sketched in the work of Soltow, van Zanden, and others. It utilizes the probate inventories drawn up by the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage, which when coupled with the marriage, baptism, and burial records of the city archives, allow for the reconstruction of the household circumstances, material, financial, and demographic, of the families associated with the institution. These data yield detailed information about precisely the kind of people who were systematically excluded from the tax registers and financial records which form the basis for our current knowledge about inequality among historical populations. The lower portion of the wealth distribution is described and then linked via housing rental rates to a more complete distribution of the various social classes in the city. Finally, the determinants of inequality within the ranks of the poor are examined and financial assets of even very small amounts are found to be critical in shaping the socio-economic experience of the lower citizenry.     

Finnish trade in the early seventeenth century

Abstract

Mercantilist principles were observed more strictly in Sweden-Finland than in many other European countries. Towns were classified according to their right to carryon foreign trade; full ‘staple rights’, viz. the right to pursue both active and passive foreign trade, were held by no more than four Finnish towns, situated on the Gulf of Finland, viz. Turku (Åbo), Viipuri (Viborg), Helsinki (Hclsingfors) and Porvoo (BorgÅ), the last of which lost this right in 1639. The commercial policy which was pursued during the Period of Ascendancy (1611–1718) exerted an important influence upon the development of the urban social structure in Finland and it was the regulations governing foreign trade which were the decisive factor in limiting the growth of a merchant ‘aristocracy’ to the staple towns. These matters are illustrated in the introductory part of Dr. Möller's dissertation.     

English timber imports from Northern Europe in the eighteenth century

Abstract

English commercial history has tended to concern itself with tracing the pattern of exports, especially of textiles, rather than that of imports. There are, however, certain commodities on the import side that have attracted more attention than others—strategically important articles, for example, such as tar and pitch, which used to be designated as ‘naval stores’. These commodities, together with iron, constituted northern Europe's most important contribution to English imports in the eighteenth century.¹ The import of ‘naval stores’, like that of iron, was based upon northern Europe's vast forest resources combined with proximity to England. Of the regions within the orbit of English trade, only North America could boast continuous tracts of forest on a comparable scale; but the long transatlantic crossing retarded such imports from America, for wood and wood products were bulky commodities in relation to their value.     

Baltic iron and the British iron industry in the eighteenth century

Before the revolution in coal technology that swept the British iron industry in the last years of the eighteenth century, native ironmasters were unable to meet the burgeoning demand for malleable bar iron. The shortfall was made good by imports of bar iron from the Baltic, first from Sweden, then from Russia. This article presents new empirical evidence on the role played by Baltic iron in the Georgian economy. It also considers the impact of Swedish and Russian iron on domestic ironmasters as they sought organizational, as well as technological, ways to overcome the energy constraints facing the industry.     

Labour policy and population thought in eighteenth century Sweden

Abstract

In the eighteenth century Sweden made a pioneering contribution to population statistics, and it is this which gives to the contemporary Swedish debate on population problems its principal claim to international interest. Ideas, policies, and statistics were of course closely interconnected.     

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.     

Structural change in the Dutch trade with the baltic in the eighteenth century

Abstract

Affluence easily veils failure and cripples creativity. In the eighteenth century, the Dutch Republic probably enjoyed the world's highest national per capita income. The Republic was the first state to ascend beyond the modest pre-industrial income levels, interestingly enough without itself industrializing. Yet, economically the Republic stagnated visibly. Ships on the international routes increasingly passed Amsterdam by and trade — the old foundation of prosperity — declined in the midst of a general revival of North and West European commerce. The stagnation affected all walks of economic life and created a feeling of resignation that baffled many attempts at redress.¹ The fascination with the fate of the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth century arises in part from this juxtaposition of affluence and decay. Did structural change cause the decline of Dutch trade or was it precisely the want of structural adjustments that became fatal? There is a great deal of confusion in Dutch historiography on this issue. Johan de Vries — to start with the Nestor among the historians of the Dutch decline — speaks of ‘structural alterations in the trade’ that ultimately undermined the position     

Swedish shipping with the Netherlands in the second half of the eighteenth century

Abstract

In March 1792 the Amsterdams Galley of 90 lasts (ca. 180 metric tons), commanded by Captain Henrik Melle Feddes of Stockholm, left for Amsterdam. It carried 260 shippounds (à 136 kg) of bar iron, 900 barrels of tar, 240 barrels of pitch and 42 shippounds of alum. Five Stockholm merchants were responsible for the cargo, which was valued at 2,374 Swedish rix-dollars. The ship was registered as having arrived in Amsterdam on 6 July 1792. The Dutch customs officers determined its lastage as 126 gross and 82 net, but registered no further details about its cargo.