Swedish Shipping Industry : a European and Global Perspective, 1600-1800

Abstract

At the beginning of the seventeenth century Sweden was fairly backward poor country in Europe’s northern periphery a kingdom with a large territory stretching eastward in the European landmass but with few naval ambitions, especially in comparison with Sweden’s archenemy Denmark.(2) Sweden had an important navy, but an insignificant merchant marine. The kingdom’s foreign trade was limited, concentrated to the southern Baltic and carried by foreigners.(3) After two hundred years the situation was very different. Sweden stayed neutral during the first decade of the French Revolutionary Wars, as well as during other late eighteenthcentury conflicts, and it became an important neutral carrier in European and the world waters. According to French diplomatic reports in the mid-1780s the Swedish merchant marine was the fifth in Europe, only behind Britain, France, the Dutch Republic and Denmark-Norway, and in front of Spain, Two Sicilies and Portugal.(4) Moreover, the Swedish flag became the second most frequent in the Sound, only behind the British, and in front of the Dutch and the Danes. Undoubtedly, by 1800 Sweden was an important European carrier. From an inward-looking perspective, shipping sector became in the course of the time a important and dynamic part of Sweden’s economy. The freight incomes during the French Revolutionary Wars made a substantial share of the country’s foreign trade profit.(5) Another important change concerned the geographical scope of Swedish shipping operations. While the early seventeenth-century shipping was limited mainly to coastal shipping and traffic across the