The Struggle for Baltic Markets: Powers in Conflict, 1558-1618

Abstract

In recent decades Swedish historians have been inclined to see the Baltic question of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a struggle for the control of Russia's trade with Western Europe. An earlier school of Swedish historians generally had overlooked the operation of economic forces, attaching primary importance to political and strategic considerations. The reinterpretation of Swedish Baltic historiography began in 1935 with the publication of Ingvar Andersson's study of Erik XIV's Baltic diplomacy during the 1560s. The economic interpretation of Baltic policy begun by Andersson has been further developed and documented by Artur Attman in a number of important monographs and articles published since 1944. The Struggle for Baltic Markets: Powers in Conflict, 1558-1618 is the most recent of these studies and s(immarizes some thirty to forty years of research and publication concerning Baltic history. Attman's story begins with Ivan IV's attack on Livonia in 1558 and ends in 1617-18 with the Treaty of Stolbovo and the conclusion of a fourteen-year truce between Russia and Poland. According to Attman, during these sixty years Russia aimed at establishing direct trade and commercial contacts with Western Europe, Sweden tried to control Russia's trade via the Arctic and the Gulf of Finland, and the main objective of Poland-Lithuania's Baltic policy was to shut Russia off from the Baltic Sea and gain control over the lines of communication to the Russian market (p. 209). Missing from Attman's monograph is the broader context of interacting economic, social, strategic, and political forces that help us understand Baltic policy during the period 1558-1618. For example, because of the little attention Attman pays to political considerations, the reader is hardly aware of Sweden's vulnerable position in the Baltic area and Scandinavia as long as Denmark controlled Norway, Halland, Skane, Gotland, and Osel. Nor does the reader obtain from Attman's book a clear picture of the complicated social, economic, political, and military factors that led to the Treaty of Stolbovo and the failure of Russian policy in the Baltic region. Even the economic side of Baltic policy is not presented by Attman in the perspective of the place of the Baltic in the European world economy, for he does not bring out clearly the role of Polish grain exports in feeding the English and the Dutch, in advancing the prosperity of European seafarers and merchants, and in contributing to the economic and social decline of Polish peasants and townspeople. His presentation of Baltic policy tends to be one dimensional and, as economic history, old fashioned.