An Instrumental Connection. Economic Diplomacy, International Arms Trade and Overseas Aspirations between Portugal and Sweden, 1640–80

This paper offers an Iberian perspective on Sweden’s ‘Age of Greatness’ by looking at the intersection of international politics and trade involving Portugal and Sweden after Portugal regained its independence from Spain at the end of 1640. Sweden’s exports of timber, naval stores, iron, copper, and weapons to Braganza Portugal are seen in the context of the Portuguese wars for overseas trade and colonial settlement against the Dutch Republic and the struggle for autonomy against Spain in its home turf. By revisiting the accounts of diplomatic actors, this contribution will discuss how Portugal turned to Sweden for diplomatic recognition and new consumption markets and carriers for its export sector. It will also be shown how Sweden stood to gain by adding a new customer to its military export sector and by tapping into Portugal’s colonial goods and salt, while at the same time it entertained the prospect of using the Portuguese offshoots in West Africa and the East Indies to further its ambitions in overseas trade.

A second-hand shipwreck market: Salvage auctions in mid-eighteenth-century Helsinki

When a merchant ship was wrecked in the Gulf of Finland in the eighteenth century it was salvaged (mainly its running rigging), together with its cargo. In eighteenth-century Sweden, salvage was the monopoly of the Northern Diving and Salvage Company (1729–1802). In Helsinki, several salvage auctions were held each year. Salvage documents are useful sources not only for investigating the demand for ship parts, but also for identifying ships and explaining past marine accidents. The detailed technical knowledge provided by auction protocols offers insight into ships and their equipment in the early modern Baltic. Many ships were on their way to St Petersburg (established in 1703), the home port of European naval stores, but many of them were wrecked on the rocky coasts of Helsinki. This gave rise to a strange kind of shipping based on random imports and the use of recycled cordage, sails and anchors from the shores blessed by unfortunate ships.

The Making of a Timber Colony: British North America, the Navy Board, and Global Resource Extraction in the Age of Napoleon

This article recounts the worldwide search for timber undertaken by the Navy Board, the administrative body under the authority of the Admiralty responsible for the supply of naval stores and the construction and repair of ships during the Napoleonic Wars. The closure of the Baltic by France and its European allies is considered the main factor in making British North America a timber colony. Yet the process through which the forests of the Laurentian Plateau and the North Appalachians came to fuel the dockyards of England and Scotland is taken for granted. To acquire this commodity, through merchants, diplomats, and commissioned agents, the power of the British state reached globally, reshaped ecological relationships, and integrated new landscapes to the Imperial economy. Many alternatives to the Baltic were indeed considered and tentatively exploited. Only a mixture of contingency, political factors, and environmental constraints forced the Board to contract in Lower Canada and New Brunswick rather than in areas such as the Western Cape, the Brazilian coast, or Bombay's hinterland.

Les réseaux négociants européens et les échanges entre la France et l'Europe du Nord (XVIIe-XIXe siècles)

France was a country that had great agricultural potential and natural resources that allowed it to not be dependent on external markets, especially raw materials from the North. French ports, however, maintained close relations with the Baltic countries where they marketed many products and obtained supplies of naval stores and, depending on the economic situation, cereals. This paper proposes to revisit the French trade with the Baltic over a period of two centuries by using the Sound Toll Accounts whose entire data is now available to the research community. As we will see, several evidences are to be reconsidered.