Swedish Variations on Dutch Commercial Institutions, 1605-1655
2005; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 77; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2163-8195
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Economic and Social Studies
ResumoPOLITICAL HISTORIANS know Sweden's seventeenth century as the Great Power Period or Stormaktstid; economic historians know it as a period when Sweden's contact with the rest of the European continent increased, as suggested by the title of the second part of Eli Heckscher's classic economic history of Sweden, The Economy Under International Influence, 1600-1720. The exchanges took many different forms, from an expansion of the circulation of goods and coin to the immigration of workers bringing new skills and capital with significant effects upon Sweden's society and economy (see Floren and Ternhag; Sandstrom). Exchange also included intellectual and cultural aspects. Sweden's rulers consciously imitated and adapted Dutch innovations in commercial organization such as the chartered joint-stock company and the public bank as part of a broader project to improve and expand Sweden's trade. Historians once took these efforts seriously in viewing them as noble attempts to strengthen the kingdom and ameliorate the lot of its subjects. For most of file twentieth century, however, skeptical historians have mocked seventeenth-century statesmen's efforts to improve and increase their realm's commerce, and the usual fate of chartered companies cast in the mold of the Dutch East India Company shows why. Created amidst a flurry of projectors' confident proclamations that they would work wonders--even prepare the realm for the Second Coming--most ended pathetically with knowledge of incompetence leavened only by suspicions of corruption. Recent historians tend to agree with Heckscher that Swedish companies, undoubtable examples of Dutch influence, usually fit this pattern (Heckscher 592-7. On Heckscher, see Hettne; Utterstrom; Carlson; Flarierski). They generally concur with Heckscher's praise of the seemingly straightforward, yet prescient, views of Sweden's Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, who stated in 1630 that trade should be frij ..., och ju friere ju heller (Oxenstierna 1:347) [free, and the freer the better] (see also Stellan Dahlgren 3; Nilsson 515, 522; and Wetterberg II:728-9). But Oxenstierna's views were neither prescient nor straightforward. Historians should stay their skepticism long enough to examine how Oxenstierna and his compatriots viewed the problems they faced and how they tried to solve them, for their efforts to draw upon Dutch innovations in commercial governance reveal the ambiguity attendant upon emulation and the creativity inherent in cultural reception. During Oxenstierna's lifetime, there was no science of economics and no widely accepted doctrine about the production and distribution of wealth that it seems useful to identify as mercantilism (Judges; Runefelt). Swedish rulers needed to draw upon different discourses and practices of governance in order to compose their commercial counsels; historians need to set those words in the context of those languages to recover their meanings and intentions (Pocock). The imitation of Dutch commercial institutions not only reveals something of the richness of seventeenth-century statecraft, but also of the complexity of these men's desires, policies, and powers. Swedish statesmen were deeply conscious of differences between their own forest-covered land and what Oxenstierna once called the civil nations of continental Europe (Revera; Runeby; Gustafsson). Some argued that Sweden needed to be civilized through improved governance, and they scoured works of political and legal theory to find ways to increase the kingdom's reputation and power in this way. They looked first to ancient Rome to see how to combine civility, opulence, and power, but they also scrutinized the states of their own day (Niedermann; Huppert; Starobinski). Their problems were many. One nobleman complained that hwarfore och inthet stort Konungerijke, ia nepligen nagot gott Furstendomme i werlden sa faa stader och warre, an Swerige (Sveriges Ridderskap 75) [no great kingdom, yea, even no good principality in the world has so few and worse cities than Sweden]. …
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