CHAPTER 1 Introduction
1.1 Why study eighteenth-century Swedish consuls?
The Cinderella service—this is how the historian Desmond C.M. Platt has described the British consular service in his outline of its history since 1825 ; an ironic way of illustrating the discrepancy between humble consuls and high- level diplomats. 2 It is clear that the same social gap separated the Swedish consuls from their more upper-class colleagues at the Department of Foreign Affairs. While high-level diplomats were recruited from Sweden’s aristocratic circles, consuls generally had, by contrast, relatively modest mercantile backgrounds. And while grand issues of foreign policy preoccupied career diplomats; consuls helped shipmasters to pay port duties in Lisbon or Livorno , or mailed the latest issues of price currents from New York . Consuls did not make important political decisions, and did not participate in the political game at Stockholm—with some notable exceptions.
Indeed, historians have seldom considered consuls as significant and interesting actors; this perhaps is the reason why the history of the consular service has received such limited attention in Sweden’s diplomatic history. 3 The only historical context in which the Swedish consular service has been studied more deeply centres on the break-up of the union between Sweden and Norway in 1905 . In the 1890s , the conflict concerning appointments of Swedish-Norwegian consuls and the organization of the consular service became a serious threat to relations between the two states, and is usually seen as the primary cause of the end of the Scandinavian union. 4
One of the aims of this study is to redress this limited perspective. With the help of new theoretical tools, and via a combination of diplomatic and economic history, I will examine the role that the Swedish consular service played between 1720 and 1815.
The starting point of the study, the 1720s, marks the traditional turning point in Sweden’s history. By 1718–21, Sweden had lost its great power status, and political interest shifted from military to commercial priorities; in a way, the active economic policy of the 1720s and 1730s was a substitute for military expansion. The Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula played an important role in this new policy. This region was interesting from the point of Swedish commercial expansion but, at the same time, was an area where the Swedes lacked established contacts. The establishment of the consular service was a putative solution to this problem.
Southern Europe, in particular, is an interesting area from other points of view: for example, Sweden’s semi-diplomatic relations with the North-African states, and the active role of Swedish shipping in the endemic warfare in the Mediterranean. In the established accounts of Swedish trade with southern Europe, the commodity exchange has received major attention; shipping, on the other hand, has been seen as a necessary, but not especially profitable or unprofitable complement. 5 Because of its own Navigation Act, so the argument runs, Sweden had to build up sufficient shipping capacity to enable the country to carry its exports and import salt and other southern-European commodities. In contrast, I will argue that shipping and commodity exchange complemented each other in a rather complex way; in fact, in specific situations the commodity exchange might be a less profitable complement to highly profitable shipping. Therefore, in the first case study (chapters 3, 4, and 5), much more attention than in previous research will be paid to Swedish shipping and its relationship to commodity trade.
The concluding point of this case study is the end of the Napoleonic Wars. After 1815, the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula lost much of their importance in Sweden’s shipping and trade. On the one hand, this might be explained by the lost basis of neutrality for Sweden’s shipping after 1815. On the other hand, different geographical areas, in particular the Baltic and Britain, reappeared as leading areas of trade growth.
The second case study (chapters 6 and 7) concerns the establishment of the Swedish consular service in the United States, and Swedish transatlantic trade and shipping after 1783. There are two important reasons for this choice. First, the establishment of transatlantic contacts in the 1780s followed the same policy as the establishment of the consular service in southern Europe after 1720; in addition, Swedish transatlantic shipping developed as an extension of Swedish shipping in southern Europe. Hence, we may investigate whether these twin policies entailed the same results. Second, after 1800, the US became one of Sweden’s major trading partners, due to the rapid expansion of Swedish iron exports to North America, and a key question is whether the early-established consular contacts played a role in that process. In particular, the focus will be on the relationship between consuls’ economic functions and the development of Sweden’s transatlantic trade and shipping.
The major focus of the whole book is on the period between 1721, the year of the Russo-Swedish Peace after the Great Northern War, and 1815, the year of the Congress of Vienna, which ended the extended period of Franco-British warfare. The period 1721–1815 also marks those years in which Sweden could fully employ the strategy of neutrality shipping.
This study has two major purposes. The first is descriptive. I aim to show why and how the Swedish consular service was established in these two specific areas and how it functioned. The second purpose is more analytical; to relate the establishment of the consular service to the issue of neutrality shipping and, at a theoretical level, to the question of protection costs and the productivity of Swedish shipping.
The book focuses on only two, rather specific cases of interaction between the consular service and the development of Swedish trade and shipping, and in addition, addresses these cases over a rather limited period. It is a legitimate question to ask why I have not examined the history of the Swedish consular service up to the year 1906 , when it was reorganised in a very different way. In addition to the motives mentioned above, there is also a quite practical reason. The consular archives of the Swedish Board of Trade, the major source here, contain a vast volume of consular reports, especially reports concerning the nineteenth century and reports from the big commercial centres such as London , Amsterdam or Hamburg . 6 It has not been possible to explore this material comprehensively, in the available time and with the available means. Quite simply, I found it more valuable to concentrate on the two selected cases, and to study them in depth.
How to study Swedish consuls? The creation of the Swedish consular service was a part of the state-building process in Sweden, and one way to study consuls is to write an administrative history of the service. There is indeed such a study, written by Johan Axel Almqvist . It provides a detailed account of the consular service between the mid-seventeenth century and the administrative reform of 1906 , including data about specific consulates and consuls. 7 However, it is a typical administrative history. It does not set the consular service in the broad context of Sweden’s economic policy, nor of the long-term historical developments connected to it.
The rising number of consulates dating from the beginning of the eight- teenth century can also be perceived as an aspect of the process of bureaucratisation. This is the approach used by Stefan Håkansson in his study of the Swedish consular service, although focusing on a much later period ( 1906–21 ). 8
Another way of placing the consular service in the context of the state-building process is to approach it from a neo-institutional perspective; to examine the consular service as a formal institution. For example, many consular duties might be comprised in the concept of transaction costs, the key concept of neo- institutional economic theory. First, consuls collected business information (on prices, market situations, business opportunities, etc.) and forwarded it either to the sending state authorities, the Board of Trade in Sweden ( Kommerskollegium ), o r directly to economic actors, hence affecting information asymmetries between actors of the sending state and foreigners. Second, they also assisted subjects of the sending state in handling contacts with local authorities and business partners in their district, hence reducing costs for contract enforcement. Third, they affected the ‘protection costs’ of the sending state’s subjects, by informing them of risks, and taking measures to diminish such risks. They frequently represented absent shipowners at court when a ship or cargo was declared a prize. Due to their semi-diplomatic status, they might directly affect the security of commerce and shipping (for example, by the negotiation of peace treaties with, and the forwarding of gifts to, the North-African rulers). Thus, the consular service might be seen as a formal institution that externalised and tentatively diminished the transaction costs of actors engaged in Sweden’s foreign trade and shipping.
Another aspect of the institutional approach is to see the consular service as a typical ‘mercantilist’ institution. The express purpose of the consular service was to promote trade between Sweden and the receiving country, which was also a typical task of mercantilist policy. As the Swedish consular service was established as a component of the new protectionist trade policy after 1718, it must be perceived in the context of other measures of that same policy: for example, the Swedish Navigation Act, the protection of domestic industries, and the establishment of chartered trading companies. Overall, the neo-institutional perspective appears to be the more fruitful method of conceptualising the consular service, so it will be to the fore here.
1.2 Protection costs and Swedish neutrality shipping
The concept of transaction costs is useful in seeing the consular service as a general phenomenon. All national consular services aimed to reduce information, contract and other costs. In this sense, the Venetian consular service had no different function to the French, English or Swedish. From a specifically Swedish point of view, the concept of protection costs is especially valuable. The present writer’s hypothesis is that Sweden benefited comparatively more from its lower protection costs than other, even more highly developed maritime states, and that these low protection costs were the single most significant factor in the growth of Swedish shipping in the late eighteenth century.
The eighteenth century was a century of warfare. The period 1689–1815 is sometimes referred to as the Second Hundred Years War. 9 Sweden, in spite of its traditional alliance with France , was successful in remaining outside many eighteenth-century conflicts, and this neutrality made the Swedish flag more secure, consequently diminishing the protection costs of Swedish shipping. 10
Yet it is also important to underline the relative nature of Sweden’s neutrality. Britain and the other naval powers of the period either did, or did not, recognize third party neutrality, depending on their own interests; therefore the interpretation of neutrality was under permanent dispute among the states concerned, and many Swedish ships and cargoes were seized in spite of declared neutral status. In the end, neutral status depended on British goodwill.
Looking at the consular service via a protection-costs perspective reveals it as primarily an institution created for the needs of shipping. There were, of course, other functions (notarial duties and state service), but from the economic point of view, the issue of shipping is crucial. The fact that until the mid-nineteenth century nearly all Swedish consulates were established at seaports confirms the significance of shipping. 11
Between the sixteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries sea transport and the dominance of the seas played a crucial economic and political role. With the introduction of the ocean-going sailing ship about 1500, the seaborne trade expanded. Shipping was generally the cheapest and fastest means of transportation goods and people over large distances. However, with the increasing importance of seaborne trade, states’ concerns about the control of sealines of communication increased in parallel. Sir Walter Raleigh’s statement, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, would be valid for the British—and not only British—view of the relationship between naval force and commerce for three hundred years. Between 1700 and 1900, Great Britain exerted an efficient naval mastery over the seas, and its expanding trade and shipping went hand in hand with this dominance.
The Scandinavian countries did not stand aloof. Despite their peripheral location and remote distance from the European economic core, Sweden, as well as Denmark-Norway, became involved in early modern commercial expansion. The reason was not only the western-European demand for Baltic commodities, but also the Scandinavians’ access to the seas. Without the possibility of sea transport, neither Swedish iron, nor Finnish tar and pitch nor Norwegian timber would have reached the Amsterdam and London markets.
Long-distance trade and shipping as factors of modern economic growth have been an issue of economic historical debate, and it is clear that the question is highly relevant in Swedish economic history, even if the research so far undertaken has been rather limited. Perhaps the cause of historians’ lack of interest in eighteenth-century Swedish shipping is still the shadow of Eli F. Heckscher . Heckscher , the dominant figure of economic historical research in Sweden and one of the great names in the economic history discipline, had dealt in a number of works with Sweden’s eighteenth-century shipping and, in particular, with its important precondition, the Swedish Navigation Act ( produktplakatet ). 12 Like t he liberal economist he was, he criticised the Act as a typical protectionist measure. In this perspective, then, Sweden’s protected shipping had been seen as inefficient, and indeed as consuming resources that could have been better employed elsewhere. Even if Heckscher ’s view of Swedish mercantilism has been re-examined in many other sectors, his view of shipping as inefficient and the Navigation Act as a typically protectionist measure has been reproduced by many historians. 13 The most recent account of Scandinavian shipping in the late eighteenth century, by the Danish historian Hans Christian Johansen , also reproduces this view. On the one hand, Johansen admits that Swedish shipping capacity was impressive in comparison with other seafaring nations; on the other hand, he explains this via a combination of bulky export commodities and strong protectionism (the Navigation Act and protectionist duties on trade). However, he does not point out the Swedish role in tramp shipping:
Shipping and foreign trade in the eighteenth century have received rather limited attention from economic historians in Sweden. Instead, the focus of research has been on domestic economic sectors: agriculture, proto-industries and eighteenth-century iron production. The situation is different as regards the second part of the nineteenth century and Sweden’s industrialization. 15 The discrepancy between the focus on either the domestic sector or exports is reflected in two explanatory models of Sweden’s industrialization. The so-called export model highlights, as one might expect, the role of exports. 16 The export boom between 1850 and 1890 is perceived as the prime-mover of contemporary industrialisation. The ‘export model’ also connects the starting point of Sweden’s industrialisation to the expansion of world trade after 1850 , and (in a shipping perspective) to the transition from sail and wood to steam and iron. Sweden’s eighteenth-century trade and her early integration within the Atlantic economy does not appear to have much importance.
The second model, the so-called ‘domestic market model’, points out that the process of Sweden’s industrialization was much more drawn-out, and that the post- 1850 export boom did not play as important a role as its advocates have argued. Instead, the focus is on the role of the transition in agriculture, the growth of proto-industrial activities, and of broad consumption and the domestic market. This model also lays emphasis on institutional change, especially the shift from the protectionist institutions of the early modern period to the nineteenth-century’s more liberal institutions. Instead of seeing Sweden’s industrialization as a revolutionary shift, mainly caused by external factors, this model stresses the drawn-out, evolutionary, and basically internal/domestic character of the change. 17 Neither of the two models investigates in depth the role of Swedish trade and shipping between 1720 and 1815 : the export model because it ascribes the first significance of foreign trade to the period from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the domestic market model because it focuses on internal factors of industrialization and economic growth.
The Swedish export and domestic market models of economic growth reflect the ongoing international discussion regarding the character of globalization, which has its roots in the 1970s , when Immanuel Wallerstein published his seminal work on the modern world system. 18 Even if the present debate does not deal with the same issues of dependency and underdevelopment, as in the 1970s , there is a perceptible discursive connection. The present debate is also concerned with the importance of long-distance trade before 1800 , and in general, the role of early modern European expansion. On the one hand, some scholars see the role of long-distance trade before 1800 as vastly exaggerated. According to this point of view, the modest volume of trade, of capital invested and of people engaged in the expansion were of limited importance for domestic economies and, consequently, of limited importance for modern economic growth. Alternatively, other scholars claim that a fixation with quantitative evidence obscures highly significant qualitative changes; for example institutional innovations, the establishment of trading networks between different parts of the world, etc. Even if volumes of traded commodities before 1800 were rather limited, this trade could entail very substantial consequences for domestic markets. 19 It is not appropriate to reconsider this debate extensively here: I will therefore focus on only one aspect of the debate—the aspect of the putative early modern transport revolution.
1.3 An early modern transport revolution?
Transport costs are a critical factor in the development of trade, especially in long-distance and bulk trade, and consequently they are also a critical factor in the development of the market economy. High transport costs function as efficient trade barriers; low transport costs promote trade. Hence, the decline in transport costs has been seen as one of the preconditions of modern economic growth; a factor of the same importance as the decline in commodity production costs. The lower the transport costs, the greater the integration of markets. Above all, it has been pointed out that the introduction of the ocean-going sailing vessel about 1500, and its dominance as a means of transportation for 350 years, effected significantly the development of foreign exchange in the early modern period, but there is no broad agreement on this issue. In fact, many economic historians do not see declining transport costs as a factor of economic growth at least until the mid-nineteenth century.
The American historian Russell Menard , in his analysis of transport costs in European and transatlantic trade between 1300 and 1800 , arrives at the conclusion that there was only a modest decline in transport costs during the period. In fact, declining commodity prices and different methods of packaging appeared as more important factors in the growth of long-distance trade than the productivity of shipping. In other words, there was no transport revolution in the early modern era. 20
Knick C. Harley ’s analysis of transport costs between 1740 and 1913 , based mainly on British and American freight rates, confirms Menard ’s picture. There was a very modest decline in transport costs prior to the mid-nineteenth century. The first crucial drop in freight rates occurred between 1850 and 1913 , and it is attributed to the transition from sail and wood to steam and iron vessels. Hence, the transport revolution first occurred in the mid-nineteenth century. 21
Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson have used the lack of productivity growth in shipping before 1850 as evidence for the late market integration of the Atlantic economy. 22 However, in addition to the analysis of freight rates, these two authors have examined the price convergence among a number of globally traded commodities. If the gaps between prices in different markets indicate different levels of transport costs, then the convergence between global prices should also indicate declining transport costs. O’Rourke ’s and Williamson ’s data show that there was no such price convergence between 1500 and beginning of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, there is abundant evidence of such price convergence from the mid-nineteenth century.
In the early modern period, world trade grew not because of any decline in trade barriers but in spite of them.
It was in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century that, for the first time and as a consequence of the technological revolution in both land and sea transport, the world’s trade became truly integrated and global. Globalization began after 1800 . It is worth mentioning that O’Rourke and Williamson ’s arguments are consistent with both the models of Sweden’s industrialization. In fact, Sweden represents an important case in O’Rourke ’s and Williamson ’s evidence. 24
O’Rourke ’s and Williamson ’s focus on the issue of market integration shows how important it is to make a distinction between commodity production costs and transport costs. Whereas supporters of the concept of an early modern transport revolution, and of early globalization, indicate long-distance shipping as a dynamic part economic agent, supporters of the post-1850 transport revolution do not perceive much dynamism in that sector in the early modern period. However, they do not suggest that there was no growth in commodity exchange. On the contrary, there could be, and there was, a significant growth in commodity exchange; but this growth has to be explained by large price differences between commodities and/or by a decline in commodity production costs in one area, and not by the integration of markets as a consequence of declining transport costs. 25 The focus on the development paths of commodity production and commodity costs, on the one hand, and of productivity in long-distance shipping and transport costs, on the other hand, of course also effects the perception of the transport and production sectors as either dynamic or stagnant.
Another group of economic historians has, contrary to the view adumbrated above, found evidence of a significant decline in transport costs even before the age of iron ships and steamers. The arguments for a decline in transport costs before 1800 combine two patterns of reasoning. First, there is the factor of overall shipping costs. Improved ship design, the better operation of ships, increasing tonnage per man ratios, and shortened turn-around times in harbours are all identified as crucial factors in the decline in transport costs. Second, there is the factor of protection costs. The reduced threat of piracy or privateering, international treaties on shipping, established insurance practices: all these factors reduced the protection costs of shipping.
However, in reality, decline in the two variables of transport costs is difficult to discern. For example, the introduction of the flute in Dutch shipping by 1600 might be seen as a mainly technological achievement, substantially reducing overall shipping costs. (The craft and its sails were designed to carry much larger cargoes with much smaller crews.) On the other hand, the introduction of the slow flute manned by a smaller crew was first made possible when the North and Baltic Seas became safe enough for shipowners to dare employ such a craft. 26
The majority of the authors who have identified a decline in transport costs before 1800/1850 therefore combine the two variables of a decline in overall shipping costs with a decline in protection costs. Douglass C. North , the leading scholar of neo-institutional economic theory, has studied the relationship between the decline in transport costs and economic development in the United States . His analysis was based, like Menard ’s, Harley ’s and O’Rourke and Williamson ’s, primarily on the study of ocean freight rates. However, North’s conclusion was different; instead of a long stagnation and then a dramatic decline in freight rates in the mid-nineteenth century, he uncovered a stable and quite rapid decline during the whole 1750–1900 period. 27 Later, North complemented his study of freight rates with other measures of productivity change, in particular, the average size of ships and ratios of ton per man. The results of this more complex analysis are consistent with his previous conclusions.
According to North the productivity growth in ocean shipping during the early modern period cannot be explained by new technology alone. Until the mid-nineteenth century, ocean shipping used basically the same technology, introduced by the Dutch 250 years before. Hence, North had to find some other, non-technological, explanation, and he consequently turned to institutional factors (a decline in piracy and privateering, the improved operational performance of ships, the decline of mercantilist restrictions, Navigation Acts) as forming a more proper explanation of productivity growth in shipping before 1850.
North’s studies of ocean freight rates became a starting point for much of the subsequent research on sea transport. Harley ’s article of 1988 was primarily a re-examination of North’s data—with differing conclusions. There are many other studies confirming North’s conclusions, while using a different empirical basis. Gary M. Walton ’s research followed North’s arguments closely. Simon Ville , in his analysis of coal shipping in Britain, 1700–1850 , studied a number of productivity factors. His results convincingly show a significant increase in productivity before 1850 . 29
Many of the works discussed above have been based on freight rate analysis, which (as it appears to the present writer) entails a number of problems. The construction of freight rate indices includes too many variables to be fully convincing. The same empirical basis can provide widely divergent results, depending on the variables included or excluded (commodity price movements, packaging, etc.). Another problem connected with the use of freight rates is that the data sets used include freight rates for a limited number of routes, which is hardly representative. Much shipping (not least Danish and Swedish) took the form of tramp shipping from port to port, rather than the shipping in shuttle routes that provided the major data for freight rates. Furthermore, if shipowners took higher profits, productivity gains did not necessarily lead to lower freight rates. The decline in freight rates in the mid-nineteenth century occurred in a highly competitive environment; in such an environment, it was difficult to turn productivity gains into higher profits.
Measuring tons-per-man ratios appears a more robust method of estimating productivity change, and thus of addressing the question of stagnating or declining transport costs in early modern long-distance shipping. However, even this method entails many problems. Jan Lucassen and Richard W. Unger recently provided an account of labour productivity in ocean shipping between the fifteenth and late nineteenth centuries based on tons-per-man ratios. Their data are based on estimates of labour engaged in shipping and on estimates of the merchant tonnage of leading maritime states, and not merely on freight rates on a limited number of shuttle routes. Moreover, they do not only provide a general view of labour productivity in shipping; their data also afford a basis for comparisons of labour productivity between different merchant marines. They found evidence of a significant growth in labour productivity in shipping between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.
This growth was not continual, and the growth rates differed between countries. The authors divided the whole period into four phases, each representing a specific kind of shipping pattern. The first phase, the late Middle Ages, is characterised by mixed fleets of oared and sailing ships, and low tons-per-man ratios, about five tons per man. The second phase, between the mid-sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, was a period of Dutch dominance in shipping, with ratios of about ten tons per man. By the late seventeenth century, the Dutch reached an astonishing average of twenty tons per man, but this was a short-lived achievement and Dutch labour productivity declined in the following decades. The other merchant marines emulated the Dutch shipping and by the mid-eighteenth century the British and Scandinavians achieved ratios of about ten tons per man. During the third phase ( 1780–1850 ) the ratios grew by some 70 per cent, to seventeen tons per man. This growth occurred on a fairly broad basis, including all the leading European merchant fleets. The fourth phase started in the mid-nineteenth century, and is marked by the breakthrough of steam and iron ships, and consequently by a dramatic increase in labour productivity to thirty and more tons per man. 30
The increase in labour productivity during the last phase is consistent with the technological shift examined in the studies of Harley, O’Rourke and Williamson and others. But Lucassen and Unger’s data also indicate that there was a very substantial increase in labour productivity between 1450 and 1850, which, on the other hand, supports the conclusions of North, Walton, Ville and others. This growth in labour productivity is attributed to a number of factors. Size of vessel and destination are the most important. However, even the design of vessels and improvements in technology played an important role, particularly in the first and second stages. Other factors were the functioning of the labour market and the quality of sailors. By contrast, however:
This is exactly the period in which Scandinavian neutrality shipping expanded.
Lucassen and Unger ’s analysis of labour productivity in shipping focuses on a decline in overall shipping costs. The factor of protection costs played some role, they maintain; for example, the difference between Dutch labour productivity in the Baltic and in the Mediterranean is attributed to the safety of seas, but this is not the crucial factor in their long-term account. 32
There is no study of Swedish shipping focusing on the question of productivity development in the eighteenth century, yet the Finnish historian Jari Ojala ’s research on eighteenth and nineteenth-century Finnish shipping is highly relevant for Sweden too, due to the similarity of shipping conditions and, of course, due to the fact that, until 1809 , Finland was a part of Sweden. Ojala , in parallel with North, sees the productivity development before 1850 as a combination of technological and organizational factors. As regards the technological factors (size, speed, manning levels per ship, etc.) there was a stable but not particularly rapid productivity growth. As regards the organizational factors, Ojala primarily focuses on the issue of information costs. State mercantilist policy is perceived mainly as a factor diminishing information costs and effecting information asymmetries between actors. In this development, the consular service played a significant role, diminishing actors’ information costs. Ojala ’s analysis of the long-term economy of Finnish shipping is consistent with Douglass C. North ’s conclusions positing a significant increase in the productivity of shipping even before 1850 . Ojala stresses, too, the combination of the transaction cost and the production cost approaches. However, he seems to pay rather limited attention to the issue of protection costs and to the importance of Sweden’s neutrality for Finnish shipowners. 33
1.4 Fiscal-military states and protection of shipping
It is clear that the factor of protection costs is a significant element in the explanations of the pre-1850 growth in the productivity of shipping. In North’s and Walton’s studies this factor is highlighted as the single most important, while other authors merely acknowledge its significance. The reason, perhaps, is the difficulty of defining it. Protection costs are included, but hardly discernible, in overall shipping costs. A decline or increase in protection costs affects those important production factors of shipping, a vessel’s average size and available cargo space, its number of crew members, the crew’s wages, insurance premiums, and even freight rates. All these factors are quantifiable, but not the protection cost element within them.
The difficulty for economic historians in dealing with protection costs also has to do with the difficulty integrating the role of the state in their analyses. The state and its capacity to protect its shipping interests were, of course, crucial factors affecting the level of protection costs. It is impossible to imagine the formidable growth of British trade and shipping in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries without British naval mastery over the seas; and it is more than reasonable to expect that that mastery entailed lower protection costs for British shipowners and merchants. 34 But how may one compare, from this perspective, the protection costs of a British shipowner in comparison with a French or Spanish shipowner? How may we relate the comparatively high level of British duties on foreign trade to the comparatively low protection costs of a British shipowner and merchant?
Frederic C. Lane , the maritime and economic historian of Venice , made the first attempts to link the concept of protection costs to the efficient use of state violence. Within his perspective, the state was seen as a producer and seller of protection. The stronger the state and the state’s control of sea-lines of communication, the lower the protection costs for the merchants and shipowners of that state. 35 The concept of the state as a protection vendor means that a militarily powerful state can provide its subjects with a better and safer economic environment than a weak state, even if the subjects concerned have to pay for this benefit through by higher taxes and duties.
Jan Glete , the Swedish maritime historian, employed this perspective in his study of the relationship between the rise of fiscal-military states and maritime conflicts in the early modern period. 36 He contrasts the different paths of development in the Mediterranean and in the Baltic, and explains the divergences with the help of a protection costs approach. The economic decline of the Mediterranean and the rise of north-western Europe is related to the growth of strong fiscal-military states in the latter, and to political fragmentation and the decline of states in the former, areas. The sixteenth-century rise of Denmark and Sweden to become the two dominant powers on the Baltic Sea made seaborne trade there much safer, particularly compared to other parts of Europe.
In the course of the seventeenth century Sweden and Denmark developed into efficient fiscal-military states with formidable navies. And the income drawn from duties on foreign trade played an important role in financing this development, at the same time as this income served as an important motive for the states’ mercantilist policy. But merchants were willing to pay the concomitant costs provided the Baltic remained safe. The high productivity of Dutch shipping in the North and Baltic Seas indicates significantly lower protection costs there than in other parts of Europe. The Baltic Sea enjoyed a relative safety, which persisted over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Mediterranean developed in precisely the opposite way. The two dominant empires of the region, Spain and the Ottoman Empire, failed to transform themselves into efficient fiscal-military states. Their struggle for control of the Mediterranean did not result in a balanced and safe environment. Instead, the drawn-out conflict transmuted into coastal raids, semi-official privateering and piracy; a kind of warfare known as guerre de course . Constantinople ’s control over its North-African vassals declined, and the Barbary coast became a centre of corsairing. On the Christian side, Malta and Livorno played similar roles. In conclusion, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mediterranean world was dominated by sea warfare and violence, with too many actors involved but no efficient control. The high protection costs of Mediterranean shipping appear at least partly to explain the low shipping productivity there. 38
Jan Glete’s analysis of fiscal-military states ends in 1650. However, his approach—which considers states essentially as protection-selling actors—is certainly also applicable for eighteenth-century shipping. With the rise of fiscal- military states, some of the protection costs of seaborne trade were transferred from the level of economic actors (merchants or shipowners) to the state level. These were primarily military costs. However, the question of protection costs concerned not only military but also political and diplomatic issues. Merchants argued that they needed state protection, and they often had political power and the means to press their claims. As regards protection costs, the military and economic aims were met. For example, the Navigation Acts in Sweden and Britain were not only measures protecting domestic shipping, trade and industries; they were also a component of the states’ naval policy. Politicians were aware of the fact that considerable merchant fleets meant many well-trained sailors would be available for their navies.
Peace and trade treaties with the North-African states and neutrality pacts are examples of how diplomacy could reduce the protection costs of shipping. Due to their importance for the development of Swedish shipping in the course of the eighteenth century these two topics—neutrality and relations with the North-African states—will receive detailed attention here.
North and Walton , as well as Lucassen and Unger , found a significant productivity growth in ocean shipping in the late eighteenth century, entailing lower transport costs. When considering strong naval states as protection providers and sellers, it is possible to attribute a substantial share of these gains to a decline in the protection costs of shipping. At the global level, the decline might be attributed to British naval mastery. This eighteenth-century naval mastery, even if much more vulnerable than the nineteenth-century Pax Britannica , made seas safer for British vessels, but vessels of other flags could also draw benefits from it—providing they were not at war with Britain. Piracy in the West Indies disappeared, and even the Mediterranean became much safer in the course of the eighteenth century.
The view of the state as a protection vendor is also valid as regards eight- teenth-century Sweden. First, Sweden implemented, during most of the period in focus, a consistent and rather successful neutrality policy. In addition to this, the state signed a number of treaties with North-African and European states, which entailed relatively lower protection costs for Swedish vessels. However, if Sweden’s neutrality was to impact on protection costs it had to be respected; neutrality shipping presupposed a navy that commanded the respect of other nations. Indeed, Sweden’s eighteenth-century navy was relatively large. 39
However, maintaining the navy and occasionally using it for convoying was costly. The peace treaties with North-African states were also expensive affairs in the long term, not least due to the consulates that needed to be established in connection with these treaties. Thus a tentative dec line in protection costs for individual economic actors resulted in a very significant real increase in protection costs for the state. The drawn-out Swedish debate on the benefits and costs of long-distance shipping and trade shows that politicians understood this relationship well.
But protection costs are only one cost factor of shipping. We have to relate comparatively low Swedish protection costs to the overall costs of Swedish shipping. Here the labour productivity of Swedish shipping is the most interesting issue. If one takes Heckscher ’s conclusions about the Swedish Navigation Act as a starting point, the productivity of Swedish shipping should be comparatively low, due to the protection of the domestic shipping market. Consequently Swedish vessels should be crowded out of the international market for tramp shipping. This question will be addressed in chapter 5, which includes a detailed analysis of the labour productivity of Swedish shipping in southern Europe, and also comprises comparisons with other merchant marines. Chapter 5 further includes estimates of overall costs and benefits of Swedish shipping in southern Europe, in relation to state protection costs. Fortunately, the state’s activities connected with providing protection for Swedish ships in southern Europe (convoying, peace treaties with and consular service in North-African states) were carried out under the umbrella of one institution—the Swedish Convoy Office ( Konvojkommissariatet ) . Therefore the Office’s outlays provide a fairly accurate reflection of the state’s total protection costs in the area.
1.5 A note on the book’s structure
This book consists of the introductory section and two case studies. The introduction (chapter 1) presents the subject of the study, the Swedish consular service, and sets it in the context of neo-institutional theory and the recent debate on the early modern transport revolution and productivity in shipping. The focus here is on the shipping sector, instead of the commodity trade sector. One hypothesis is that shipping was, in fact, a more dynamic, a more important and, at least in the late eighteenth century, a more profitable sector of Sweden’s foreign commercial activities than commodity exchange. In particular, the present writer highlights that part of the debate which lays emphasis on the factor of protection costs. This study argues that the factor of protection costs is particularly significant for the Swedish case, due to Swedish economic policy and due to Sweden’s situation as a predominantly neutral state in the period. The two other parts of the book, the case studies of southern Europe and North America, should be examined in the light of that debate.
Chapter 2 provides a short outline of the Swedish consular service from the mid-seventeenth century to 1906. This outline shows that the build-up of the Swedish consular service occurred in a number of distinctive phases. The first phase of development, after some initial attempts in the second part of the seventeenth century, started about 1720 when Sweden established a number of consulates in southern Europe (the Mediterranean, the Iberian Peninsula and France). By the late eighteenth century, the Americas had become another region of interest, and Swedish consulates appeared in the new American republics soon after their liberation from British and Spanish control. The third phase in the establishment of the consular service is discernible in the mid- nineteenth century. New consulates appeared in Africa, southeastern Asia and the Pacific, following in the footsteps of the second wave of imperialism. Notably, almost all these consulates were located in seaports, serving Swedish and, after 1814, also Norwegian shipping interests. Parallel with these three specific areas, the consular service in Europe first developed in great commercial centres (Amsterdam, London, Hamburg), and then in many other more or less important seaports.
After this general introduction to the Swedish consular service, the focus is on two specific areas in which the consular service in particular could impact on the aspect of protection costs: consular services in southern Europe and in the United States. Thus, chapters 3 and 4 examine the establishment and functioning of the consular service in the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula. Chapter 3 deals mainly with the motives and aims of Swedish policy in southern Europe. Special attention is paid to the role of the Swedish Navigation Act, which had considerable impact on the development of shipping between Sweden and southern Europe. The peace treaties with the Ottoman Empire and the North African states are another key issue dealt with in this chapter.
Chapter 4 examines in depth how the Swedish consular service in the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula functioned. It starts with an account of the Mediterranean consular system, with which all national consular services originated. After that, it describes in detail how the Swedish service was established and what duties and rights the Swedish consuls had. Finally, the chapter describes in narrative form the activities of four leading consulates in the region (Lisbon, Cadiz, Livorno, and Marseilles) and of consulates in North Africa (Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco). The purpose of these narratives is to unveil, at an actor’s level, the specific demands and problems encountered at different seaports (consular districts).
Chapters 3 and 4 are rather descriptive, since they show what consuls did or what they were supposed to do, and what they reported to Stockholm; but the account of the consular service at the actor’s level cannot fully address the issue of the service’s overall impact on Swedish economic development. Chapter 5 includes an overall analysis of both Swedish foreign trade and shipping activities in southern Europe; but the major focus is on shipping. With the help of the lists of Algerian Passports (passports issued for all Swedish-flagged ships sailing beyond Cape Finisterre), the pattern of Swedish shipping is unveiled and related to three factors: (1) economic policy and institutions (Navigation Act); (2) external environment and foreign policy (Swedish neutrality); and (3) the labour productivity of Swedish shipping. The productivity of Swedish shipping in the area is compared with the productivity of other merchant marines. This section also includes a rough estimate of overall costs and benefits of Swedish shipping in southern Europe.
The second case study (chapters 6 and 7) deals with the establishment of the Swedish consular service in North America and with Swedish transatlantic trade and shipping. The starting point of the American case study is the recognized fact that, after 1800, the United States replaced Britain as the largest buyer of Swedish iron. 40 Due to iron’s importance for Sweden’s economy, the shift to transatlantic markets was a crucial factor for Swedish economic development in the first decades of the nineteenth century and, beyond question, a factor that affected US-Swedish relations in the nineteenth century. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate whether there was any link between this shift in iron sales and the early establishment of Swedish diplomatic contacts with the United States : Sweden was one of the first states to sign a trade treaty with the United States , and the first Swedish consuls to the United States were appointed as early as 1783 . More specifically, chapter 6 examines the motives and objectives of Swedish policy in the Americas in the 1780s and 1790s . It is apparent that the establishment of the consular service in the United States was part of a broad strategy that even included the acquisition of a colony in the West Indies ( St. Barthélemy ). Sweden intended to enter into the trade of the dynamic transatlantic triangle.
Chapter 7 then transfers attention to the pattern of American trade and shipping after 1800; and it shows that the Swedish ‘West Indian’ strategy had a rather limited impact on the establishment of the iron trade with the United States. Instead, Sweden’s (and specifically Gothenburg’s) role in the Continental blockade is indicated as the decisive factor in shaping the pattern of post- 1800 Swedish-American trade. Once more, it was Sweden’s neutrality that provided the Swedish actors with a comparative advantage, but in the case of iron exports to the US, this did not concern Swedish shipowners. Nevertheless, after 1815 neutrality was no longer an advantage, and exchanges between Sweden and the United States developed according to a different pattern.
In conclusion, chapter 8 relates the results of the two case studies to the theoretical debate on productivity change in shipping, and on the timing and character of the transport revolution. It sets the build-up of the Swedish consular service, Sweden’s neutrality and her protectionism in the context of a broader development of European long-distance shipping.
CHAPTER 2 The Swedish consular service: a summary, c . 1600–1900
2.1 1600–1718
The first data concerning the establishment of the Swedish consular service are from the first half of the seventeenth century, when the young ‘great power’ began to develop its diplomatic representation abroad. This process was a part of Sweden’s military expansion and foreign policy in the 1620s and 1630s, and thus the first representatives were appointed at places of major importance for Sweden. This first rather simple and unorganised representation comprehended three major levels: ambassadors, residents (envoys) and correspondence agents; it was the latter category that most resembled the later consuls. One of the primary duties of these first representatives was to collect useful business information, a typical consular duty.
The establishment of diplomatic representation was also an outcome of the system of bilateral treaties which the Swedish kingdom began to build from the beginning of the seventeenth century. Thus the first Swedish representative in the Dutch Republic, at the rank of ambassador, was appointed soon after the conclusion of the defence and peace treaty between the Dutch Republic and Sweden in 1614 . In consequence of this early measure, diplomatic relations between Sweden and the Dutch Republic were long lasting. The first Swedish residents were based at the Hague and not at Amsterdam , the world’s economic centre, which indicated their primarily diplomatic function. However, from about 1640 there was even a Swedish agent in Amsterdam . 41
After Amsterdam , Hamburg and Elsinore also became important centres of Swedish representation. In 1621 Anders Svensson Ödell was appointed Swedish agent at the Sound, to represent Sweden’s commercial interests at Elsinore . 42 From the Swedish point of view, Elsinore was not only a key site for obtaining intelligence about Baltic trade and shipping. Elsinore , like Hamburg , was a crucial node in the early modern mail network between the continent and Sweden. The Swedish representatives at Elsinore functioned as royal mail agents. 43 Hamburg ’s role as a place of intelligence exchange and as a hub in the European mail network was the reason why that city was also an early recipient of a Swedish representative. After 1620 there was a Swedish resident there, whose duties were to supervise the mail destined for Sweden, and to gather valuable information from the Holy Roman Empire. Indeed, the Swedish correspondence agents at Elsinore and Hamburg had many different duties, from spying on Sweden’s enemies to searching out new credit sources for the Swedish crown. Sweden’s representative in Hamburg , Johan Adler Salvius , appears a typical example for this period. 44
Russia was another state with which Sweden established early diplomatic contacts, as early as 1631 . In fact, economic interests played an important role in Russia too: in this case they concerned supplies of grain for the Swedish army. The first Swedish representative in Russia ( Petter Krusebjörn ) was appointed a ‘resident’ at Moscow and Novgorod . During the 1620s and 1630s , Sweden also obtained its first representatives in England and in many German cities, as a consequence of her involvement in the Thirty Years War. 45
Very unclear conditions of service were a typical feature of this early representation. Nevertheless, the collection of different kinds of information was the crucial duty that the first Swedish representatives discharged, even if this information was not gathered and forwarded in a systematic way. The aforementioned correspondence agents were appointed in states bordering Sweden, or in states of considerable economic and political importance for Sweden (the Dutch Republic, England). The agent networks grew naturally in parallel with Sweden’s military expansion.
An interesting and different case, indicating the future importance of southern Europe, was the Swedish representation in Lisbon. This post was a direct result of the commerce and friendship treaty between Sweden and Portugal, signed in 1641, just a year after Portugal won its independence from Spain, and there was also a clear political interest in establishing diplomatic and commercial links between these two states. Portugal was a member of the same anti- Habsburg camp as Sweden, still engaged in the Thirty Years War. Portugal, indeed, is highly interesting from the point of view of the consular service.
The first Swedish representative in Portugal was Lars Skytte . He moved to Lisbon in 1641 , together with the Portuguese mission that signed the aforementioned treaty in Stockholm, and he remained at his post until 1647 . In addition to his representative function he was instructed to report on commercial opportunities in Portugal . Nevertheless, during Skytte ’s tenure, the overwhelming Swedish interest in Portugal related to the conflict with Spain . 46
The next Swedish representative in Portugal , Johan Friedrich von Friesendorff (resident in Lisbon 1649–52 ) made attempts to win access to Portugal ’s colonies for Sweden, and after his return to Stockholm he also championed the promotion of Swedish trade in the Mediterranean and Levant . 47 In 1669 , after almost two decades without an official representative, Nils Simons was appointed Swedish representative in Lisbon and received the title of ‘consul’. In light of its continual operation since the 1660s , the Lisbon consulate may be considered the oldest branch of the Swedish consular service. 48 This consulate retained its role as one of the key points in the Swedish consular network in the eighteenth century; its history and role will be investigated in detail in chapter 4.
From the second half of the seventeenth century we can start to distinguish more clearly between properly diplomatic and consular functions. An important stage in this bifurcation was the creation of the Swedish Board of Trade in 1651 . The Board became the central institution of the new economic policy, which worked much more consciously for the promotion of Sweden’s foreign trade and shipping. 49 The consular service was formally connected to the Board—one of the reasons why consular correspondence was sent to the Board of Trade until 1906 , and preserved at its archives.
As early as its first meeting, on 21 November 1651 , the Board discussed the appointment of correspondence agents at the leading European commercial centres. The proposed cities were: London , Paris , Cadiz , Lisbon , Venice , Florence and Livorno . This selection shows us that, even as early as 1651 , the Swedish authorities identified the potential for Swedish commerce in southern Europe. However, with the exception of Lisbon , no agent was appointed at that time. There were other attempts to establish a correspondence agent in Paris ( 1652 ), comprising a huge ‘district’ covering all the western Mediterranean, and a further attempt for Venice ( 1670 ). 50
During the second half of the seventeenth century, Sweden already had an established and relatively stable network of diplomatic representation, but there were few agents with purely consular duties. In Denmark , representation was reorganised. From 1662 onwards, a new envoy was established at Copenhagen , near the Danish royal court, while the correspondence agent at Elsinore carried out consular duties. This separation of diplomatic and consular duties should be seen as a model for the future organization of Swedish representation. 51 In the Dutch Republic too, representation was dividend between a diplomat at the Hague and an agent in Amsterdam . 52
During this period, Swedish representation abroad was characterised by an eclectic mixture of titles, and by unexpected shifts in levels of representation. The title of ‘consul’ had primarily been used in states in which ‘consuls’ had been known for centuries—i.e. southern Europe. Therefore Lisbon and Cadiz were the first places where the title was used for Swedish representatives. 53 The traditional organization of the consular service in the Mediterranean was a model for consular services in all western European states, and the Swedish system developed in the same manner. This model will be described later (chapter 4).
In conclusion, we may say that in the second part of the seventeenth century, Sweden build up a system of regular diplomatic representation, which also carried out typical consular duties: the gathering and forwarding of business information, the promotion of Sweden’s trade and shipping, and assistance to Swedish subjects abroad. Despite the early ambitions of the Board of Trade to establish a separate consular service, there was no clear distinction between the ‘ordinary’ representation and consuls. Both the titles and the functions were mixed, and the situation remained largely the same until the end of the Great Northern War.
2.2 1718–1815
The Great Northern War marked the end of Sweden as a great power and, of course, the decline in Sweden’s international position had many internal political consequences. We will highlight only two here, in view of their impact on the future of the Swedish consular service. First, the shift of political power from the king to the riksdag and the royal council gave the commercial elite much more political influence. After 1718 , this social group could participate more actively in shaping Sweden’s economic policy than in the seventeenth century: consequently, the interests of different mercantile groups became an integral part of Sweden’s policy. Second, in some ways, the eighteenth-century’s commercial expansion replaced the seventeenth-century’s military expansion. There was of course a substantial difference between the ambitions of the post- 1718 Swedish state and the concomitant reality. However, it is clear that the Swedish authorities after 1718 implemented a policy of commercial expansion, and that southern Europe was accorded a very special place in this policy. The motives and aims of Sweden’s economic policy after 1718 will be examined in detail in chapter 3. Here we will only furnish a general description of the expansion of the consular service, as a component of this policy.
The increasing number of consulates in the Mediterranean from the 1720s onwards clearly reflects the special role of this area in Swedish designs. As a consequence of the peace treaties ratified with the Barbary states and with the Ottoman Empire, Sweden established consulates in Algiers ( 1729 ), Smyrna ( 1736 ), Tunis ( 1737 ), Tripoli ( 1739 ) and Morocco ( 1764 ). Yet the treaties with the Barbary states were merely a precondition of safety for Swedes in the Mediterranean. They would not in themselves result in any inevitable increase in trade and shipping. To promote trade and shipping in the area, the Swedish authorities established a number of consulates on the northern coast of the Mediterranean and on the Iberian Peninsula. Thus Swedish consuls were appointed in Livorno in 1720 , Marseilles in 1731 , Venice in 1735 , Malaga in 1737 , Alicante in 1738 , Cagliari ( Sardinia ) in 1743 , in 1744 , Genoa in 1748 , Naples in 1749 , Cette and Montpellier in 1750 , Madrid in 1754 and Cartagena in 1759 . In addition, there were some further consuls appointed outside the Mediterranean. In 1735 the Board of Trade appointed a consul at Santa Cruz on Tenerife , but the Spanish authorities never accepted this appointment. 54 Even El Ferrol in northern Spain received a Swedish consul ( 1759 ). Consulates were also established on the north-western coast of France , at Rouen ( 1726 ), La Rochelle ( 1741 ), Nantes ( 1747 ), Dunkirk ( 1751 ), Bayonne ( 1760 ), and Le Croisic ( 1757 ). It should be pointed out here that an appointment did not necessarily result in consul’s establishment in his district. Moreover, some consulates were left vacant after the first appointed consul returned home or died. In the same way as the appointment of a consul did not inevitably mean active consular service, the consular service itself did not necessarily entail an increase in trade and shipping. The policy of appointments should be seen mainly as an articulation of mercantilist ambitions.
Table 2.1 clarifies the overall picture of appointments between 1720 and 1815. It confirms the significance of southern Europe. The expansion of Sweden’s consular service before 1815 can be divided into two clearly discernible phases. Until the 1780s, southern Europe was the major area of appointments, clearly in accordance with Sweden’s offensive commercial policy. The independence wars in the Americas, first in North America, and later in Latin America, resulted in a number of consulates being established in this area.
Whereas the establishment of consulates in north-western Europe, Russia and the Baltic was more a result of practical concerns and of the traditional importance of these areas (these markets dominated Swedish foreign trade), the consulates in southern Europe and in the Americas were the result of conscious policy. The question is, first, whether the policy was successful or not, and, second, if there really was a significant increase in trade and shipping, was this a product of the consular service or were there other, more important factors?
Yet the rising number of Swedish consulates after 1718 was not only a result of the state’s active economic policy. The leading Swedish merchants had an interest in doing business with people they could trust and, from the Swedish point of view, a Swedish consul at Lisbon or Cagliari was more trustworthy than a local. This was particularly important in southern Europe, the area where Swedes traditionally lacked contacts. The English merchant, James Shastoe, was well aware of this when, in 1735, he applied for the position of Swedish consul at Cagliari (Sardinia), an important centre for the purchase of salt. He wrote to the Board of Trade in thus:
The issue of consuls’ appointments, their duties and their relations with the Board of Trade, merchant communities and other consuls will be studied in detail in chapter 4. In general, the description of the situation for Swedish consuls in southern Europe is applicable to the whole Swedish consular service. The consular services of the European states were organised according to the model of the Mediterranean consulates.
In southern Europe, the Swedish consular system appeared to have been completed by 1800. Of course, new consulates were established there even after this date, but the pace of establishment was now slower than in other areas.
2.3 1815–1906
The period between the 1780s and the 1850s marks another phase in the formation of the Swedish consular service. The most remarkable feature of this phase is the establishment of consulates in the Americas, which followed in the footsteps of the local independence movements. Thus, the first Swedish consuls appeared in the United States (in Philadelphia and Boston ) in 1783, the same year as the United States ’ independence was recognised, and in Charleston in 1784 . New York ( 1799 ) and Baltimore ( 1810 ) followed after. After 1800 , Latin America began its struggle for independence. The first Swedish consul to Brazil was appointed in 1808 . French Haiti (Saint Domingue), which won its independence in the same period, received a Swedish consul in 1830 . By 1850 , the Swedish authorities had appointed consuls in Buenos Aires ( 1836 ), Montevideo ( 1836 ), Pernambuco ( 1838 ), Havana ( 1839 ), Valparaiso , ( 1847 ) Caracas ( 1840 ), Panama ( 1847 ) and Quebec ( 1850 ). 56
Of the total number of thirty-three appointments in the period 1815–50, ten were made in the young American republics. However, there were also a number of new appointments in Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia. It is apparent that this world-encompassing system was not designed merely for the interests of Sweden’s foreign trade. The extension of the consular service after 1815 indicates that the system was re-shaped primarily to accommodate shipping interests. Part of the explanation lies with the union with Norway. The consular system after 1814 served both parts of the union, and in Norway the interests of the shipping industry played a significantly larger role. However, Sweden also had considerable shipping interests.
After 1814 , policy concerning consular issues increasingly took Norwegian interests into account. Thus, the new ordinary consular instruction ( konsulstadgan ), issued in March 1830 , was prepared in cooperation with Norwegians. This instruction replaced the first consular instruction dating from 1793 . For example, it gave the Norwegian merchant and shipowner associations the same opportunity to propose new consuls as the Swedish merchants had had before. 57 However, after 1836 , proposals for new consular appointments were prepared separately by the Swedish and Norwegian governments and sent to the king for their final decision. 58
The balance between Norwegian and Swedish interests in the consular service was later to become a crucial issue, not only in terms of the future of the consular service but also, to an increasing degree, in terms of the future of the Scandinavian union. One of the consequences of balancing Swedish and Norwegian interests was the decline of the role of the Swedish Board of Trade. The new instruction for the Board of Trade, issued in 1831 , made a clear distinction between consular economic issues (trade, shipping), which were still under the Board’s authority, and political issues (for example, consular reports on local political situations), which were now under the authority of the union’s Department of Foreign Affairs. 59 In 1840 , the Board of Trade lost its right to issue letters of authorisation for consular appointments. Instead, the right was transferred to the Department of Foreign Affairs. According to another instruction, issued in 1858 , all consular matters that concerned both areas of the union were taken over by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Only those questions that exclusively concerned Swedish economic affairs were still subject to the Board of Trade’s authority. 60
The transformation of the consular service after 1815 also entailed more stable and unified regulations. This concerned, for example, consular payments. In the eighteenth century, there were no general rules as to when, how and how much consuls would be paid. Consular fees were specified in a consul’s letter of authorisation, and so they varied from place to place and from appointment to appointment. The nineteenth-century consular service was much more unified. In instructions of 1834 and 1850 , equal fees per last of registered tonnage were introduced for all Swedish-Norwegian consuls. 61
The consular service was reformed once again in 1858 , according to the proposal of the consular committee of 1855 . 62 One of the important issues discussed by the committee was the introduction of a system of salaried consuls. In general, in the course of the eighteenth century, the only salaried consuls were those working in the Barbary states. The reasons were quite logical. As there was insignificant Swedish trade and shipping in North Africa, consuls could not make a living from consular fees or from their own private business, though at the same time their representation was necessary for the maintenance of peaceful relations with the states and for the safety of shipping in the Mediterranean. Swedish consuls in North Africa were paid by means of the Swedish Convoy Fund ( konvojkassan ), not by the Department of Foreign Affairs. This system will be described and analysed in detail in chapter 4.
The new instruction of 1858 comprised, conversely, a new system of financing, with a common consul fund, which replaced the one-hundred-and-fifty- year-old Convoy Fund and ended the special consular system in North Africa. 63 However, it was to take another decade for the system of salaried consuls to be introduced. The first such salaried consulate was in London , in 1869 , followed by Cardiff , Liverpool and Newcastle in 1871 . 64
The Swedish consular service continued to expand after 1850. Over forty new consulates were established in the phase spanning the years 1850 to 1906. The majority of these consulates were located in Asia, Africa and the Pacific, reflecting the ongoing world trade boom and also the interests of Norwegian tramp shipping. But the consular service also expanded in Europe—especially in Germany and central Europe—and in Latin America. On the other hand, southern Europe, which had been so important for the establishment of the service in the eighteenth century, lost its significance.
In fact, the world trade boom after 1850 strengthened the divergence in the development paths of the Swedish and Norwegian economies. The Norwegian merchant fleet expanded at a remarkable pace. It increased, between 1854 and 1874 , by 360 per cent, from 167,000 to 600,000 lasts. The Swedish merchant fleet increased by 280 per cent in the same period—an impressive growth rate, but the total tonnage in 1874 was still only 123,000 lasts. The Norwegian merchant fleet was almost six times larger, and it was growing significantly faster. On the other hand, Swedish exports were almost twice the value of Norwegian. 65 The divergent interests of shipping in one part of the union, and of foreign trade in the other, inevitably entailed differing views regarding the role of the consular service.
To solve the problem of this rising discrepancy between Swedish and Norwegian interests, another consular committee was appointed in 1875 . The committee consisted of three Swedish and three Norwegian representatives. The committee’s report, published in 1876 , provides an excellent outline of the history and contemporary problems of the Swedish-Norwegian consular service, but it apparently failed to solve the problems which it addressed. The new instruction for consular service was first issued in November 1886, ten years after the committee’s report. It strengthened even further the control of the consular service under the aegis of the common Department of Foreign Affairs. However, the Norwegians were disappointed, and the new instruction became an indirect cause of the break-up of the Swedish-Norwegian union in 1905 . 66
The reorganization of the consular service in 1906 , as a consequence of the disunion, once again highlighted the question of the purpose of the service. On the one hand, the economic actors required the new service to work primarily for the promotion of Swedish economic interests, especially in distant markets ( Asia , Latin America). 67 And, of course, they required the service to be as cheap and efficient as possible. On the other hand, by 1906 , the consular service had already become an integral part of the bureaucracy of the Department of Foreign Affairs. The employees within this system (i.e., the salaried consuls) defended their interests. They argued that consular duties concerned many non- economic issues, and they attempted to preserve the system as it had existed before 1905 . The result was a compromise between the interests of the diplomatic bureaucracy and those of commercial enterprises. Yet, after 1906 , the consular service played a minimal role in promoting Swedish economic interests abroad. Swedish enterprises found other ways to reach distant markets. Thus, in the long-term perspective, the reform was a ‘failure’.
The consular service’s separation from the Board of Trade also confirmed the fact that, after 1906, it lost much of its economic purpose. When, in the mid- seventeenth century, the first steps in the establishment of a Swedish consular service were made, the service was part of a conscious mercantilist policy. The same reasoning lay behind the extension of the consular service in the eighteenth century. The service was integrated with the Board of Trade, and it grew in accordance with the priorities of Swedish commercial interests. It was shaped according to the traditional methods of doing business in the Mediterranean. An independent Swedish consular system was a necessary precondition for any Swedish commercial activities in the area. The same mercantilist reasoning explains the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century extension of the consular service. But, under changing trade conditions, and in particular after 1850, the system became more and more obsolete for the purposes it had once been established for. Moreover, the differing paths of economic development in Sweden and Norway entailed rising tensions regarding the purpose of the consular service.
The modern Swedish consular service, established in post-1905 Sweden, still has many similarities with its eighteenth century predecessor. Consuls are still often recruited from among local businessmen, and the promotion of business contacts still plays an important role. However, the general economic importance of the service has naturally declined, due to the completely different methods of conducting modern business, and also because there are now so many other ways of obtaining economic information in comparison with the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, liaising with local authorities still has its place among the important functions of the consuls, even if troubled shipmasters have these days been replaced by tourists.
CHAPTER 3 Sweden’s eighteenth-century policy in southern Europe
3.1 Preconditions, motives and aims of Sweden’s economic policy in southern Europe
Early in the morning, on 30 July 1709 , two Barbary corsairs attacked a group of seven merchant ships sailing off the coast of Portugal . With the exception of one Genovese ship, the merchantmen were sailing under the Swedish flag. Five ships managed to escape, but the two slowest, the Genovese vessel and a Swedish ship called Stora Jernvågen , were caught and forced to fight. The Genovese ship was soon overpowered by the enemy, but the Swedes fought with courage for almost an hour. At the end, a fire on board the Swede reached the powder room, and the ship and its unlucky crew were blown up.
The incident is reported in Joachim de Besche ’s letter to the Board of Trade, dated some days later. As de Besche , the Swedish consul in Lisbon , explains, the misfortune was partly a consequence of the Dutch peace treaty with Algiers . After the treaty was signed, thirty Barbary corsairs arrived in the Portuguese and Spanish waters looking for non-Dutch merchant ships, which usually followed the Dutch convoys. Stora Jernvågen became one of their victims. 69 However, many more Swedish ships were in danger. The Barbary corsairs did not dare to sail as far as the Channel and to North Sea. This made commerce insecure for small seafaring states, such as Denmark , Sweden, Hamburg , Lübeck and Danzig . On the other hand, English and Dutch shipping could exploit the situation. In his report, de Besche asked for Swedish convoy vessels to make shipping more secure, but he was aware of the difficulties facing the Stockholm government in 1709 , and he did not hope for much. Sweden was in middle of the long drawn-out Great Northern War ( 1700–21 ), with King Charles XII abroad, and with the country facing an increasing shortage of resources.
The misfortune of Stora Jernvågen shows how dangerous sailing to Portugal and to the Mediterranean could be for the Swedish crews. Even if Swedish shipping to Portugal was in danger, however, it was a very substantial element of Swedish shipping activities—in the course of the Great Northern War, as at other times. Portugal was Sweden’s major supplier of salt. Due to its special character, as both a non-substitute commodity and a daily necessity, salt had to be acquired, regardless of cost. From this point of view, salt can probably be seen as the main determinant of Swedish policy toward southern Europe.
In the course of the eighteenth century, Swedish trade with the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean changed character. The Iberian and Mediterranean markets began to import increasing quantities of Swedish staple commodities: iron, sawn timber, tar and pitch. There was also a substantial growth in shipping activities; and Swedish ships, to an increasing degree, began to carry the goods of other states. Sweden became a serious competitor to other middle- sized commercial shipping states, principally the Danes.
The interests of commerce and shipping in southern Europe became an important issue in Swedish politics. Decisions concerning Swedish economic or foreign policy could not be made without taking into account Mediterranean affairs. Sweden signed a number of peace and trade treaties with countries all around the Mediterranean. Furthermore, her commercial and shipping interests in southern Europe became a powerful argument behind Sweden’s neutrality policy after 1721. Apparently, the Mediterranean was now included in the orbit of Sweden’s interests. One clearly visible indicator of these interests was the rapid expansion of the network of Swedish consulates in the area. The consular network in southern Europe was the best organised and most developed part of the Swedish consular service. There are obvious reasons for this fact, which will be explained in detail later. First, we have to examine the preconditions for the Swedish presence in southern Europe and the motives for Sweden’s political activity in the area after 1718. The subsequent chapter will then focus on the functions of the consular service in the area, and will provide a detailed account of some of the leading consulates.
3.2 The Swedish presence in the Mediterranean in the seventeenth century
During the seventeenth century, Sweden established quite frequent commercial contacts with southern Europe. As we have mentioned above, the most important reason was the salt trade. In the course of the century, the traditional Lunenburg salt was increasingly replaced in Sweden by high quality salt from Setubal and, to balance the exchange, the Swedes began to export iron and naval stores to Portugal . Testimony for these relatively early contacts between Sweden and Portugal is provided by the trade treaty between the two countries, signed as early as 1641 . 70 Even if the political importance of Portugal ’s independence was obvious to Swedish politicians, the political motives for the treaty should not be exaggerated. The major interest behind the Swedish-Portuguese alignment was commercial, specifically salt supplies. 71 As previously stated, the Swedish government also showe d interest in obtaining access to Portugal ’s overseas colonies, though without much success. 72
In the second half of the seventeenth century the direct trade between Sweden and Portugal developed quite satisfactorily. The fleets of merchantmen destined for Portugal and Spain usually left Stockholm in convoys during the autumn. They sailed out with cargoes of weapons, bar-iron, timber and tar, and returned with salt. These salt vessels were among the largest vessels in the Swedish merchant marine. 73 In later part of the century, about Swedish twenty vessels a year visited Portugal ’s ports. 74
The Portuguese salt trade was monopolised by the king and a small merchant consortium. This form of organization, together with the changing conditions of salt production, resulted in violent price fluctuations, which made the market situation unpredictable for salt buyers. Consequently, many of them entered the Mediterranean to look for cheaper salt, as did the Swedes. There was a Swedish proposal, dated 1693 , to buy salt in Ibiza (Ivica) and La Matta (near Alicante ). Two years later, the Portuguese king decided to increase salt prices by 265 per cent at a stroke. 75 Following this price shock, Swedish vessels began to sail into the Mediterranean on a regular basis, albeit under the protection of convoys. Discussions in the Board of Trade also testified to the changed attitude towards shipping in the Mediterranean. Not only the salt trade was now encouraged, but also trade with Italian ports and even with Smyrna . 76
However, as the Swedes knew, the Mediterranean waters were among the most perilous in the world. There was still the matter of the ongoing guerre de course— the war between Christian and Muslim corsairs. This war actually continued in the tradition of crusades: thus on the Christian side, the Maltese knights were still among the most active participants. Many Christian sailors became slaves, or more exactly captives, in the North African states on the so- called Barbary coast. 77 This does not necessarily mean that the prisoners were taken in the Mediterranean. The Barbary corsairs sometimes sailed north along the European coast, and could reach as far afield as the fishing banks of Newfoundland . In the early seventeenth century they raided Iceland and the Faeroes ( 1627 ). 78
There were also Swedes among these captives; however, the captured Swedes had not only been serving on ships of the Swedish flag. Indeed, many were captured while under service aboard foreign ships. According to a document dated 1662 , about a hundred Swedish seamen were kept as captives in North Africa at this time. In 1690, double this number of Swedes were identified as prisoners. 79
From the Christian point of view, guerre de course was more or less Muslim piracy with the economic aspect to the fore. But for the Muslim rulers of Algiers , Tunis , Tripoli and Morocco , it had another highly important function. Seen as a part of the holy war against the infidels, corsair activities legitimised the political power of the rulers and the semi-independence of the Barbary states within the Ottoman Empire 80
Concerning this guerre de course, it should be noted that Sweden was not simply an innocent victim in this struggle between the Christian and Muslim worlds. It had the will, if not the resources, to participate in it, as the following episode clearly illustrates. In 1663 , a secret Swedish privateer company was founded with the purpose of capturing Muslim ships in the Red Sea. Participants in the company were the Queen Dowager and a number of councillors ( riksråd ). Instructions for the privateer expedition were issued in September 1663 , and two ships, under the command of Admiral Hans G. Sjöhjelm , were sent to the Red Sea. One of them, Falken , eventually reached the Red Sea after a lengthy voyage around Africa , and was successful in taking two richly-laden Muslim vessels. The expedition ended in Goa in Portuguese India, where Admiral Sjöhjelm sold the Swedish vessel and the captured Muslim cargoes. Papers detailing the proceedings and examined after Sjöhjelm ’s death show that, from the investors’ point of view, the expedition was no success. 81
Basically there were two ways to make shipping in these dangerous waters safer: convoying, and peace treaties with the Barbary states. Both practices were used by other states and both had been discussed in Sweden. As regards convoying, this was a well-established and quite common practice, even for Swedish shipping to the Iberian Peninsula. According to Swedish Maritime Law, ships sailing to Spain and Portugal had to sail in convoys. 82 As the rising salt prices in Setubal and Lisbon pushed the Swedish merchants into the Mediterranean, the need for convoying in these waters became a pressing problem. In 1695 , the convoying vessels received an order to convoy Swedish merchants through Gibraltar and along the eastern Spanish coast, to La Matta and other destinations. 83
Treaties with the Barbary states were the other means of rendering shipping safer. The idea of concluding peace treaties with the Barbary states had been under discussion as early as 1667 and 1668 . 84 However, these were so far merely paper proposals. The first serious attempts to sign treaties with the Barbary states were made much later, after 1721 .
Although the salt trade between Sweden and Portugal was already well established in the mid-seventeenth century, Swedish merchants did not enter the Mediterranean more extensively until the late 1690s, and even then they did so with hesitation. Concerning treaties with the North-African states, as we have seen, the Swedish authorities discussed the question, but did not make any serious attempt to negotiate with the Barbary states in the course of the seventeenth century. However, the situation was to change during Charles XII’s reign.
3.3 The diplomatic game with the Ottoman Empire
The previously-cited Swedish attempts to enter the Mediterranean were founded on primarily economic considerations. The Swedes were searching for cheap salt, and for potential markets for Swedish staple commodities. However, there was another, more political aspect to the Mediterranean initiatives. The southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean were controlled—more or less formally—by the Ottoman Empire. And the Ottomans were seen in Sweden as a potential ally against Russia . Therefore Sweden made a number of attempts to strengthen this alliance of interest and establish closer cooperation with the Ottomans, not least in the economic sphere.
During the seventeenth century, there were some attempts to establish diplomatic relations with the Sublime Porte, and also to open direct commercial links with the Levant and Persia. During Charles X ’s reign, Claes Rålamb organised a diplomatic mission to Constantinople . 85 In 1671 a Tartar emissary, Haga , proposed the opening of direct trade between Sweden, the Levant and the Black Sea. 86 In 1687 , a group of Armenian merchants visited Stockholm with the aim of establishing direct Swedish trade with Persia. 87 Yet none of these attempts resulted in real commercial exchange. One of the reasons was still the overwhelmingly negative image entertained of the Ottoman Empire, as the enemy of all Christians.
This attitude towards the Ottoman Empire changed during Charles XII ’s years of sojourn at Bender , within Ottoman territory. For Charles XII , relations with Constantinople had combined political, economic and cultural aspects. On the one hand, he saw the Ottoman Empire as a key ally in his struggle against Russia , and he aimed to transform the relationship with Constantinople into a form of military alliance against Russia . On the other hand, there was an economic interest in developing Swedish trade with the Levant , and with the eastern Mediterranean in general. The frequent contacts between Swedes and Turks during Charles’s Bender period also stimulated cultural and religious interest in the Ottoman Empire. 88
The outstanding supporter of commercial exchange with the Ottoman Empire was Johan Silfvercrantz , an official of the Swedish Board of Trade. Since 1705 Silfvercrantz had been travelling around Europe searching for commercial opportunities for Swedish manufactures and trade. Among other destinations, he visited Marseilles and Livorno , and he could see for himself the importance of Levant trade in these ports. In 1710 , Silfvercrantz presented his report on the improvement of Swedish commerce to Charles XII at Bender . His ideas primarily concerned the development of manufactures within the kingdom, but the Levant also played an important role. He saw it as a future market for Swedish products. According to Silfvercrantz , Sweden possessed many products in demand in the Levant . And Sweden could purchase commodities there (especially silk), which were otherwise imported by foreigners. Silfvercrantz ’s proposal for organizing Swedish trade with the Levant centred on following the examples of states with a well-established Levant trade. His favourite example in this regard was the English LevantCompany. 89
In 1711 , the king sent Silfvercrantz to the Levant , to continue to assemble information on the local commercial opportunities Unfortunately, Silfvercrantz died there the next year. His work had not been completed as planned, but his studies were nonetheless an important precondition for the foundation of the Swedish Levant Company in 1738 . 90
The second string of Charles XII ’s Bender policy concerned diplomatic relations with the Sublime Porte. The king strove to link a trade treaty with the Sublime Porte with a formal treaty of alliance directed against Russia . Soon after the king’s entry into Ottoman territory he sent his envoy, Martin Neugebauer , to Constantinople to discuss this issue. Neugebauer was authorised to negotiate the terms of the treaty. In addition, he was supposed to negotiate with the Ottoman authorities regarding Sweden’s relations with the Barbary states, which formally belonged to the Ottoman Empire. After a promising start, the negotiations failed in 1713 . The major reason seemed to be Charles XII ’s wish to connect the trade treaty with a military alliance. 91 It took an additional two decades before the treaty could be signed.
The question of a trade treaty with the Sublime Porte was raised again in the 1720s , after the death of Charles XII . Then a significant hindrance for the establishment of commercial ties between Sweden and the Ottoman Empire was the royal debt. During his stay at Bender , Charles had borrowed substantial amounts of money from Constantinople . In 1729 , when the first Ottoman envoy visited Stockholm, the debt was set at 2 million d.s.m., and the debt had to be paid before a treaty between the states could be signed. 92
In 1734 , the Board of Trade sent two young Swedes, Edvard Carlson and Carl Fredrik von Höpken , to Constantinople . Among other matters, they were authorized to negotiate the terms of the debt repayment and to discuss the trade treaty. With the help of an influential Frenchman working for the Ottomans, the count de Bonneval, they reached a solution to the debt issue. Instead of a cash payment, Sweden promised to send to the Sublime Porte a fully equipped man-of-war with 72 guns; in addition, 30,000 firearms and items of war equipment should be supplied. 93
Even if the proposed solution was very satisfying for the Swedish Treasury, it was not, at least at first sight, politically acceptable for two reasons. First, the Ottoman Empire was still seen as a major enemy of the Christian world, and the idea of supplying Constantinople with ships and weapons encountered many protests. Second, the proposed solution had an anti-Russian thrust, which was not acceptable to the Caps. The Swedish riksdag in the 1720s and 1730s was dominated by the Cap party, which worked for peaceful and friendly relations with Russia .
Despite these domestic protests a man-of-war, Sverige , was equipped in the navy’s shipyard at Karlskrona , and sent to Constantinople , together with the supply ship Patrioten . However, Sverige was shipwrecked on the Spanish coast and only Patrioten reached Constantinople . After some additional negotiations the Sublime Porte accepted Patrioten instead of Sverige and, in 1737 , the trade treaty could finally be concluded. 94
Gustaf Kierman , the Stockholm merchant and leading Hat politician, was deeply involved in the negotiations, and he played an important role in establishing of Swedish-Levant trade. He paid for Carlson ’s and Höpken ’s stay in Constantinople , and he equipped Patrioten , partially using it for his own cargo destined for Constantinople . He was one of the great supporters of the idea of the Swedish Levant Company, and one of the company’s founders. 95
It is clear that Sweden’s foreign political interests played an important role in establishing commercial links with the Levant and Constantinople. It has been stated that Charles XII’s project of a military alliance between the Ottoman Empire and Sweden finally became a hindrance, and, after 1721, the Caps’ Russian-friendly foreign policy made it difficult to sign a treaty with Constantinople.
In these negotiations, very little real attention was paid to the Barbary states, even if they were mentioned, and even if the Swedish side attempted to persuade Constantinople to exercise its influence in North Africa. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that the first peace treaties with the Barbary states were signed outside this diplomatic game balancing Russian, Swedish and Ottoman interests, and before the conclusion of the treaty with the Sublime Porte.
The major reason for Sweden’s fresh engagement in the issue of peace treaties with the Barbary states was the changed situation of Swedish shipping in the Mediterranean in the late 1720s . As mentioned above, Swedish ships sailing into the Mediterranean were wont to join the Dutch convoys. But, after 1726 , this became impossible. In this year, after twelve years of war, the Dutch concluded a peace treaty with Algiers . 96 The Dutch-Algiers treaty forbade the Dutch convoys to protect non-Dutch merchantmen. This made Swedish shipping much more vulnerable. The issue of Swedish shipping’s protection appeared the following year in front of the Swedish Secret Committee—the parliamentary committee dealing principally with foreign affairs. A peace treaty with Algiers appeared to be the best solution. Consequently, George Logie , the Scottish merchant resident in Sweden and possessing detailed knowledge of Mediterranean affairs, was empowered to negotiate the peace treaty on Sweden’s behalf, a commission which he successfully discharged.
In October 1727 , Jean von Utfall , appointed the official Swedish emissary for Algiers , left Sweden to conclude the treaty. Von Utfall was also instructed to conceal his mission as far as possible from foreign powers. In April 1729 , the peace, trade and shipping treaty between Algiers and Sweden was officially signed by von Utfall and the Dey of Algiers (the Algiers ruler). 97
The treaty was shaped along the lines of other treaties between European states and Algiers —the most recent Dutch treaty of 1726 , but also the older English treaty from 1682 . 98 The Swedish treaty regulated the obligations and rights of Swedish and Algiers subjects in detail, as regards shipping and commerce in their respective countries. Typically, the treaty avoided mentioning the Swedish obligation to send gifts or tributes to the Algiers ruler, even if this was a self-evident part of the agreement. This highlights the ambiguous character of gift exchange in the contemporary settling of relations between Christian powers and Muslims. According to Muslim legal tradition, the gifts of the Christian powers were perceived as a tribute confirming Christian submission to the Muslim order. Naturally, the Christian powers made the effort to stress that these gifts were not regular tributes, and were not expressive of Christian obedience to the Muslim order. From the Christian point of view, gifts were exchanged between two equal partners. In particular, two leading European powers, France and Great Britain , even if they continued to hand over gifts to the Muslim rulers, interpreted them to an increasing degree as voluntary. 99 The ambiguous distinction between payment of a tribute or ransom, on the one hand, and the exchange of voluntary gifts, on the other, continued over the course of the entire eighteenth century. The different views of these relationships also reflected different legal traditions: Muslim customary law and European international law. 100 The exchange of gifts shows how complex the diplomatic interplay between Europeans and Muslim rulers was. The Swedish agreement with Algiers also followed exactly the same pattern as other Christian states’ agreements. It encompassed substantial Swedish gifts to the Dey of Algiers , a practice perceived as a natural accompaniment of the treaty.
Two aspects of Sweden’s treaty with Algiers are worthy of more attention: the consular service and the system of Algerian passports. The treaty gave Sweden the right to appoint a consul to Algiers. This was the beginning of the regular consular service in North Africa, an important precondition of Swedish shipping in the Mediterranean. The organization of these North-African consulates differed from other areas of the Swedish consular service, due to the fact that consuls in the Barbary states had a diplomatic function, whereas their economic function was rather limited.
The other aspect concerns the so-called Algerian passports. The treaty stipulated the corsairs’ right to stop and search Swedish vessels, and the duty of the Swedes to prove the ship’s nationality via a special passport—the Algerian passport. To prevent misuse of the passport by other shipping flags, the process of issuing passports was strictly regulated and controlled. Only the Swedish Board of Trade could issue the passports, and a passport’s validity was limited to only one voyage. These strict control procedures make the passport register a very good source for the analysis of Swedish shipping in southern Europe, not only in the Mediterranean but also, more generally, south of Cape Finisterre in north-western Spain (see section 5.4).
What was the reaction of the other shipping states to Sweden’s treaty with Algiers ? Outwardly, the various foreign powers had no significant objections to a Swedish treaty with Algiers . The Dutch consul informed his government of the Swedish diplomatic activities in Algiers , but did nothing to hinder them. The French consul even helped von Utfall conduct the negotiations. 101
George Logie , who played the leading role in preparing the treaty, was appointed as first Swedish consul in Algiers . 102 Quite soon after the treaty with Algiers was signed, Logie also opened negotiations with another Barbary state, Tunis . He employed a similar strategy as in Algiers . First, the parties had to reach agreement on the conditions of the treaty, which included the form and value of the Swedish gifts. In parallel with Algiers , the gifts consisted mainly of arms, gunpowder and sawn timber, valued in Sweden at 10,000 d.s.m. The treaty with Tunis was signed in December 1736 . 103 The next step was Tripoli . Here too the negotiations followed a similar path and the conditions were similar to those obtaining in the Algiers and Tunis treaties. It took Logie another four years before this treaty could be signed, on 15 April 1741 . 104
With the conclusion of the treaty with Tripoli , the first phase of the establishment of relations with the Barbary states was over. However, Sweden lacked a peace treaty with the most powerful Barbary state— Morocco . It took another twenty years before an agreement could be reached with the Moroccan Emperor, after treaties with Morocco had already been signed by the Dutch and the Danes. 105 The peace treaty with Morocco was much more expensive than those with the other Barbary states. The final cost of peace with Morocco was about 350,000 rixdollars, compared to about 125,500 rixdollars for the three other states. 106
The peace treaties with the North African states gave Sweden the necessary degree of safety for her shipping in the Mediterranean. In fact, these treaties provided Swedish ships with a comparative advantage to offset their other relative disadvantages. Sweden lacked expertise of long-distance shipping in southern waters. In addition, Sweden was situated in the northern periphery of Europe, with a short sailing season, at a distance from the key European markets and from the Mediterranean Sea. Sweden’s important competitor for the shipping market in southern Europe was Denmark . It is worthy of mention that the Swedish system of peace treaties with the Barbary states was established before the Danish; Denmark signed its first treaty with Algiers in 1746 . 107
3.4 Swedish Navigation Act 1724
As mentioned above, the system of peace treaties with the Barbary states was established without much regard for Sweden’s grand diplomatic strategy towards Russia and the Ottoman Empire. It is more correct to see this system primarily as a part of the shipping promotion policy pursued in the 1720s by the Board of Trade. In this section we will focus on this policy. Without doubt, the most important instrument of eighteenth-century Swedish economic policy with regard to shipping was the Swedish Navigation Act ( produktplakatet ), approved on November 10, 1724 . 108 The Act was a result of intense debate about the contemporary problems and future direction of Sweden’s foreign trade and shipping, a debate conducted between 1719 and 1723 . In typical Swedish manner, the Act was shaped with prevalent western European shipping policy as its model, and in particular, the role of the English Navigation Acts should be noted. 109
The Swedish debate followed a classical pattern. The major problem of Swedish foreign trade was recognized as a trade deficit, and this deficit was caused, among other things, by the Dutch and English dominance of shipping from and to Sweden. On the one hand, the debate was carried out in the Board of Trade, where Jacob Olofsson Hökerstedt in particular sharpened his statistical arguments for a more protective policy. 110 In 1721 , according to the calculations of the Board of Trade, Sweden had a large current account deficit of about 2.5 million d.s.m.
The second forum, much more important for the outcome of the debate, was provided by the sessions of the Swedish parliament, the riksdag . In particular, the 1723 riksdag played an important role in introducing a new policy. This riksdag paid much attention to trade and shipping questions, and it also decided the question of the Swedish Navigation Act. There were two groups with widely differing interests engaged in the issue. On the one hand, there was the group of the major Stockholm merchants and shipowners. The Navigation Act was, of course, in their interest. This group cooperated closely with Hökerstedt and the Board of Trade. On the other hand, there were representatives of small port towns, without sufficient shipping capacity or capital rapidly to buy or build new tonnage. These men feared that shortage of domestic tonnage would entail a shortage of salt and other import commodities. Both sides argued for their respective points of view, and the riksdag’s solution was a compromise. The parliament did not yet approve any new policy; it merely ordered the Board of Trade to prepare a Navigation Act for consideration. 111
Taking the baton from the 1723 riksdag, the Board of Trade took over the issue of the Navigation Act and worked for its rapid passing. In 1724 , the board prepared the Act’s draft and rejected the objections of the small towns’ representatives. On 10 November 1724 , the Navigation Act—to be effective from January 1725 —was signed by the king. Nevertheless, small towns continued to apply for exemptions to allow them to hire foreign ships. To reinforce the Act, the original version was supplemented on 28 February 1726 with a coda dealing with foreign shipping in Sweden. 112
The Swedish Navigation Act prohibited imports and exports to and from Sweden on any vessels other than Swedish ships or ships of those countries where the cargoes originated or were destined for. It was directly modelled on the English Navigation Act, which was also frequently mentioned in the debate. Its primary target was Dutch shipping. During the Great Northern War, the Dutch took a large share of Swedish foreign shipping, and the Act’s aim was to reduce this encroachment. On the other hand, the Act could not change much in terms of the trade and shipping balance between Sweden and Britain, which had different features from trade between Sweden and the Dutch Republic.
The debate on the Navigation Act focused on two key, and space-requisite, commodities—iron and salt. These should be carried in Swedish hulls, to save money and to develop a strong merchant marine. As the Act only concerned transit shipping, it did not, in fact, touch on the iron carried on British ships to Britain. But it hit the Dutch transit shipping of salt heavily. As mentioned above, Swedish salt supplies came primarily from Portugal and the Mediterranean, not from the Dutch Republic. With the introduction of the Navigation Act, all this trade could only be carried in Swedish hulls.
The statistical data indicate that Dutch shipping to and from Sweden collapsed. The Sound Toll Register shows over a hundred Dutch ships passing the Sound on their way from Sweden in 1719 and 1720 ( Finland not included). In 1725 and 1726 the number of Dutch ships passing the Sound from Sweden declined to six and three respectively. At the same time there were almost two thousand Dutch ships passing the Sound to and from non-Swedish ports. 113 Without doubt, immediately after 1724 , a large part of the Dutch decline and the Swedish increase can be attributed to a mere change of flag, but in the long run there was a real increase in Swedish-built and -manned tonnage. The path of shipping development was established.
Even if the Board of Trade played an important role in framing the arguments, in the end it was large merchants, ironworks owners and shipowners who carried these measures through the parliament. This means that the Navigation Act was not a result of abstract economic thinking on the part of administrators in the Board of Trade. It expressed and served the interests of the Stockholm mercantile elite. The same group of Hat-oriented politicians then played a key role in carrying out other parts of Sweden’s mercantilist policy in the Age of Liberty, concerning manufactures, protectionism, price and exchange regulations, and so on.
As the first and perhaps most distinctive measure of Swedish protectionist policy after 1721 , the Navigation Act attracted a good deal of public attention during the eighteenth century. There were many early critics (Christopher Polhem, Emmanuel Swedenborg , Lars Salvius , Pehr Niclas Christiernin and others). An investigation conducted by Johan Jacob Westberg for the Board of Trade was also very critical of the Act. In addition, the Act received much attention during the political struggles of the 1760s . At that time, Anders Chydenius , the Swedish ‘ Adam Smith ’, was its most renowned opponent. 114 The major argument against the Navigation Act was that Swedish shipping could not compete with that of the more developed maritime states, such as the Dutch or the British. The carriage of goods on Swedish ships had to be more expensive, which in the end caused higher commodity prices, both at home and on foreign markets. The commodities particularly in question were salt and iron. The critical question was whether the Navigation Act was an economically rational institution, benefiting the whole Swedish economy, or merely another costly instrument disturbing the market balance, while promoting the interests of small selfish elite.
The contemporary debates, even when they relied heavily on the use of statistical evidence, could not provide a definitive answer. The evidence was insufficient and was, as was the debate, too highly coloured by the political interests of the combatants. However, the question has also attracted the attention of modern economic historians. For Eli F. Heckscher the Swedish Navigation Act was a favourite subject, to which he returned many times. 115 Heckscher stated that as regards the number of registered Swedish ships, the volume of shipping, and particularly the geographical expansion of Swedish shipping, the Act was, in fact, a great success. But, at the same time, this success led to high salt prices in Sweden. Moreover, the Navigation Act supposedly had a similar effect on grain prices, in particular during periods of grain shortage. It occasionally happened that the Navigation Act was suspended in periods of dearth, to help secure adequate grain supplies.
On the export side, the Act supposedly made Swedish iron more expensive and so less competitive on the British market. These market problems for Swedish iron could also have been related to another major issue of Swedish economic history in the same period—the loss of dominance in the iron trade to Russia . In summation, Heckscher argued that, despite the spectacular increase in the number of ships and in shipping volume, the primary consequence of the Navigation Act was increased freight costs. 116 Using institutional terminology, we can say that, according to Heckscher , the new institution (Navigation Act) did not diminish, but rather increased the transaction costs of the Swedish economy.
Heckscher also compared the Swedish Navigation Act with the English version, relating his criticism to Adam Smith ’s relatively positive view of the English Navigation Act. Smith appreciated the value of the English Navigation Act, because of its importance for the British navy. Even when the use of merchantmen in naval warfare declined, the large, heavily-manned merchant fleet provided a supply of experienced sailors who in time of need could be enrolled in the navy. However, according to Heckscher , no such argument could be used in the case of the Swedish Navigation Act. It was a purely mercantilist measure made in the interests of a small merchant elite. 117
Heckscher ’s view of mercantilist policy, and not least his picture of Sweden’s eighteenth-century economy, has been questioned for at least fifty years, 118 but his view of the Navigation Act has been widely accepted, with few exceptions. The Swedish economic historian, Stefan Carlén , who has provided the most detailed analysis so far of Heckscher ’s arguments against the Navigation Act and economic statistics, did not find any evidence of a price effect on the iron and grain trades. 119 And Carlén ’s detailed study of Swedish salt prices has shown that they in fact declined in the long term, both relative to other Swedish prices and to foreign salt prices (the Dutch Republic). 120 In other words, there is no evidence that the Navigation Act entailed increased transaction costs for the Swedish economy.
However, in addition to the price factor, there is another important factor to which Heckscher did not pay attention. In the case of the English Navigation Act, Adam Smith stressed its military significance, which he, in the end, saw as being more important than the purely economic profitability of the institution. We may not see the Navigation Acts, English, Swedish and otherwise, exclusively as economically rational or irrational measures. There are other factors involved, which must compromise any purely economic perspective. A large merchant fleet provided manpower for the navy, and a strong navy was a precondition of that naval mastery that made it possible for the British to shape the shipping market according to their interests. Thus, in spite of the fact that seventeenth-century Dutch shipping was much more efficient than that of the British, in the course of the eighteenth century British shipping increased, whereas the Dutch declined. 121 The reasons here were not economic, but political and military.
There was also a clearly military aspect to the introduction of the Swedish Navigation Act. A large merchant marine was seen as a guarantee that the Swedish navy could quickly recruit experienced seamen and officers at home in case of war. 122
The introduction of the Navigation Act touched on many different issues. Here, in particular, the author will stress the link between the Navigation Act and Swedish salt imports, and between the Act and shipping to the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula.
3.5 Convoying and the Convoy Office
Another institutional arrangement necessary for Swedish shipping in the Mediterranean Sea was convoying. In this case, Sweden followed the Dutch example, even though the concept of convoying as an instrument of shipping protection had long been familiar. The convoy system in the Netherlands had been in use as early as the 1550s , before the Dutch Revolt. At that time, it had been employed in the rich westerly trade with the Iberian Peninsula and France , and had followed a pattern established by Spanish shipping to the New World. 123 After the Revolt, the Dutch improved the convoy system and placed it on a stable financial basis. The common Dutch duty on the financing of convoys was introduced in 1582 . 124
In the Mediterranean, the Dutch convoy system reached perfection in the mid-seventeenth century. In contrast to the English, who sailed in large, heavily manned and well-armed vessels, the Dutch sailed to the Mediterranean in convoys consisting of considerable numbers of small merchantmen, usually accompanied by two men-of-war. 125 The use of convoying, to some extent, was a consequence of the introduction of a new and highly cost-efficient ship design, the flute. 126
The system was apparently efficient as the Dutch, steadily replaced the English in the Mediterranean. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the convoy system was introduced in the English shipping organization, especially in the Mediterranean, and by 1700 convoying had become widely established practice. Sailing in convoy significantly reduced insurance premiums for shipping. 127 However, the system also had its disadvantages. Convoys were slow, as the slowest ship determined the speed of the entire convoy, and turnaround times at ports were extended.
The practice of convoying ships passing the Sound was established in Sweden in the mid-seventeenth century. Axel Oxenstierna issued the first ordinance regulating convoying in 1653 . 128 According to this ordinance, Swedish ships sailing to England , the Dutch Republic, and France should meet at Gothenburg on Sweden’s western coast. When a sufficient number of vessels was assembled, the convoy sailed away, accompanied by one or two men-of-war. As mentioned above, Swedish ships also frequently joined the Dutch convoys travelling to Portugal and Spain . During the period of armed neutrality in the 1690s , there was co-operation between Denmark and Sweden in organizing convoys. 129
Conditions for Swedish shipping deteriorated during the Great Northern War, especially after 1709 when Denmark again entered the war. The Swedish ships became potential booty for the Danish privateers west of the Sound. However, as the story of Stora Jernvågen shows, Swedish ships could also be taken by Barbary corsairs. By 1720 , in particular, the Barbary corsairs had begun to take many Swedish ships. 130 The need for convoying Swedish merchantmen was widely recognised.
A reorganization of the Swedish convoy system was discussed by the same riksdag (in 1723 ) as had promulgated the Navigation Act. The session agreed to establish a new system for financing convoys, based on a special duty, the so- called extra licenten. The Board of Trade proposed that the following duty should be paid on all imports and exports: 1 per cent on all imports, and H per cent on all exports. Of course, merchants trading in the Baltic Sea, who had no use for convoying, opposed this proposal, and the riksdag finally decided to reduce the duty on Baltic imports and exports by a half. 131
The duty was collected in the Convoy Fund ( Konvojkassan ) which was used to pay for convoys, for peace treaties with the Barbary states, and partly also for the release of Swedish seamen in Africa . The question of whether the Convoy Fund was an institution useful to the whole kingdom, or whether it was created merely in the interests of the mercantile elite engaged in the Mediterranean trade, recurred many times. For example, in 1745 , during the ongoing negotiations with Tripoli , many were critical of Anders Plomgren , one of the merchants with interests in the Mediterranean, when he proposed that all merchants should contribute to the Convoy Fund according to their financial situation. 132
Before 1724 , the convoys had usually been organized through cooperation between the Admiralty and the Board of Trade. With the new ordinance for convoy organization, a new office was created with its seat at Gothenburg -he Convoy Office ( Konvojkommissariatet ). It included representatives of burghers (merchants and shipowners) and of the Admiralty. The Presidents of the Office were always drawn from the ranks of the navy’s admirals. 133
According to the instructions issued by the Board of Trade and the Admiralty, convoys should consist of two men-of-war, with at least 50 guns each. Earlier, it had been usual for only one ship to accompany convoys. Convoys were supposed to sail twice a year—in spring and autumn. The first place where ships met was Gothenburg . Swedish convoys were then supposed to wait at Plymouth for all merchant vessels that asked for protection, and then they sailed directly to Portugal , keeping close to the Portuguese coast. Men-of- war were expected to continue their voyage to Cadiz , but not to sail past Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. On their return voyage, the men-of-war were supposed to assemble Swedish ships waiting in salt ports, such as Lisbon and Setubal . 134
Typically, convoy organization encountered continual problems. On the one hand, there was a constant lack of resources. The costs of the expeditions were much larger than the collected duty of the extra licenten . On the other hand, Stockholm merchants in particular were reluctant to use convoys. Convoying was always connected to long waiting periods and turnaround times, which made ships less efficient. Therefore many shipmasters refused to wait for convoys and sailed without protection, or in the convoys of other countries.
Despite frequent public criticism and lack of resources, the Convoy Office survived for over a hundred years. However, the organization went through many changes. First, it was moved from Gothenburg to Stockholm in 1741– 42 . 135 There the Office continued in it activities until the 1780s , when, as a result of an investigation, its closure was proposed. Between 1790 and 1797 , the Convoy Office’s duties were taken over by the State Office. But, quite soon, it became clear that the new organization was even more expensive, and no better at protecting shipping than the Convoy Office. Thus, in February 1797 , the Convoy Office was re-established in a similar form as before, and it continued into the first decades of the nineteenth century. 136
As mentioned above, the activities of the Office were theoretically financed by the duty of extra licenten . But the resources thereby collected were insufficient. Therefore, the extra licenten level was doubled in 1747 , and again in 1760 . 137 In addition, the Office was allowed to finance its activities via loans. However, all these attempts to secure its finances proved inadequate. Clearly, it was impossible to balance rising expenditure with available income. For example, in 1759 the Convoy Office’s income was roughly 100,000 d.s.m., but its outlays amounted to almost 162,000 d.s.m. 138 The total debts of the Office were steadily rising. Repeatedly, when the situation became acute, the state took over the Office’s debts and wrote them off. Hence, in 1766 the state wrote off a debt of 923,448 d.s.m.
The situation did not much improve during the Gustavian period (1772– 1809). In 1776, the Office received a subsidy of 666,666 rixdollars specie. In spite of this, the debts continued to rise, and in 1778 it was once again necessary to write them off, this time to the tune of 364,723 rixdollars specie. These continuous problems with finances were among the reasons why the Office was closed in 1790.
The financial problems of the Convoy Office were the result of the fact that it was employed in too many areas. First, there was convoying—the most important task. The Office was responsible for manpower aboard the navy’s convoying ships and for supplying the equipment for voyages. The navy’s ships also had to be returned to the Admiralty in good shape, which entailed repair costs. Thus the total costs of a single convoy could be dauntingly high. For example, the first convoy of autumn 1724 , including the two 54-gun ships Verden and Öland , cost the Convoy Office 35,286 d.s.m. 139
Second, there were the costs of peace treaties with the Barbary states, which, indeed, made the biggest hole in the Office’s accounts. As mentioned above, from the first contacts with the Barbary states onwards, the Convoy Office was seen as the institution which should provide for these outlays. This meant that the treaties and the institutional arrangements surrounding them, including the work of Swedish diplomatic representatives, the gifts and the consular services, were seen by the Stockholm authorities as a part of the same institutional arrangement for the Mediterranean shipping as was convoying. In modern institutional terminology, both could be labelled protection costs.
The third task of the Convoy Office was the payment of ransoms for, and hence the freeing of, Swedish captives in North Africa. However, the resources for this purpose were not only provided by extra licenten . Every year, money was collected in all Swedish churches for the freeing of Swedish subjects from Muslim slavery. 140 As late as 1726 , the king issued an ordinance to the effect that four times per year money should be collected in Swedish churches to free these helpless Swedish subjects. 141
To make the convoy system less costly, Sweden occasionally co-operated with Denmark , the latter being in exactly the same situation. Such joint convoys were already being organised in the 1690s , during the first period of armed neutrality. 142 Similar attempts were made after the Dutch treaty with Algiers in 1726 : at that time the Danish envoy in Stockholm proposed organising joint Danish-Swedish convoys to the Mediterranean. However, in 1728, when it became clear that Sweden would soon sign a treaty with Algiers , Stockholm lost interest in joint Danish-Swedish convoying. 143
It should be mentioned here that the Danish protection system was organised in a partially different way. There was no Danish Convoy Office, and the Danish consular service and the release of Danish captives were implemented via other institutions. In 1725 , there was a proposal to pay for convoys to Portugal and Spain via a special duty on shipping—quite similar to the Swedish extra licenten— but the proposal failed. 144 Perhaps the notion that all Danish vessels should pay for convoys used by only a limited number of ships was not acceptable to the absolute state. The same idea, however, could find support in the Swedish riksdag of the Age of Liberty.
Payments of ransoms for Danish captives in North Africa were carried out by a special Slave Society ( Slavenkassen ), established in 1715 . 145 The funds were collected from a duty paid on each ship, according to its tonnage. Indeed, the Danish Slave Society was the institution which first proposed signing a treaty with the Barbary states: the proposal of a treaty with Algiers in 1736 . This proposal clearly had the Swedish treaty of 1728 as its model, and perhaps the Society’s representatives also had contacts with the Swedes engaged in the Swedish negotiations. 146 Yet it took another ten years before the Danish treaty became a reality. 147
Balancing the convoying of ships with the maintenance of peaceful relations with the Barbary corsairs was a complicated task. The main reason for signing the treaties with the Barbary states was the protection of shipping in southern Europe. It was argued that treaties would reduce the costs of convoying and increase security for the ships. However, convoying did not disappear; instead the Convoy Office was obliged to pay for both peace treaties and convoying.
The Swedish convoying system concentrated the many tasks of shipping protection (convoying, peace treaties and consular service in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco) in one institution—the Convoy Office. According to the original concept, the Convoy Office was supposed to finance its activities by a special duty on all Swedish foreign trade. However, this income was never enough, and hence the outlays of the Office, and so the whole Swedish protection system in southern Europe, were more or less obviously paid for by the state. Looking at the system from a protection costs perspective, we may conclude that it modestly reduced the overall protection costs of Swedish shipping and trade in southern Europe (See section 5.6 and Appendix E). To be sure, it transferred the protection costs of private enterprises (Swedish shipowners and merchants with interests in the area) to the state: a private issue was thereby turned into a public concern. This became possible due to the political power of the Stockholm mercantile elite, which had the strongest interest in the development of commercial contacts with southern Europe. But a number of examples show that the public acceptance of the system was not wholly unproblematic. The history of the Swedish Convoy Office includes many attempts to change its organization and reduce its costs.
3.6 The Swedish Levant Company
Salt supplies have been identified as probably the single most important factor behind Sweden’s engagement in southern Europe. However, there was another, commercial motive for such activities—the Levant trade. As in the case of the salt trade, Swedish interests in the Levant had a long history. Some of the initial contacts have been mentioned in the section above, dealing with diplomatic relationships with the Sublime Porte. We have mentioned Johan Silfvercrantz’s plans to establish a Swedish Levant trade during Charles XII’s stay on Ottoman territory, and the reasons for their failure.
In parallel with the diplomatic negotiations with the Sublime Porte in the 1730s , some leading Stockholm merchants were planning the prompt opening of Swedish trade with the Levant , and when the question of Charles XII ’s debt was resolved and the trade treaty with the Sublime Porte concluded, there were no more obstacles to this ambition. Thus, a year later, in February 1738 , the Swedish Levant Company was founded in Stockholm. 148
In many ways, establishing the Levant company was a controversial issue, a fact reflected in the riksdag of 1738 . There was a deep political split over the issue between the old Cap regime of Arvid Horn , and the rising party of the Hats. Not coincidently, the supporters of the company idea were without exception leading Hats. Firstly, the controversy had diplomatic implications. The establishment of the Levant Company was impossible without improved relationships with the Ottoman Empire (the trade treaty), which met with the disapproval of the Caps’ ally, Russia , and even with that of some other states. And in this sense the establishment of the Company may be interpreted as an important platform in the Hats’ aggressive anti-Russian policy.
Second, and in this context perhaps more important, was the organizational aspect. Should the Levant trade be organized according to a chartered company model, following the example of the English Levant Company, or should it be left free, following the model of the Dutch? The Stockholm merchant community was divided on the question. Some minor merchants argued for a free trade form of organization. However, the merchant elite argued for a chartered company on the English model, and their proposal, although in partially reduced stature, finally won through in the riksdag . 149
Third, there also was a more general mercantilist aspect to the Levant trade debate. Adversaries argued that Sweden had no true commercial interests in the Levant. Levant commodities (e.g. silk) were seen as unnecessary luxuries, and so one of the roots of Sweden’s unfavourable balance of trade. Instead, the Swedes should consume products made in Sweden, in Swedish manufactures; and, even if consumption of Levant commodities were allowed, foreigners could import them at lower cost.
Analysing the privileges included in the Company charter of 1738, we can see that the final version of the charter was a kind of compromise between monopoly and free trade. The Company’s monopoly was not complete. It concerned only the Levant coast—meaning that commerce in western area of the Mediterranean basin was left free. In addition, individuals could purchase a special Levant trade licence from the Company (for a fee of 15 per cent of the cargo value).
The charter gave the newly-appointed Swedish consul in Smyrna , Henrik Hackson , an important role. On the one hand, the consul was made an official Swedish representative there. His duty was to register all Swedish cargoes entering and leaving the harbour, and to inform the Board of Trade about trade and shipping there. The Convoy Fund paid him 2,000 rixdollars annually, which showed that the Smyrna consulate was a part of the same consular system as the consulates at Algiers , Tripoli and Tunis . At the same time, the consul was appointed by the Company’s directors, and he worked for the Company. 150 Hackson also took an active part in the discussions about the future shape of the Swedish Levant trade and, not surprisingly, he preferred a chartered company form of organization.
The Levant Company was the second chartered company founded in Sweden during the Age of Liberty, the first being the Swedish East India Company ( 1731 ). However, despite a superficial, external similarity in organization, there were substantial differences between the Levant and East India Companies. First, the monopoly rights given to the East India Company were much more exclusive. In contrast to the Mediterranean trade, there were no real opportunities for private East India trade from Sweden. Second, the scale of operations and the capital stock invested were of different magnitudes. The starting capital of the Levant Company was a modest 200,000 d.s.m., compared to 5.5 million d.s.m. for the Swedish East India Company. 151 The difference in capital stock can be explained not only by the scale of operations of the East India Company, but also by foreign interests. In particular, during its first decades, foreign investments in the East India Company played a crucial role, and the Company staff included many foreigners. On the other hand, the Levant Company does not appear to have attracted any foreign investors or employees.
The business of the Levant Company did not develop according to the high- flown expectations of its founders. When, after the first ten years, the charter was renewed, the monopoly for the Levant coastal trade was made even more exclusive, to improve the Company’s financial condition. But that did not help. After 1752 , the Company’s operations more or less ceased, and after another three years the riksdag ( 1755–56 ) decided to withdraw the company charter, and thus ‘liberated’ Swedish trade with the Levant . The charter was bought back by the state. During its 18 years existence ( 1738–56 ), the Levant Company sent the tiny number of fourteen vessels to Smyrna . 152
The failure of the Levant Company strongly contrasts with the overall increase in Swedish shipping to the Mediterranean. The fourteen vessels cited above can be compared with over 3,000 Algerian passports issued in the 1739– 59 period by the Board of Trade. 153 Why did the Levant Company fail? In 1752 , the riksdag asked the directors for an explanation of the miserable conditions of the Company business. The reasons given by the directors exactly reflect the general problems experienced by Swedish long-distance trade compared with other states. There were too many disadvantages. The value of an average Swedish cargo was much lower than an average foreign cargo. Swedish cargoes destined for the Levant was never valued over 15,000 d.s.m., while the Dutch and English cargoes were usually valued at about 100,000 d.s.m. The explanation lies in the composition of Swedish cargoes. The Swedes mainly exported bulky commodities (iron, iron manufactures, tar, pitch, sawn timber), demanding of space but relatively cheap. The Dutch and English, on the other hand, exported textiles and other high-value goods. Whereas bar-iron was the major commodity for the Swedes, the Dutch used it as ballast, so that it was free of freight cost. In addition, sailing from Stockholm to Smyrna took much longer than a voyage from Amsterdam or London , which made the Swedish voyage relatively uneconomic. Moreover, the Swedish company was financially too weak, and hence it was obliged to buy Levant commodities on worse terms than its financially stronger competitors. 154
The Company directors also highlighted the well-known structural disadvantages of Swedish long-distance trade and shipping. It was scarcely novel to argue that Swedish ships had to sail much further than Dutch or English ones. Neither was the capital weakness of Swedish merchants or the unfavourable composition of their cargoes news. This did not explain much. Perhaps a better explanation of the failure of this enterprise lays in the fact that the Company was not successful in exploiting all the opportunities and advantages that the Swedes had in the area of Mediterranean shipping. It was also dissolved before the Swedish ships could fully exploit the advantages of neutrality shipping.
Neither did the consulate at Smyrna promote trade as had been intended. The first consul at Smyrna , the above-mentioned Henrik Hackson , apparently spent much time in Sweden. He was appointed consul in March 1736 , even before the peace and trade treaty with the Sublime Porte was concluded. 155 However, as early as 1737 he was in Stockholm, taking part in the debate about the future shape of the Levant trade. As mentioned, the Company charter gave him a position as the Company’s commission agent. In 1742 , Hackson sent his resignation to the Board of Trade. In his place, Johan Henrik Kierman took over the consular duties, but he does not seem to have received the official appointment document from Stockholm. Kierman was a stepson of Gustaf Kierman , who played so important a role in the payment of the Swedish debt to the Sublime Porte, and was already deeply engaged in the Levant trade in the early 1730s . Gustaf Kierman was also one of the founders and directors of the Company.
Despite the fact that he lacked an official appointment, Kierman junior worked to promote Swedish trade with the Ottoman Empire. And he highlighted out neutral shipping as the major Swedish advantage. In his report to the Directors of the Company of September 1744 , he wrote of the profitable prospects for Swedish shipowners in shipping between Smyrna , Thessaloniki , even Alexandria , and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Because of the lack of shipping capacity, local merchants rented ships from Naples and Venice —only too well aware of the danger, as the Neapolitan and Venetian ships were favourite targets of the Barbary corsairs. Swedish ships were much safer and, due to their lower insurance premiums, they were better paid for freight. Kierman mentioned the fact that for the Smyrna Livorno voyage, the insurance premiums for the Swedish ships were 3–4 per cent, whereas the Venetian ships paid premiums of 6, 8, or even as much as 10 per cent. 156 Unfortunately, the young Kierman did not manage to realise many of his ideas. In October 1744 , just two years after taking over the consulate, he was murdered in a robbery near Smyrna . 157
Other reports for the area also testify that the most profitable opportunity for the Swedes was not the commodity trade between the Levant and Sweden, but shipping for foreigners in the Mediterranean Sea. Edvard Carlson , who after the successful negotiations with the Sublime Porte became the Swedish envoy in Constantinople , reported in August 1744 on the plans of Marseilles merchants to hire Swedish ships for trade with Thessaloniki and Smyrna . 158 The failure of the Levant Company should therefore be seen mainly as a failure of the direct trade between the Levant and Sweden. It did not demonstrate any general failure of Swedish policy for the Mediterranean.
3.7 Conclusions
It is clear that the Mediterranean became, in the early eighteenth century, a high-priority area for the Swedish authorities and Sweden’s merchants. Swedish ambitions encompassed both the western and eastern basins of the Mediterranean Sea, and they had a primarily commercial, but also partly a political character. In the western basin of the Mediterranean, the Swedes were first of all interested in salt supplies. Second, they were searching for new markets for Swedish staple commodities, such as iron, sawn timber, tar and pitch. The major motive for establishing contacts with the eastern basin of the Mediterranean was the Levant trade; but, in this area, the balance of foreign political interests between the Ottoman Empire and Russia decided the timing and extent of Swedish engagement.
To promote these ambitions, Sweden implemented a number of measures, which can be described as institutional modernization. Nevertheless, even if this institutional modernisation was new for Sweden, it was not original in an international context. In fact, all the ‘new’ Swedish institutions mimicked the well-tested Dutch and English prototypes.
First, the Swedish Navigation Act was launched in 1724. Second, the Swedish convoy system was reorganized, and a new Convoy Fund and Convoy Office were established. Third, Sweden signed important peace and trade treaties with the Barbary states and the Sublime Porte. The consular service in North Africa appeared as an immediate outcome of the peace treaties, and a complement to the rising number of consulates on the northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and on the Iberian Peninsula. Fourth, the Swedish Levant Company began operation business in 1738.
The institutional framework described above fits comfortably under the umbrella of that eighteenth-century economic policy labelled mercantilism. A question that naturally flows from this, and one naturally related to the old debate about the character of mercantilism, is: did this institutional framework provide an efficient foundation for the growth of Swedish trade and shipping in southern Europe, and of the Swedish economy in general, or should it be seen as a distortion of the ‘market balance’, and perhaps a result of political egotism by some self-interested actors? In other words, did the institutional framework entail a reduction or increase in transaction costs for Sweden? Answering these questions, however, requires a quantitative analysis of both the Swedish commodity trade and shipping activities in southern Europe. In addition, such an analysis must be related to the general development of European long-distance shipping. An attempt to address the issue is made in chapter 5, but before that we will look more closely at the Swedish consular service in southern Europe: its models, origins and functions. Not least, we will closely examine the history of some major Swedish consulates in the area.
CHAPTER 4 The Swedish consular service in southern Europe
4.1 Early consular services in the Mediterranean
Violet Barbour described the seventeenth-century shipping world as divided into two quite distinct fields. 160 Shipping in northern Europe was characterised by bulky commodities, by large merchant fleets and by high average tonnage per vessel. It was also a relatively safe world, with few seamen on board an average ship and low insurance premiums. It was a world dominated by the Dutch flute.
The second field encompassed the remaining shipping world: southern Europe, the Canaries , Madeira , Africa , and the East Indies . Barbour might also add the Caribbean and the Americas. Commerce in these regions had been characterised by ‘rich trades’. The shipping of high-value commodities did not require such large shipping capacity as the northern trades in bulkier commodities, but on the other hand, long-distance sailing and especially sailing in dangerous waters required many hands on board; insurance premiums were high. In spite of the fact that the shipping world changed and expanded substantially, Barbour ’s characterisation also largely works for the eighteenth century. The Mediterranean Sea belonged, of course, to the latter field of shipping, notwithstanding that much of the shipping in the Mediterranean also had the character of ‘bulky’ trade. 161
Swedish trade and shipping had for centuries been conducted in northern Europe. Swedish merchants and sailors knew the conditions of shipping, as well as the institutional environment in the area. The Mediterranean, which they had entered more extensively by the late seventeenth century, was a different proposition. Business activities in southern Europe were carried out in a different institutional environment from northern Europe. This environment was the result of much longer historical development dating back to the ancient period, but it was also an environment characterised by a large degree of uncertainty, both on the seas and in relations with local authorities.
One of the particular features of this strange institutional environment was the consular system. The system united commercial, legal and—partly—also diplomatic functions. Consulates were originally tribunals, with representation from both merchants—either local or from abroad—and from local authorities. In this form, consulates were already known in the late thirteenth century. 162 Consulates solved disputes concerning all aspects of maritime trade. They were supposed to solve conflicts between merchants and authorities, but also between different merchants, or merchants and their employees (captains, seamen, etc.). 163 Consuls, in fact, were representatives of the merchant community at a specific seaport, and were usually elected by the merchant community of that seaport.
Because of the international character of the merchant communities all around the Mediterranean, many elected consuls were foreigners. In conflicts with local authorities, they then represented not only the interests of commerce but often also the interests of their own national groups. In this way the distinction between two categories of consuls arose. The overseas consuls ( Consul de Ultramar ) obtained a representative function. They defended and assisted citizens of their respective countries, and they represented their state in its contacts with the local power. On the other hand, the consuls of the sea ( Consul de Mar ) fulf illed a legal role in the resolution of conflicts concerning the Mediterranean maritime world. 164 Here the focus will be on the group of overseas consuls. In particular, north-western European countries developed overseas consular services in the course of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which then served as a model for the Swedish consular service.
An interesting area, as regards the rise of overseas consuls, was the Levant coast: on the one hand, part of the Ottoman Empire, on the other an area of great commercial importance for Europeans since the Middle Ages. Ottoman administration often came into conflict with European merchant communities. Therefore the consular system in the Levant may serve as a classic example of how the consular services of the European powers operated.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were four states with consular representation in the Levant : Venice , with its traditionally well-established exchange with the area; France , with its consular service established in 1535/ 36 ; England , with a consular service since 1583 ; and the Dutch Republic, with a consular service since 1613 . 165 The consular representations were based on treaties with the Sublime Porte, but these treaties had a different character compared with the European treaty system. Relations with the Sublime Porte should not be seen in the same perspective as inter-European diplomatic relations based on international law. Relations between European consuls and local authorities followed Muslim customary law, regulating the legal situation of infidels under Muslim sovereignty. This feature is also important as regards the later Swedish treaties with the North-African states.
The non-diplomatic character of the consular service in the Ottoman territories is confirmed by the fact that, in the course of the sixteenth century, European consuls were not exempt from local jurisdiction. As late as 1596 , the local authorities in Alexandria could execute a French consul. 166 Provision for the diplomatic immunity of consuls was first included in the renewed English and French treaties in 1601 and 1604 respectively.
The consuls were perceived by the Ottoman authorities primarily as the leaders of foreign merchant communities, not as representatives of European states. Therefore they could be handled quite arbitrarily. For example, it was usual to see unilateral increases in the duties paid by consuls, without proper explanation. In addition, a typical feature of the authorities’ attitude to consuls was collective responsibility. Communities of foreign merchants and their leaders—consuls—were responsible to local authorities for the behaviour of individual community members.
In a similar manner as the consuls of the sea ( Consul de Mar ), European consuls in the Levant functioned as judges. They ruled on conflicts within European merchant communities. In the course of time, they became more and more independent from the local jurisdiction. In special cases consuls could even send defendants to their home countries for trial.
It has been stressed that the European consuls had a role mainly as representatives of their national merchant communities. Nevertheless, they were authorised to act as consuls by the governments of their home countries. They had to receive official appointments, otherwise they were not taken seriously by the local authorities. So an official appointment letter was drawn up to confirm a consul’s diplomatic role, although this role was not the same as that of diplomats in western Europe.
This ambiguous position—as a representative of a merchant community, and as a quasi-diplomatic representative of a state—was frequently a cause of conflict of interest. 167 For example, typical Venetian consuls seldom had commercial ties with Venetian merchants at the place of appointment. They had usually seen prior service as officials in Venice . The Venetian consular service seems to have been more professionalised than the services of other states. According to Niels Steensgaard , who analysed the European consulates in the Levant , the reports of Venetian consuls to their government were of better quality than those of their French, Dutch and English counterparts. 168 The Venetian consuls also obtained a fixed state salary, and were not allowed to take part in local commerce. All these features stress their position as official diplomatic representatives of the Venetian Republic more than as leaders of any merchant community.
This professional system contrasted with the French consular service. French consuls had much closer relationships with their merchant communities. The state tried to strengthen its control over the consular institution, but it was not very successful. The French consulates frequently passed from one family member to another in a way typical of other offices in seventeenth-century France . This was the reason why the French consular service was seen as less efficient than the other states’. French consuls in the Levant did not receive any salary, and were supposed to obtain their living from the 2 per cent duty on imported French goods. To improve their financial situation, French consuls had to take part in commerce, although this meant less independence and lower social status. 169
The Dutch consular system more closely resembled the French than the Venetian model. Dutch consuls also originated from well-established merchant families. They did not receive any salary, and so they were dependent on consular duties and on their own business affairs. 170
The English consular system in the Levant was completely different from any other. It was built up on the basis of the different organization of the English Levant trade, and the special role of the English Levant Company within it. English consuls represented neither England , nor the English merchant community (English ‘nation’). They represented nothing other than the Levant Company and its interest, even against other English subjects in the Levant . The company was also entitled to appoint the English consuls and vice- consuls in the Levant , despite the criticism of the independent English merchants in the area. This inflamed the relationship between Englishmen living in the Levant and the London directors of the Levant Company. 171
The cases of the Venetian, French, Dutch and English consular services obviously demonstrate that the consular institution could be organised in quite different ways. The Swedish consular service in the Mediterranean was to include different pieces of these models, depending on the consulate’s location.
By the seventeenth century, international commerce in the Mediterranean had acquired a partially different character in comparison with previous centuries. The traditional corsair guerre de course between the Christians and Muslims was receding. France , due to its early diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire, played a key role in this development. At the same time, northern-European shipping and commerce acquired a large share of Mediterranean trade.
In comparison with the Mediterranean states, the northern-European merchants (first the Dutch and English, but later, also the Danes and Swedes) had more spacious ships, more tonnage per man on board, and a more efficient shipping organization. However, one of the key preconditions of northern- European shipping in the Mediterranean Sea was the increasing security and predictability of trading activities. Treaties with the Ottoman Empire and its vassals in North Africa created this security, and it appeared easier for such treaties to be signed by Protestant northern-European powers than by Catholic Mediterranean states. 172 Consular services played a key role in creating this more secure commercial environment, at least for the Dutch, English and French.
The Swedish consular service, established after 1720, clearly combined the Dutch and English consular models—in the same way that the Dutch and English treaties with the Barbary states served as a model for defining Swedish relations with the Muslim states in the Mediterranean. In the following sections we will describe in detail how the Swedish consular service was shaped, which individuals were appointed as Swedish consuls in the area, and which duties and general functions Swedish consuls discharged.
4.2 Appointment procedures in the Swedish consular service
The expansion of the Swedish consular service in southern Europe was more a result of political and economic ambition than a response to the specific needs of Sweden’s foreign trade and shipping in the area. To some extent, consuls were appointed for areas where the authorities wished to develop Swedish trade. But the consular service had also expanded, even if less rapidly, in areas where Swedish trade was already established: Britain, France and the Dutch Republic.
An interesting aspect of the Swedish consular service in the eighteenth century is the issue of nationality. On the one hand, the employment of local merchants of non-Swedish origin as Swedish consuls was very common. They usually had better knowledge of the local trade and political situation than the Swedes. They were quite often also interested in becoming Swedish consuls. Foreigners did not only aspire to the post of Swedish consul because of their commercial interests. Consular appointment also entailed diplomatic immunity, and thus exemption from the local jurisdiction. Consuls enjoyed a high degree of personal security and esteem within the local merchant communities. However, within France it was forbidden to appoint as consul an individual who was not a French subject. Therefore all Swedish consuls in France were Frenchmen.
The Swedish Board of Trade preferred Swedish subjects. These were perceived as better guarantors of the promotion of Swedish interests. As early as November 1719 , the Swedish Board of Trade was arguing that young Swedish merchants should be preferred as consuls abroad. In 1723 , the royal instruction concerning the consular service once again expressed the aspiration that Swedes rather than foreigners should be employed. Consuls were also asked to report in the Swedish language and this, of course, was easier for a Swedish-born consul. Nevertheless, a considerable volume of consular correspondence to the Board of Trade was in English or French. In the course of the eighteenth century, the proportion of foreigners slowly declined. In 1789 , foreigners made up only seventeen of forty-eight active consuls. 173
The rising number of Swedish-born consuls was not only a result of the Board’s appointment policy, but also a sign of interest on the part of Stockholm’s leading merchant families. Swedish consuls in the key commercial centres often belonged to these families. The Lisbon consulate is a good example of this phenomenon. After Joachim de Besche ( 1704–21 ), Anders Bachmanson Nordencrantz , a prominent politician and merchant ( 1727–38 ) served as consul. After Nordencrantz came Arvid Arfwedson ( 1738–56 ) of the well- known Stockholm family, and later Jean Bedoire ( 1757–78 ), member of another prominent city family. Between 1782 and 1808 , and again from 1816 to 1860 , the Lisbon consulate was served by the Kantzow family, yet another leading Stockholm family. 174 The same situation will be found in other parts of the Swedish consular services. The key consulates in London were served by members of the Grill and Tottie families for almost a hundred years ( 1777– 1869 ). The consulate in Amsterdam was managed by the Hasselgren s. All three families belonged to the very highest stratum of the Stockholm merchant elite. 175
However, the leading merchant circles of Stockholm had quite an ambiguous view of the consular service. In some parts of Europe, they perceived consuls as a necessity; in particular, this was true for the Mediterranean. Here, the consular service was necessary because it was a part of the traditional fabric of doing business—as described above. So, if Sweden wished to take part in Mediterranean commerce, it had to conform to this same system. On the other hand, in northern and eastern Europe, areas without any tradition of consular service, exchange could be carried out without consuls. Hence consular service in these areas entailed little more than new costs. Perhaps the long period of vacancy of the London consulate may be explained by the unwillingness of merchants to fill it. Despite the first official appointment in 1722 ( Jonas Alström ), the consulate was in fact vacant for 50 years. Jonas Alström promptly returned to Sweden in 1723 , and the next consul, Peter Christian Algehr , received his official appointment in 1772 . 176 London business could be carried out with or without a consul.
To reach a concord between the enthusiastic appointment policy of the Board of Trade and the more practical attitude of the merchant community, all appointments were made in consultation with merchant representatives. Usually, the Board asked the merchants for a recommendation on the question of an appointment, and usually followed their recommendation. In the first part of the eighteenth century, the Stockholm merchants chose between six and twelve representatives, who drafted these recommendations. From 1770 on, the recommendations were signed by the Stockholm Merchant Association ( Grosshandelssocieteten ). Beginning in 1813 , other Swedish port towns were even asked to comment on the appointments of new consuls. 177 This proves that the Stockholm merchant elite played a key role in the appointment policy.
Merchants’ statements concerning the appointments of new consuls are preserved in the archives of the Board of Trade. They provide us with a detailed picture of how the Stockholm merchant elite approached the question. It seems that quite often they were opposed to new consulates, new costs being the main reason. The following cases show in detail how the process of consideration could play out.
In 1775 , Gustaf Baumgart applied to the Board of Trade for appointment as a Swedish consul in Valencia in Spain , and as usual, the Board sent his application to the Stockholm Merchant Association for comment. The Association response stated that Swedish trade in the district of Valencia had not developed as merchants wished, and that the reason was ‘the lack of National consuls’. So, in general, the Association was positive regarding the creation of a new consulate. Nevertheless, it also stated that the new consulate should not impose any new fees on Swedish trade and shipping. 178 The application was subsequently declined. Yet it is worth mentioning that this same Baumgart became Swedish consul at Cartagena some twenty years later, in 1792 . 179
Statements of the Association also show that its members recommended only individuals whom the Stockholm merchants knew and trusted. Of course, one natural consequence of this priority was that the recommended applicants were frequently of Swedish origin, and were very often members of one of Stockholm’s leading mercantile families, as previously observed. So, when the Association was asked to make a statement regarding applicants for a vacant consulate at Genoa , in 1778 , it recommended the Swedish-born Carl Holmberg , well known to them from his business activities in Genoa . They also expressed the hope in their statement that ‘through Holmberg a good national [Swedish] merchant house could be established at Genoa ’. But once again, the representatives stressed that the appointment must not entail new consular fees. 180
Another example of the importance of personal knowledge for recommendation is the case of an English officer named J. Labot . In 1813 , Labot applied for the position of Swedish consul at Malta (La Valetta). The Association’s answer was dated June 1814 . The merchants stated that the applicant was completely unknown to them, and they could not recommend him for the post. 181
A strong reason for preferring a well-known and trustworthy individual was the employment of consuls as commission agents. A recent analysis of the role of Swedish consuls as commission agents for Finnish merchants reveals that about half of the consuls dealing with Finnish cargoes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had Scandinavian names. 182 They were simply more trusted. This implies that Swedish-Finnish merchants preferred Swedish consuls before foreigners, mainly because of their personal knowledge of the consul or his family.
But the importance of Swedish origin should not be exaggerated. There were at least two strong arguments for appointing foreigners. Firstly, they usually had much better expertise vis-à-vis the local trade conditions than did Swedes. This advantage was especially apparent in the early part of the eighteenth century, and in those areas where Sweden had no established contacts. The establishment of the consular service in North Africa would not have been possible without the experience of the Scottish merchant George Logie . Secondly, foreigners were simply more interested in getting the job. The Board of Trade had problems recruiting Swedish nationals, and it blamed the rich merchants as being unwilling to settle in foreign countries, or to send their sons there. 183
4.3 Payments and ‘consulade’ fees
The Swedish consular service was not a lucrative option for ambitious merchant sons. It was too badly paid. The majority of Swedish consuls, in contradiction to their Venetian counterparts, were not paid officials (career consuls), but so-called honorary consuls. 184 This meant that they had primarily to earn their living on their own accounts, as merchants and commission agents. But they also had the right to claim ‘consulade’—a fee paid by every national ship visiting a consul’s district. In addition, they could collect some other special fees for assisting Swedish subjects abroad.
The system of payments was not unified. Consequently, the conditions varied from district to district, and sometimes from appointment to appointment. The prevalent level of consulade in a specific district was decided on the occasion of the appointment of a consul, but it usually conformed to the previous conditions. Consulade fees comprised a never-ending saga in the correspondence between consuls, the Board of Trade and the merchant representatives. In fact, the question of consulade fees is one of the most frequently raised in consular reports to the Board of Trade.
The only salaried consulates in the course of the eighteenth century were those in Algiers , Tunis , Tripoli and Morocco . Nevertheless, these salaries were a consequence of the very special character of these consulates. In the Barbary states, consuls had a primarily diplomatic function: they negotiated with the local rulers; they organised the delivery of the gifts/tributes; they represented their government. On the other hand, they had a very limited commercial function, simply because the trade between Sweden and these states was insignificant. They could not make a living as commission agents, which was the usual practice in other consulates. The salaries of the Swedish consuls on the Barbary coast were paid from the resources of the Convoy Office Fund, which indicates how closely this system was connected with the issue of the security of Swedish shipping. 185
Because Swedish honorary consuls could not survive without conducting their own business, the Board of Trade did not limit consuls’ mercantile activities—in spite of the fact that they could become entangled in a conflict of interest between their roles as consuls and as merchants. However, there were some prohibited areas. Consuls were forbidden to participate in freight shipping. Yet again, there were exceptions even here, so that consuls in the Barbary states were allowed to participate in freight shipping. 186
The question of the durable financing of the Swedish consular service was not resolved in the eighteenth century. The fees (consulade) were a permanent conflict issue between consuls and merchants; the latter often argued, in fact, that fees created a real hindrance for Swedish trade. The conflict between Stockholm merchants and the Lisbon consul Anders BachmansonNordencrantz in the 1730s seems to have been particularly tough. This conflict will be described in detail in the section concerning the Lisbon consulate. 187 Looking at the consular fees from the merchant perspective, one may argue that the consular service did, in fact, increase the transaction costs of Swedish shipping and trade. Yet the competing arguments are difficult to evaluate. Here, the question will primarily be treated as a conflict of different interests. However, the dispute clearly reflects the ambiguous (and in a sense untenable) situation of consuls as both professional state bureaucrats and independent businessmen.
As late as 1789 , the Board of Trade proposed that those applicants would be preferred who could take over the business of a former consul, so that the appointee could make a living from the same merchant firm as his predecessor. The Board also argued for salaried consulates in districts in which commerce was insufficient to satisfy an independent Swedish merchant house. Another recommendation was to make a clear distinction between consulates with primarily diplomatic functions, which should be linked more directly to the Department of Foreign Affairs, and consulates with predominantly commercial functions. 188
The lack of common rules for the consular service increased the confusion. There was no general instruction regarding consular duties or rights until 1793 . Consequently, each appointment included a more or less specific description of conditions and payment in the specific consular district, even if these frequently did no more than repeat the old instruction. The first general Swedish consular instruction ( konsulstadgan ), issued in January 1793 , summarised and confirmed the existing practices. It pointed out the required qualities of a consul, his duties and rights, and it defined the rules of selection of applicants. 189
The distinction between salaried (career) and honorary consuls is indicative of the important difference between consuls’ diplomatic and commercial functions. Yet there are also some other distinctions worthy of discussion. There existed three different ranks in the Swedish consular service: general consuls, consuls and vice-consuls. Consuls were appointed by the Board of Trade in Stockholm, and the appointment was confirmed by a royal letter, which provided the consul with his diplomatic rank. Vice-consuls were often appointed by the consul to help him in his duties, for instance in far-flung areas of the consular district, or during the consul’s absence. Hence, vice-consuls lacked the ‘official royal letter’. The payment of vice-consuls was also decided locally.
The highest rank of consular representation was general consul. Like that of a with consul, the general consul’s status was confirmed and defined in an official appointment and confirmed by a royal letter, these documents delineating the general consul’s rights and duties. The major difference between consul and general consul lay in the extent of territory. The district of a general consul comprised a whole state, and a general consul often lived in the capital, whereas the district of a consul was much smaller, usually comprising a specific port town and its hinterland.
It has been pointed out above, in the description of the origins of the Swedish consular service in the seventeenth century, how different functions and titles were mixed. In the seventeenth century, there was no clear distinction between consuls, merchant agents and envoys. In Sweden, the term ‘consul’ was in use from the second part of the seventeenth century onwards—for example, in Lisbon ( 1669 ), and Amsterdam ( 1688 ). 190 However, it is clear that the term was broadly used by other nations, even in the Baltic area. 191 In Sweden, more general use of the term, and a clear distinction between consular and other forms of representation, is first apparent after 1720 . From 1801 the title of ‘merchant agent’ ( handelsagent ) replaced that of ‘consul’. The Swedish authorities did not wish to arouse the ire of the great French consul. Yet in 1815 , when Napoleon ’s power was no more, all Swedish ‘merchant agents’ were once again designated ‘consuls’. 192
4.4 Reporting and other duties
Looking at consular duties from the state perspective, the process of reporting to the Board of Trade was one of the most important functions. These reports could concern many different subjects, depending very much on the consul’s personality and interests. However, the most important subject was the description of the conditions of trade and shipping in a consul’s district. 193
Consuls provided information about price developments vis-à-vis the key local commodities, and those commodities important for Sweden. They could also inform the Board of important events, and of new regulations (e.g. new duties) that impacted on the market situation. It was quite usual to enclose price currents, cuttings from local newspapers, or cargo lists with a consular report. From the Swedish point of view, each specific market had some interesting commodities to purchase, or some interesting opportunities for sales. Such topics were the focus of the reports. Hence, the Lisbon reports dealt overwhelmingly with salt: salt prices, conditions of salt production, duties, weather conditions—all the factors affecting salt supplies and prices. However, in the same Lisbon reports we will even find information on incoming Brazilian fleets and their cargoes.
On the other hand, reports from Cadiz or Marseilles paid the bulk of their attention to the market for Swedish staple commodities: iron, sawn timber, tar and pitch. At the same time, however, they were also concerned with market conditions for grain, and the consequences of market changes for Swedish tramp shipping in the area. Reports from the Barbary states were mainly concerned with the political situation. 194
Due to the importance of the political situation for commerce and shipping, consuls paid a good deal of attention to the diplomatic relations between the great powers, particularly when the outcome could affect freight rates, insurance premiums and (eventually) the demand for Swedish shipping. For neutral Sweden, warfare always meant a potential increase in business. Therefore much space in the reports was allotted to rumours about possible conflicts.
Another aspect of reporting specifically concerned the data on Swedish shipping and trade. Consuls were obliged to report on every Swedish ship entering and leaving their district. They reported on cargoes, conditions of cargo sales and suitable return cargoes. They informed the Board of conditions of shipping (freight rates and insurance premiums) and advised Swedish shipowners as to when and where shipping was profitable. The reports show that the consuls had a very good overview of the movements of Swedish ships, not only in their own districts but in the whole Mediterranean area. Occasionally, reports included annual accounts or shipping lists.
Cases of the capture of Swedish ships were a very frequent topic within consular reports. It was the consul’s duty to defend the interests of Swedish subjects in court when a ship was declared a prize. Consuls sent warnings to Stockholm as to when and where privateers and corsairs could be expected.
Another important aspect of reporting concerned the health situation in the consul’s district. Particularly by the late eighteenth century, consuls had begun to give information about epidemics, quarantine periods and regulations, so the Swedish merchants could decide if the voyage to the district was secure or not. All this was highly important business news for shipowners and merchants in distant Sweden.
Evidently, the scope of reporting was very varied, and so was the quality. Some consuls wrote frequent and lengthy letters, some others just a few short letters annually. Some consuls paid attention only to commercial information, others focused on political events. Some consuls preferred to write in an abstract general manner, some others restricted their reporting to practicalities. One could find consuls sending lengthy, high-flown proposals for increasing Swedish trade and shipping in a district; others only detailed necessities. Consuls were obliged to keep records of the Swedish shipping and trade in the district, and to report on them. Therefore some reports include quantitative data on Sweden’s shipping, trade, and even seamen. Other reports do not pay any attention to such issues. Such a widely differing quality in the reports makes it difficult to carry out any systematic analysis based on these data (see chapter 5). At the same time, the reports do provide a good picture of the consuls’ daily activities. The concluding part of this chapter will give a narrative account of these daily activities in key Swedish consulates in the Mediterranean, but first we should say something more about the other duties comprised in the consular service.
The consuls’ notary duties are an obvious element here. Consuls had the right to issue passports and documents testifying to the Swedish nationality of ships and people. However, they had also to take care of the documents of lost and sold ships. As regards the aforementioned Algerian passports, there are many examples of situations in which a ship was either lost or sold in the Mediterranean. The local Swedish consul had to collect the ship’s documents and send them back to the Board of Trade. This was very important in order to avoid abuse of the Swedish flag. For example, in his letter of 23 May 1753 , the Cadiz consul Jacob Martin Bellman informed the Board of Trade of a number of passports from ships which had been lost or sold in his district in recent months. Of the five ships mentioned, two were lost at sea ( Enigheten and Ängelen ), two were sold ( Printz Gustav and Freden ) and one was captured by privateers and brought to Ceuta ( Westerviks Vapen ). 195
A duty we have mentioned was that of helping Swedish subjects in local courts. The most frequent cases concerned the capture of Swedish ships. Here, consuls represented shipowner’s interests, and tried to prevent a ship or cargo being declared a prize. And if this did occur, the consul could even try to purchase the prize back. The capture of Swedish ships seems to have been among the most common incidents regarding which consuls had to deal with local authorities. We will return to some of these cases in the detailed account of the consulates in Lisbon and Cadiz.
Helping his nation’s subjects was always among a consul’s primary duties. For present-day consuls, this might mean helping lost tourists; in the eighteenth century it almost exclusively meant providing assistance to captured or otherwise stranded seamen. Consuls helped those seamen who got into difficulties as the crew of putative prize ships, or as captives in North Africa. A typical consequence of privateer activity was the local appearance of released and unemployed Swedish crews. Consuls had to cover the costs of local authorities in keeping the released seamen in quarantine, jail or hospital. For instance, in 1805 , the Swedish consul in Livorno , Joachim Grabien, was involved in freeing Swedish seamen taken by French privateers. Because of the local health regulations, the Swedes were kept in quarantine, and the consul was charged for their sojourn there. Grabien mentioned in his reports that the released seamen frequently took work on foreign ships, when their own ship was declared a prize. Consuls usually strove to find some employment for seamen on returning Swedish ships, but it was not always possible. By 1800 , American ships had become a favoured option because of their much higher wages. 196
The cases of Swedish seamen captured by the Barbary corsairs were of course much more moving. Even here, consuls did their best to help the Swedish subjects in captivity. The following example illustrates how such help might be provided. It concerns a group of Swedish captives in Tangier in 1740 . In October 1739 , the Lisbon consul Arvid Arfwedson received a letter from Tangier , written by five Swedish seamen who had been captured by Morocco corsairs while on their way from Cadiz to Sweden. The consul reported the case to the Board of Trade and the shipowner, and he also sent money to the captives from his consulate’s charity fund, as well as taking the first steps to get them released. However, it was to be another three years before the men were allowed to leave. In April 1742 , two of them—the others probably died in Morocco —arrived in Gibraltar on board an English ship. They received food, clothes and travel money from the Lisbon consul for the journey to Setubal , whence they could catch a Swedish ship bound for home. 197
Nevertheless, consuls could also represent absent shipowners at court against their escaped crew members, or again, they might intercede in conflicts between Swedish seamen and the local authorities. In April 1774 , the Cadiz consul Hans Jacob Gahn reported on the subject of two Swedish seamen who had found their way into the jail in Cadiz . One of them, the crew member on a Swedish East India ship, seemed to be suspected of smuggling, some goods into Cadiz . Fortunately, the matter appeared to be a mistake, and the man was freed with the consul’s help. Another Swedish seaman apparently tried to smuggle tobacco into Cadiz . In this case, the man sat in jail for a longer period, not daring to ask the consul Gahn for help. It is not clear how the affair ended. 198
Consuls were supposed to provide a solution in critical situations concerning Swedish interests—for example, when a Swedish shipmaster died or became incapable of commanding his ship. Thus, in January 1729 , the Lisbon consul Bachmanson Nordencrantz had to decide what to do with the ship Concordia a nd its crew, when the vessel’s master suddenly died. Apparently in this situation his consular instruction was of no help to him. On his own initiative, Bachmanson Nordencrantz organised a meeting of all the Swedish shipmasters who were then in Lisbon , and asked them if they could recommend that Concordia ’s mate take over the ship’s command. 199
Consuls were also supposed to keep records of all Swedes living in their districts, and they regularly informed the Board of Trade of the number of Swedish subjects there. Hence the Cadiz consul Gahn ’s reports from the 1770s and 1780s included detailed information on all Swedish subjects living in his district. 200 Consuls even had to take care of the estates of deceased Swedes— those who had died in their district, or (much more commonly) on board. Typically, a majority of the tasks concerned shipping and seamen in one form or another.
One of the specific conditions of consular service in southern Europe was the right to observe the Swedish Church’s services in the consul’s home. We must remember that the Barbary states were Muslim, and the Christian coast of the Mediterranean and Iberian Peninsula was Catholic. The right to observe the Swedish service was usually included in the peace and trade treaties regulating the relationships between the local power and the Swedish consulate. For example, the treaty with Algiers of 1729 clearly stipulated the right of the Swedish consul to have a Swedish priest and to observe services at the consul’s house. It was permissible for all Swedish subjects in Algiers to participate in these services—including captive Swedish seamen. 201
On the other hand, the religious freedom guaranteed by treaty could be violated, as Joachim de Besche , the Swedish consul in Lisbon , discovered. In 1717 , the Portuguese Inquisition accused him of providing a public Protestant service in which all nations could participate. The Inquisition approached the Portuguese king and asked him to intervene. De Besche was called to court to explain himself, and in the end he was forced to send his priest, Andre Silvius , home to Sweden. 202
Apparently, then, consuls had many duties. Reporting and the duties connected with the aforementioned everyday concerns reflected their role as the nation’s representatives. But, of course, consuls were also businessmen, even if these two functions often came into conflict. Business activities provided the means of earning one’s living, and so were a precondition of consular service. In the next section we will look more closely at consuls’ function as commission agents and merchants.
4.5 Consuls as commission agents
The basis of a Swedish consul’s personal economy was usually provided by commissions from Swedish merchant houses. Evidently this was such a well- established practice that the Board of Trade presupposed it. Many letters of appointment include an article forbidding the consul to take a consulade fee from a ship consigned to him. 203 Of course, this practice increased the costs for merchants who did not consign their cargo to a consul; they had to pay both a commission to their local commission agent and a consulade fee to the consul. To avoid such double costs, merchants and shipowners were obliged to consign their cargoes to a consul, without regard to his qualities as a businessman.
The policy may also be seen as a typical mercantilist means of controlling trade. It had been argued—by the Board of Trade and by consuls—that it was better to monopolise sales of Swedish staple commodities in one strong national house at a port (district, country) rather than to divide them among many weak commission agents, who might in addition often be foreigners. One strong national house could guarantee that commodities could be sold for the best prices and at the right moment. As early as 1712 , the Lisbon consul de Besche criticised the fact that Swedish iron reached Portugal from many different places (the Dutch Republic, England , Hamburg ) and was imported by many merchants. If the iron was retailed through one house, he argued, the price would be much better. 204 In 1740 , George Logie argued in a letter from Livorno that Swedish iron could receive a much better price if sold through one Swedish firm. 205 Another Lisbon consul, Anders Bachmanson Nordencrantz , also expounded—in the context of his schemes for the development of the Swedish-Portuguese exchange—on the virtues of having one strong Swedish merchant house. Bachmanson Nordencrantz mentioned the English organization of trade as a model. 206
Of course, the regulations concerning consulade fees strengthened the position of the consul as commission agent. This is not to say that merchants were happy about it. They saw these regulations as a violation of their right to choose whichever agent they wanted. The problem was not an issue if the appointed consul already worked as a commission agent in the locale—not an unusual situation—and if the merchant representatives in Stockholm supported the appointment. However, this became a serious problem when the consul appointed lacked experience and the support of the Swedish merchants. He then received few commissions and was more dependent on fees, which annoyed both merchants and shipowners. Their annoyance swelled when the consul argued for higher consulade fees.
Commissions became such a troubled issue for the consul Arendt Dreyer . Dreyer , consul in Cadiz in 1767–73 , was apparently appointed in spite of his weak connection with the Swedish trade in Cadiz . From 1772 , he engaged in a bitter struggle over commissions with his own vice-consul, Anders Hagström . Dreyer accused Hagström of taking the most profitable commissions whereas he, the consul, got only the scraps. Of course, in his accusations Dreyer did not mention the fact that Hagström was an experienced and successful merchant who had lived in Cadiz for many years. In fact, Hagström ’s experience of local business and knowledge of Spanish were the main reasons why Dreyer had employed him as vice-consul. In his reports to the Board of Trade, Dreyer revealed that Hagström also worked as vice-consul for the French. These French commissions seemed to be the key problem in the quarrel. But the cause of Dreyer ’s problems was not lack of French commissions. He appeared simply to be a bad businessman, as his losses even of Swedish commissions testified. 207
The Lisbon consul Bachmanson Nordencrantz got into difficulties with the Stockholm merchants because of similar problems. His case will be analysed in depth in the section on the Lisbon consulate (section 4.6.1). Nevertheless, the cases of Dreyer and Bachmanson Nordencrantz appear to be exceptional. The majority of consuls seem to have been quite successful as commission agents of Swedish firms. Part of the explanation is of course that many of them belonged to established merchant families, as noted above.
An indirect testament to the commission trade’s importance for consuls is provided by merchant accounts in Sweden. The Finnish historian Jari Ojala has analysed the ledgers of Abraham Falander , a large Swedish-Finnish merchant and shipowner. Falander ’s accounts show that in the period 1785–1815 , about one-third of his transactions abroad were made via the commission of consuls. Consuls also accounted for about one-quarter of all the correspondents with whom Falander was in contact. In 1790 , about a half of Falander ’s foreign trade’s value was made through consuls’ commissions. Yet data for the year 1790 is partly misleading, due to the dominant role of one single partner, the Amsterdam consul Conrad Adrian Hasselgren . Analyses of the correspondence of other Swedish-Finnish merchants ( Matts Johanson Sovelius in Finland , and the Stockholm-based Carlos and ClaesGrill ) also prove the important role of consuls as correspondents and commission agents. 208
The examples above are drawn from merchant correspondence and account books. It is difficult to get this kind of evidence from consular reports, simply because the aim of these reports was the provision of information for the Board of Trade—not reportage on the consul’s private business. However, a few consular reports mention to whom the Swedish cargoes were consigned and these confirm the major role of the consul as a commission agent. The reports of the aforementioned vice-consul