Preliminary Programme

The paper discusses the shipping and commodity trade before, during, and after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. I will use Finnish shipping and trade as an example of trade convergence at the time. Using the recently published Sound Toll Registers Online (www.soundtoll.nl) as the main source, the paper asks whether the Finnish trade and shipping changed during the period in question, in which way, and why? Did the commodities converge with the exports and imports of neighbouring trade areas?
Previous literature has placed emphasis on both endogenous (e.g. structural change in the Finnish economy) and exogenous (e.g. the changes in the British customs duties) causes for changes in trade patterns. Until recently, the big picture of this trade – especially with the freight carrying cargoes – has been rather difficult to obtain due to shortcomings with the domestic sources.
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International shipping was of primary concern for the economies bordering the Baltic Sea. There has been much research both into the growth of trade and shipping in the region, and into the productivity of early modern shipping in general. One topic which has received considerably less attention is the question of the speed of shipping. In this paper, I want to study the latter issue, using data from the Soundtoll Database Online (www.soundtoll.nl). From this database, it is possible to estimate the speed of shipping in the region quantitatively, using a very large sample of ships. The paper will examine whether the speed of shipping differed on different routes, and whether there is any evidence of an increasing speed – something that could have contributed to a growth in productivity. (Show less)

One of the emerging gateways of international commerce in the Baltic in the eighteenth century was Stettin, which benefited greatly from its strategic location at the mouth of the river Oder. After the Great Northern War (1700-1721), Stettin became one of Prussia´s new centres of maritime expansion, profoundly affecting the economic structure of the entire Pomeranian coastal area. In this paper, I use published sources and archival data to estimate the volume, composition and geographical structure of Stettin's international trade. Then, I assess its impact on the regional economic structure of the Pomeranian littoral, focusing on the changing roles of coastal towns and villages in the international trade and transport systems of the gateway Stettin. The goal of the paper is to contribute to an expanding body of literature that uses international trade statistics as a point of reference for the explanation of processes of regional economic change. (Show less)

In the course of the eighteenth century, Hamburg became one of the
most important distribution center or ‘Gateway’ on the Continent.
Several countries – France, Spain, Portugal – were connected with
Hamburg for the distribution of colonial goods, especially sugar. This
century saw the rise of England for the Atlantic Economies, while the
role of Hamburg became more and more important.
It is true that London was a metropolis of British Empire, but its
influence on inner-European trade was not so high as in the case of
Hamburg. It was a center of sugar distribution on the Continent.
London had to export sugar to Hamburg. The sugar was reexported to the
Northern Europe and the Continent. In this paper we will trace the
development of Hamburg’s function of sugar distribution center from 1733
to French Revolutionary Wars.
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Although Amsterdam did not play the major role in international trade in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, it was still one of the major players. Because of a bias in the sources there has always been more attention for Amsterdam’s Baltic trade than for its Atlantic, trans-Atlantic and Mediterranean trade. This bias can now be partly corrected because new sources have been digitalized. The Paalgeld Registers of Amsterdam, a source comparable to the Danish Sound Toll Registers as far as information goes, allow us to test the correctness of the traditional view of the overall importance of Amsterdam’s Baltic trade. In this paper I will show that the importance of the Atlantic and Trans-Atlantic trade outweighed the Baltic Trade in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in value and probably also in volume.
In two earlier projects I have been responsible for the digitalization of two Dutch sources, which can be verified partly by the data in the Soundtoll Registers, which are now available on line. The records of the Paalgeld Registers of Amsterdam concerning the European are available for a longer period (1742, 1771-1832) but only the records for the years 1742, 1771-1787 have been digitized for the European trade. The data for the Trans-Atlantic trade have been digitized for the period 1742, 1771-1817. An effort is being made to digitize the remaining parts of the Paalgeld Registers.
These data are quite similar to those of the Soundtoll Registers, since they give a detailed description of the whole cargo that ships brought to Amsterdam. Using these data it should be possible to verify the data of ships that were destined for Amsterdam in the Soundtoll Registers.
The records of Lastgeld Registers of Amsterdam have only survived for a short period, from April 1744 to the end of December 1748. The records give only scarce information about the cargoes, but on the other hand they offer information that cannot be found in the Paalgeld Registers or the Sound Toll Registers, being the size of the ship. These data have been digitized completely.

The goal of the paper is to contribute to the discussion about international trade statistics as a point of reference for the explanation of processes of regional economic change and how newly digitized primary sources can help us understand these complex historical developments
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