Mid Sweden University

Interregional and global economic connections continued to grow in the eighteenth century, but we know less about consuls' impact on commodity chains that were stretched thin across large distances. Using a microhistorical approach, we look at the activities of a Swedish consul in Cadiz, Hans Jacob Gahn, who supplied large amounts of copper sheets to the Spanish navy. It was Gahn's position as an official representative, not merely his networks in Spain and Sweden, that was crucial for winning and executing the contract: his consular post enabled him to leverage his social, political, and financial capital to drastically alter trade flows for the years he held the contract. As contractors, consuls had a significant economic function for both their sending and receiving states.

This paper examines the birth of the exploitative sockenlappssystemet (the 'Parish Lapp' system) in central Sweden during the early eighteenth century. Based on a foundation of control and eviction instituted in earlier laws, the 1720s saw a forceful rise in royal concern over the existence of nomadic Sami in central Sweden. His Majesty King Fredrik I specifically expressed fear of damage to the resources of the forests through Sami hunting, especially bird hunting. The period between 1720 and 1730 saw King Fredrik corresponding with the Royal Council, the county governors, and some groups of Sami agents. The council sought to evict the Sami and move them or have them move to the lappmarker. The Sami agents claimed birth right and asserted that Sami in central Sweden had no relationship to either the land or the Sami in the northern part of the realm. This paper uses a historical anthropological perspective, based on a wide set of sources, including historical archaeology, history, and ethnography, in order to paint a bigger picture of the conflicted situation that led to the founding of the unique system of forced indenture: the so-called Parish Lapp system.

The purpose of this chapter has been to study the Swedish copper commodity chain, emphasizing the export of copper and brass to France and the links between the Swedish copper trade and the French Atlantic trade system during the eighteenth century. Conditions during times of war are an important factor to explain the downturns in the Swedish copper trade. It is more difficult to explain how trade recovered and expanded in the periods between the wars. To influence copper production and exports, the Swedish state actively contributed in numerous ways. This survey shows how the state performed market investigations in France, how they helped French craftsmen to practice their industry in Sweden, and how they subsidized copper export for Swedish merchants. The data about the Swedish manufacture of copperproducts demonstrate that certain goods were intended for the slave trade and that some deliveries could be linked to several French merchants active in the French Atlantic trade system. An assumption based on the observations in this chapter is that Swedish actors were also investors in French slave and colonial trade expeditions. The business of supplying copper goods for barter on the African coast as well as for furnishing the sugar refineries in the Caribbean generated profits and promoted the industrial development in Sweden.

Det första syftet med denna artikel är att beskriva hur den svenska koppar- och mässingsexporten utvecklades under 1700-talet. De frågeställningar som besvara är i vilken utsträckning exporten förändrades, vilka varor som exporterades och till vilka platser exporten gick. Det andra syftet är att tentativt diskutera några av de faktorer som kan ha påverkat den svenska exporten av koppar och mässing och diskutera detta i relation till hur den svenska exporten fluktuerade. Huvudfrågan i detta sammanhang är vilken roll den svenska staten spelade och i vilken utsträckning statens agerande påverkade utfallet av den svenska koppar- och mässingsexporten. De specifika faktorer som valts ut för denna analys är först och främst det varierade utbudet av svensk råkoppar från Falu koppargruva. För det andra svenska statens försök att stimulera svensk export av koppar- och mässingsprodukter och för det tredje de svenska krigens inverkan på exporten.