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Historisk tidskrift 124:2 • 2004

Innehåll (Contents) 2004:2

Uppsatser (Articles)

Kolonialprodukter i Sveriges handel och konsumtionskultur, 1700–1800

Leos Müller

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

The Consumer Revolution and Colonial Goods in Eighteenth-Century Sweden

The purpose of the article is to place Sweden’s imports and consumption of colonial goods in the context of the ongoing international debate on the role of colonial goods in the industrialisation process. In international research, colonial goods have received much attention, both from a perspective studying the ”birth of a consumer society”, and from a perspective studying production and international trade (e.g. the concept of the early modern Atlantic economy). In Sweden, however, historical research on consumption has focused on manufactured products and on the nineteenth century. This article argues that the issue of consumption of colonial goods is relevant also to eighteenth-century Sweden, despite the fact that the real breakthrough for consumption of such goods occurred only in the early nineteenth century.

Eighteenth-century political economy in Sweden discussed the importation of colonial goods, and their consumption was subject to many restrictive and prohibitive measures. Sweden (through the Swedish East India Company) played an important role in European tea trade, and the state also had the ambition to develop its own production of colonial goods in the West Indies—even if that ambition was never realised. Colonial goods made up a substantial and dynamic share of Sweden’s imports. Perhaps the most important aspect of Sweden’s consumption of, and trade in, colonial goods was Sweden’s integration into the commercial system of the early modern Atlantic and world economy.