La balance commerciale de la Baltique – Premières évaluations à partir de la base de données du STRO / The balance of Baltic trade - Historical empirical estimates based on STRO

• The Baltic trade, holds a central role in the historiography of Northern Europe as it has been of major strategic significance for all countries involved in it during the early modern period. Economic historiography has in large portrayed the Baltic maritime trade as unbalance with the value of commodities exiting the Baltic sea being significantly larger than the value of commodities imported in the region. Despite this commonly held view, however, long-term empirical estimates of the balance of this trade has been a missing element in economic historiography. The present study contributes to this literature by constructing such estimates for the first time using trade data from the Sound Toll Registers Online. The results on the one hand confirm our previous assumptions of a relatively unbalanced trade between North-Western Europe and the Baltic Sea region. It is also found, however, that this imbalance was not permanent. By the mid-nineteenth century the commodities trade balance between the two regions was almost perfect. The results do, however, also designate that a very large share of the Baltic net exports value is left unexplained after accounting for the value of bullion transfers.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Ekonomisk historia (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economic History (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Baltic

trade balance

colonial commodities

bullion

multilateral exchange mechanisms

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)