Klas Rönnbäck

Integration of global commodity markets in the early modern era

In this article, I test whether there is any evidence of price convergence on intercontinental commodity markets prior to the nineteenth century. I gather price data on eleven commodity markets important to early modern intercontinental trade. The main conclusion is that many of the commodity markets do show signs of price convergence even prior to the nineteenth century. The question of an early globalisation can thus not be dismissed as easily as has often been done so far.

Slave ownership and fossil fuel usage: a commentary

In a recent, thought-provoking article, Jean-François Mouhot argues that there are many similarities between historical slave ownership and present-day fossil fuel usage. For that reason, Mouhot believes, members of modern fossil-fuel-dependent civilization should not feel morally superior to slave owners. While it is easy to sympathize with Mouhot’s intentions of furthering a transition to sustainable energy use, some arguments made in the article are in need of refinement.

Transaction costs of early modern multinational enterprise: measuring the transatlantic information lag of the British Royal African Company and its successor, 1680–1818

Abstract There is extensive previous research on the early modern chartered multinational corporations, their development and how they dealt with the various challenges they faced. This article attempts to contribute to this field of research by estimating quantitatively the information lag in early modern multinational enterprise, studying the case of the British Royal African Company and its successor the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa. The results show that the transatlantic information lag decreased somewhat during the second half of the eighteenth century. The decrease was however quite modest, and far less striking than has been claimed in some previous research. During the period, this information lag therefore still posed a major constraint on the development of multinational enterprise.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Social Stratification on the Gold Coast

ABSTRACT The paper is concerned with the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on African economies. It focuses upon the case of the Gold Coast, studying quantitatively the impact on the social stratification of Gold Coast societies. The paper argues that the demand for provisions from the external slave trade was too small to have any substantial direct positive linkage effects for the development of commercial agriculture in the rural part of the Gold Coast. Some labourers in the coastal European enclaves experienced an initial temporary boom in living standards, but soon a period of decline took precedent. Only a small group of highly privileged, key employees were able to gain consistently from their positions working for the European slave traders.

New and old peripheries: Britain, the Baltic, and the Americas in the Great Divergence

In his seminal book The Great Divergence , Kenneth Pomeranz has argued that access to inputs from the vast acreages available in the Americas was crucial for the Industrial Revolution in Britain. But could no other regions of the world have provided the inputs in demand? Recent research claims that this could have been the case. This article takes that research one step further by studying Britain’s trade with an old and important peripheral trading partner, the Baltic, contrasting this to the British trade with America. The article shows that production for export was not necessarily stagnating in the Baltic, as Pomeranz has claimed. Qualitative aspects of the factor endowment of land did not, however, enable the production of specific raw materials, such as cotton, to meet the increasing demand. Thus, the decreasing role of the Baltic ought to a large extent to be attributed to the patterns of British industrialization, and the demand it created for specific raw materials, rather than internal, institutional constraints in the Baltic region.

Who Stood to Gain from Colonialism? A Case Study of Early Modern European Colonialism in the Caribbean

Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx considered British colonies to be a net burden on British society. Ever since the issue has been a controversial one and has received a great deal of attention from scholars, not least thanks to the publication of Eric Williamss book “Capitalism and Slavery”. To a large extent the debate has been concerned with the issue of whether the profits from colonialism were large enough to have a decisive effect upon, or at least contribute to, the industrialisation of Britain and/or other countries in Europe.

Balancing the Baltic trade: colonial commodities in the trade on the Baltic, 1773–1856

Abstract This article attempts to look at the connection between the Atlantic and the Baltic economies during the transition from early modern to the modern era. Previous research has seriously underestimated the importance of colonial commodities traded on the Baltic during this period. Colonial commodities, particularly from the American plantation complex, became ever more important for the Western European balance of payments on the Baltic. Already by the late eighteenth century, these commodities were on aggregate worth approximately as much as the exports of strategic commodities such as grains or iron from the Baltic at the same time. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the value of colonial commodities imported to the region far surpassed the value of such key exports from the Baltic. The colonial commodities thus constituted an important part of the balance of payments for the trade on the Baltic.

African agricultural productivity and the transatlantic slave trade: evidence from Senegambia in the nineteenth century: AFRICAN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY

Agriculture has played a central role in Africas long‐term economic development. Previous research has argued that the low productivity of African economies has posed significant challenges to African efforts to produce an agricultural surplus or to develop commercial agriculture. Low agricultural productivity has also served as a key explanation for the transatlantic slave trade, on the basis that it was more profitable to export humans overseas than to grow and export produce. However, the field has suffered from a lack of comparable empirical evidence. This article contributes to this field by presenting quantitative data on historical land and labour productivity in Africa, from a case study of the agricultural productivity of Senegambia in the early nineteenth century. Focusing on five key crops, our results suggest that both land and labour productivity was lower in Senegambia than it was in all other parts of the world for which we have found comparable data. This article thus lends support to claims that stress ecological factors as one of the main determinants of Africas historical development.

Historicizing the environmental Kuznets Curve: water pollution in Göta Älv, Sweden, 1895–2000

In this paper, it is argued that environmental historians ought to become more engaged in scholarly debate on the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Starting from this theoretical perspective, the paper studies water pollution in the case of the river Göta Älv in Sweden. The empirical evidence shown for pollution of the river fits well with the patterns hypothesized by the theory of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. Explaining the relationship is however more complex than much of the research in this field has argued. An historical analysis of the relationship shows that the pattern was largely dependent on a process of learning about the negative environmental impact of various types of pollution, and the need to deal with these problems. A crucial turning point in the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution occurred when pollution levels approached the carrying capacity of the local ecosystems.

Interest-group lobbying for free trade: An empirical case study of international trade policy formation

Many public-choice models have a problem explaining why governments support free trade policies in the face of interest-group lobbying. A common assumption is that interest groups tend to be rent seeking and therefore protectionist. In this empirical case study I find the interest groups to be anti-protectionist. The study shows that many interest groups have a more complex analysis underlying their trade policy preferences than what many public-choice models so far have allowed for.