Baltic trade

“ In no country is the struggle for existence between the medieval and the modern commercial methods plainer than in Germany. The trade of the Hanse towns failed to grow, partly for the reason that their merchants had not command of the fluid wealth that raised to pre-eminence the southern cities. There were, indeed, other causes for the decline of the Hanseatic Baltic trade. ”

“ These states were characterized, in general, by a lack of coal and by the slight development of manufactures; and by a soil and climate which are disadvantageous to the ordinary operations of agriculture. The difficulties of life have forced many inhabitants to emigrate, and forced those who stayed at home to make the most of their extractive industries (forestry, mining, dairying) , the products of which they could exchange for the wares of more favored nations. The time when the Baltic trade was one of the great branches of world commerce was long past. ”

“ It was about this time that wheat won the first place among the exports away from flax and its products. Commerce by way of the Black Sea increased very rapidly, while the Baltic did not keep its proportional share in the commerce of the country, and the proportion of trade finding its outlet by the Arctic Ocean had sunk to insignificance. Commerce with the west of Europe across the land frontier, which formerly had been restricted by the difficulty of transportation, grew even faster than the Black Sea commerce, and gave an entirely new importance to trade relations with neighboring states. ”

“ Shut off from any prospects of territorial sovereignty, the towns, even those which held from the Empire, were also excluded from the Diet until the close of the fifteenth century. Trade afforded the only outlet for their activities. But in trade they engaged with such success that, by the close of the Middle Ages, Augsburg rivalled Florence as a centre of cosmopolitan finance, and the Baltic towns had developed a commerce comparable to that of the Mediterranean. It was the Baltic trade which gave birth to a new form of municipal league, the famous Hansa. ”

“ The ceasing of that monopoly and those bounties, will rather raise the price in the Baltic, because those States in America in which pitch and tar chiefly grow, have so many articles of more profitable cultivation, that without bounties it is not probable that trade will flourish to a degree, to reduce the prices in the north of Europe. ”

“ In the early 15th century the league attempted to shut Dutch ships from the Baltic trade by restricting their cargoes to wares produced in their own country, and by coercing Denmark into granting the league special privileges on the route through the Sound. This policy, culminating in the destruction of the Dutch grain fleet in 1437, led to a naval struggle which extended over four years and ended in a truce by which the Dutch secured the freedom of the Baltic. ”

“ For instance, Poland can supply all the other States with her coal, and Lithuania can supply the corn which Finland needs. Undoubtedly, there are common interests between all the above-named States in the trade of the Baltic Sea. Each one of them has a natural Hinterland, and, consequently, is vitally interested in the guarantee of freedom of trade in the Baltic Sea. Besides, the mere political interest of common defence is a strong enough basis for an alliance of all the Baltic States, for they are under the double menace of Germany on one side and Russia on the other. ”

“ The trade interests of the Baltic, as the outlet through which great rivers and the products of immense regions found their way to the world beyond, made its control also an object of importance to both the chief parties in the coming struggle,—to Great Britain who strove to drive her enemy off the sea, and to France who wished to shut out hers from the land. ”

“ The changed attitude toward the new political status quo in the eastern Baltic and toward the question of trading with Russia is due to the remorseless working of economic laws which prove in the long run more powerful than the combinazione of statesmen. Politics naturally yields to economics, for trade is the raison d’être of the foreign policy of nations. Prejudices die hard. The influences working against the stability of the Baltic Sea republics at London and Paris are still strong. French opposition among anti-Bolshevists, Russian bondholders, and amis de la Pologne is still active. ”

“ It rapidly grew to be a place of great trade. {1625} It became the principal emporium for the commerce of the Baltic, and its merchants extended their dealings to Italy and the Levant. At a period when navigation was still imperfect, and when the seas were infested with pirates, it was of great importance to be able to maintain a safe intercourse by land between Lubeck and Hamburgh, as by that means the difficult and dangerous navigation of the Sound was avoided. ”

“ Query XII. If we were so tender of our trade to the northern ports in general, ought we not in policy rather to have considered the hazard that trade runs by the approaching ruin of Sweden, and by the Czar's becoming the whole and sole master of the Baltic, and all the naval stores we want from thence? ”

“ The nations of the Baltic and of farthest Ind now exchanged their products on a more extensive scale and with a wider sweep across the earth than when the mistress of the Adriatic alone held the keys of Asiatic commerce. The haughty but intelligent oligarchy of shopkeepers, which had grown so rich and attained so eminent a political position from its magnificent monopoly, already saw the sources of its grandeur drying up before its eyes, now that the world's trade—for the first time in human history—had become oceanic. ”

“ Prussia, Denmark, and Sweden rallied around Russia, as leader of the neutral nations; energetic efforts were made to keep the Baltic and North Seas open for neutral shipping, and to close the Baltic to British shipping, as long as England should not agree to the just demands of the neutral Powers. We must bear in mind that the trade with Northern and Eastern Europe was of immense importance for England at that time; the countries bordering the Baltic constituted a rich market for British industrial products, and it was from them that England obtained very large quantities of corn and timber. ”

“ The ordinary commercial roads to Russia through the Baltic are automatically closed by the location of the German fleet, and probably England and France, deprived of other outlets for their own trade, will nearly monopolize the trade with Russia through the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. ”

“ But to establish Russian power on the Baltic at all was as great a mistake as ever has been committed by so shrewd a statesman as Peter the Great. The predominance of Russia in the Baltic with her strong navy threatened the interest of the commerce and carrying-trade of the English and Dutch. Hence it was natural enough that England and Holland, two great maritime powers, 102should have joined to protect their interest in the Baltic as well as the integrity of Sweden against Russian aggression. ”

“ All through the winter the worker is hard at work making all kinds of wooden vessels as early as one or two o'clock in the morning, and thus he can sell his goods cheaper than anybody in all Finland, though many others along the coast have not only a better supply of forests, but also of workmen well versed in this trade. Let us look for the cause of this. It is quite impossible that such diligence could arise and be maintained without freedom of Export.
The towns mentioned above have of old had the liberty of sailing round the Baltic with poles, laths and wooden vessels. ”

“ Nowhere are industrial pursuits and manufactures so perfect; cloths, mirrors, sugar-refineries, porcelain, pottery, rich stuffs of silk, satin and brocade, iron-ware and ship-rigging. They supply Europe with half of its luxuries and nearly all its transportation. A thousand vessels traverse the Baltic in quest of raw material. Eight hundred boats are engaged in the herring fishery. Vast companies monopolize trade with India, China and Japan; Batavia is the centre of a Dutch empire; at this moment, 1609, Holland on the sea and in the world is what England was in the time of Napoleon. ”

“ Want of ports on the Mediterranean and Atlantic hamper commerce, while the great ports in the Baltic are frozen up four or five months in the year; the southern ports are growing in importance, and wheat, timber, flax, and wool are largely exported. There is a vast inland trade, facilitated by the great rivers (Volga, Don, Dnieper, Dniester, Vistula, &c.) and by excellent railway and telegraphic communication. Among its varied races there exists a wide variety of religions—Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Shamanism, &c. ”

“ In England as early as 1404 a group of merchant adventurers organized a company to carry trade to Baltic cities. But as it turned out the agricultural English were not ready, for, although their sailors and traders fought savagely during piratical encounters in the Baltic, at home they were still hindered by their feudal system, a system against which the Germans had early rebelled as being incompatible with commercial enterprise. The absence of a large middle class, of sufficient urban community life in England, forestalled any real commerce. ”

“ The ruins of Wisby, the chief port of ancient Gotland, are to this day the greatest wonder of the Baltic, and Öland Isle was another seat of ancient Gothic trade. There is some connection between the ancient trade of the Goths and the settlement of them and their allies in England. The most remarkable native commodity which came in ancient days from the Baltic was the fossil-gum known as amber. The trade in amber can be traced almost as long as any in Europe. ”

“ Finally, it must be remembered that the Scandinavian seaports are also to a certain extent competing for the German business, especially for the trade with the hinterland of the Baltic ports of Germany. All this goes to show that the countries surrounding Germany which have for centuries striven to exercise a kind of political hegemony over Germany—or, rather, generally speaking, over Central Europe—are not without plenty of facilities enabling them to try to capture large portions of the carrying trade of these parts of Europe. ”

“ Does not this article expressly tell us how to remedy the disturbances our trade in the Baltic might suffer, in case of a misunderstanding betwixt the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, by obliging both these Princes to keep all the Treaties of Peace that have been concluded between them from 1660-1670, and in case either of them should in an hostile manner act against the said Treaties, by assisting the other against the aggressor? How comes it then that we don't make use of so just a remedy against an evil we are so great sufferers by? ”

“ Query XI. Whether, by our insisting upon the trade to the ports prohibited by the King of Sweden, which besides it being unnecessary to us, hardly makes one part in ten of that we carry on in the Baltic, we have not drawn upon us the hazards that our trade has run all this while, been ourselves the occasion of our great expenses in fitting out fleets for its protection, and by our joining with the enemies of Sweden, fully justified his Swedish Majesty's resentment ”

“ In two years out of three, and probably three out of four, the Baltic and Black Sea, with their cereals and provisions, can undersell us in the markets of Western Europe, consequently a reliance on a direct trade of our northern productions with countries beyond our own, would be so uncertain as to leave us two years out of three, and probably three out of four, in a condition almost as helpless as if we had raised nothing above our own consumptive wants. ”

“ It is a fortunate circumstance that the navigation has been so long protracted as to enable the trade to proceed hitherto out of the Baltic, and as considerable delay must still take place before the peace can be ratified, it will afford sufficient time for the ships that are loading in the Russian ports to assemble at Carlscrona before the exclusion can be enforced. The period agreed upon for the last convoy to sail from Carlscrona was fixed to the 15th Nov., till which time, at least, we must hope the ports will be open, both to ships of war and the trade. ”

“ Her seaboard upon the North Sea is a maze of shallows and sandbanks, through which devious channels leading to her naval and commercial bases are kept open only by continuous dredging. God has made Plymouth Sound, Spithead and the Firth of Forth; the Devil, it is alleged, has been responsible for Scapa and the Pentland Firth in winter; but man, German man, has made the navigable mouths of the Elbe, the Weser and the Ems. The Baltic is an inland sea upon which the coasting trade had for centuries been mainly in the hands of Scandinavians. ”

“ The gentleman hinted at is Admiral Norris, whose Baltic campaign against Peter I. seems, indeed, to be the original pattern upon which the recent naval campaigns of Admirals Napier and Dundas were cut out.
The restoration to Sweden of the Baltic provinces is required by the commercial as well as the political interest of Great Britain. Such is the pith of our author's argument:
"Trade is become the very life of our State ”

“ In the Netherlands the Hanseatics clung to their position in Bruges until 1540, while trade was migrating to the ports of Antwerp and Amsterdam. By the peace of Copenhagen in 1441, after the unsuccessful war of the League with Holland, the attempted monopoly of the Baltic was broken, and, though the Hanseatic trade regulations were maintained on paper, the Dutch with their larger ships increased their hold on the herring fisheries, the French salt trade, and the Baltic grain trade. For the Russian trade new competitors were emerging in southern Germany. ”