Silk and Tea in the North – Scandinavian Trade and the Market for Asian
Goods in Eighteenth Century Europe
Hanna Hodacs
Eighteenth century Scandinavia hosted no less than two East India companies; the Swedish (Svenska
Ostindiska Kompaniet, SEIC) established in 1731, only a year after the Danish (Asiatiska Kompagni,
AC). This was not the first such company; Danish trade with India dates back to the early
seventeenth century but the establishment of AC marked a new expansive and more profitable
phase of this trade which now also involved China.
Compared to the Dutch and the English East India companies the Scandinavian ones were small
ventures. Between the 1731 and 1806 the SEIC organised no more than 117 expeditions.1 The
activity of the Danish company is somewhat more impressive (222 expeditions between 1730 and
1807).2 The small scale character of the Danish and the Swedish operations can sometimes get lost
in older historical studies. Since SEIC was one of the few successful attempts of Swedish expansion
outside Europe it has been celebrated. Eli Heckscher, the founding father of Swedish economic
history, went so far as calling it “the most successful Swedish trading company [ever]”.3 In the
Danish case the trade with Asia is traditionally understood within a context of early modern Danish
expansion more generally, also taking into account its colonies on the west coast of Africa and in the
Caribbean world.4
More recent historians have argued that neither company were particularly Danish or Swedish in its
origin. Dutch funding and know-how were central in establishing the Danish trade with Asia.5 In the
Swedish case the strong links between the Ostend Company dissolved in 1730 and the SEIC have
formed a focal point.6 The emphasis on the national context to explain the success of the companies
has also been modified by accounts of events in Asia, most significantly the role of remittance trade.
The Danish company relied heavily on access to Anglo-Indian capital in South Asia with which they
purchased Indian piece goods thus avoiding the expensive import of silver to India. The neutral
status of Denmark and Sweden and its benefits for Scandinavian operations in Asia during periods of
conflict between Britain, France and the Dutch Republic have also been highlighted.7
Apart from transnational movements of capital and know-how, and international politics there have
however been few other attempts to contextualise the trade of the DA and the SEIC in a wider panEuropean, Asian, or global way. The connection between the trade with Asia and the consumer
revolution of eighteenth century Europe (one of the focal points in the project Europe’s Asian
1
Christian Koninckx, The First and Second Charters of the Swedish East India Company, 1731–1766: A
Contribution to the Maritime, Economic and Social History of North-Western Europe in Its Relationships with
the Far East (Kortrijk: Van Ghemmert, 1980).
2
Ole Feldbæk, “Danish East India Trade 1772-1807”, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 1978.
3
Eli Heckscher, ”Sveriges framgångsrikaste handelsföretag. Ostindiska kompaniet”, in Heckscher,
Historieuppfattning, materialistisk och annan, (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1944).
4
Vore gamle tropekolonier. Vol. 1-8, 2nd. ed. (Copenhagen: Fremad, 1966-1968).
5
Kristof Glamann, “The Danish Asiatic Company, 1732–1772.” Scandinavian Economic History Review 8 (1960).
6
Leos Müller, “The Swedish East India Trade and International Markets: Re-exports of Teas, 1731–1813.”
Scandinavian Economic History Review 51 (2003).
7
Ole Feldbæk, India Trade under the Danish Flag, 1772–1808: European Enterprise and Anglo-Indian
Remittance and Trade (Copenhagen: Studentlitteratur, 1969).
Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600-1830) has largely been unexplored. It is easy to understand why this
aspect has received less attention. Outside the realms of royal families and the Nordic elite of
aristocrats, iron barons and well-to-do merchants, few in Denmark and Sweden could afford Asian
luxuries (up until the beginning of the 19th century Norway formed a part of the Danish kingdom and
Finland a part of the Swedish). The greatest share of the Asian goods brought to Copenhagen and
Gothenburg was instead re-exported.8
This re-export forms the starting point for my work, the result of which will be presented in a
monograph (preliminary titled: Silk and Tea in the North – Scandinavian Trade and the Market for
Asian Goods in Eighteenth Century Europe). I draw particularly on two types of archival material in
my research, sales catalogues from auctions in Copenhagen but particularly Gothenburg, and
negotiation protocols and accounts from the Danish trade in China. The Swedish sales catalogues are
a near unique material in an East India context, very few have survived elsewhere in Europe. The
very extensive administrative material which the Danish archives offers have largely been unused in
previous research.
This material allows me to fit the Scandinavian companies into a global process springing from the
early modern European consumer revolution. The role of the Scandinavian companies as middlemen
with weak domestic markets differentiate them from the Dutch, French and British East India
companies. But more importantly the Scandinavian companies can illuminate the complexity and
competitiveness of the European market for Asian goods and how it fed the consumer revolution in
more wealthy areas. The sales catalogues include e.g. notes on purchasers and prices, and
correspondence between networks of merchants active at the public sales in Gothenburg and
Copenhagen can be used to illuminate several different aspects. Some of the themes I explore are
thus how the sales of East India goods in these Northern peripheral emporia were connected to
other markets for Asian goods in Europe, and the agency of wholesalers and other networks
engaged in the pan-European trade.
Another aim of my study is to put the Asian material culture at the forefront. This includes taking
into account how the intrinsic qualities of the goods shaped aspects of trade and consumption. In
my study I focus on two distinct products, tea and silk.
Chinese tea was the single most important commodity traded by the Scandinavian East India
companies, both in terms of bulk and value. This reflects the growing consumption of tea in Europe,
particularly in the Low Countries and in Britain, the end destination for most of the Scandinavian tea
– since Danish and the Swedish populations hardly drank tea at all. Another important factor was of
course that until the beginning of the nineteenth century, China had a monopoly on tea. While
previous research has highlighted the centrality of tea to the viability of the Scandinavian
companies, and the vast quantities smuggled into Britain, very little attention has been paid to the
types and qualities of the Scandinavian imported tea and what this can tell us about the European
taste for, and knowledge of, Chinese tea. In my research I study the role of wholesalers in
Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Hamburg who dealt in tea imported by the Scandinavian companies.
8
In the Danish case 77% of the Chinese goods imported between 1734 and 1752 were re-exported, increasing
to 81% between 1753 and 1772 (Glamann, “The Danish Asiatic Company”, pp. 141-142). In the Swedish case
the domestic market only absorbed 10% of the goods from China, the rest was re-exported (Müller, “The
Swedish East India Trade”, p. 35.
Their correspondence reveals how tea standards were established, as Swedish tea was tested
compared to tea imported by the other companies but also how different tea tastes developed in
different parts of Europe. Drawing on negotiation protocols from particularly the Danish company I
also look at how supercargoes working for the Scandinavian companies negotiated with Canton
merchants purchasing tea of different types (including black tea such as Bohea, Soatchoun, Congo,
Peckoe, and Linchisin, and green tea such as Heysan, Heysan-Skin, and Singlo). The main purpose of
this research is to illuminate the process knowledge involved in purchasing tea on behalf of distant,
non-domestic consumers and how this evolved over time as tea types and quality standards
changed.
Chinese silk is the second commodity I consider. Although the technique of making silk originated in
China, by the Middle Ages it was an established trade in the Christian parts of Europe. By the
eighteenth century the European market for silk production and design was dominated by two
centres, Lyon and London. New pattern and colour schemes designed there were diffused all over
Europe. As manufacturers of silk textiles in more peripheral parts of the continent copied the French
and the English fashions, the latter regularly had to invent new ones to stay abreast of the
competition. By the eighteenth century the market for silk was influenced by annually changing
trends. This very competitive and rapidly changing silk market forms a backdrop to the discussion of
the import of Chinese silk by the Scandinavian East India companies and particularly the shifting
colour schemes of silk fabrics.
Based on information from sales catalogues and negotiation protocols from the Danish and the
Swedish companies I have compiled statistics illustrating the extent to which colour scheme of silk
imports changed over time and the extent to which this reflected changing demands in Europe. I
also discuss the colour nomenclature and used for describing the silk and its etymology more
generally, highlighting the extent to which French terms (such as Mazarine and Turquin Blue) were
used negotiating with Chinese merchants in Canton, and when presenting goods for sale in Europe –
a nomenclature seemingly common to all East India companies. Drawing on Scandinavian
eighteenth-century handbooks on dyeing, I also argue that, although Chinese silk was only to a
limited degree was consumed in Scandinavia itself, the colour scheme of this silk was influential. The
Scandinavian population was encouraged to use blueberries and lichen on textiles to re-produce
colours on silk material made in China but described with a terminology emanating out of a vibrant
French fashion industry. Colours as an immaterial material culture can in this sense help illuminate
the complex process by which Asian, European, and Nordic consumption and production influenced
one another.
To sum up, the Scandinavian trade with China, understood against the backdrop of the early modern
consumer revolution in more prosperous parts of Europe, illuminates several new dimensions.
Although Chinese producers and European consumers are largely unaccounted for in my study
notions of supply and demand are not. These forces created a complex geography of movements
across the globe and along routes which linked Asian staple cities, to peripheral emporia in
Scandinavia, to European staple cities via a network of merchants and wholesalers operating inside
and outside the Swedish and the Danish East India companies. Moreover, quality distinctions and
other ways to differentiate good such as tea and silk were generated by competition between East
India companies and European traders and manufacturers operating on the same market. The
Scandinavian trade with China also tells us that different goods can provide us with different stories
which spans different periods, and localities. Although dried and cured tea leaves travelled
reasonably well from Canton to Europe in the eighteenth century, tea bushes did not. This opened
up for opportunities for Scandinavian traders, establishing alternative supplies to the ever growing
market for Chinese tea. A fundamental relocation took place in the beginning of the nineteenth
century, as tea production took off in South Asia. By then of course the British had not only taken
control of India, it had also lowered import duties for tea at home, undermining the tea smuggling as
well as e Scandinavian Companies. Chinese silk in contrast could not keep up with competition from
continental manufacturers, or with domestic protectionism. In contrast to tea (and cotton), there
was no mass market which could generate a demand for Chinese silk big enough to sustain the
trade. Only in the nineteenth century do we see a clear increase in import of another originally Asian
textile to Scandinavia, but now largely manufactured in Britain, namely cotton textiles. At the same
time coffee, not tea became a popular beverage in Scandinavia. This signals a new phase of
consumption and production, linking British industrialisation and Atlantic trade to Scandinavia, and a
move away for Denmark and Sweden, from being peripheral emporia, to markets inhabited by
consumers of global goods.