The European market for teas and the Swedish East India Company, c. 1730-1760
Hanna Hodacs & Leos Müller,
Abstract:
The European trade in tea is one of the most dynamic components of the 18th-century global trade.
In the course of the 18th century tea revolutionized the drinking habits of Europeans, particular in
Britain and the Dutch Republic). Imports of tea increased many times and the prices dropped;
already by the mid-century tea had become an everyday beverage for many Dutch and British
subjects, including the poor. All the tea consumed in 18th-century Europe was imported from China
by a limited number of competing suppliers – chartered companies – and one of the most important
actors was the Swedish East India Company. What distinguished among others the Swedish company
was that most of the tea it brought to Gothenburg was re-exported. In this paper we analyses this
trade focusing on volumes, assortments, qualities, prices and purchasers of this tea. The aim is to
illuminate the role of the Swedish tea on the European market, and aspects to do with how
quantities and qualities were negotiating with long distance producers as well as long distance
consumers. In the paper we will draw on two types of sources, firstly a near unique series of sales
catalogues from the Company auctions in Gothenburg, covering a series of years stretching between
1733 and 1759, secondly the correspondence of a group of merchants, all involved in the whole sale
tea trade in Sweden but operating from Hamburg, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, London and Gothenburg.