230 (The History of the Swedes)

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230
New towns founded.
Rise of Gottenburg.
HISTORY OF THE SWEDES. Regulation of foreign and
inland trade.
1
[1611-
Swedish kings were formerly reduced to draw all
their stores of ammunition from foreign countries.
Therefore his majesty had found it advisable to
procure the erection of refineries, forges, and fac-
tories of all kinds. Thereafter, when the wars took
up more and more of his time, his majesty first ap-
pointed colonel Siegroth to be captain of the mines,
giving liim for his mine-master George Griesback,
and for his secretary Jost Frank. But as soon as
his majesty had gone to Gei’many, he directed the
council of state to form a complete board of mines,
which should superintend these affairs^." The im-
provement of the mines influenced the commerce of
the country, to which they furnished the principal
article of export. The care bestowed on the de-
velopment of industry and trade in the towns
(perhaps at the expense of the country) is best
shown by the fact, that in this warlike reign no
less than seventeen were founded or privileged*.
Among these was Gottenburg, which, destroyed
with New Lodose in the Danish war, but rebuilt by
Gustavus Adolphus, now received the burghers of
both towns, together with Scottish, German, and
Dutch immigrants. It was visited in 1624 by the
king, and several decrees made for the benefit of the
town. By the ordinance of 1619 the administration
of the towns was regulated, and the ordinance of
1614, on commerce, introduced the distinction be-
tween upland and staple towns. This occasioned
repeated complaints, springing partly out of old
abuses, and partly having their ground in the too
narrow limitation of municipal freedom. The old
towns remonstrated against the formation of the
new ;
those of Norrland especially, founded at
former fair and fishing stations, where the bur-
gesses of Stockholm, and the other places on the
Mselar, had hitherto possessed the traffic exclu-
sively, were. objects of jealousy. The ports which
obtained the right of trading to foreign countries
were little grateful for the distinction, at a time
when Stockholm did not possess a single ship for
foreign commerce, and the town obtained from the
3
Representation of the Department of Mines, November
10, 1648. Palmsk. MSS. t. 80. The Mine Office was esta-
blished in 1630, confirmed in 1634, received a governor and
assessors in 1637, and began in 1640 to be called the College
of Mines.
«
They were, Gottenburg, Hernosand, Soderhamn or
South-Haven, Umea, Lulea, Pitea, Tornea, Norrtelje or
North Telje, Sala, Alingsas, Boras, Falun, Siiter; besides
Old Carleby, New Carleby, Nystad, and Kexholm, in Fin-
land and Russia. In the privileges of Gottenburg, dated
June 4, 1621, exemption from customs and taxes is guaran-
teed to the town for sixteen years, a condition, however, not
very exactly observed. On his visit to Gottenburg in 1024,
the king proposed to the town to form a trading company to
Vermeland, which was to buy up all the iron ore and forge
it into bars, as also to enter into the timber trade. Of this
however nothing came.
^ On all this compare Hallenberg.
6 "That in Sweden the burgesses are beggars, proceeds
from their extravagant living in all manner of food, clothes,
and dwellings." Axel Oxenstierna in the Palmsk. MSS.
The king complains that "for a little gain, for a beggar’s
penny, they will let themselves be used as servants by
foreigners." Among the hindrances of the prosperity of
Swedish towns, Oxenstierna, in 1636, enumerates, 1. The
Kopparberg (probably the extensive trading privileges of the
former Copper Company) ;
2. The crown farms, which took
the best burghers out of the towns ;
3. The late king’s levies,
which had drawn off the sons of many burgesses, who, ad-
government the loan of two vessels for the purpose.
The capital, of which the principal trade lay with
the inland mining tracts, complained most loudly ;
and when, to appease its burgesses, the Finnish trade
was confined to Stockholm, the others complained.
The queen dowager, the princess, the nobility, de-
manded exclusive privileges for themselves *. The
prohibition of country trade, with the attempt to
confine the exercise of handicrafts to the towns,
met with peculiar hindrances in the physical con-
dition of the land. The government reproached the
trading class with their want of enterprise, and
their dependence on foreigners

; these again
seemed little inclined to exchange it for a still
greater dependence on government. It is certain
that this period established in Sweden the princi-
ples of the prohibitive system. The most powerful
motive to it was the necessity for the government
itself engaging in commerce, of which we have
already pointed out the effects. Yet it
powerfully
furthered internal activity. The high roads, of
which the king says, that in most parts
"
they were
so narrow and stony that they should rather be
called footpaths," were widened. The Hielmar
Canal, begun by Charles IX., was continued by Gus-
tavus Adolphus 7. In this and other respects great
plans were mooted, which a distant future was to
realize *.
Sweden first imder this reign learned to know in
what the rule of officials consists. In earlier times
we see but the contest between the power of the
magnates and the arbitrariness of the kings ;
it
was the former of these which obtained the sanction
of law in the Swedish middle age. The old order,
or disorder, of administration was by a polycracy of
feudatories. This barbarous notion of a public
functionary began to be abandoned, but at first
only by the employment of violent and illegal
means. These were, in immediate connexion with
the king, what we have called the secretary-
government, and under it, in the country, the
creation of the office of bailiff", both confided, out of
vanced to be officers, enticed others ;
4. The king’s granting
nobility to many burgesses in Stockholm, with the view of
encouraging the trading class, while these, when ennobled,
invested their capitals in landed estates, and thus quitted
traffic. Even the Norrland towns, he remarks, were founded
partly with a view to military uses,
" that the soldiers might
have town-quarters there, and men might people the laud,
where before bears and wolves had housed."
’
According to a remark (communicated to me by Mr.
Secretary Bergfalk) from a letter of Charles IX of July 17,
1610, the cutting between the Hielmar and tlie Mtelar,
which his majesty considered expedient, had then been
nearly completed by the peasantry with the help of the sol-
diery. In the Register of 1629, under the 22d March,
appears a letter nf Gustavus Adolphus to the peasants of
Akerbo, and the hundred of Glanshammar, respecting the
continuance of the channel of the Hielmar to the stream of
Arboga, for which they are promised exemption from the
levy for three years. I The Hielmar canal unites the lake of
that name with the Maelar. T.)
8 "Hereon depends a great profit for the realm, which
may be in connectijig the navigable lakes by sluices with the
Baltic and with each other, so that we might pass across the
Hielmar to Stockholm, across the Wetter to Norrkbping,
across the Vener to Gottenburg, across the Silian to the
Kopparberg ;
which the government and council will not
forget." Opinion of Axel Oxenstierna for the Government
and Council of Sweden. Frankfort-on-the-Main, October 8,
1633. Draught by his own hand in the Library of Upsala.

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