Swedish East India trade in a value-added analysis, c. 1730–1800

Abstract

ABSTRACT The narrative of the Swedish East India Company (SEIC) is a well-known part of Sweden’s eighteenth century history. The company is known as a profitable venture, the only successful chartered company in Sweden, but with a limited impact upon the country’s economic development. In this paper, we employ a value-chain analysis to estimate the Swedish East India trade’s magnitude in terms of value-added. The results show that the success of the company was not based on monopolised domestic market in Sweden, a typical strategy of big chartered companies. The most valuable line of SEIC’s business (Chinese teas) was rather based on re-exports to other countries in Europe. Our quantitative estimates also show that the Swedish East India trade eventually made up a non-negligible share, and in particular a major share of the transport and trade sectors, of the Swedish economy during a long part of the eighteenth century.