4 - Prussia’s New Gate to the World: Stettin’s Overseas Imports (1720–1770) and Prussia’s Rise to Power

Summary

The year 1720 was a momentous one for Prussia, as far as King Frederick Wilhelm I was concerned. In that year, Sweden finally ceded the Pomeranian port of Stettin – Szczecin, today located in Poland – as well as Western Pomerania to his kingdom, for a sum of two million Reichsthaler. Frederick had wanted the port for his kingdom for quite some time: he had hoped that it would guarantee access to seaborne trade and free his landlocked kingdom from its dependence on Hamburg as an intermediary, once and for all. There were quite a few issues with this seeming victory, however. In order to enter Stettin’s port, ships first had to pass either the Peene or the Swine River (now the Świna River in Poland), and the water depth of both was exceedingly low and thus entirely unsuited to larger ships. For this reason, the larger ships had to anchor in the roadstead and reload their cargo on to smaller ships (so-called Leichter), which was both time- and labor-consuming. In order to carry the cargo to Berlin and the rest of the kingdom, the smaller ships then had to travel up the Oder River, whose waters were also shallow at various points and – to make matters worse – even silted. Overall, merchants considered the Oder River to be unreliable and greatly dependent on the weather. None of this made for a particularly good trade route. The following decades saw intense water-engineering projects in Stettin and along the Oder River system, including the construction and repair of canals connecting the Oder to the Havel and Spree Rivers, and thus to the capital, Berlin. Trade regulations were devised, to encourage merchants to use the new port instead of Hamburg and the Elbe River. Prussia was to profit from overseas trade.

Scholars have tended to point out that the state’s investment in this infrastructure was not particularly successful – a point they especially made for Prussia’s export trade. Silesian linen merchants, for example, continued to prefer Hamburg because of its superior international shipping capabilities, but also because the Silesians had functioning business connections to that port, while they were sceptical about the capacity of Stettin’s merchants to distribute their product.