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Rural maritime labour migration to Copenhagen and Stockholm (1700–1800)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2019

Aske Laursen Brock  and
Jelle van Lottum
Aske Laursen Brock*
Affiliation:
Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University
Jelle van Lottum
Affiliation:
Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Focusing on the shipping sector, this article discusses the influence of labour migrants from rural areas on economic development in Copenhagen and Stockholm during the long eighteenth century. During this period, the two cities developed in markedly different ways; Copenhagen flourished while Stockholm stagnated, and the qualitative and quantitative contribution of migrants was essential in facilitating these differences. Both capitals were maritime hubs that relied on a constant influx of mariners who originated from the two cities’ rural hinterlands. By examining different characteristics of the migrant mariners and the improvements of mariners’ human capital across the eighteenth century, this article emphasises the importance of the shipping sector as well as labour migration in the socio-economic development of Copenhagen and Stockholm.

French abstract

Les auteurs se concentrent sur le secteur des transports maritimes et examinent l'influence qu'ont eue les travailleurs migrants venus des zones rurales sur le développement économique de Copenhague et de Stockholm au dix-huitième siècle. Au cours de cette période, ces deux villes se sont développées de manière fort différente. Copenhague a prospéré tandis que Stockholm stagnait et la contribution qualitative et quantitative des migrants fut essentielle pour accentuer ces différences. L'une et l'autre centre portuaire maritime, les deux capitales s'appuyaient sur l'afflux constant de marins originaires des arrière-pays ruraux des deux cités. On observe ce qui caractérisait les marins migrants et l'on note que le capital humain des marins s'est amélioré au cours du XVIIIe siècle, ce qui amène à souligner l'importance du secteur des transports maritimes et à quel point la migration de cette main-d’œuvre a joué dans le développement socio-économique de Copenhague et de Stockholm.

German abstract

Dieser Beitrag schaut auf die Schifffahrt, um den Einfluss von Wanderarbeitern aus ländlichen Gebieten auf die Wirtschaftsentwicklung in Kopenhagen und Stockholm während des langen 18. Jahrhunderts zu erörtert. In diesem Zeitraum entwickelten sich die beiden Städte auf deutlich unterschiedliche Weise: Kopenhagen blühte auf, während Stockholm stagnierte, wobei der qualitative und quantitative Beitrag der Migranten für die Herausbildung dieser Unterschiede mit entscheidend war. Als maritime Knotenpunkte waren beide Hauptstädte auf den dauernden Zustrom von Seeleuten angewiesen, die aus dem agrarischen Hinterland stammten. Der Beitrag untersucht die unterschiedlichen Merkmale der Wanderseeleute und die Verbesserungen ihres Humankapitals im 18. Jahrhundert und betont dabei die Bedeutung sowohl der Schifffahrt als auch der Arbeitsmigration für die sozialökonomische Entwicklung von Kopenhagen und Stockholm.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , August 2019 , pp. 231 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

Notes

1 The National Archives, UK (hereafter TNA), HCA 32/71.

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18 Johansen, ‘Scandinavian shipping’, 481–2.

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22 Van Lottum and van Zanden indeed showed that the Prize Paper Dataset constitutes a representative cross-section of the eighteenth-century European maritime sector; see van Lottum and van Zanden, ‘Labour productivity’, 84–7. Ships brought to shore by the British navy or privateers were not significantly different from those that sailed the seas during peacetime. They were of similar size and sailed with a similar number of crew.

23 For a further description of the source, see van Lottum and van Zanden, ‘Labour productivity’, 84–7.

24 The majority of the sailors included in this dataset mustered the ships in Copenhagen or Stockholm, respectively. Seventy-eight per cent of the ships from Copenhagen primarily mustered in Copenhagen and 75 per cent in Stockholm.

25 van Lottum, Jelle, Across the North Sea: the impact of the Dutch Republic on international labour migration, c. 1550–1850 (Amsterdam, 2007)Google Scholar, ch. 3; van Lottum, Jelle, ‘Labour migration and economic performance: London and the Randstad, c. 1600–1800’, Economic History Review 64, 2 (2011), 531–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 560–3.

26 Rural and urban are defined on basis of data from Bairoch, Paul, La population des villes europennes: banque de données et analyse sommaire des résultats 800–1850 (Geneve, 1988)Google Scholar. Towns and cities with a population larger than 10,000 have been deemed as urban and anything less are characterised as rural. The term ‘maritime communities' refers to towns and villages within ten kilometres of any ocean.

27 Page Moch, Moving Europeans, 43–52.

28 Johansen has previously noted the importance of the mariners from the Danish islands; see Johansen, H. C., ‘Danish sailors, 1570–1870’, in van Royen, Paul, Bruijn, Jaap and Lucassen, Jan eds., ‘Those emblems of hell’? European sailors and the maritime labour market, 1570–1870 (St John's, 1997), 233–52Google Scholar.

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30 For a detailed breakdown of Finnish sailors and their role in Swedish shipping, see Yrjö Kaukiainen, ‘Finnish sailors, 1750–1870’, in van Royen, Bruijn and Lucassen eds., ‘Those emblems of hell’?, 211–32.

31 Ressel, Magnus, ‘Swedish Pomeranian shipping in the Revolutionary Age (1776–1815)’, Forum Navale 68 (2012), 65–103Google Scholar.

32 For good examples of this in northern Europe and Scandinavia, see van Lottum, Across the North Sea; van Lottum, Jelle, van Voss, Lex Heerma and Lucassen, Jan, ‘Sailors, national and international labour markets and national identity, 1600–1850’, in Unger, Richard ed., Shipping and Economic Growth 1350–1800 (Leiden, 2011)Google Scholar; van Voss, Lex Heerma, ‘The North Sea and culture, 1500–1800’, in Roding, Juliette and van Voss, Lex Heerma eds., The North Sea and Culture, 1500–1800 (Hilversum, 1996)Google Scholar; Larson, Laurence Marcellus, Territorial problems of the Baltic Basin, vol. 18 (Urbana, 1918)Google Scholar.

33 In the early nineteenth century, after the British attacks on Copenhagen and the state bankruptcy of 1813, Southern Jutland became increasingly important in Danish overseas trade; see Jespersen, Mikkel Leth, Kaptajner og kolonier: sejlskibstidens oversøiske Aabenraa-søfart, 1820–1890 (Aabenraa, 2014), 9–17Google Scholar.

34 Van Lottum, Across the North Sea, ch. 3; van Lottum, van Voss and Lucassen, ‘Sailors’, 309–52, esp. 317.

35 Most of the ships taken by the British around 1800 were still from Stockholm. Of the confiscated Swedish ships 30 per cent were from Stockholm and 9 per cent from Gothenburg. Data compiled using TNA HCA 32.

36 For the Swedish navy's low rate of action between 1703 and 1709, see Nováky, Swedish naval personnel, 58–9.

37 Johansen, ‘Danish sailors’, 246.

38 See Jaap Bruijn, ‘Career patterns’, in van Royen, Bruijn and Lucassen eds., ‘Those emblems of hell’?, 25–34, esp. 27–8.

39 For the relationship between marriage and migration, see Sharlin, Allan, ‘Natural decrease in early modern cities: a reconsideration’, Past & Present 79 (1978), 126–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 133–5.

40 This follows the trend Valerie Burton found at the end of the nineteenth century: two thirds of British sailors were married, which questions the traditional truth of sailors with a girl in every port. See Burton, Valerie, ‘The myth of Bachelor Jack: masculinity, patriarchy and seafaring labour’, in Howell, Colin D. and Twomey, Richard J. eds., Jack Tar in history: essays in the history of maritime life and labour (Fredericton, 1991), 187Google Scholar.

41 The dramatic change is undoubtedly partly due to the low absolute number of local mariners in Copenhagen in the latter part of the eighteenth century. However, the percentage can serve as an indication of a trend.

42 The majority of the migrants in Copenhagen came from rural Denmark, and at the beginning of the century the average age at marriage was 29.1; see Johansen, Danish population history, 70.

43 This observation of marriage rates is suggested by the research on the European Marriage Pattern. For the latest discussions on this, see Carmichael, Sarah G., de Pleijt, Alexandra, van Zanden, Jan Luiten and de Moor, Tine, ‘The European Marriage Pattern and its measurement’, Journal of Economic History 76, 1 (2016), 196–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dennison, Tracy and Ogilvie, Sheilagh, ‘Does the European Marriage Pattern explain economic growth?’, Journal of Economic History 74, 3 (2014), 651–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 The celibacy rate was generally high during the eighteenth century, and a large number of people never married; see, for instance, Weir, David, ‘Rather never than late: celibacy and age at marriage in English cohort fertility, 1541–1871’, Journal of Family History 9, 4 (1984), 348–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Feldbæk, Storhandelens tid 1720–1814, 37–9; Söderberg, A stagnating metropolis, 5; Hecksher, ‘Den svenska handelssjöfartens’, 15–16; Magnusson, Sveriges ekonomiska historia, 259–60.

46 For the increased focus on education in Denmark and Sweden during the eighteenth century, see Houston, R. A., Literacy in early modern Europe: culture and education 1500–1800 (London, 1988), 58–9Google Scholar.

47 Bland, John, Trade revived (London, 1659), 13Google Scholar.

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49 Temple, William, Miscellanea (London, 1680), 13Google Scholar.

50 Child, Josiah, A discourse concerning trades (London: printed and sold by Andrew Sowle, 1689), 6Google Scholar.

51 Nováky, Swedish naval personnel, 52.

52 Gøbel, Erik, ’Asiatisk Kompagnis Kinafarter 1732–1772: Sejlruter Og Sejltider’, Handels- Og Søfartsmuseet På Kronborg's yearbook (1978), 7–46Google Scholar.

53 See, for instance, Bruijn, Jaap, Commanders of Dutch East India ships in the eighteenth century (Woodbridge, 2011), 32–5Google Scholar; van Lottum, Jelle, Brock, Aske Laursen and Sumnall, Catherine, ‘Mobility, migration and human capital in the long eighteenth century: the life of Joseph Anton Ponsaing’, in Fusaro, Maria et al. eds., Law, labour, and empire: comparative perspectives on seafarers, c. 1500–1800 (Basingstoke, 2015), 158–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 165–6.

54 See, for instance, TNA HCA 32/466. See also Davids, C. A., The rise and decline of Dutch technological leadership: technology, economy and culture in the Netherlands, 1350–1800 (Leiden, 2008), 278–9Google Scholar.

55 The use of signatures as a proxy for literacy is not perfect and has been debated for as long as the methodology has been used. For this debate, see Houston, Literacy; Hackel, Heidi Brayman, Reading material in early modern England: print, gender, and literacy (Cambridge, 2005), 56–8Google Scholar. However, using signatures is the most efficient way to investigate changing levels of literacy. For a recent study using the methodology, see van Lottum, Jelle and Poulsen, Bo, ‘Estimating levels of numeracy and literacy in the maritime sector of the North Atlantic in the late eighteenth century’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 59, 1 (2011), 67–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 71–2.

56 This is in line with findings in the Dutch labour market around the same time; see van Lottum, Jelle, ‘Some thoughts about migration of maritime workers in the eighteenth-century North Sea Region’, International Journal of Maritime History 27, 4 (2015), 647–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 659.

57 Not only sailors but also farmers would at times use a mark rather than a signature in the early part of the eighteenth century. Appel, Charlotte, Læsning og Bogmarked i 1600-tallets Danmark (Copenhagen, 2001)Google Scholar. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, 18.5 per cent of Scandinavian sailors signed with a mark compared to 9.4 per cent of Dutch sailors and 8.9 per cent of French sailors.

58 See van Lottum and van Zanden, ‘Labour productivity’.

59 van Lottum, Jelle, ‘The necessity and consequences of internationalisation: maritime work in the Dutch Republic in the 17th and 18th centuries’, in Buchet, Christian and Le Bouëdec, Gérard eds., The Sea in history: the early modern world (Martlesham, 2017), 839–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van Lottum, ‘Some thoughts’, 659.

60 The sailors in Copenhagen showed higher levels of human capital than the rest of Denmark, which was among the highest levels in general, see van Lottum and Poulsen, ‘Estimating’, 75 (Figure 2).

61 Original quote in Danish: ‘indtil de i det mindste kan læse færdig i bog og ved deres kristendom’, in Appel, Charlotte and Jensen, Morten Fink, Da læreren holdt skole, tiden før 1780, ed. de Coninck Smith, Ning (Aarhus, 2013), 195Google Scholar. On changes to literacy levels in Denmark during the early modern period, see Appel, Læsning og Bogmarked.

62 TNA HCA 32/689.

63 TNA HCA 32/863. The marriage did not last. In the 1801 census of the Danish population, Alison Bishop/Malcolm is mentioned as a widow living with her son James Bishop in Christianshavn. In the neighbouring house, Captain James Ogilvie lived with his young wife Mary Anne Bishop, who may have been Alison's daughter. They constituted what appears to have been a small Scottish diaspora in Christianshavn. For the Danish census, see the Danish State Archives online at https://www.sa.dk/.