Chests, Tubs and Lots of Tea — the European Market for Chinese Tea and the Swedish East India Company, c. 1730–1760

Hodacs, Hanna; Müller, Leoš

doi:10.1057/9781137403940_18

Cited by 1 publication

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“…We furthermore try to estimate the value-added of re-exported Asian goods: both the links in the value-chain from purchase in Asia until the sale at auctions in Sweden, and the value-added in later stages of the value-chain for the share of the goods re-exported by Swedish agents. The SEIC was certainly directly responsible for a large part of the estimated value-added but, as we will show in this article, the Company's trade also enabled a very substantial re-export trade conducted by other agentsmost often agents in one or another way related to the company (Askenfelt, 2017;Hodacs & Müller, 2015;Janes, 2020;Söderpalm, 2003, pp. 88-105).…”

Section: Value-chain Analysismentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Most recent research into the history of the SEIC has provided an increasingly complex picture of the company's business and its role in the Euro-Asian trade (Hodacs, 2016;Hodacs & Müller, 2015;Müller, 2003Müller, , 2011Müller, , 2016Müller, , 2018. It has stressed the role of illegal tea market in Great Britain as the main destination of the SEIC's cargoes of tea.…”

Section: Outline Of the Articlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous research has shown that the majority of the goods sold at the SEIC auctions were purchased by Swedish (or naturalised Swedish) merchants, who later re-exported the goods (Askenfelt, 2017, pp. 68-71;Hodacs & Müller, 2015;Müller, 2003).…”

Section: Calculation Of Value-addedmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Rönnbäck

Müller

2020

Scandinavian Economic History Review

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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.

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Section: Value-chain Analysismentioning

confidence: 98%