The eighteenth century

The first printed works which might be defined as ‘economics' only arrived in the early eighteenth century. Moreover, the first chair in the economic sciences was established at the University of Uppsala in 1741.

The noblemen Brahes' and Rosenhanes' works were never printed but spread in hand-written copies in small circles of land-estate owners. The fate of not being printed was also alloted to a work of a different kind, certainly also influenced by Aristotle, a longish manual written by Johan Risingh (of which a fraction was published as III Uthogh om Kiophandelen eller Commercierene in 1669). Instead of agriculture it dealt with foreign trade and commerce and how these should be regulated in order to gain the most income for the state. Risingh is mainly referred to as a cameralist, but his focus is less on taxation than on commerce and he seems close in his thinking to Johan Joakim Becher, the councillor of commerce in Vienna at the court of the Habsburgs. Risingh was a leading official in the Collegium of Commerce set up in 1651 to enhance Swedish foreign trade — not least in order to lift the dominance of the Dutch.

The first printed economic treatise in Sweden was Anders Bachmansson's (later Nordencrantz) Arcana Oeconomiae (1730).

It has been customary to portray Bachmansson, Nordencrantz and Berch's works as ‘mercantilist'. Although especially Berch refers to something he called the ‘balance of trade', it is not so easy to discern what he meant by using the concept. No doubt, he was not making the mistake which Adam Smith accused the ‘mercantile' or ‘commercial' system of making: confusing wealth with gold and silver. Rather he defines the ‘balance of trade' in the same manner as English writers at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, as a balance making it advantageous for a state to export value-added and import raw products. Such an emphasis on the need for more manufactories, greater employment of handicrafts and worked-up production is a general theme in much of the lively economic discussion in Sweden from around 1730 up to the end of the ‘Age of Liberty' in 1772, with the coup d’etat of Gustav III ending a long period of a high degree of freedom of the press. As with Berch, many of these texts were highly dirigiste in tone and particularly supported so-called manufacture policies that had been established in the 1730s, which included both subsidies to the sector as well a plethora of privileges.

In general, however, such policies led to financial speculation and inflation, which in the early 1760s ended with a big financial crash. Inflation soured into deflation and the economic writers turned away from dirigisme. This change was more apparent in public discussion than in the universities, where a mixture of commercial law, agricultural improvements and policies in order to increase the population still prevailed. But from outside, a number of writers appeared who were ready to condemn early regulations as violations against ‘natural law'. In order to increase economic wealth and happiness, they argued, trade must be unregulated and more freedom of enterprise allowed. Only by pursuing its own interest and seeking the best oppor­tunities can the whole prosper, argued for example the radical clergyman Anders Chydenius from the distant Ostrabothnia in Finland. While this perhaps does not make him — as has been proposed — a predecessor of Adam Smith, he was clearly inspired by the general discussion on natural rights which spread through Europe at the time. In a small pamphlet from 1765, The National Gain, he effectively argues for deregulation of (foreign) trade, with arguments based upon the notion of an invisible hand. This was not uncommon at the time and was not — of course — invented by Smith. But is perhaps remarkable for its time how Chydenius was able to use individual liberty as an argument for more economic freedom.

However, Chydenius' main inspiration did not stem directly from foreign sources but rather from someone he himself called his teacher, Anders Nordencrantz. Since we first encountered him in 1730, he had been nobled as Nordencrantz instead of Bachmansson, had made a career as an (eventually defaulted) iron mine owner, politician and a vitriolic writer condemning the old dirigisme in stark language. His intellectual influences came from reading British and French moral philosophers such as Mandeville, Hume and Helvetius. His main outlook was pessimistic: men were at heart ‘knaves and rogues', he said.

At least one Swedish economic writer at this period was clearly influenced by Quesnay and the Physiocratic School, the nobleman and politician Carl Fredrik Scheffer. However, in his own translation of some of the school's main texts, including Quesnay's Maximes, the majority of its most important exclusivities were left out. While agreeing that the net produit for a country could only be achieved in agriculture, he did not characterise the other sectors as sterile. Moreover according to his plan for new taxation, he made a plea for the old feudal estate owners and ignored the middle-farmers, the fermiers. Most likely this reflected the situation in the Swedish countryside during the middle of the eighteenth century, with the absence of ‘capitalist' farmers.