International Freight Markets in the 1830s and 1840s: The Experience of a Major Finnish Shipowner

There is a common belief that truly international, or global, freight markets only became possible after the introduction of steam shipping and telegraph communication. It is obvious, however, that some very important developments in maritime trade took place during the era of sail, well before these crucial technological innovations occurred. In the late 1950s and 1960s, Douglass C. North published a series of articles on the long-run development of freight rates and shipping productivity.¹ In these, he claimed that the costs of seaborne transport declined almost continuously from the mid-seventeenth century until the First World War, thus effectively diminishing the