Finland and the Core: Stages of Integration (ca. 1600-1850)

The article focusses on the economic relations between the developed core areas of Europe and a periphery, Finland, from the Middle Ages to the late nineteenth century. Particular emphasis is laid on the role of maritime transport, which not only affected the total economics of foreign trade but even in some degree explains the extent to which the commodity flows could be controlled by the core. thus, the development in the export of bulky forest products from Finland, first tar and later sawn wood and timber, was inversely related to the general level of freight costs. High trans port costs indicate that the supply of cargo space was the real bottleneck of the trade relations. Therefore, whoever was able to control the transport was able to control the entire commodity flow. However, the ability to control not only depended on economic power but on military power as well, as the rise of Sweden in the seventeenth century demonstrates. It was only during the late nineteenth century that the huge growth in transport potential robbed shipping of its former key position and made the control over natural resources and other factors of production more important.