Abstract
Based on an example of iron deliveries from Russia to Great Britain around the mid-eighteenth century, Scheltjens describes the various functions of ports and their role as providers of manpower during the continental and maritime stages of the iron supply route. The chapter uses the insights gained from this example for a brief discussion of the main characteristics of preindustrial logistics, paying attention mostly to the organisation of long-distance commodity chains, the people involved in ‘manning’ these chains and the ways in which the chain unfolded in space and time.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
www.soundtoll.nl, record 362633, 10 September 1764. More information about the Danish Sound Toll Registers and the electronic database based upon these registers can be found in Scheltjens and Veluwenkamp (2012) and Scheltjens, Veluwenkamp, and Van der Woude (2018).
- 2.
www.soundtoll.nl, record 444772, 23 June 1757; record 430239, 2 August 1757; record 517537, 14 September 1760; record 521620, 28 November 1760; record 377554, 26 May 1763; record 385231, 1 August 1763; record 348439, 21 July 1764; record 362633, 10 September 1764; record 388656, 10 May 1765; record 381415, 27 July 1765; record 436661, 2 October 1766; record 317356, 6 August 1768; record 330175, 25 October 1768; record 1741595, 16 September 1771; record 1744728, 10 December 1771. Longbottom’s name was spelled differently in several registrations (6× Longbottom; 3× Longbottam; 1× Langbothen, Langbottam, Longbothan, Langbothom, Longbotam, Longbotton). Such variation has two causes: misspelling in the original registers, or misreading and/or typing errors during the process of data entry in the electronic database. His registered domicile varied as well (Scarborough, London, Whitby). The latter was not an uncommon phenomenon in the Danish Sound toll registers (and other sources of preindustrial maritime shipping), and is perhaps explained best as the result of variation in the customs officers’ registration practices (Scheltjens, 2015a).
- 3.
As early as 1954, the French historian Portal (1954) pointed towards the historical interest of Kafengauz’s detailed descriptive account of Demidov’s ‘iron caravans’, and provided an abridged account that is quite similar to the one in this section.
- 4.
- 5.
Cf. www.soundtoll.nl, record 348439, 21 July 1764 and record 362633, 10 September 1764.
- 6.
- 7.
A question that requires further analysis in this context is that of the wages for the workforce employed during the various stages between the Ural Mountains and St. Petersburg. Were they paid for the distance covered, or for the number of days worked? Either case presupposes a radically different relation to the factor ‘time’.
- 8.
One noteworthy exception is Rönnbäck (2018).
References
Appleby, J. H. (1992). Mills, models and magdalens—The Dingley brothers and the society of arts. RSA Journal, 140(5427), 267–273.
Åström, S.-E. (1988). From tar to timber: Studies in Northeast European forest exploitation and foreign trade, 1660–1860. Helsinki, Finland: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.
Åström, S.-E. (1989). Britain’s timber imports from the Baltic. Some new figures and viewpoints. The Scandinavian Economic History Review, 37(1), 57–71.
Clendenning, P. (1990). The Anglo-Russian trade treaty of 1766—An example of eighteenth-century power group interests. Journal of European Economic History, 19(3), 475–520.
Davis, R. (1962). The rise of the English shipping industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. London, UK: Macmillan.
Demkin, A. V. (1994). Russko-britanskie torgovye otnošenija v XVIII veke. Sbornik dokumentov. Moscow, Russia: Inst. rossiĭskoĭ istorii.
Demkin, A. V. (1996). Vnešnjaja torgovlja Rossii čerez peterburgskij port. 1764 god. Vedomost‘ ob ėksporte rossijskich tovarov. Moscow, Russia: Izd-vo “Veresk”.
Demkin, A. V. (1998). Britanskoe kupečestvo v Rossii XVIII veka. Moscow, Russia: Inst. rossiĭskoĭ istorii.
Foy, C. R. (2012). Sewing a safety net: Scarborough’s maritime community, 1747–1765. International Journal of Maritime History, 24(1), 1–28.
Gorelov, V. A. (1953). Rečnye kanaly v Rossii. K istorii russkich kanalov v XVIII veke. Leningrad and Moscow, USSR: Izd-vo ministerstva rechnogo flota SSSR.
Hudson, H. D., Jr. (1984). Free enterprise and the state in eighteenth-century Russia: The Demidov metallurgical empire. Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des Slavistes, 26(2/3), 182–200.
Istomina, Ė. G. (1975). Vyšnevolockij vodnyj put‘ vo vtoroj polovine XVIII – načale XIX v. In Istoričeskaja geografija Rossii XII – načalo XX v. Sbornik statej k 70-letiju professora Ljubomira Grigor’eviča Beskrovnogo (pp. 193–206). Moscow, USSR: Izdat. Nauka.
Jackson, G. (2001). The importance of unimportant ports. International Journal of Maritime History, 13(2), 1–17.
Johannsen, O. (1953). Geschichte des Eisens (3rd ed.). Düsseldorf, West Germany: Verlag Stahleisen.
Jones, R. E. (1984). Getting the goods to St. Petersburg: Water transport from the interior 1703–1811. Slavic Review, 43(3), 413–433.
Kafengauz, B. B. (1949). Istorija chozjajstva Demidovych v XVIII-XIX vv. Opyt issledovanija po istorii ural’skoj metallurgii, Tom 1. Moscow and Leningrad, USSR: Akad. Nauk. SSSR.
Kahan, A. (1962). Entrepreneurship in the early development of iron manufacturing in Russia. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 10(4), 395–422.
Kaplan, H. H. (1995). Russian overseas commerce with Great Britain during the reign of Catherine II. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.
Kaukiainen, Y. (2001). Shrinking the world: Improvements in the speed of information transmission, c. 1820–1870. European Review of Economic History, 5(1), 1–28.
Kerblay, B. (1966). Les foires commerciales et le marché intérieur en Russie dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle. Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, 7(3), 413–435.
Laakso, S.-R. (2007). Across the oceans: Development of overseas business information transmission. Helsinki, Finland: BoD – Books on Demand.
Le Bouëdec, G. (2006a). Economie atlantique et profil des villes-ports en Europe (XVIIe-XIXe siècle). In G. Saupin (Ed.), Villes atlantiques dans l’Europe occidentale du Moyen-Age au XXe siècle (pp. 1–12). Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
Le Bouëdec, G. (2006b). Intra-european coastal shipping from 1400 to 1900: A long forgotten sector of development. In P. Emmer, O. Petré-Grenouilleau, & J. Roitman (Eds.), A Deus ex Machina revisited, Atlantic colonial trade and European development (pp. 89–107). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Le Bouëdec, G. (2009). Small ports from the 16th to the early 19th century and the local economy of the French Atlantic coast. International Journal of Maritime History, 21, 103–126.
Matley, I. M. (1981). Defense manufactures of St. Petersburg 1703–1730. Geographical Review, 71(4), 411–426.
McCusker, J. J. (2005). The demise of distance: The business press and the origins of the information revolution in the early modern Atlantic world. The American Historical Review, 110(2), 295–321.
Minenko, N. A, Dashkevich, L. A., Poberezhnikov, I. V., Ustiantsev, S. V, Tomilov, A. G., Zhelezkin, V. G., … Golikova, S. V. (1993). Ural iron before the industrial revolution. In G. Rydén & M. Ågren (Eds.), Ironmaking in Sweden and Russia: A survey of the social organisation of iron production before 1900 (= Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 12) (pp. 43–95). Uppsala, Finland: Historiska institutionen.
Nash, P. (2012). The maritime shipping trade of Scarborough, 1550 to 1750. Northern History, 49(2), 202–222.
Ojala, J. (2002). The problem of information in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century shipping: A Finnish case. International Journal of Maritime History, 14(1), 189–208.
Ojala, J. (2017). Business information through the Sound: Finnish merchants and Danish brokerage firms at Elsinore and Copenhagen, c. 1750–1900. In O. Degn (Ed.), The Sound Toll at Elsinore: Politics, shipping and the collection of duties 1749–1857 (pp. 341–363). Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Ojala, J. (2019). Maritime information networks between Northern and Southern Europe during the eighteenth century. In G. Nigro (Ed.). Reti marittime come fattori dell’integrazione europea: Selezione di ricerche = Maritime networks as a factor in European integration: Selection of essays (pp. 183–194). Atti delle “Settimande di Studi” e altri Convegni 50. Florence: Firenze University Press.
Polónia, A. (2008). Les petits ports dans le système portuaire européen à l’Age Moderne (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles). Revista da Faculdade de Letras HISTÓRIA Porto, III Série, 1, 27–51.
Portal, R. (1950). L’Oural au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Étude d’histoire économique et sociale.
Portal, R. (1954). Une route du fer au XVIIIe siècle (A propos d’une thèse récente). Revue historique, 211(1), 19–29.
Rönnbäck, K. (2018). The speed of early modern shipping in the Baltic—A tentative exploration using STRO. In J. W. Veluwenkamp & W. Scheltjens (Eds.), Early modern shipping and trade: Novel approaches using Sound Toll Registers Online (pp. 177–187). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Scheltjens, W. (2009). The volume of Dutch Baltic shipping at the end of the eighteenth century: A new estimation based on the Danish Sound Toll Registers. Scripta Mercaturae, 43(1), 74–102.
Scheltjens, W. (2015a). Dutch deltas: Emergence, functions and structure of the Low Countries’ maritime transport system, ca. 1300–1850. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Scheltjens, W. (2015b). Maße und Gewichte. Konvertierungsmöglichkeiten am Beispiel der Sundzollregister. In P. Rauscher & A. Serles (Eds.), Wiegen - Zählen – Registrieren. Handelsgeschichtliche Massenquellen und die Erforschung mitteleuropäischer Märkte (13.-18. Jahrhundert) (pp. 455–479). Innsbruck, Wien, and Bozen: Studien Verlag.
Scheltjens, W. (2018). North-Eurasian fairs from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. In M. A. Denzel (Ed.), Europäische Messegeschichte. 9.-19. Jahrhundert (pp. 325–352). Köln, Weimar, and Wien: Böhlau Verlag.
Scheltjens, W., & Veluwenkamp, J. W. (2012). Sound Toll Registers Online: Introduction and first research examples. International Journal of Maritime History, 24(1), 301–330.
Scheltjens, W., Veluwenkamp, J. W., & Van der Woude, S. (2018). A closer look: STRO as instrument for the study of early modern maritime history. In J. W. Veluwenkamp & W. Scheltjens (Eds.), Early modern shipping and trade: Novel approaches using Sound Toll Registers Online (pp. 1–18). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Stuckenberg, J. C. (1841). Beschreibung aller, im Russischen Reiche gegrabenen oder projectirten, schiff- und flossbaren Kanaele, in historisch-statistisch-technischer Beziehung, nach den vollständigsten und zuverlässigsten Quellen verfasst, und von der Kaiserlichen Sankt-Petersburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften eines Demidowschen Preises gewürdigt. Mit einer Karte. St. Petersburg, Russian Empire: Druckerei des Staabes d. Militair-Lehr-Anstalten.
Vinnal, H. (2014). The world refuses to shrink: The speed and reliability of information transmission in North and Baltic Sea region. European Review of Economic History, 18, 398–412.
Vinnal, H. (2018). Cost–distance ratio in change: Transmission rates of commercial correspondence in the North and Baltic Sea region, 1732–1808. Scandinavian Economic History Review, 66(3), 264–281.
Zakharov, V. N. (2005). Zapadnoevropejskie kupcy v rossijskoj torgovle XVIII veka/West-European merchants in Russian trade of the 18th century. Moscow, Russia: Nauka, In-t Vseobshchei Istorii.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Scheltjens, W. (2019). Ports and Their Functions: Some Reflections About Preindustrial Logistics. In: Favero, G., Serruys, MW., Sugiura, M. (eds) The Urban Logistic Network. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27599-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27599-0_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27598-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27599-0
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)