Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Page 153

THE POTENTIALITIES OF INTER-
NORTHERN COMMERCE
By Gudmund Hatt.
5MALL countries have large foreign trades. The value of the
Danish import trade in 1936 was £ 17.3 per head of the
population, while the value of her export trade during the
same year was £ 16.0 per head. No other European country has
so large an import trade per capita, and only Iceland and Bel-
gium-Luxemburg have a larger export trade per capita. The per
capita foreign trade of Germany and France is only about one
third of that of Denmark. A small country usually lacks more
of the essential raw materials than a big one. For this very reason
the economic development has forced the small nations into an
intensive utilization of such natural resources as they do possess,
and has made it necessary for them to adapt the exploitation of
these resources to the demands of the world market. The idea
of national self-sufficiency, in its origin geopolitical rather than
based on considerations of economic geography, can strike root in
big States with rich and varied natural resources, but it can never
be a very tempting gospel to small countries with undiversified
resources.
Small countries are the natural champions of free trade. Den-
mark has pursued a liberal trade policy for about a century and
a half, until the years of crises after the Great War. The liberation
of the peasants and the freeing of commerce from the restric-
tions of the mercantile system very nearly synchronized, and
the success which attended the subsequent development of Danish
agriculture was closely bound up with the growth of foreign
trade. Similarly, the demand of the intensive Dutch agriculture
for foreign markets is probably one of the reasons why
Holland pursues a liberal trade policy. The agriculture of
Norway, Sweden, and Finland, on the other hand, has little
need of foreign markets, but wants protection of the home mar-
kets against foreign competition, while the exploitation of the
forest and mineral resources of these countries is based on a large-
scale export trade. As far as Norway and, to a still greater ex-
tent Iceland, are concerned, the marketing of fishery produce is
a condition of their prosperity.
The attempts of the big States to attain national self-suffi-
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