Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1940, Blaðsíða 87

ECONOMIC FELLOWSHIP,
PAST AND PRESENT, BETWEEN FINLAND
AND SWEDEN
By A. Montgomery,
Professor of political economy at the High School of Commerce, Stockholm.
A T the beginning of the nineteenth century when Finland
Z_\ still formed a part and a very important part of the
-A-Swedish kingdom, it was linked up in different ways
with the economy of the “mother-country”. The intimate political
connection between the two parts of the kingdom, which had
lasted for many centuries, had left a deep impress on Finnish as
well as on Swedish economic life. Finland had been governed in
the same way as other parts of the kingdom. The system of in-
dustrial organization and regulation which was still in force in
Sweden at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had also been
extended to the Finnish provinces, and the Finns had indeed co-
operated in building up that system, both at the “Riksdag”, where
the Finnish provinces were represented in the same manner as the
main part of the kingdom, and as members of the central as well
as the local administration. There had also developed a limited
division of labour between different parts of Sweden-Finland.
Manufacturing industry, though by no means non-existant in
Finland, was of considerably greater importance in some parts
of Sweden, and the products of the Swedish industry had also
gained a market on the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia. On the
other hand Stockholm in particular received considerable supplies
of food products from Finland. This trade was for a great part
carried on by the peasants and fishermen themselves, and even to-
day peasant craft from Aaland and the Finnish mainland are
frequent visitors of the harbour of Stockholm.
During the eighteenth century, after the conclusion of the
Great Northern War, the population of the kingdom in its en-
tirety grew considerably faster than before, but the rate of in-
crease was more rapid in Finland than in Sweden. This was partly
due to the fact that Finland possessed still vaster reserves of land
fit for cultivation than the main part of the kingdom, and in Fin-
*) This article is written before the outbreak of the war between the
Soviet-Union and Finland.
Le Nord 1940, 2
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