Torsten dos Santos Arnold is a Doctoral Researcher within the DFG Project The Globalized Periphery: Atlantic Commerce, Socioeconomic and Cultural Change in Central Europe (1680–1850) at the European University Viadrina at Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. His research and dissertation project with the working title Central European Trade via French and Portuguese Seaports – Trans-National Networks and Merchandise comprises the socio-economic relations between Central Europe and French and Portuguese Atlantic empires during the long 18th Century.
He graduated with his MA in Maritime History from the Faculty of Letters, Lisbon University (FLUL) and the Portuguese Naval College in 2014. In 2013, his research of the Indo-Portuguese copper trade during the first half of the 16th Century was awarded with the Annual Research Prize of the Portuguese Association of Economic and Social History (APHES).
Central Europe and the Portuguese, Spanish and French Atlantic, 15th to 19th Centuries
Abstract:
Since the Late Middle Ages, Portuguese and French sea salt, wine and other agricultural produce were exchanged for cereals and timber from the Baltic regions. North Sea ports such as Antwerp and Hamburg benefited from the process of Europe’s expansion, adding exotic and luxurious commodities such as spices, sugar, coffee, cocoa and tobacco to their imports. At the same time, ever-growing volumes of German-made linen, metalware, glass etc. were exported to sea powers such as France, Portugal and Spain, who in turn bartered them for African slaves and covered demand in their New World plantation colonies. Linen provides an example of a key commodity for plantation economies: it became the universal cloth for slaves because its sturdiness makes it four times more durable than cotton fabrics. Portugal is particularly suitable to illustrate continuity and change in Central Europe’s trade into the Atlantic basin, simply because Portugal was pioneering European Maritime Expansion.
German-speaking merchants in Lisbon, such as the Fugger and Welser (16th Century) and Lang and Hasenclever (18th Century) held prominent positions in socio-economic life and enjoyed preferential treatment. Not only the German merchant community in Lisbon enjoyed such privileges: they also benefited both Dutch and British communities in French and Spanish Atlantic seaports. The status of the Germans allows for some conclusions on their good bargaining positions. Portuguese, Spanish and French (and even British) Atlantic trade depended on cheap supplies with labour-intensive trading goods, and only Central European provinces like Silesia, Pomerania and Bohemia, with their comparatively lower wage level, could provide them in large quantity.
At first glance, it seems that the Portuguese and French commercial elites were in full control of the economy of their respective empires, but the importance of merchants, financiers and industrialists from Central Europe should not be underrated.
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