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Farewell to Self-sufficiency: Finland and the Globalization of Fossil Fuels

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Energy, Policy, and the Environment

Part of the book series: Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation ((STHE,volume 6))

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Abstract

The peculiarity of Finnish energy history is best to be examined in a transnational framework, where energy use and industrialization are closely connected to each other. This relationship is often considered an international pattern, a key regularity of modern global economic history. Therefore, it is claimed to be a decisive characteristic of globalization, featuring the expansion of trade in goods and services as well as the migration of population. At first coal, ‘black gold’, in the nineteenth century and then oil, ‘the global juice’, in the twentieth century have been regarded to power mass production and consumption culture throughout the modern world (MacGilliway 2006).

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Notes

  1. 1.

     In postwar years, Finland built up close trade relations between both Eastern trade organization The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (In Russian: Coвeт экoнoмичecкoй взaимoпoмoщи, Sovet ekonomicheskoy vsaymopomoshchi, CЭB, SEV, English abbreviation COMECON, 1949–1991) and a Western organization European Free Trade Association (EFTA, since 1960). A principle of the Finno-Comecon bilateral trade was that within each period of the Soviet 5-year plan, Finland’s imports from the Soviet Union and its Comecon partner countries should be equal with its exports to those countries. The imbalances in Finno-Soviet trade could be levelled by triangular trade with some other Comecon country. In the early 1960s, Finland became an associate member of Comecon and EFTA. See, for example, Bideleux and Jeffries (1998); Müller and Myllyntaus (2008).

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Correspondence to Timo Myllyntaus .

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Myllyntaus, T. (2011). Farewell to Self-sufficiency: Finland and the Globalization of Fossil Fuels. In: Järvelä, M., Juhola, S. (eds) Energy, Policy, and the Environment. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 6. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0350-0_3

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