Customers and Markets for ‘New’ Textiles in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Sweden

Abstract

While many consumer historians have devoted particular attention to urban contexts of material culture and consumption, in Sweden the countryside was the main stage for consumer developments, a finding which is not at odds with the famous industrious revolution thesis of Jan de Vries.¹ Moreover, international trade played a pivotal role in enhancing new products and consumer practices, the mid sixteenth century in particular being pivotal in the introduction of rising numbers of new luxury products. At first the growth was rather modest, but imports accelerated enormously at the start of the seventeenth century. Even though it was not until the eighteenth century that the trade balance argument was used to restrict Swedish imports, bans were introduced as early as the 1600s, the rationale being symbolic rather than mercantilistic. In a nationalistic and mercantilistic Europe, the major powers tried to keep up appearances by fostering local luxury industries including, among others, a variety of luxuries such as silk, that could measure up to the goods from other empires.²