ABSTRACT
An earlier generation of Swedish industrial historians had difficulties in analysing the development of Swedish iron making during the first half of the nineteenth century in the absence of the adoption of any of the coal-using methods. This chapter aims to discuss how information on British developments reached Sweden. Britain was the most important market for Swedish iron in the eighteenth century, so the chapter concentrates on signals transmitted through the market, and how the loss of market share in Britain after 1800 was perceived. The chapter deals with the more delicate matter of information gathered by Swedish travellers to Britain. Gustaf Ekman wrote that the performance of British iron making should be seen as an index against which Swedish iron making could be compared, and during the first decades of the nineteenth century this comparison was not to the advantage of Swedish iron.
