ABSTRACT
In his survey of Swedish economic thought from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards Eli Heckscher emphasised how ‘mercantilism’—as a system of thought-especially during the 1860s was replaced by liberal and freetrade ideas. The change was in fact so tremendous and rapid, he wrote, that the ‘main cause of this must have been outside influences and not internal change within our own community’.1 This outside force was the free-trade liberal doctrine, which had finally arrived in Sweden. At the same time, however, Heckscher noted that the main influence behind this breakthrough did not originate ‘from where one should have expected’, that is from England. In fact, as Heckscher argued: ‘As far as I am acquainted with the Swedish economic discussion and our popular economic literature of the 1860’s and 1870’s, there is almost no trace of any influence from English writers.’2 Hence almost no translations of English economic texts were carried out during this period-not even Richard Cobden’s writing was translated into Swedish. Instead the new ideas were imported from France, and especially from Bastiat, and the harmony economists. Apart from Bastiat, Heckscher mentioned writers such as Ambroise Clément, Courcelle-Senueil, Blanqi and others for having a profound influence on the Swedish discussion.
