ABSTRACT
The occasion was the publication of the second volume of Professor Eli F. Heckscher’s comprehensive work on Sweden’s economic history, in which the author amongst other things described the copper policy in the heyday of Swedish power. Centering on the decree of 1624 a comprehensive discussion of the seventeenth century European copper market as a whole gradually developed. W. H. Moreland, an authority on the economic history of India, has shown how the Dutch East India Company, in its first years in the East, had already obtained a firm footing within the Asiatic trade. “Beginning by the direct purchase of spices for Europe, the Dutch were led gradually to engage in nearly every important line of commerce throughout Asiatic waters.” India especially quickly came into “their scheme of operations. There is much evidence that points to the Chinese trade in Nagasaki having been very considerable compared to that of the Dutch.
