Enclaves of Exception: Reaping the Advantages of Colonialism Through Free Trade in the Scandinavian Caribbean, 1672–1815

ABSTRACT The mercantile history of Charlotte Amalie and Gustavia, free ports in the Danish (1672–1917) and Swedish (1784–1878) Caribbean, have existed outside of the standard purview of both national and transnational historiographies, despite the considerable attention they received by eighteenth century political and economic thought. Due to their unique legislative character, they cannot be situated easily within available historical frameworks. In contemporary politico-economic opinion and eyewitness accounts, the Scandinavian free ports were equated to other free trade regimes insofar as they were conceived as a means of commercial rivalry against other nations. The liberal laws of free ports were styled as consistent with Enlightenment theories of equality and industry, even though they did not represent anything novel in the permeable commercial world of early modern colonialism. Interloping, as the practice of trespassing commercial privilege was commonly referred to, was a key feature of the transit trade operating out of these free ports. The utility of the free port trade was highly contingent upon shifting alliances and patterns of conflict. Operating across the peripheries of other empires, Scandinavian free trade designs in the Caribbean were beneficial for various actors, including but not limited to the parent states themselves.


Colonial Dominion Questioned, Free Trade Neglected
In 1819, Olof Erik Bergius published his work Om Westindien (On the West Indies), a reasonably detached treatise that dealt with the region's history, geography, nature, agriculture and politics.It was the result of both of his reflections as a former Swedish official in St. Barthélemy and his readings of abbé de Pradt, highly current at the time of Bergius' publication due to the French clergyman's writings on the ongoing revolutions in Spanish America.
Still, Bergius displayed sentiments of civic pride, particularly an apparent sympathy for the young, independent regimes of the New World.He was convinced that the old colonial politics of Europethe kind that only extended the constitutional right of production and consumption to its satellites in the tropicswas doomed in the long run. 1 When describing the free ports of the Caribbean, he claimed that 'No other country has understood better than Denmark' how to 'create a Colonial power using foreign capital, and hence the most diverse advantages, without large investments or the need of the costly maintenance of naval power'. 2 He even asserted that it was not accurate to describe the islands of St. Barthélemy and St. Thomas as colonies in the first place.They had not been colonised by the 'Nations to which they belong' and were only profitable by their nature of 'foreignness'.The free ports in these colonies bear more than a passing resemblance, even though they differed a great deal in their origins and subsequent history.Free ports often came about through a process of emulation.The precursors in these cases were Dutch St. Eustatius and Curaçao, frequently imitated because of their success.Charlotte Amalie 3 had existed as an encampment on St. Thomas from the earliest Danish and Dutch attempts to colonise the Caribbean island in 1650-1660.St. Thomas became the first island of the Danish Caribbean empire, followed by St. John (1718) and St. Croix (1733).Gustavia, in comparison, was a late example of Swedish colonial efforts borne to fruition.The town of Gustavia, christened after royalty as its Danish precursor 4 , was founded shortly after the island of St. Barthélemy passed into Swedish hands after a trade and subsidy agreement with France in 1784.
Colonial power, however, was fleeting.The second these locations would cease to attract foreign merchants, Bergius claimed, was the moment when they would stop being of interest to their parent governments. 5He was, at least when it came to the Swedish colony he helped govern, entirely correct.Since the war's conclusion in 1815, free ports faced a different and more challenging economic reality.St. Barthélemy was returned to France by Sweden in 1878 after decades of attempts to sell off the island.St. Thomas was sold by Denmark to the USA, along with the rest of the Danish West Indies, in 1917.Because of their perceived foreign nature, the histories of the free ports of Charlotte Amalie and Gustavia have not been readily integrated into national historiographies because they have been found lacking in economic importance for their respective owners. 6riters and historians of the preceding two centuries have also generally been apprehensive towards the free ports' polyglot and multicultural nature.'The Danish element among the trading population of St. Thomas of the eighteenth century was more than likely very small', Jens Vibaek summarised in his still serviceable 1952 volume on the Danish West Indies. 7The islands have remained ethnically and linguistically diverse.When Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope wrote his travelogue of the Caribbean, his description of St. Thomas was full of virulently racist and anti-semitic themes. 8o Nordic historians, there has also been something inherently transgressive in the combination of colonial rule and royal power.Vibaek, for instance, winced at the 'unappealing blend of public and private activity, indecent concessions and fantastical accounting' 9 when considering the history of the Royal West Indian Company, founded in 1778.His sentence is somewhat surprising since it was simply a self-evident description of colonial economic affairs.His dismay can perhaps be explained by the fact that he made no significant attempt at locating the colonies within a broader framework of Danish imperialism.Instead, he focused on the colonial administration as a detached arm of the Royal Danish Kingdom, representing its interests in a hostile tropical environment. 10imilarly, Torvald T:son Höjer suggested that it was fortunate that the colonial investments of Sweden did not pay higher dividends during the early reign of Charles XIV John.At least in this way, he reasoned, the colonial windfall did not feed the Swedish monarchy's corruptive tendencies too much.'They, who want to judge the legacy of Charles John only by the morals of private housekeeping', he surmised, 'should wish that these transactions would never have taken place'. 11hat is not to say that the histories of these urbanities have been actively hidden away because they contain elements unsavoury to any particular nationalist or royalist sensibilities. 12Their histories have simply not been driven by theoften exaltedeconomic agents of, say, the contemporary Danish trade resurgence of the late eighteenth century (den florissante handelsperiod).Still, free ports and their enterprising merchants were well-known by contemporary observers and commentators.Advocates of British imperialism railed against Swedish and Danish entrepôts in the same breath as they attacked the neutral shipping of the United States during the Napoleonic Wars. 13Prior to this, St. Thomas had attained fame (or infamy) as a free trade emporium.However, in Raynal's widely disseminated Histoire des Deux Indes (1770), it is asserted that Denmark did not profit much from its prodigious trade at St. Thomas.The explanation was that foreigners were disposed to leave with their wealth once they had succeeded, in contrast to Bergius's later claim. 14istorical understanding of older free trade regimes is arguably undergoing a critical change due to the recent increase in free port studies.A latent tendency in earlier work has been to place historical free ports into a continuum culminating in the special economic zones of the modern world.The implicit narrative is that free ports are seen as early expressions or part of the foundation of economic liberalism.Another problemwithin Caribbean and American history is the significant overlap and confusion between smuggling and free trade. 15Later studies have instead paid more attention to the precise context in which historical free trade regimes were born.These conclude that free ports were not as much the purveyors of modernity as they were the opportunistic tools of the mercantilist state.
A recent example is R. Grant Kleiser's study of the British Free Port Act of 1766.According to his reading, the government in London conceived of free ports primarily as a means of Britain's commercial empire, a way of reaching the goals of the Navigation Acts through other means.This novel interpretation is meaningful partly because it goes against a common notion of free trade reform as Enlightenment thought writ large.According to that view, international trade was encouraged to promote Enlightenment values such as mutual understanding and universal prosperity. 16n parallel to Kleiser, I argue that free trade regimes in the Danish and Swedish Caribbean colonies can instead broadly be conceived as the outcome of a patriotic economic policy, albeit strategically different from the free ports of the larger European empires.Instead, they assumed a distinct role as open markets for all nations.Also, they assumed the role of facilitators of free trade through a permissive naturalization process, which allowed foreign actors to fly Swedish and Danish flags on their ships.The essential function was to transit goodsto act as a middlemanbetween colonial systems formally excluded from each other.In contrast, the British and French free trade regimes were export-oriented and tightly regulated.The transit trade through Scandinavian free ports, properly understood, was neither novel nor an aberration.Instead, it was a salient feature of a more extended Nordic diplomatic history of neutrality.Nordic neutrality has previously tended to be viewed as a modern, twentieth century phenomenon.Its original practice, however, particularly in trade policy during international conflicts, was prevalent during the decline of Nordic military and political power in eighteenth century Europe. 17Without transit trade under neutral flags, a large part of the trade resurgences such as den florissante handelsperiod would not have been possible. 18As a consciously articulated policy, neutrality in Swedish diplomacy and trade went back to at least the Anglo-French wars of the eighteenth century.As a maritime practice, Swedish neutrality goes back to the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth century. 19ree ports as an extension of imperial power politics should be interpreted with some distinction in the Scandinavian cases.It is harder to trace an imperial agency in the histories of Danish and Swedish free ports.Instead, the interaction between public and private actors, as described by Vibaek, is what is most prevalent.This interaction created tensions between royal prerogative, company privileges, rival empires, and the ambitions of individual actors.These tensions reveal the processes of state formation, globalisation and capitalistic trends through the institution of the free port.The free port was used as a tool by many, not just by sovereigns or imperial governments.However, the Scandinavian free ports carried many imprints of imperial and commercial design.St. Thomas and St. Barthélemy were founded on relaxations of ethnoreligious restrictions, which were often explicitly justified with reference to Enlightenment ideas.The adoption of these relations, however, was first and foremost borne out of an ambition to promote overseas trade.

Extraterritoriality and the State in Scandinavian Free Port Regimes
Free ports share the distinction of facilitating trade through extraterritoriality.Different forms of territorial exceptionalism had existed for centuries before free ports were established in the Caribbean.If one keeps to this lowest common denominator, it is indeed possible to see a long, unbroken historical trajectory between the late medieval free ports and modern special economic zones (SEZs). 20Different aspects of extraterritoriality could come into play.The legal foundation of the early modern free port was a set of principles that set it apart from the parent state, particularly on matters of trade, customs, taxes, guilds and religion.
These distinct sets of rules made exceptions out of free ports within a network of colonies in that colonial economies were generally exclusive to their metropoles and their merchants.Caribbean free ports differed from other colonies in the region in at least two ways.First, they can generally be thought of primarily as markets rather than productive hinterlands.Bergius compared the privileges between free ports to that of Swedish mills or ironworks.Their value was derived not from natural assets such as a waterfall or real estate but from their conferred privileges or licenses. 21The rights granted to free ports were the rights to be outside the bounds of Navigation laws.Usual trade patterns applied in free ports as manufactured goods were generally exchanged for raw materials.Crucially, they were markets that mediated both between colonial peripheries and between colonial periphery and metropolitan core. 22t was not uncommon that trade between free ports and metropoles was more heavily regulated and restricted through company privileges.Second, free ports stood apart from other colonies due to their wider freedom of movement and settlement.While foreign trade and mobility in the metropoles and the colonies were restricted and heavily regulated, free ports were generally open to trade with ships of all nations.The naturalisation of settlers was typically determined by wealth.Gustavia, for instance, had different levels of burgher briefs.The so-called grand naturalisation gave its owner the right to equip and sail vessels under Swedish colours.The lesser naturalisation carried merely the privilege of regular subjecthood.
The colony needed both shipowners with capital and a marine workforce, so the prices of each burgher brief reflected this aim. 23The increased mobility is also an aspect that set Dutch, Danish and Swedish free ports apart from British implementations.But this was not merely due to the unique legal regime of the free port but a natural consequence of different features of the competing empires.Scandinavian countries could not depend on large populations for a source of settlement.Instead, they saw recourse to colonisation by invitation.In the Danish West Indies, Dutch cultural and commercial hegemony was the result.In St. Barthélemy, by contrast, the population was primarily Anglophone and Francophone, while English speakers dominated the commercial community.The island's newspaper ran most of its editorial content in English. 24he territorial exceptionalism of Charlotte Amalie and Gustavia created mechanisms of convenience that are reminiscent of today's international legal regimes in shipping, logistics and labour.Today, over half of the world's merchant-fleet tonnage is registered in flag-of-convenience states, considering tonnages for bulk and container shipping.By flying flags of convenience, shipowners compete internationally by lowering operating costs.Offshore registration is attractive since shipowners seek low taxes and fees and enjoy the benefits of poorly enforced environmental, safety, and labour standards.The demarcated zones supplying these exceptions thus generate foreign exchange and benefit by charging rent such as customs tariffs, taxes and services. 25Since the early twentieth century, such zones also include offshore banking arrangements and tax havens.Modern-day tax havens are conspicuously connected to the process of decolonisation.They were often established in order to funnel capital out of decolonising territories.Some foreign trade zone advocates in the 1920s even explicitly claimed that they were emulating early modern European free ports. 26part from territorial exceptionalism, what early modern Scandinavian free ports in the Caribbean offered to contemporaries was arguably reduced protection costs.Neutrality throughout the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries became, through the free port, a valuable commodity bought and sold like any other.A neutral flag of convenience was often a cheaper means to protect ships and cargoes than armaments and convoys.Even though many neutral vessels were captured during wartime, neutral shipping was profitable and often sanctioned in practice. 27Free ports were intimately connected to the history of neutral trade.The regulation of neutral trade and the relation between the rights of neutrals and belligerents were subject to extensive debates during the eighteenth century, particularly the role of neutral Dutch merchants.
These debates showed that the principal issue at stake was always imperial power and international relations. 28While this perspective is integrated into Dutch colonial and commercial history, free ports within Nordic history have been viewed as examples of failed mercantilism.Their creation was a sign that colonies could not be operated according to the principles of the ideal mercantile system. 29A central piece of free port policy, that of 'colonisation by invitation', however, was at heart a policy of population growth, a cornerstone of mercantilist and cameral theories of public administration. 30The ambition to attract foreign capital can also be seen from a commercial power perspective; whatever the sovereign could gain in the way of an enterprising mercantile community was his rival's loss.It is tempting to see this motivation explain the curious stipulation which granted amnesty, in the free port privileges of Gustavia of 1785, to persons fleeing debt from other countries for a period of up to 10 years. 31Such a decision was, in any case, consistent with general mercantile theory.

Private and State Agency in Scandinavian Colonial Policy
Separated by over a hundred years, the commencement of the Danish (1672) and the Swedish (1784) colonial projects in the Caribbean were nevertheless similar.The administration of the colonies was initially entrusted to royally sanctioned trading companies, the Danish West India and Guinea Company (Vestindisk-Guinesisk Kompagni) and the Swedish West India Company (Svenska Västindiska Kompaniet). 32Companies generally had a limited lifespan, and colonial authority was returned to local administrators whenever companies were dissolved.The Danish state bought the Danish West India and Guinea Company in 1754.St. Barthélemy was mainly under the control of the Swedish West India Company during the 19 years of its charter, from 1786 to 1805.The metropolitan governments in Copenhagen and Stockholm afforded the companies considerable autonomy in colonial governance.Authority was nevertheless spread among several different actors, commercial, civic and military.
While companies concentrated their efforts on trade between the Caribbean and the metropoleor between the African West Coast and the Caribbean in the case of the Danish West India and Guinea Companythey cared little or had no interest in regulating free trade or the black market.Despite an impressing edifice of imperial ordinances and decrees, intercolonial and inter-imperial trade was rampant in the Caribbean from the onset of colonisation.Informal markets were an ever-present economic reality long before the formalisation of free ports.Scholars of the early colonial Caribbean have often claimed that smuggling overshadowed legally permitted trade despite the difficulties involved in tracing and quantifying illegal commerce. 33ven before the island was formally granted porto franco rights in 1764, St. Thomas had a history of free trade to its name.During the Nine Years' War, St. Thomas had become a significant regional entrepôt due to Denmark's neutrality.Speculative merchants were attracted to its spacious and relatively safe leeward harbour, evident by its lively traffic.English Governors complained in 1688 of the indiscriminate grants of burgher briefs by the authorities in St. Thomas and of the illicit trade in British sugar by the Brandenburger officials in charge of the Danish island. 34The island would prove to be difficult to sustain economically without recourse to clandestine trade with Caribbean colonies.Its plantation economy was not sufficient in and of itself, and its status as the main colony in the Danish Caribbean was surpassed when Denmark acquired St. Croix in 1733.The Danish formalisation of free trade legislation responded to the fear of economic decline in a peacetime economy.In 1764, porto franco rights were granted to St. Thomas and St. John (acquired in 1718). 35hile it gained notoriety as a free trade emporium akin to St. Eustatius and Curaçao, few studies exist on the intercolonial trade through St. Thomas.However, the general picture is that the 13 North American colonies found commercial outlets in the Danish islands during Franco-British hostilities and that free ports such as Charlotte Amalie would become especially important for neutral carriers after the advent of North American independence from Great Britain. 36hereas Denmark institutionalised what had been an economic reality for decades, Sweden immediately saw it necessary to create an emporium of the small Caribbean island ceded by France in 1784.The hilly and arid St. Barthélemy did not live up to the expectations of Gustav III, who had hoped for a colony large enough tosustain a plantation economy.However, Gustav III and his advisors were fully aware of the commercial success enjoyed by Dutch and Danish free ports and sought to emulate their system.Gustavia was not the first Swedish free port.It was preceded by Marstrand, located in the archipelago north of Gothenburg.The small port town had been given porto franco rights in 1775 and was of some importance during the American War of Independence.There is an argument to be made that Gustavia and Marstrand, in a different way from St. Thomas and its Dutch predecessors, were testing grounds for Enlightenment theories on the economy as well as religion.Johan Liljencrantz, finance minister and close advisor to Gustav III, was familiar with the free ports of the Mediterranean through his travels and was convinced that a meaningful way to stimulate Swedish shipping was to increase the Swedish share of transit trade in foreign goods. 37he project was tied to other reforms espoused by the early regime of Gustav III.The Swedish king aspired to be seen as an enlightened monarch.But his true motives were often to be found in the need to revitalise an ailing Swedish economy.One such reform was the edict of toleration of 1781 38 , which allowed Jews, for the first time in Swedish history, to take up residence in the major towns in the Swedish kingdom without being forced to convert.However, the edict had been preceded by the free port declaration in Marstrand, which implied that confessors of foreign faiths could settle freely within the town limits.When Marstrand's rights were rescinded in 1794, the Jewish community there relocated to Gothenburg. 39Since the seventeenth century, Denmark allowed communities of Jews to live and work in the southern parts of the country.The St. Thomas synagogue, erected in 1833, was the work of a newly founded Hebrew congregation (1792), which had migrated to the Danish island afterthe sacking of St. Eustatius by British forces in 1781. 40t. Barthélemy became host to several different denominations but never to a large Jewish community.In the case of St. Barthélemy, religious freedom antedated the free port institution since the treaty of cession between France and Sweden guaranteed the rights of remaining French Catholic colonists on the island to continue practising their faith. 41Notions of population growth and economic stimulation were embedded in religious freedom, and it was no accident that it was part of porto franco legislation.Anders Chydenius, a priest and prominent Enlightenment philosopher, supported religious freedom in Sweden on economic grounds.In a pamphlet advocating for the adoption of a future edict of toleration in 1779, he extolled the liberal virtues of the Duchy of Tuscany, home to the old free port of Livorno.He believed that the region owed its economic success to its general freedom of religion and commerce. 42Generally opposed by clergy but supported by the other Estates, the edict of toleration was passed.It was a significant reform, recognising that absolute ethnoreligious unity was not always necessary for national prosperity. 43hile religious freedom was debated with a view to freedom of trade, arguments for free ports and free trade were sparse in Denmark and Sweden.Arguments for the liberalisation of trade were couched in the language of patriotism.Chydenius was the main figure of Swedish economic thought, but he directed his criticism against the Swedish Navigation Laws (Produktplakatet, in effect since 1724) rather than establishing new free ports within the kingdom.Whatever the merit of foreign examples such as Livorno, the brief free port experiment in Marstrand had run afoul of widespread accusations of domestic smuggling. 44There were differences in mercantile attention to economic discussions abroad.A Danish translation of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations appeared in 1779, while a comprehensive Swedish edition was first printed two centuries later, in 1909.Adherents to Smith in the Baltic were few.The Swedish clerk E. E. Bodell, who, like Smith, was employed in the Customs service of his country, translated parts of Wealth of Nations that dealt with matters of customs and tariffs.While Bodell argued for the deregulation of the customs system, his view was that Smith's ideas were compatible with the overall protectionism of Swedish navigation laws.Initially rebuffed, Bodell's ideas found more supporters over the years, and he was appointed Director-General of the Customs Office.He expounded on Smith's and his own ideas before the reformed government during the Diet of 1823, but the liberalization of Swedish trade was still decades in the future.Bodell died in 1848 before the Swedish navigation laws were disposed of. 45Patriotism, rather than freedom, was fundamental to Swedish legal conceptions of trade and commercial policy.Promoted by manufacturers, this line of thought endorsed patriotic protectionism and consumption.The smuggling of foreign goods was consequently a perennial problem in Swedish discourses on the economyalthough challenged by exponents of natural rights, who defended civil rights to consume and conduct trade freely.Bodell had believed that the only way to decrease smuggling was through easing tariffs and regulations. 46ue to the centrality of protectionism in Swedish commercial policy, it is interesting to see how Swedish merchants and officials conceived of prospects of free port trade in the Caribbean.An early memorial was written by Jacob Eliasson Röhl, one of the first agents of the Swedish West India Company.He would later become one of the most consequential slave traders in the Swedish colony.Before departing to St. Barthélemy, he had some experience in colonial trade and offered his ideas and suggestions based on his soundings in nearby colonies in the Caribbean.He was certainly not coy about the implications of his business, basically suggesting to set up a smuggling base by various means: […] I do not doubt, that such freedom [of trade with the French islands] already mentioned, would be possible to obtain in secret if only the right and forceful means are taken to that end.The grounds for this assumption have been given to me by the Dutch on S Eustache, who know well to obtain so-called Indulgences for their smuggling on the French islands, although they must assuredly pay for them.That same resort would also be advisable for a Swedish Company on S Barthelemy, after the example of England and Holland, who have kept offices on the French Islands, especially Guadeloupe, which is best situated for the smuggling trade of S Barthelemy, in order with greater quietness and dispatch and movement to smuggle out their products, in which way will in every neutral harbour in the West Indies fetch a profit of 20 to 25 per cent. 47 understand how these naked propositions for duplicity harmonised with Swedish commercial policy, one need only understand that patriotic protectionism referred mainly to imports and domestic consumption.When it came to international shipping, foreign transit trade under Swedishand Danishcolours had a long history.Röhl's use of language is also illuminating.The different Swedish (and closely related Danish) words for smuggling had Dutch etymological origins, as other nautical and commercial terms.The most common word for a smuggler was lurendrägare (Dan.lurendrejer), from the Dutch lorrendraaier, originally 'one who mixes shoddy wool into cloth (in weaving)'. 48he primary meaning of this word was deception, understood first and foremost as a pernicious activity committed to the detriment of one's fatherland.The English word 'smuggler' (Sw.smugglare, Dan.smuggler) also has Dutch roots, smukkeler or smokkelaar.However, this word was not widely used in Swedish or Danish at the turn of the eighteenth century, even though the closely related adjective smyghandel (literally 'sneaking trade') was sometimes used.Röhl used both lurendrägare and smyghandel, but interestingly he also used what can only be described as a bastardised version of le commerce interlope, or in his words, 'Entrelope handel'.Behind this concept is another Dutch word with a specific meaning.An uteloper was an unauthorised trader trespassing on the rights of a trade monopoly.It was used since the sixteenth century, replaced in English by the word 'interloper' later in the same century, with adaptations in other languages. 49he use of this word is not insignificant.While Röhl did not skirt the implications of the trade likely to be conducted at a free port, his use of the term interloping connects with broader Swedish commercial ambitions to create a separate branch of Swedish colonial trade.Röhl's memorial embraced the idea that this branch could not be independently developed, but had to be captured by encroaching on the trade of other empires.Before the free trade movements of the early nineteenth century, interloping was a practical form of 'free' trade. 50Crucially, this term carried a more legitimate air of national rivalry and power struggle than lowly regarded smuggling activities. 51It should also be pointed out that Röhl did not see much promise in the limited free trade recently enacted in some French Caribbean ports.He reasoned that most of the approved merchandise did not include goods that Sweden exported to any great extent.At any rate, these were goodssuch as rice, salt beef, corn, coal, tar and lumberthat Americans imported to the Caribbean at much lower prices than Swedes could hope to offer.Röhl mainly contemplated trade with the French colonies because of practical and geographical considerations.His outlook might have been different had he written his account a few years later, when Charles IV of Spain formally extended free trade to New Spain in 1789.Still, Comercio Libre was burdened with similar restrictions to the British and French imperial forms of free trade. 52rade and were government-sanctioned.Smuggling could be elevated to a national virtue if it was undertaken towards the detriment of one's enemies and rivals.When the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War broke out on account of disagreements on the conduct and legality of Dutch trade with Britain's enemy, the Danish foreign minister Andreas Peter Bernstorff sensed the importance of the moment, particularly the opportunities the war entailed for Danish trade in the Caribbean: It is very joyous news indeed this war which is declared against Holland.If we only know how to reap its advantages, it will get us out of our worst troubles, and I flatter myself that we will, at least in part, and as far as the present system and the thinking of those in power can admit.Even the first reports, raising the price of West Indian merchandise by 20 to 30 per cent, proves to be of immense advantage, and what will not be gained from the vessels which we expect this year, on the freight in the Mediterranean, and of fish of all kinds, all to which we enjoy almost an exclusive trade.Providence does all it can for Denmark, and woe to those who misuse or abuse such obvious material blessings. 53portunistic attempts to seize larger shares of global trade reflected a shared worldview and commercial doctrine, which saw one country's loss as another country's gain.The 'jealousy of trade' (after David Hume) displayed in letters by Bernstorff to his fellow statesman Reventlow was established practice.In 1778, a new company, the Danish Royal West Indian Commercial Society (Kongelige vestindiske handelsselskab), had been established.According to Bernstorff, this company was nothing like the old company that had administered the colonies and the transatlantic slave trade.Its explicit aim was to break the virtual monopoly that Dutch St. Eustatius had on the free port trade in the Caribbean.Since St. Thomas had officially been a free port for many years already, Bernstorff believed that the scheme had a good chance of succeeding. 54owever, disagreements also arose, especially over the question of who should benefit from the favourable situation and how much: There are only two articles that I very much disapprove of in this undertaking; one is the indirect monopoly of trade in coffee, granted to the company, as well as the payments to directors, recruited among the first men of the state.It may well be that the latter article was necessary to secure company privileges, but I was nevertheless offended by it, and I did not want to have any part in the plan, nor in the direction, even if it had depended entirely upon myself. 55rnstorff's objections to monopoly, as well as the blatant ambitions of enrichment among elites, were not uncommon.It also showed that commercial rivalry naturally existed in domestic and private contexts.Similar sentiments arose when the Swedish West India Company was established.Free ports were seen as a potential boon for many actors.Before the Swedish settlement of St. Barthélemy, several merchants based in the Caribbean produced advisory memoranda to the Swedish government in anticipation of a new free port on the small island.In general, merchants already established in the Danish and Dutch free ports welcomed the prospect of a new free port since competition would likely create downward pressure on tariffs and taxes.Understandably, the creation of a chartered company was something these entrepreneurs always advised against. 56 chartered company was established nevertheless.There were good reasons to delegate partial colonial administration to a company.It had the advantage of offsetting initial costs and spreading the risk among many shareholders.The company charter was always defended on the grounds that it carried the responsibility of colonial governance.Through its trade, it was argued, the company would create a new branch of Swedish overseas trade and open up future economic opportunities.Colonial entrepreneurs, as well as metropolitan merchants who did not own any of its stock, reviled the Swedish West India Company during the period of its charter.The rationale behind the company's creation was denounced by the Stockholm merchant society when the company's charter came up for review in 1805.Their criticism was apt since the company had achieved little in establishing new avenues for Swedish trade with the Caribbean. 57he transit trade was another matter.St. Barthélemy flourished, with some intermittent setbacks, during the Napoleonic Wars.When St. Thomas, along with the rest of the Danish Caribbean colonies, was occupied by the British in 1807, St. Barthélemy had suddenly become the single remaining free port, which it would remain until the Treaty of Vienna in 1815.A whole new opportunity for the colony's mercantile community was now on offer. 58ompany failures notwithstanding, there were still possibilities for a Nordic monarch to influence colonial politics in the Caribbean.In no other instance is this as clear as with the ascendancy of Charles XIV John to the Swedish throne after 1810.St. Barthélemy's transformation into a crown colony in 1812 was intimately linked to Charles' economic ambitions.Having a considerable understanding of the value of colonies through his French military career, Charles assumed a role in Swedish colonial affairs no monarch had had since Gustav III.As a part of his foreign policy, Charles was interested in the struggles for independence in South America.He benefitted directly from the independence movements through trade in arms and naval stores.In general terms, he encouraged free trade through Gustavia. 59The royal appropriation of colonial funds was exceptionally well-timed, as Gustavia became an Anglo-American port of convenience during the War of 1812.Up until the treaties of Ghent and Vienna, Charles could use Gustavia's customs windfall to extend his assets.He spent them on various foreign policy designs, private payments and all manner of expenses, which were part of the minutiae of high-ranking statesmanship. 60owever, the historical agency of the state in the context of Caribbean free ports cannot easily be reduced to what states and governments intended alone.When Sweden and Denmark engaged in the colonial world through free ports, they created consequences that were not always easy to foresee and control.Charlotte Amalie and Gustavia's entanglements across imperial borders made national allegiances a complex matter. 61One need only consider the pleas and protests of British merchants living in St. Thomas as Danish subjects after the British occupation of the Danish West Indies in 1807.When the British Navy started to suppress Danish trade in the Caribbean after the outbreak of the conflict, domestic and British colonial merchants complained that it was a British branch of trade that its countrymen had just attacked. 62qually relevant in this context is the imperial agency of France and Great Britain.For them, neutral trade was a nuisance and a threat when it entailed that the colonial produce of their rival was shipped to market in Europe.Naval blockades, privateering, and other forms of maritime predation all served to counter this problem. 63The campaigns of individual members of parliament, such as the lawyer James Stephen, might have helped skew the image of the neutral free port as an unequivocally negative phenomenon to British wartime interests. 64In 1805, Stephen published the legal polemic War in Disguise; or, the Frauds of the Neutral Flags.While Stephen's primary target was the neutral American carrying trade, the Danish and Swedish entrepôts in the Caribbean had caught his attention as potential links between France and her Caribbean dominions. 65till, free port trade was tolerated comparatively well under certain circumstances.Observers on St. Barthélemy, such as Bergius, were convinced that the greater colonial powers, in general, must be entertaining a tacit understanding between themselves to tolerate the exception that the free ports made amid their empire.Many British and French colonies depended on free ports as neutral subterfuges, mainly when war had made regular trade channels precarious.We can find evidence of this in British colonial correspondence. 66While Sweden and Britain were ostensibly at war in 1810-1812, Hugh Elliot, Governor of the British Leeward Islands, confessed to Lord Liverpool that the British colonies were dependent upon free ports such as Gustavia for their imports of foodstuffs and lumber.It was especially the case now when American wartime embargoes were strictly enforced.Luckily, full commercial relations between St. Barthélemy and British colonies persisted 'as if founded upon perfect neutrality'. 67he wartime Caribbean dynamic also offered opportunities for belligerent empires to exploit free ports to their benefit.Deliberate yet informal attempts by imperial officials to control a foreign region, its resources or its people have traditionally been associated with nineteenth century British machinations in Asia. 68French and British colonial administrators, however, also used subtle methods of local influence in the Caribbean.The Scandinavian free ports in the Caribbean were always under the influence of regional imperial powers.Especially after the outbreak of war in 1793, French revolutionary privateers and their commissaires had a significant presence in the Dutch, Danish and Swedish free ports.These privateering operations were highly decentralised and conducted under the authority of a given port, itself being constituted as a type of 'maritime republic'.Guadeloupe's revolutionary authorities set up bounty courts (agences de prises) in St. Thomas and St. Barthélemy, as well as St. Eustatius, Curaçao.Trinidad, Cuba and Puerto Rico.These institutions served as outlets for French privateering prizes and were the instruments the revolutionary authorities used to exert political and military leverage over adjoining colonies.Since the revision and expansion of the 'Exclusif mitigé' as a commercial policy in the French Caribbean in 1874, merchants in French free ports such as Saint-Pierre in Martinique had gradually increased their trading ties with Scandinavian and Dutch colonies.These networks of cabotage and small trade, then, had a long history.However, during the early Revolutionary Wars, specific conditions made Scandinavian free ports into reluctant satellites of Republican French warfare. 69nother phase began after the British imperial sweep of the Caribbean, beginning in 1807.After the British successfully thwarted the French war efforts in the region and occupied more colonies, including St. Thomas, St. Barthélemy was left more dependent on British-American trade than ever.In a sense, the War of 1812 came as a tremendous albeit fleeting gift for the Swedish free port.The American Prizes Act 70 , enacted by Whitehall on 1 February 1813, was the critical piece of legislation that created the conditions that made Gustavia flourish.The Act altered some aspects of the British Orders in Council of 11 November 1807, which had stipulated that Britain's enemies could not sell their ships to neutrals, as they then could be condemned as lawful prizes.
The American Prizes Act would now restrict this particular paragraph to the French.American ships were thus exempted from this rule even if not explicitly mentioned in the Act.The Act's specific context is highlighted by the fact that it was communicated personally by Castlereagh to the Swedish envoy in London, Gotthard Mauritz von Rehausen.Von Rehausen dispatched this information to Sweden, along with earlier communications that had signalled that the British Navy would allow free passage to Swedish vessels destined for the North American coast to load victuals.All of this information was naturally relayed to the Swedish governor in St. Barthélemy. 71 British merchants who wished to ship their merchandise directly to the United States could secure neutral Swedish papers from obliging Swedish officials in St. Barthélemy.While American exports were severely diminished due to the war, St. Barthélemy was inundated with American shipping that needed a subterfuge for British-bound cargo. 72eutral ships did not only run through blockades in the Caribbean, as Swedish and Spanish ships were common sightings as far north as Lake Champlain.The British North American territories were also in need of precious imports.An American in Halifax noted late in 1812 that upwards of 20,000 barrels of flour had been brought in by Swedish and Spanish vessels, most of them from Boston.Indeed, they were not merely obliging out of opportunism.The Swedish Board of Commerce also took advantage of the situation by allowing Swedish consuls in the United States the right to register Swedish ships to naturalised Swedish subjects.American ships were now allowed to be naturalised while anchored in American ports. 73his system of free trade was successful but short-lived.Through this convenient arrangement, British imperial interests were actualised, as well as Swedish and American economic interests.After the wars, the world of commercial borders was changed forever.After successive treaties in Ghent, Paris and Vienna, it was evident that a new order was successively being imposed in the colonies.British and French commercial trade barriers were lifted, only subject to temporary closures during intermittent conflicts of the early nineteenth century.Gustavia and Charlotte Amalie remained polyglot merchant communities well into the nineteenth century .The Danish free port found more stable success as an important coaling port during the coming age of steam shipping.Lacking other advantages, St. Barthélemy languished for a long time before Sweden relinquished it to France after nearly a century in its possession. 74The histories of both ports bear witness to the long continuity of inter-imperial border crossings and arguably to the coming of the age of free trade imperialism.

Conclusion
The Scandinavian free ports in the Caribbean were a form of territorial exceptionalism.Still, as the long history of Caribbean intercolonial trade has shown, this particular form of exceptionalism should not be exaggerated.Conditions in colonial peripheries have always tended to render imperial boundaries more permeable than they formally were.Sovereignty in colonial dominions was constricted and complex, with authority often being amorphous and delegated.The Scandinavian empires have commonly been understood as especially porous or lacking in dominion.Still, if contextualised within other modes of colonial practice and administration, they do not appear uncommon at all.What instead distinguished Scandinavian free ports was a clear ambition to attract foreign settlement.The resulting multi-ethnic and polyglot communities were, despite their fleeting nature, de jure and de facto emporiums of free trade.
A common feature of both Charlotte Amalie and Gustavia was that their free port privileges were extended to them to solve the particular problems they faced in colonial and national rivalry.Danish authorities feared St. Thomas would fall behind its sugar-producing sister colonies, whereas St. Barthélemy was never suited to this mode of production.Hence, the free port model suggested itself, well-known to statesmen through older and contemporary sources.For both Scandinavian powers, Dutch colonies were the archetypes as well as their foremost competitors.Free ports, then, were understood as a means of capturing or sharing in the advantages of a broader colonial world.Other free trade regimes have definitively been shown to be conflated with imperial conquest.But, the history of Charlotte Amalie and Gustavia also convincingly shows that free ports could be used with more modest aims to reap the benefits of colonialism without supporting a costly overseas empire.As a way of commercial rivalry, the Scandinavian free trade regimes in the Caribbean were not export-oriented.Their mode of operation did not necessarily align with the long-term economic interests of the state.
Instead, what was apparent was a tendency of pure opportunism and exploitation of wartime economies to further the short-term gain of different elites, whether intrepid merchants or monarchs with independent economic ambitions.Monarchs, of course, experienced few contradictions between their own interests and those of the state.Scandinavian actors and institutions willingly collaborated with larger empires.Decades ago, the Danish historian Sven Erik Pedersen made a connection between Danish colonial trade through St. Thomas and the contention about the British conquest of India made by American historian Holden Furber.According to Furber, whether they were willing or not, all other European nations involved in India contributed willingly or unwillingly to British domination of the sub-continent.According to this view, British traders and administrators used foreign dogsbodies and pawns to further their goals. 75ut from a Scandinavian perspective, it was also consistent with the long history of transit trade for foreign actors during times of war and conflict.Whether they served foreign interests or not, collaboration and assimilation with international merchant capital was a time-honoured way of realising limited commercial advantages for Scandinavian actors.