In European Small States and the Role of Consuls in the Age of Empire Aryo Makko argues that Sweden and Norway participated in the New Imperialism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries through consular services. Usually portrayed as nations without an imperial past, Makko demonstrates that their role in the processes of imperialism and colonialism during that period can be understood by including consular affairs and practices of informal imperialism into the analysis. With this, he contributes to our understanding of the role of smaller states in the so-called Age of Empire. Aryo Makko, Ph.D. (2012), Stockholm University, is Associate Professor of History at that university and a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS). He is also a member of the Young Academy of Sweden.

The nineteenth century saw the expansion of Western influence across the globe. A consular presence in a new territory had numerous advantages for business and trade. Using specific case studies, de Goey demonstrates the key role played by consuls in the rise of the global economy.

Analyzes how negotiations between Dutch consuls and North African rulers over the liberation of Dutch sailors helped create a new diplomatic order in the western Mediterranean.

This volume brings together a leading group of scholars to offer a new perspective on the history of conflicts and trade, focusing on the role of small and medium, or "weak", and often neutral states. Existing historiography has often downplayed the importance of such states in world trade, during armed conflicts, and as important agents in the expanding trade and global connections of the last 250 years. The country studies demonstrate that these states played a much bigger role in world and bilateral trade than has previously been assumed, and that this role was augmented by the emergence of truly global conflicts and total war. In addition to careful country or comparative studies, this book provides new data on trade and shipping during wars and examines the impact of this trade on the individual states’ economies. It spans the period from the late 18th century to the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War of the 20th century, a crucial period of change in the concept and practice of neutrality and trade, as well as periods of transition in the nature and technology of warfare. This book will be of great interest to scholars of economic history, comparative history, international relations, and political science.

From West Indian sugar and bottles of Southeast Asian arrack to French red wines, English felt cloth, and Mediterranean lemons, many global wares ended up in the Scandinavian borderlands during the late eighteenth century. This book explores how and why these goods came to be there and analyses what smuggling can reveal about the emergence of global trade, the formation of the nation state, and the development of consumer society in Europe’s northernmost outskirts. This book shows that the global underground was ubiquitous in the Nordic countries and fundamentally altered them, politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Through re-evaluating the role of smuggling the book complements and challenges established historical accounts about state building, market dynamics, consumer culture, and ideas and identity. It also offers a roadmap for how to think about illegal global trade and how to approach this notoriously difficult research field. By integrating illegality, the book aims to show how an illicit web entangled often overlooked ‘peripheral’ territories with traditional ‘portals of globalisation’ and proposes a novel take on early modern globalisation and the paths to modernity in the European hinterlands. To achieve this a wide variety of sources are used including court records, administrative sources, diaries, ambassadorial correspondence, and maps in various languages including Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, English, and French. This book makes a significant contribution to the literature on economic history, the first wave of globalisation, the study of shadow economies, and Scandinavian history more broadly.

New Diplomatic History has turned into one of the most dynamic and innovative areas of research – especially with regard to early modern history. It has shown that diplomacy was not as homogenous as previously thought. On the contrary, it was shaped by a multitude of actors, practices and places. The handbook aims to characterise these different manifestations of diplomacy and to contextualise them within ongoing scientific debates. It brings together scholars from different disciplines and historiographical traditions. The handbook deliberately focuses on European diplomacy – although non-European areas are taken into account for future research – in order to limit the framework and ensure precise definitions of diplomacy and its manifestations. This must be the prerequisite for potential future global historical perspectives including both the non-European and the European world.

Diplomacy and Intelligence in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean World examines the activities of diplomats in the expansion of their home country's informal imperial ambitions. Taking a comparative approach, the book combines a focus on the extension of the informal British Empire with an exploration of the imperial ambitions of other states, such as France, Austro-Hungary and Japan. The authors combine approaches from diplomatic history, intelligence history and microhistory in order to give new insights into the Mediterranean as a 'contested space' between competing informal empires. This study will be of great interest to anyone interested in the history of the Mediterranean region during the 19th century.

This intellectual biography of Johan David Åkerblad (1763–1819) presents a new account of the decipherment of ancient Egyptian. Oriental and classical studies and their entwinement in the turbulent politics of this age of Revolutions are presented from a novel perspective.