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AB - Abstract This article charts the development of the trade in a key input into early modern British industry: potash, used as a source of alkali, predominantly in the making of soap for washing woollens, and the bleaching the linen. Although an essential intermediary input into the manufacturing processes through precursors to the modern chemical industry, this trade and its ecological impact have gone almost entirely unnoticed by historians. The article sets out the scale of the trade and its organization reaching to regions of supply in the Baltic and Russia, before a rapid switch towards North American suppliers after 1760. Knowledge of the potash trade expands the scope and understanding of the ‘organic economy’ to a product that accounted for the largest share of ‘ghost acres’ abroad used to underpin British industrial development and whose wood requirements came to far exceed the production of wood within Britain. Data on the ash trade provides an indicator for the scale of industrial output, and relative size of the textile-finishing sector in England and the Netherlands that may modify our understanding of the relative fortunes of industries in both countries. In the middle of the sixteenth century the English Parliament passed an Act ‘againste the carriage of White Ashes out of this Realme’. Ashes, proclaimed the Act, were ‘verie necessaries and expedient for the making of Sope and Salte Peter, and for the whitinge of lynnen Clothe, dyinge and scowringe of wollenn Clothe and for other nedefull things’.1 In other words, ash was an essential input into the processes of two of England’s major industries, the production of linen and woollen cloth.2 Two centuries later, Malachy Postlethwayt’s translation of Savary’s dictionary declared potash ‘a commodity that no nation can hardly well be without, either for making soap, glass, dyeing, or bleaching’.3 The use of ash was the precursor to the modern chemical industry. Ash was the main source of alkalis in a range of industrial processes, especially soap-making (the output of which was primarily used in the textile industry rather than for hygiene), and also in glass-making and ceramics. The very first patent granted by the United States patent office, on 31 January 1790, was for an improved technique in potash manufacture. Only in the late eighteenth century were artificial alkalis developed, and hydrochloric acid for use as a bleaching agent; and it was later in the nineteenth century when vegetable potash was replaced by mineral potash.4 Before this, all ash came from the combustion of plant matter. Ash was not a homogeneous product. It came from a variety of plants, which had different alkali contents and could be refined to different degrees. For making high-quality glass or hard soaps manufacturers preferred barilla ash, obtained from the Mediterranean.5 Different qualities of ‘ashes’ were variously known as ‘wood ashes’, ‘woad ashes’, ‘white ashes’, ‘blue ashes’, ‘pearl ashes’ and most commonly as simply ‘soap ashes’.6 ‘Potash’ was a more refined product, which only appeared on the English market during the 1590s but rapidly came to dominate it. In the eighteenth century, a major industry developed in the Hebridean and Orkney Islands burning kelp on the seashore to produce soda that was exported south to the Clyde, Mersey and Tyne.7 Any agricultural waste and bracken could be a source of ash, but by far the greatest amount of ash came from burning wood, and preferably good quality hardwoods such as beech.8 The crucial chemical compound was potassium carbonate (K2CO3), the name potassium of course being derived from the word ‘potash’.9 It is obvious that to obtain a large amount of ash one needs to burn a very large amount of wood. The multiple of volume between the wood burned and the ash so obtained is very large — up to a thousand-fold. It is equally obvious that a country such as England lacked very extensive wood reserves. English and Scottish ash was generally produced from straw, rushes, ferns or bracken and was of much lower quality: ‘entirely unfit for making white glass: they make a very coarse and strong kind of soap; they are too foul, sharp and corrosive for bleaching and are as unfit for dyeing, as least many colours’.10 Experiments conducted in Scotland in 1783 showed that while the alkali content of imported pot- or pearl ashes could reach 40–50 per cent, ashes derived from domestic plants did not yield much more than 7 per cent at best.11 This essential source of alkali was therefore imported, largely from the Baltic ports and Archangel on the White Sea in northern Russia, and later from North America. The ash trade was a key input into England’s major industries during the early modern period, and came to have an enormous ecological footprint that could never have been sustained within the British Isles. Demand for wood that was turned into ash and imported into Britain and the Netherlands completely dwarfed the demand from much better-known trades in timber and naval stores. Contemporaries were certainly aware of this dependency and some sought remedies. Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, sought the secret of good potash making from Danzigers in the 1660s. There were repeated attempts to manufacture potash in the American colonies before the industry blossomed around the mid 1760s, encouraged by the dropping of duties on American ash by Parliamentary Act in 1751 but probably more closely connected with the eventual transfer of less capital-intensive and competitive European techniques which could be employed on the settlement frontier.12 When the rising price of ash became a cause of increasing concern to the linen industry in these decades, some of the nation’s leading chemists — such as Frances Home, William Cullen and Joseph Black — devoted time to seeking substitutes, while Scotland’s Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures and Improvements paid out handsome premiums for advances in bleaching techniques and alkali production.13 Towards the end of the century the artificial production of alkalis was one of the key technical breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution. Yet there has been virtually no scholarship that addresses any aspect of this trade.14 This article seeks to redress this neglect, and to begin to establish the parameters of the trade and a hitherto overlooked aspect of resource-dependency in the trading system of early modern Britain. It begins by presenting the most basic information required for such a study: the sources by which the trade may be traced, and their reliability. It goes on to provide some quantification of the trade, of the price of ash and the marked shifts between different kinds of ash-products until the middle of the eighteenth century. It then moves on to examine the organization of the trade and the sources of the goods. We will then consider the impact on the supplier regions before returning to the question of consumption, and what the ash trade can tell us about the process of British industrialization. It is suggested that appreciation of an ‘intermediary good’ such as potash as an input into industrial processes may help shed considerable light both on the timing of industrial change, and on the demands on land use, trade, and labour regimes far from the ‘core’ of production attendant on that change. I the scale of the english trade Reconstructing the ash trade is not a simple task. The first main source is English customs and exchequer records. For the period before 1699, the most important of these are the ‘Port Books’ kept by customs officials, especially those that survive from after a major reform of the customs bureaucracy in 1564.15 These comprised a number of volumes maintained by different officials in the customs house and at the dockside of each port, which were supposed both to provide a means of resolving disputes and to allow the Exchequer to audit the record-keeping, and probity, of each officer. The books were to correspond to a system of warrants and dockets issued to shipmasters permitting the transit of goods. On completion, each year’s Port Books were to be supplied to the Exchequer, and it is these volumes (or in some cases, more likely good copies specially made for this purpose) that survive today. As they were subject to different levels of dues, the shipments of native and alien merchants were recorded separately. In many places these were bound together in the same volume, but in the case of larger ports discrete books dealt with each kind of merchant. This means that to get a full picture of the trade in any given year, the returns from both native and alien merchants must survive — a rare occurrence, and hence pre-1699 records are very fragmentary, although they may be complemented in some years with records of aggregate customs receipts. The aggregate trade must also be assembled shipment by shipment, or more accurately, with each lot that passed under the eye of customs officials, meaning that the assembly of this data has required working through the entirety of the ledgers of English imports during these years.16 From 1699 English exchequer officials began to keep aggregated records of national trade, now filed under ‘Customs 3’ in the National Archives. These provide a full account of imports and exports (at least those that came the attention of honest excise men), divided first between London and all other ports, and then by the polity or region of origin. The northern trades were divided between the Kingdom of Denmark (which included Norway), Sweden (which included Finland), Germany (primarily Hamburg), and ‘the East Country’, those lands along the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic which had fallen under the trading monopoly trading rights of the Eastland Company in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These customs records provide the first continual annual account of total imports. The second main source is the tolls levied at the Danish Sound at Helsingør, which provide a complete record of shipments heading west from 1562, but in which their destination is only recorded from 1669.17 As we know that cargoes to Britain were frequently carried by ships domiciled in other places, an estimate of the trade based upon cargoes carried only by English ships is likely to understate its extent before this latter date, and only provides a minimum figure. Records survive for nearly every single year from 1562, broken only occasionally in years of strife in the southern Baltic, such as the early 1570s, 1634, and the late 1650s. While this provides by far the most comprehensive source before 1699, it is well known that the Sound Toll records have serious pitfalls. As with any customs records, we have to be aware of the possibility of smuggling and lax supervision by officials. Reform of Danish customs in 1618 is thought to have reduced smuggling, and there was a notable leap in the volume of potash carried by Dutch ships in that year, although it seems to have made no difference to the English trade.18 For some periods some nations enjoyed exemptions.19 While overall both the English and Danish customs records can only be indicative of the trade rather than provide an exact record, in England the evidence of fraud bears more on the side of evasion of export duties than under-recording of imports, at least before the well-known smuggling culture developed in response to seventeenth-century excise taxes.20 In fact, a comparison of the returns to the Sound Tolls with the English Customs records shows a remarkable congruity, both on a ship-by-ship basis for the seventeenth century, and on an aggregate basis when this is possible from 1700. The annual totals recorded paying the Sound Tolls were on average 98 per cent of the total potash recorded as being landed annually from the Baltic in England over the years 1699 to 1726.21 During the period of disruption after 1703, when foreign ships came to predominate in the English trade, it is noticeable however that the amounts recorded as shipped by the English in the Sound Tolls fell far more than those recorded as landed by the English at home.22 It may well be that some of the trade was carried out in reflagged English ships which had abandoned the pretence by the time they reached home waters. Ash was exported from the eastern Baltic in late medieval times, at least from the early fourteenth century.23 In 1415, the Master of the Teutonic Order gave permission for ash (among other products) to be transported across his territory from Russia, Poland and Lithuania.24 Officers to check and seal barrels of ash were appointed in Danzig in 1428, Königsberg in 1450 and Riga in 1452.25 These would remain the primary exporting cities for the next two centuries. Shipments were recorded arriving in London in the 1480s. The trade was dominated by London, which was partly a function of the overwhelming concentration of the manufacture of soft soap in the metropolis.26 In 1685, for which year we have a complete picture of the trade, over 99 per cent of the ash was shipped to London.27 This concentration in London is a stroke of fortune for the historian, because survival of Port Books is extremely uneven for any individual port, never mind the total trade of a range of ports for any given year. Surveys of a large number of surviving Port Books suggest that the trade elsewhere was tiny across the seventeenth century, with evidence of only small shipments to Hull and Ipswich (both important trading bases for the Eastland Company).28 The more complete customs records after 1699 confirm this picture. Potash shipments to ports other than London were generally much less than 5 per cent of the trade, with only occasional peaks of around a tenth. Nearly all of these shipments came from the Baltic, and hence are also found in the Sound Tolls.29 Figure 1 provides my reconstruction of the import trade for the entire period from 1560. Ash shipments through the Sound were recorded in two kinds, either as plain ‘ash’ usually measured in Last, or potash usually measured in ship-pounds. Those landed in England were noted as either Last (typically for soap ashes) or as pounds or hundredweight.30 However, as the two products were of different qualities with a different alkali content, it is misleading to aggregate these raw figures.31 A more reliable indicator of the relative importance of the trade in each product is to convert them to a common measure, in this case as if all ash shipped was in fact potash. Details of the information available directly on potash, and the sources for that product, are provided in the Appendix. A fairly dramatic leap appears to have occurred in the Jacobean period, or from the 1590s at the earliest, followed by a more modest increase in proportional terms, so that by the early eighteenth century imports were three to four times higher than in the late sixteenth century. An aggregate of the total trade before 1699 must rely on English customs records only, as the Baltic trade only represented part of the whole, and ash was also shipped via the Dutch entrepôt. Proclamations of 1622 and 1630 that sought to limit the carrying of imported Baltic goods to English vessels were only applied gradually.32 Nevertheless, the Baltic share of the trade was very significant, and we can use the Danish data to trace significant changes in its overall structure during the seventeenth century. FIGURE 1 View largeDownload slide TOTAL ASH IMPORTS TO ENGLAND (LBS OF POTASH EQUIVALENT)* * Sources: TNA SP 12/8, fos. 63–4; TNA SP 16/87 fo. 65; British Library Lansdowne MS 8 fos. 75–6; BL Cotton Titus MS B IV; Add MS 36785 fos. 4–5, 91–2; TNA CUST 3 passim; Millard, ‘Imports Trade of London’, appendix II, table 5.2; Gittins, ‘Innovations in Textile Bleaching in Britain’, 199. Grey indicates that the source is Port Books or proxy estimates from other records; black that the source is from Cust 3. Note: As ashes are not a homogeneous product, ‘woad ashes’ or ‘soap ashes’ have been converted into the wood required for their manufacture and converted into potash equivalent by treating them as if that wood had been used in the manufacture of potash. On wood inputs into potash, see main text. For the years up to 1627, aggregate customs receipts have been used and converted into ash inputs on the basis of the impost levied and the price of ash (derived from checking both official sources and individual valuations of shipments in the Port Books). For 1589, the data only covers Easter to Michaelmas, and comes directly from the Port Books. For all other years direct records of imports are available. FIGURE 1 View largeDownload slide TOTAL ASH IMPORTS TO ENGLAND (LBS OF POTASH EQUIVALENT)* * Sources: TNA SP 12/8, fos. 63–4; TNA SP 16/87 fo. 65; British Library Lansdowne MS 8 fos. 75–6; BL Cotton Titus MS B IV; Add MS 36785 fos. 4–5, 91–2; TNA CUST 3 passim; Millard, ‘Imports Trade of London’, appendix II, table 5.2; Gittins, ‘Innovations in Textile Bleaching in Britain’, 199. Grey indicates that the source is Port Books or proxy estimates from other records; black that the source is from Cust 3. Note: As ashes are not a homogeneous product, ‘woad ashes’ or ‘soap ashes’ have been converted into the wood required for their manufacture and converted into potash equivalent by treating them as if that wood had been used in the manufacture of potash. On wood inputs into potash, see main text. For the years up to 1627, aggregate customs receipts have been used and converted into ash inputs on the basis of the impost levied and the price of ash (derived from checking both official sources and individual valuations of shipments in the Port Books). For 1589, the data only covers Easter to Michaelmas, and comes directly from the Port Books. For all other years direct records of imports are available. Up until around 1620, international trade was almost entirely in wood ash (or ‘soap ashes’). Potash made its first appearance in the Port Books with a shipment from Danzig (in a ship from Hamburg) in May 1589, but its presence remained marginal for many years. It first appeared in the Sound Toll records going to the Netherlands in 1598 and to England in 1613. Thereafter there was a very rapid switchover to potash around 1618–19, found in both English and Dutch shipments.33 The causes of the shift towards the more highly refined potash remain unclear. It may have been a technological switch that improved refining techniques. However, the timing also fits well with the rapid debasement of much of eastern Europe’s silver coinage, especially the Polish zloty. As the debasement effectively cut labour costs it may have lowered processing and transport costs, encouraging the switch to a more refined product which both required more time to make and was frequently transported over much greater distances.34 Wood ash was already freighted west in fairly substantial quantities from Danzig in the fifteenth century, with around a thousand Last per year shipped from 1490 to 1492, and records showing at least 184.5 Last and some additional barrels being landed in London between April and June 1481.35 During the sixteenth century the Dutch were almost certainly dominant as suppliers and consumers. In the mid 1570s, when up to thirteen thousand Last were dispatched each year from the eastern Baltic, it seems unlikely that much more than a tenth of this reached England.36 Soap ashes valued at £4,665 were landed in 1559–60, and £2,600-worth were imported into London in 1565. If, as in 1567–8, a Last was valued at £3, this implies around a thousand Last per year arriving at this time (approximately 1,850 tons). A memo drawn up for the English Crown of ‘foren commodities shypt into this rallme’ for 1570 does not mention ashes at all.37 For 1589, Port Books record the imports both of alien and domestic merchants, albeit only for the summer months. These amounted to 1,198 Last. A comparison of the Port Books and the Sound Tolls suggests that wood ash was largely imported into England by domestic merchants using foreign vessels at this time.38 After the Jacobean expansion, imports from the Baltic dropped dramatically from the 1640s, and did not fully recover until the eighteenth century. This was largely caused by geopolitical disruption — first the great Cossack uprising (1648–57), and then the Polish−Russian war (1654–67) and the Second Northern War, which saw Swedish invasions of Poland and Denmark (1655–60), as well as a Dutch−Danish alliance against the English. The disruptions further east led to the brief florescence of potash production in the beech woods of Blekinge (now in southern Sweden, then under Danish rule) and above all in Swedish districts to the north.39 But even before these upheavals, English merchants followed the Dutch in opening up a northern supply route in 1642 from Archangel, and in 1644 they obtained a seven-year grant for a production monopoly in the Dvina basin to the south-east of the White Sea, wresting this from Dutch merchants. Their monopoly was peremptorily abolished in 1649 on the execution of Charles I. From 1645 to 1649 they managed production levels that may have been as much as 310 tons per annum, consuming over a million cubic metres of wood at the very peak. The 1650s are a more obscure decade, during which intermediaries must have sustained the trade along with temporary supplies from what is now southern Sweden.40 The Russian trade was revived from 1676, at first via Narva on the Baltic but soon focused again on Archangel, while Danzig retained some of its role due to the quality of its potash.41Figure 2 provides a breakdown of sources of supply for the period for which we have a complete picture, from 1699. Russian ash was completely dominant around 1700; the southern Baltic ports saw a revival during the Great Northern War, especially between 1703 and 1711, which then gradually fell back. There was also a sea change at this time in the way ash was freighted. It is clear that before 1650, Dutch and German ships had the majority share of the trade to England; London was the recipient of over 40 per cent of the total trade in the 1620s but only a quarter came in English vessels.42 After 1650, the Dutch were almost completely excluded and English shipping came to dominate domestic supply, with occasional apparent upsurges in the role of Baltic fleets that may well have just been re-flagging for political convenience. FIGURE 2 View largeDownload slide SHARE OF TRADE BY REGION, 1700–1750 (%)* * Source: TNA CUST 3. FIGURE 2 View largeDownload slide SHARE OF TRADE BY REGION, 1700–1750 (%)* * Source: TNA CUST 3. Imports continued to expand, and in the years before the American Revolution well over five million pounds found passage to Britain each year, half of which now came across the ocean in 1767, and three-quarters by 1772. It was claimed that the higher quality American potash, once the process of production was successfully transplanted across the Atlantic, offered a particularly pure product suitable especially for bleaching.43 By the end of the century, truly colossal amounts were arriving in Britain as a whole: 14.2 million pounds in 1792, and a staggering thirty-six million pounds (sixteen thousand tons) on the eve of renewed hostilities in 1810, reduced to 19.6 million pounds in 1811. In this last year the largest single supplier was Canada and the transatlantic trade took 70 per cent of the total.44 This compares with the probable scale of an annual trade well under a million pounds in the sixteenth century, between one and three million during much of the seventeenth century, and with considerable variation between three and five million for much of the eighteenth century. To round off this quantitative reconstruction of the trade, we must examine prices. These are, however, few and far between. For soap ash, the rateable value seems to have been around £3 per Last from the 1560s until 1600, but to have leapt to £6 per Last by 1608.45 By 1610, it was observed that this was a major under-valuation and that the real price was £16 per Last.46 Valuations for potash are provided in the Port Books between 1609 and 1640, but these are clearly formulaic values related to dues rather than market prices, being fixed at £1. 5s. (25s.) per 100 pounds of potash. The value of potash computed as valued at the Danish Sound using Hinton’s exchange rate was very much lower, but there was no large market for the ash there.47 In 1624, opposing an import ban that was being proposed to underpin a domestic monopoly, the Eastland Company claimed, with every incentive to exaggerate, that potash brought £30,000 of revenue each year. This might very roughly imply a value of 30s. for a hundredweight of potash, in fact a not implausible amount, although Edward Williams claimed a much lower figure of 12s. in comparing it with the 1650 price of £2. 12s. is much closer to the Danish valuation and thus may reflect purchase prices in the east. On the other hand, the merchant William Cockayne entered into an agreement with those same putative monopolists in 1624, agreeing to buy £1,000 of potash at a cost of £25 per ton, or 25s. — precisely the official customs valuation. At the official landing values quoted by customs, the potash shipped through the Sound that year would have been worth around £25,000, so the claims historians have made that the Eastland Company’s valuation was a convenient exaggeration on the part of the Company seem overstated; it was not so far off the mark.48 In 1657, customs duties re-valued a hundredweight of potash at £2.49 In 1658, the Swedish Hamilton Company sold potash in London at 27s. 3d. per hundredweight.50 Valuations of imports for the years 1663 and 1669 suggest in turn an actual price per hundredweight of potash of 33s. and 37s. respectively, and Åstrom reckoned it was about 30s. in 1685.51 The official valuation of imports for 1704–6 — undertaken to estimate the potential value of opening up production in America — set the price at 28s. per hundredweight, exactly the same as the pre-1657 customs records.52 In 1736 the ‘free on board’ price was as little as 22s. per hundredweight, and in the 1760s, ‘pearly ashes’ could be got at a mere 34–36s. for a hundredweight, at a time when their expense was triggering efforts at import substitution. There had been a price spike of over 60s. per hundredweight around 1750, the result of deliberate closure of Russian exports that hit Britain, which was another incentive to invest in American ash. The British Linen Company (a Scottish institution), founded in 1746, sought to distribute ashes at subsidized prices to producers.53 Figure 3 provides a more detailed trend from the Dutch market, which is unlikely to have deviated significantly from English trends. This shows clearly one remarkable general phenomenon: the long-term trend in prices between the early seventeenth and the mid eighteenth century was stable or even slightly down, and prices certainly fell in real terms.54 Highly disruptive spikes in price can be seen, such as during the period 1648–52 associated with the Cossack revolt, and during the War of Austrian succession in the 1740s. An English petition of 1649 also spoke of potashes having recently increased fivefold in price, doubtless a result of the interruption to commerce caused first by the revolt in the east, and then the closure of the Archangel route after the execution of Charles I. Imports remained low for several years due to the Anglo-Dutch war of 1652–4.55 Noticeable is the variable ratio between the value of bears’ foot (wood) ashes and potashes, both from Danzig.56 As the latter had a higher alkali content, one would expect a premium, but the gap between the two fell dramatically between 1609 and 1624 (the time of the great transition to potash use), opened up again in the early eighteenth century, and narrowed from the 1730s. This probably reflected the access of Danzig to more distant sources of potash supply, and created clear incentives for western consumers to buy potash. More pointedly for the overall stability of prices in the west, we can see that the silver price of Danzig potashes tended to decline in the long run. This reflects the gradual debasement of the Polish currency, a shift in the terms of trade away from the east, and the decline of silver wages paid in Danzig relative to those of Amsterdam that began at the beginning of the seventeenth century. By the 1750s, silver wages in the east had fallen by a quarter relative to 1600, and this would have lowered the costs of ash and expanded the horizons of supply for western industry.57 While this made potash cheaper, it also stimulated the further development of an import trade in order to avoid having to accept debased Polish currency in payment for western exports.58 FIGURE 3 View largeDownload slide PRICES OF ASH IN AMSTERDAM (GUILDERS)* * Source: Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland. FIGURE 3 View largeDownload slide PRICES OF ASH IN AMSTERDAM (GUILDERS)* * Source: Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland. II the organization of the trade From 1579 the direct ash trade to the Baltic was conducted under the aegis of the chartered monopoly of the Eastland Company, a development that went hand in hand with the final demolition of the privileges of the Hansa merchants in plying the Baltic trade with England. The Company set up a staple market for English goods, primarily woollen broadcloths, at the town of Elbing. Although the company’s ships sailed out of Hull, Newcastle and Ipswich as well as London, the return port for ashes was almost always London. Elbing, a near neighbour of Königsberg, was the main export centre for English merchants. Potash seems to have comprised about 10–15 per cent of the total value of the Eastland trade in the 1620s and 40s, as valued at Helsingør on the Danish Sound. In 1624, during a dispute over monopoly rights in soap-making in England, the Eastland Company claimed that ashes supplied a quarter of their total return in London and argued that they were thus essential for the export of woollen broadcloths to the East, as Poles could not purchase goods in cash (or would do so in debased currency) and had to exchange commodities. It seems, however, that institutional changes on the demand and supply side — such as the setting up of a soap-boilers’ company in London with monopoly rights in 1631 — and geopolitical crises never had more than a temporary impact on the rise of potash imports. This was even the case after the staple of the Eastland Company at Elbing was occupied by the Swedish army in 1626, interrupting its privileges to trade with supplying regions of Poland. Overall the trade still expanded dramatically.59 From the 1650s, a series of Navigation Acts were passed which required goods to be imported by English vessels, or directly in those of the exporting nation, while in Scotland various monopolies operated in the seventeenth century relating either to domestic potash production for the soap industry, or — between 1661 and 1680 — to control of the wider trade.60 In 1674, as Russian trade revived, a further Act was passed to prevent Russian ashes being shipped via the Netherlands, although licences to permit this trade were also sometimes issued.61 By the 1680s, the grip of the Eastland Company on the trade was clearly weakening, but the English had become dominant in supplying their own needs. There was generally a sharp division between those merchants who traded to Archangel, and those who plied the Baltic. We do not currently have direct estimates of the profitability of the ash trade, which was in any case one nearly always conducted as part of a wider set of exchanges by general merchants. Profits calculated by Maria Bogucka for the Danzig−Amsterdam trade during 1634–48 show a very high degree of variability, mostly the result of swings in Amsterdam prices determined by the volume of shipments through the Sound, which was itself subject to the influence of geopolitical events. It is difficult to draw any wider conclusions from these, other than that the sustained high level of imports indicates that they were worth pursuing.62 However, one detailed account of the costs of delivering forty casks of potash to London from the Swedish (but Irish- and Scottish-run) Hamilton potash company in 1658 can give us some idea of the distribution of costs. This was a substantial cargo, as each cask contained over a long ton of potash and the total was over a hundred thousand pounds. Unfortunately, we do not know the purchase price of ash, nor the costs of production near Kalmar in Sweden. However, the potash sold at 27.25s. the hundredweight in London to a soap-boiler, and the costs of getting it to the consumer made up 17.3 per cent of the final price. Of this share, 24 per cent was the freight (overwhelmingly the sea freight from Stockholm to London), 38 per cent was tolls and taxes (nearly all English), and 23 per cent was insurance (‘assurance för 2666 ¾ rixd a 9 procento’). The Company factor was paid partly in cash and partly in soap.63 The high shares for tolls and taxes must have been facilitated by the general stability or downward trend in price, while insurance costs indicate the volatility of the Eastland trade in general. However, this Swedish case of ash being produced in proximity to the coast probably had rather lower transport costs than average. While ash was produced close to the Baltic shore in southern Scandinavia and Royal Prussia, the majority of the trade drew on regions far inland which were accessed via the great rivers of the east. Danzig and Königsberg merchants drew on the basin of the Vistula and its tributaries, sometimes directly leasing forests as far away as Ruthenia in the 1630s. Lublin and Lemberg (Lvov) were the main marketplaces in the interior, and an English agent in Danzig in 1673 noted that ‘in times of peace’ it was usual to source potash from Wallachia, then far to the south on the Ottoman frontier.64 In Russia, the forests of the middle Volga several hundred miles east of Moscow were the major source, where oak, elm, maple and lime were burned.65 Nevertheless, all of the lands surrounding the Baltic continued to produce potash long into the nineteenth century.66 Near the Baltic shores there is evidence that smallholding peasants were active in producing ash, but over time it appears that the mainstay of the trade moved further inland and became dominated by magnates and rulers, often using serf labour but with the emergence of ash-burning specialists.67 Landowners and rulers granted concessions to ash-producing companies that in turn provided the large amounts of capital tied up in shifting major shipments long distances to ports. Ash was typically produced in the winter months and could be more easily removed from the forests on sleds.68 The Lithuanian parliament of 1547 made the establishment of the forest huts from which the ash-burners worked contingent on a fee and the permission of the Grand Duke, but by 1559 this power was in the hands of the landlords.69 In Russia the tsar gave concessions to Dutch and then English syndicates to produce potash in the 1630s and 1640s, but from 1662 created a state monopoly.70 From 1620 the right to manufacture or control all commercial potash in Västergötland in Sweden similarly became a royal concession to a Dutch entrepreneur, while in 1655 the right to make potash on Swedish crown lands or buy up any other production was transferred to the new company of the Irish entrepreneur Hugo Hamilton. His efforts in Småland initially required credit from the crown, and the support of local officials. In Sweden it seems that wood ash was initially produced in the forest by peasants who then supplied it to potasheries for refining. Hamilton recruited a Scot, John Doughty, and his two sons, who claimed to have produced potash in Virginia and Barbados as well as to have worked in the soap industry in England. This seems almost certain to be the same John Doughty who sued for money owed after the British potasheries were closed down in Russia after the execution of Charles I, showing how a footloose potash entrepreneur could operate. But the westerners lacked the expertise to actually refine the product, relying on Livonians and Swedes.71 The geopolitical uncertainties of trading in the east made for an opening for projectors to suggest that North America, or, more rarely, Ireland,72 could be more secure ‘domestic’ sources of the same goods. For much of the seventeenth century it was quite typical for those marketing the potential of America to dwell on precisely the list of resources that one would expect to find on a ship from Danzig or Archangel: naval stores, timber, ash, furs and possibly metals. In a few cases, such as that of the Puritan Matthew Craddock who was highly active in the Massachusetts Bay Company, this imaginative transferral came from direct experience. Apparently Polish ash-burners were recruited for this purpose as early as 1609.73 However, whether for lack of effort, expertise or simply high costs, such attempts came to nothing; in 1700 the governor of Massachusetts Bay, the earl of Bellomont, argued that ‘the dearnesse of labour is the main impediment, for the woods are infinite’, while nineteen years later, lack of expertise was blamed.74 In the eighteenth century, entrepreneurs frequently petitioned for a monopoly on ash production in one of the colonies, as well as in Ireland in the 1690s.75 In 1708, it was claimed in another petition that only a third of potash purchases from Russia were paid for by exported goods, so to prevent drainage of coin the author recommended the extension of credit to stimulate American production; yet another claimed that the nation was expending £100,000 per annum on pot- and pearl ashes in 1729.76 South Carolina offered bounties, and potash production was a major goal in the newly-established colony of Georgia, but without success; it turned out that southern trees gave low yields of ash.77 Early American producers relied on the collection of urban hearth-ashes and used processes and labour that remained too expensive for the international market. It was only in the middle of the 1760s that production began to take off, rising up to an extraordinary level by the first decade of the nineteenth century. Although premiums were offered to stimulate imports, this seems above all to have been associated with the introduction of cheaper methods and a shift in the geographical basis of production towards the settlement frontier. By the 1770s it was commonly made by farmers, making it competitive with ash from the east produced in more similar circumstances. It is hoped that wider appreciation of the importance of potash as an industrial input will stimulate more research on the precise means by which this transition occurred.78 III ecological impacts Producing ash required the destruction of many trees. As we have seen, deciduous hardwoods were preferred. Linnaeus described the making of potash in Sweden in 1749. Old beech trunks and stocks were used, reduced to ash, collected and brought to huts where it was kneaded into dough with water. This was then smeared as a paste onto sticks of fir or pine that were burned in stacks, and the ash removed when red hot and starting to liquefy. This produced the blueish wood ash. To make potash, this wood or woad ash was dissolved in water to make lye that was heated in a pot, leaving a dark alkaline residue. For the highest quality, this could be further heated in an oven to produce a calcinated white, cake-like residue (varieties of which were sometimes called ‘pearl ash’, preferred by dyers). This would have been done in purpose-built potasheries.79 Much later sources from eastern Europe refer to ‘Polish’ or ‘Hungarian’ methods, so there was clearly some regional differentiation, and Dunbar described a related but more primitive process for Scottish ash-making in 1736.80 In the early nineteenth century, Krünitz compiled a very extensive discussion of different methods for making varied qualities of ash. Archangel ash, for example, was produced by the combustion of entire beech trees, while Danzig ash was preferred by dyers. The burners of Silesia and Lusatia, whose ash was used in linen-bleaching, preferred the particular qualities of ash produced from old rotten silver firs, rejecting both the stump and young wood. The ash market distinguished qualities by region and colour, although, confusingly, the same term could be applied to quite different grades of ash. Baltic ports maintained marking schemes to indicate varying grades, and expert traders had a variety of techniques, from taste and smell to chemical investigation, to determine quality.81 This raises the question of the impact of this trade, both economic and ecological, on regions of supply. Unquestionably ash was highly demanding of wood, but how demanding exactly? Working from a Canadian source, Knoppers and Nicholls reckoned that a cubic metre of oak made 0.62 kilograms of potash.82 Joachim Radkau quotes Josef Blau from 1917 that seven hundred kilograms of beech was required for a kilogram of potash, and two thousand kilograms of spruce. This would imply that a cubic metre of beech made about 0.8 kilograms of potash.83 Rather out of line is an estimate from Delaware that only a little over half a cubic metre was required per kilogram, but the quality of the ash is uncertain.84 More contemporary testimony from Royal Prussia, from Friedrich Samuel Bock in 1783, implied that 1.6 cubic metres were needed per kilogram of potash, or that a cubic metre of wood made 0.62 kilograms of potash, identical to the Canadian figure. A later eighteenth-century description of the making of Polish ‘blue crown’ potash implied about 1.9 cubic metres of hardwood per kilogram of final product, although conversions are uncertain.85 Jan Kunnas cites a range of nineteenth-century Finnish estimates that from 0.3 to 1.5 cubic metres of birch-wood were needed to make a kilogram of potash; and some sources on quantities of stacked wood imply a higher ratio.86 Bock further reckoned that good potash required sixtyfold the amount of ‘basic’ wood ash from the initial burning of wood, but Waidasche (blue and soap ashes) only a third as much.87 In 1657, English customs valued potash much more modestly at twice the price per hundredweight of soap ashes, and the average ratio of prices of a Last of potash and a Last of soap ashes in Amsterdam between 1609 and 1760 was 1.72:1, similar to that found in England in 1621. In a Swedish toll ordinance of 1650, weijd-asche (i.e. Waidasche) was valued at only a third the price of potash. Of course, given variable transport costs and different sources we should not expect prices directly to reflect alkali content or wood inputs, certainly not in the western ports.88 Dunbar claimed that, ‘it takes about five or six Hogsheads of common Ashes to make one of Potashes, and about four Hogsheads of common Ashes to make one of Lee’, but here he seems to be comparing the low-quality common ashes of the hearth, not those that were transported as ‘soap ashes’ or ‘blue ash’. In making the calculation of wood requirements for ashes, and hence the aggregate figures for the scale of the trade and its impact, I have followed Bock’s 1783 figures that sit squarely in the range of other estimates. However, given variations in technique, quality and reporting, such figures can only ever be rough approximations.89 The impact of English imports is presented in Figure 4. They probably accounted for about a million cubic metres of wood per annum in the 1560s, 1.75–2 million cubic metres in the reign of Charles I, and approaching three million cubic metres per annum by the first decades of the eighteenth century. This level expanded gradually until the 1750s, but we should remember that English demand represented less than half of the total imported to north-west Europe as a whole, which must very regularly have reached six or more million cubic metres each year from the early seventeenth century.90 Estimates of total Russian production alone imply around five million cubic metres of wood being consumed per annum between the 1660s and 1690s.91 By 1792, over ten million cubic metres of wood was consumed as ash by the British and an extraordinary twenty-six million in 1810. FIGURE 4 View largeDownload slide WOOD CONSUMED FOR ASH IMPORTS (MILLION M3)* * Sources as for Fig. 1. FIGURE 4 View largeDownload slide WOOD CONSUMED FOR ASH IMPORTS (MILLION M3)* * Sources as for Fig. 1. This figure from 1810, solely consumed by Great Britain, is equivalent to the entire annual wood production of Germany at that date. The vast sixteenth-century state of Poland-Lithuania probably produced no more than forty-five million cubic metres of wood per annum, so even the earlier exports produced from the low millions of cubic metres represented a very considerable demand, given that specific kinds of hardwood were more desirable, and that they had to be sufficiently concentrated to be viable for market production.92 But the most telling comparison comes with the wood supplies of the importing nations. The woodland of England and Wales grew little over three million cubic metres of wood every year in the early modern period; the Netherlands, almost nothing at all.93 The fact that this figure is easily outstripped by the ash trade to the north-west of Europe, and at times by London’s trade alone, is ample testimony to the ecological dependency and impact of the early modern demand for the chemical properties of potash. As Walker commented in 1799, ‘We are, in Britain, destitute of woods, that can be employed for producing potashes. We must depend for this commodity upon foreign nations’.94 In 2000 Kenneth Pomeranz used the concept of ‘ghost acres’, invented by the Swede Georg Borgström in the 1950s, to argue that it was access to coal and colonial resources that distinguished Britain, and its potential for industrialization, from east Asia.95 Ghost acres are a measure of the land that would be required domestically to produce imported goods. This thesis is related to Tony Wrigley’s framing of ‘the organic economy’, that is, one predominantly dependent on food and resources from plants. An organic economy placed a fundamental ceiling on the possibilities for economic activity due to a combination of the limits to yields per acre, high transport costs of carrying loads by water or using animal traction, and the consequent dispersal of economic activity. Access to fossil fuels thus represented a necessary condition of modern levels of economic growth.96 The figures presented in this article suggest that the ‘organic economy’, usually associated with local constraints, was a more international phenomenon at an earlier date than has previously been appreciated. And the cause of this was an industry that has gone almost entirely unrecognized — effectively, the precursor to the modern chemical industry. In the early 1700s the improbable scenario of a domestic supply of potash in England would have required a doubling of the acreage devoted to wood, then around a million hectares. By the 1790s this demand had tripled, and would have required three million hectares, or nearly a quarter of the surface area of England. While this was certainly smaller than what would have been the contemporaneous demand for firewood to replace coal supplies, it is much larger than the values calculated by Pomeranz for the ‘ghost acreage’ of food and fibre production in the colonies, which, for his estimates relating to sugar, timber and cotton, come to 1.33 million hectares as late as 1830. In fact, as late as the 1830s, ash imports remained by far the biggest single claim to ghost acres overseas imported by Britain; if converted into the sustainable area of woodland required, they dwarf the requirements for any other product. In terms of scale (which is not of course the same as significance) this reorientates our view of the relationship between British development and the exploitation of land and labour overseas, highlighting the importance of the expanding settlement frontier in North America, and before the 1760s, the forested regions of Scandinavia and eastern Europe. Given that no region attempted to manage wood supplies sustainably for the purpose of ash-making, it implies that increased potash inputs into industry required a constant expansion of the land frontier. These findings also indicate the role of seasonal or temporary labour undertaken by peasant or farming households as essential contributors of the raw material for industrialization, alongside more familiar narratives of coercion, although settlement expansion frequently also involved the expropriation and displacement of indigenous peoples.97 They underscore the fact that the Industrial Revolution was not just an energetic transformation, but a chemical one too, even though the new artificial chemical industries and mines were heavily dependent on fossil fuels. The extraction of mineral potash, as opposed to the vegetable form discussed here, did not develop until the 1860s. Thus despite important developments in the production of artificial soda from the early nineteenth century, British industry required chemical inputs derived from organic material long into the nineteenth century. The economic and environmental history of the Industrial Revolution has been heavily focused upon energy and a very few consumer goods. Histories of organic intermediary goods as crucial components of a wider ecological history remain, for the most part, to be written. This work suggests that this historiographical lacuna leaves our appreciation of the industrialization process and its wider impact considerably wanting. IV potash and economic growth To finish we return to the consumer, and examine what the ash trade can tell us about the process of English industrialization. As we have seen, in England potash was largely used for the production of soap used in preparing wool, and the bleaching of linen; it appears to have been primarily on the continent that it played a large role in dyeing. The glass industry often used the residue of ashes for soap-making. As alkalis for these purposes were almost entirely imported, I want to suggest that the ash trade can actually be used as an indicator of the scale of industrial production in these key trades, for which we usually rely on very partial records of exports. This can only be speculative, because the very difficult work of tracing the use of ash once it left the Custom House in London, or other quays around the country, has not yet been done. However, because neither the basic chemical properties of soap nor its use in washing textiles can vary that much, we can match more detailed investigations of inputs into production from the later eighteenth century with the scale of use at earlier dates. As we have seen, in the 1620s, ash imports were very largely used for the manufacture of soft soap, which was centred on London, and the soap then largely employed in the woollen industry.98 Indeed, when the woollen industry was in crisis in 1622, a royal proclamation forbade the export of any of the raw materials of the trade, including ‘woad ashes’, out of the kingdom to prevent manufacture shifting elsewhere, although merchants may well have acquired a surfeit of ashes they could not shift in the boom of imports of the previous two years.99 In 1755, Michael Impey testified to a Parliamentary committee that soap-boilers used 1,500 tons of ash per annum, or a little under three-quarters of the total imports.100 About a thousand tons was used in soft soap-making in the early 1620s, implying the production of around five thousand tons of soap — which was exactly what petitioners of the time asserted.101 By 1755, soap production was rather greater than simple potash inputs imply, as it was probably making more use of barrilla from the Mediterranean coast of Spain for alkali inputs as well as potash. Until the 1620s, the trend in the use of alkali ashes must tell us something about the output of broadcloth, for preparing this product was the main use of soap. The production of broadcloth remained fairly stable between 1620 and 1750 and, if anything, the share of potash going into its production must have been falling with the growing use of barrilla. After 1620, if ash use rose faster than the production of broadcloth, it must have been associated with the rise of other industries, whether it was used in soap-making, bleaching, or other activities. The Table provides a comparison of change in the importation of ash with estimates of textile production produced by Craig Muldrew.102 Ash imports suggest a notable acceleration of production in the period from the 1590s to the 1620s, at a rate breaching 2 per cent per annum. After some stagnation, growth rates in the second half of the seventeenth century would have been around 0.7 per cent per annum. Given the stagnation of population in the decades after 1650, this would have represented even more real growth in per capita terms, but growth in the ash trade was arrested again after 1700, particularly by disruption due to war in the 1740s. There was a notable acceleration after 1750, especially in the 1760s. Of course, in all these periods there was great inter-annual variation. ESTIMATED ANNUAL RATES OF GROWTH OF WOOL OUTPUT AND ASH IMPORTS IN ENGLAND (%)* Period Ash imports Wool spun (excl. new drapery exports) Wool spun (million lbs) at start of period Total Wool spun Total Wool spun (million lbs) 1590–1615/20 2.4 1.3 35 1.3 35 1615/20–1640 -0.2 -0.9 41.3 -0.3 48 1640–1700 0.7 -0.15 33.2 0.4 44.6 1700–1750 0 0.02 30.6 0.5 57 1750–1770 1.7 1 33.1 1 71.6 Period Ash imports Wool spun (excl. new drapery exports) Wool spun (million lbs) at start of period Total Wool spun Total Wool spun (million lbs) 1590–1615/20 2.4 1.3 35 1.3 35 1615/20–1640 -0.2 -0.9 41.3 -0.3 48 1640–1700 0.7 -0.15 33.2 0.4 44.6 1700–1750 0 0.02 30.6 0.5 57 1750–1770 1.7 1 33.1 1 71.6 * Sources: Muldrew, ‘ “Th’ancient Distaff” and “Whirling Spindle” ’; for ash, as cited in this article. ESTIMATED ANNUAL RATES OF GROWTH OF WOOL OUTPUT AND ASH IMPORTS IN ENGLAND (%)* Period Ash imports Wool spun (excl. new drapery exports) Wool spun (million lbs) at start of period Total Wool spun Total Wool spun (million lbs) 1590–1615/20 2.4 1.3 35 1.3 35 1615/20–1640 -0.2 -0.9 41.3 -0.3 48 1640–1700 0.7 -0.15 33.2 0.4 44.6 1700–1750 0 0.02 30.6 0.5 57 1750–1770 1.7 1 33.1 1 71.6 Period Ash imports Wool spun (excl. new drapery exports) Wool spun (million lbs) at start of period Total Wool spun Total Wool spun (million lbs) 1590–1615/20 2.4 1.3 35 1.3 35 1615/20–1640 -0.2 -0.9 41.3 -0.3 48 1640–1700 0.7 -0.15 33.2 0.4 44.6 1700–1750 0 0.02 30.6 0.5 57 1750–1770 1.7 1 33.1 1 71.6 * Sources: Muldrew, ‘ “Th’ancient Distaff” and “Whirling Spindle” ’; for ash, as cited in this article. Muldrew has estimated the total amount of wool spun between 1590 and 1770 for both broadcloth and the lighter ‘new draperies’. We have seen that there was a relatively flat demand for ash to make soap for broadcloth; however, the growth of ash imports overall matches much better that of wool production in total. Moreover, new draperies — which took up an increasing share of wool production — used rather less soap than broadcloths in production. The erratic, and at times reduced, capacity to import ash from the east may well have encouraged the use of barilla where possible, as woollen production continued to rise after 1700. More intriguing, perhaps, is the significant rise in potash imports in the second half of the seventeenth century. The main alternative use of this ash would have been in whitening and bleaching linen, generally of higher quality. The logic of this comparison is that where there is a mismatch between trends in ash imports and trends in woollen output, the gap must be explained by accelerations in finer linen production. Ormrod estimates that English linen production doubled between 1730 and 1780. Domestic production has proven very difficult to quantify for earlier dates (as has the relationship between production and the imports of flax and hemp from the east). The rise in potash imports suggests that a significant expansion of fine linen production may already have taken place before 1730. However, further rapid overall growth after 1750 of the linen industries, as well as some reinvigoration of broadcloths, would also explain anxieties about potash supply in the middle of the eighteenth century in both England and Scotland (where growth was spectacular), followed by the emergence of American sources and attempts at import substitution at this time.103 Thus ash imports may give us a tentative framing for the changing levels of production in crucial parts of the textile sector. It was an essential input, and one cannot imagine it being imported unless there was a market. In this regard it is perhaps a better guide to general trends in certain types of industrial output than the export figures of cloth on which historians have relied so much as one of the few quantitative indicators of output. The data affirm the received wisdom of significant growth in the broadcloth industry between 1590 and the 1610s, and also point to unquantified but important industrial advance in the second half of the seventeenth century, in which linen manufacture may have taken a major role. This is in keeping with recent estimates of occupational structure, which suggest that a major rise in the industrial workforce took place before 1700.104 We can also compare England with the early modern economic powerhouse, the Netherlands. The Dutch took over 60 per cent of the ash supply in the 1620s, and this proportion held good for much of the seventeenth century (measuring the aggregated trade by wood inputs). The Netherlands nearly always took the greater share of the Baltic trade, and from the 1650s to the early 1680s it probably also had the larger share of the Archangel trade.105 The extent of Dutch trade with Russia in the eighteenth century is currently unclear, but was probably at least keeping up with the English in ash imports right up until the 1750s. It seems, then, that Dutch industrial strength in the finishing of textiles — remembering that many of the linens bleached at Haarlem were woven in Germany — may have held longer into the eighteenth century than is sometimes thought, and much more so when measured per capita. In both cases we can perceive how closely industrialization was connected to the forests of eastern Europe and eventually North America. This dependency has received very little recognition, and calls for greater attention to such dependencies both before and during the Industrial Revolution. This article seeks to chart a path towards the construction of a kind of ecologically-minded input–output model of early industrial development: a work implicit in the notion of ghost acres and the organic economy, but one barely yet begun. Footnotes * Research for this article was facilitated by funding generously provided by the British Academy. I would also like to thank Loreta Zydeliene and Beth Southard for their assistance with research on this project, and Richard Hoyle, Richard Unger, Thomas Kaiserfeld and Jiří Woitsch for supplying references. I am particularly grateful for feedback received at the Sound Toll Registers Online Conference at Helsingør in 2014. APPENDIX imports of potash recorded in port books, 1621–1685* Year (end of year in)106 Merchants Aggregate trade (lbs) Wood equivalent (m3) 1621 Domestic 1,806,344 1,319,000 1626 Domestic 898,819 656,000 1633 Domestic 1,354,515 989,000 1634 Domestic 487,592 356,000 1640 Domestic 2,419,508 1,766,000 1666 Domestic 42,560 31,000 1667 Domestic 1,557,920 1,137,000 1671 Domestic 463,456 338,000 1672 Domestic 828,016107 604,000 1676 Domestic 738,612 539,000 1681 Åstrom (1963) 2,531,424 1,848,000 1685 Domestic & Alien 3,411,849 2,491,000 Year (end of year in)106 Merchants Aggregate trade (lbs) Wood equivalent (m3) 1621 Domestic 1,806,344 1,319,000 1626 Domestic 898,819 656,000 1633 Domestic 1,354,515 989,000 1634 Domestic 487,592 356,000 1640 Domestic 2,419,508 1,766,000 1666 Domestic 42,560 31,000 1667 Domestic 1,557,920 1,137,000 1671 Domestic 463,456 338,000 1672 Domestic 828,016107 604,000 1676 Domestic 738,612 539,000 1681 Åstrom (1963) 2,531,424 1,848,000 1685 Domestic & Alien 3,411,849 2,491,000 * Sources: TNA E190/24/4; E190/25/6; E190/31/3; E190/33/2; E190/38/1; E190/38/5; E190/43/5; E190/44/3; E190/51/4; E190/56/1; E190/65/1; E190/64/1; E190/68/1; E190/134/1; E190/163/3; Åstrom, From cloth to iron, 54, 229. Note: wood equivalent is calculated on the basis of 0.73 cubic metres of wood being required to make a pound of potash. Actual values may be recorded in the sources as hundredweight, ship-pounds and occasionally Last, and have been converted into pounds. Ship-pounds and Last are units of volume. A hundredweight was traditionally 112 pounds; the price evidence of the Port Books seems to indicate that ‘c lib’ or ‘c wht’ in fact referred to exactly a hundred pounds of ash. 112 pounds is used here, as is also asserted in an Act of 1657. Åstrom also provided data for 1633 which is significantly greater than the sum I have tallied, and 1685, for which the total is slightly smaller, most likely due to one transcription error greatly underestimating the size of a single transaction. I also find differences with his transcriptions of Gilbert Heathcote’s trading. imports of potash recorded in port books, 1621–1685* Year (end of year in)106 Merchants Aggregate trade (lbs) Wood equivalent (m3) 1621 Domestic 1,806,344 1,319,000 1626 Domestic 898,819 656,000 1633 Domestic 1,354,515 989,000 1634 Domestic 487,592 356,000 1640 Domestic 2,419,508 1,766,000 1666 Domestic 42,560 31,000 1667 Domestic 1,557,920 1,137,000 1671 Domestic 463,456 338,000 1672 Domestic 828,016107 604,000 1676 Domestic 738,612 539,000 1681 Åstrom (1963) 2,531,424 1,848,000 1685 Domestic & Alien 3,411,849 2,491,000 Year (end of year in)106 Merchants Aggregate trade (lbs) Wood equivalent (m3) 1621 Domestic 1,806,344 1,319,000 1626 Domestic 898,819 656,000 1633 Domestic 1,354,515 989,000 1634 Domestic 487,592 356,000 1640 Domestic 2,419,508 1,766,000 1666 Domestic 42,560 31,000 1667 Domestic 1,557,920 1,137,000 1671 Domestic 463,456 338,000 1672 Domestic 828,016107 604,000 1676 Domestic 738,612 539,000 1681 Åstrom (1963) 2,531,424 1,848,000 1685 Domestic & Alien 3,411,849 2,491,000 * Sources: TNA E190/24/4; E190/25/6; E190/31/3; E190/33/2; E190/38/1; E190/38/5; E190/43/5; E190/44/3; E190/51/4; E190/56/1; E190/65/1; E190/64/1; E190/68/1; E190/134/1; E190/163/3; Åstrom, From cloth to iron, 54, 229. Note: wood equivalent is calculated on the basis of 0.73 cubic metres of wood being required to make a pound of potash. Actual values may be recorded in the sources as hundredweight, ship-pounds and occasionally Last, and have been converted into pounds. Ship-pounds and Last are units of volume. A hundredweight was traditionally 112 pounds; the price evidence of the Port Books seems to indicate that ‘c lib’ or ‘c wht’ in fact referred to exactly a hundred pounds of ash. 112 pounds is used here, as is also asserted in an Act of 1657. Åstrom also provided data for 1633 which is significantly greater than the sum I have tallied, and 1685, for which the total is slightly smaller, most likely due to one transcription error greatly underestimating the size of a single transaction. I also find differences with his transcriptions of Gilbert Heathcote’s trading. Footnotes 1 2 & 3 Edw. VI, c. 26. 2 On linen, see Nesta Evans, The East Anglian Linen Industry: Rural Industry and Local Economy, 1500–1850 (Aldershot, 1985), 30–2, although Evans does not wonder what the source of alkaline lye was. 3 Malachy Postlethwayt, The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, Translated from the French of … Monsieur Savary (London, 1751–5), 532. For a full description of the many processes involved, see Abraham Rees, The Cyclopaedia; Or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, in Rees’s Manufacturing Industry (1819–20), ed. Neil Cossons, 5 vols. (Trowbridge, 1972), i, 178–86 and v, 14–19. 4 On artificial alkalis, see L. Gittins, ‘Innovations in Textile Bleaching in Britain in the Eighteenth Century’, Business History Review, liii, no. 2 (1979); Rolf-Jürgen Gleitsmann, ‘Aspekte der Ressourcenpolitik in historischer Sicht’, Scripta Mercaturae, xv (1981), 42–3. A very extensive discussion of potash and its uses is supplied in Johann Georg Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, oder allgemeines System der Staats-, Stadt-, Haus- und Landwirthschaft, und der Kunst-Geschichte: in alphabetischer Ordnung, cxvi (Berlin, 1810), 372. 5 Postlethwayt, Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, 534; this was produced by a simpler process of evaporation in pits which resulted in a less pure alkali product, soda (sodium carbonate). Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, 380; William I. Roberts, III, ‘American Potash Manufacture before the American Revolution’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cxvi (1972), 383. 6 Confusingly people referred to ‘soap ashes’ in English meaning ash both before and after it had been employed in soap-making, although the latter contained oily residues making it unsuitable for some other industrial processes. See Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, 387, 590; Jiří Woitsch, ‘The Potash Industry in Bohemia and Moravia in the 18th and 19th centuries’, paper presented to the XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki (2006), available at <http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers1/Woitsch.pdf>, 22. 7 Archibald Clow and Nan L. Clow, The Chemical Revolution: A Contribution to Social Technology (New York, 1952), 69–75. 8 It is very clear that deciduous wood was preferred, most of all beech. Sources from Royal Prussia indicate a preference for beech, although regulations tried to steer people towards ash, lime, elm, hazel, alder, birch and hornbeam. In the northern forests where beech or oak was not available, birch or aspen were burned. Friedrich Mager, Der Wald in Altpreussen als Wirtschaftsraum (Köln, 1960), 39–40; Ingrid Schäfer, “Ein Gespenst geht um”: Politik mit der Holznot in Lippe, 1750–1850. Eine regionalstudie zur Wald- und Technikgeschichte (Detmold, 1992), 25; Stefan Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet och pottasketillverkning i 1600-talets Småland (Vaxjö, 1979), 3; Jan Kunnas, ‘Potash, Saltpeter and Tar: Production, Exports and Use of Wood in Finland in the 19th Century’, Scandinavian Journal of History, xxxii, issue 3 (2007), 286–7; James Dunbar, Smegmatalogia, Or The Art of Making Potashes and Soap, and Bleaching of Linen (Edinburgh, 1736), 1. Surprisingly, John Evelyn claimed in 1664 that most potash came from fir: John Evelyn, Sylva, Or, A Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions (London, 1664), 54. 9 Rolf Gelius, ‘Der europäische Seehandel mit Waidasche und Pottasche von 1500 bis 1650’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, xxvi (1985), 59; J. K. T. Knoppers and R. V. V. Nicholls, ‘Der Ostseeraum und der Welthandel mit Pottasche: Die Bedeutung der Pottasche im Rahmen der chemischen Technologie, 1650–1825’, in Klaus Friedland and Franz Irsigler (eds.), Seehandel und Wirtschaftswege Nordeuropas im 17 und 18 Jahrhundert (Ostfildern, 1981), 60. 10 Postlethwayt, Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, 534; Donald Woodward, ‘Straw, Bracken and the Wicklow Whale: The Exploitation of Natural Resources in Britain Since 1500’, Past and Present, no. 159 (May 1998), 70; Susan Fairlie, ‘Dyestuffs in the Eighteenth Century’, Economic History Review, xvii (1965), 495, 501, 505; Clow and Clow, Chemical Revolution, 29. 11 National Archive of Scotland, Edinburgh (hereafter NAS), NG1/53/1. In contrast, Humphry Davy would later rate the potash content of vegetables and firs as being very much higher than trees, but this does not seem to have been a ratio ash-burners were able to practically achieve. Humphry Davy, Elements of Agricultural Chemistry, In a Course of Lectures for the Board of Agriculture (New York, 1815 [American edn probably based on the 2nd edn]), 101–2; see also Woitsch, ‘Potash Industry in Bohemia and Moravia’, 8. 12 Gittins, ‘Innovations in Textile Bleaching in Britain’, 199; Thomas Stephens, The Method and Plain Process for Making Pot-Ash (London, 1755), 19–34. 13 Clow and Clow, Chemical Revolution, 99–103; NAS, NG1/1/42/1; John Mitchell, ‘On the Preparation and Uses of Various Kinds of Potash’, Philosophical Transactions, iv (1748), 541; Peter Warren, A Genuine Account of the Manner of Making Best Russia Pot Ashes (London, 1753); Dunbar, Smegmatologia; Peter Shaw, Chemical Lectures, 2nd edn (London, 1755), 287–9. 14 A few references are sometimes made as part of wider surveys of the Baltic trade. The most notable works in this regard are Sven-Erik Åström, From Cloth to Iron: The Anglo-Baltic Trade in the Late Seventeenth Century (Helsingfors, 1963); J. K. Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century: A Study in Anglo-Polish Commercial Diplomacy (Cambridge, 1980), esp. 115–19; Michael North, ‘The Export of Timber and Timber By-Products from the Baltic Region to Western Europe, 1575–1775’, in From the North Sea to the Baltic: Essays in Commercial, Monetary and Agrarian History, 1500–1800 (Aldershot, 1996), 4–5, 9. See also Jason W. Moore, ‘“Amsterdam is Standing on Norway”, Part II: The Global North Atlantic in the Ecological Revolution of the Long Seventeenth Century’, Journal of Agrarian Change, x, issue 2 (2010). Unfortunately, Moore gets some of his facts wrong on potash. Kent’s book on the mid-eighteenth-century northern trade focuses on Scandinavia and does not address potash at all. H. S. K. Kent, War and Trade in Northern Seas: Anglo-Scandinavian Economic Relations in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1973). 15 N. J. Williams, The Maritime Trade of the East Anglian Ports, 1550–1590 (Oxford, 1988); R. W. K. Hinton, The Port Books of Boston, 1601–1640 (Lincoln, 1956), xiv; G. Alan Metters, The King’s Lynn Port Books, 1610–1614 (Norwich, 2009); A. M. Millard, ‘The Imports Trade of London, 1600–1640’ (University College London Ph.D. thesis, 1941), 8–10. 16 Some books, such as that for 1649, could not be consulted for conservation reasons. The Port Books containing any significant amounts of ash imports for the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are: The National Archives, London (hereafter TNA), E190/3/2; TNA, E190/5/5; TNA, E190/6/3; TNA, E190/8/1; TNA, E190/8/2; TNA, E190/8/4; TNA, TNA, E190/9/5; TNA, E190/11/1; TNA, E190/12/1; TNA, E190/14/5; TNA, E190/15/5; TNA, E190/16/5; TNA, E190/17/1; TNA, E190/18/3; TNA, E190/18/6; TNA, E190/19/3; TNA, E190/20/6; TNA, E190/21/4; TNA, E190/22/1; TNA, E190/22/10; TNA, E190/23/4; TNA, E190/24/4; TNA, E190/25/6; TNA, E190/27/1; TNA, E190/29/3; TNA, E190/30/2; TNA, E190/31/3; TNA, E190/33/2; TNA, E190/35/6; TNA, E190/37/6; TNA, E190/37/8; TNA, E190/38/1; TNA, E190/38/5; TNA, E190/43/5; TNA, E190/44/3; TNA, E190/48/7; TNA, E190/51/4; TNA, E190/56/1; TNA, E190/58/1; TNA, E190/65/1; TNA, E190/64/1; TNA, E190/68/1; TNA, E190/131/1; TNA, E190/134/1. 17 A general political history of the Sound Tolls is provided in Charles E. Hill, The Danish Sound Dues and the Command of the Baltic: A Study of International Relations (Durham, N.C., 1926). 18 All aggregated information on the Sound Tolls is extracted from Nina Ellinger Bang, Tabeller over skibsfart og varetransport gennem Øresund, 1497–1660, 5 vols. (Copenhagen, 1906–33); Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 90. On the apparently low level of evasion after 1618, see J. Dow, ‘A Comparative Note on the Sound Toll Registers, Stockholm Customs Accounts, and Dundee Shipping Lists, 1589, 1613–22’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, xii (1964). 19 Sven-Erik Åström, From Tar to Timber: Studies in Northeast European Forest Exploitation and Foreign Trade, 1660–1860 (Helsinki, 1988), 17. 20 Williams, Maritime Trade of the East Anglian Ports, 26–32. 21 Bang, Tabeller over skibsfart og varetransport gennem Øresund; TNA, CUST 3/9–27. The standard deviation is high at 68 (with amounts ranging from 70 per cent to 130 per cent outside the years when foreigners dominated the trade between 1704 and 1711). Nevertheless, given that we would expect variation because of ash having tolls paid on it and being landed in different accounting years, among other reasons, this is still an excellent match. 22 The Sound Toll amount as a share of the Customs 3 total falls from 116 per cent in 1706 to 70 per cent in 1707, a mere 28 per cent in 1708, then is much too high at 372 per cent in 1709, 24 per cent in 1710, 45 per cent in 1711 and 35 per cent in 1712 before returning to 73 per cent in 1713. The anomalous peak in 1709 is probably because much of the potash carried through the Sound in 1709 was not landed in England until 1710. 23 Cal. Close Rolls, Edward II, 1310; Henryk Zins, England and the Baltic in the Elizabethan Era, trans. H. C. Stevens (Manchester, 1972), 11, 19, 21. 24 J. Matusas, Lietuvos miško gaminiai ir jų transportas iki XVI pabaigos [Lithuanian Forest Products and their Transportation until the End of the Sixteenth Century] (Mūsų Girios, 1943), psl 3; Juozas Jurginis, Baudžiavos įsigalėjimas Lietuvoje [Judicial Penalties in Lithuania] (Vilnius, 1962), 77; Z. Ivinskis, Lietuvos prekyba su prusais iki 16 amžiaus pradzios [Lithuania’s Trade with Prussia until the Sixteenth Century] (Kaunas, 1934), 59; Mikalojus Lukinas, ‘Upytės krašto miškai XVI amžiuje’ [The Lordly Forest of Upytė in the Sixteenth Century], Girios, i (1974), 11. 25 Gelius, ‘Europäische Seehandel mit Waidasche und Pottasche’, 61. 26 In terms of the Eastland trade this was unusual, as many of the exporters operated out of other eastern ports with Ipswich playing a prominent role. Millard, ‘Imports Trade of London’, 100. 27 Åström, From Cloth to Iron, 203. Åström’s figures are about 13 per cent below the total trade for that year, because he did not include shipments to London from Germany, the Netherlands, the Mediterranean and Ireland. The percentage share uses my total from the London Port Book: TNA, E190/134/1; TNA, E190/163/3. 28 I have found ash shipments in TNA, E190/312/7 (Hull) and TNA, E190/600/1 (Ipswich). 29 TNA, CUST 3/9–27. 30 One Last comprised twelve ship-pounds, the former being about three thousand litres and the latter 250 litres. The size of different cities’ measures varied however. Gelius reckons a Danziger ship-pound to have weighed 139.4 kilograms, and others in the Baltic being 136–9 kilograms. The Old Prussian ship-pound was 154.3 kilograms, Riga’s 167.3 kilograms, Reval’s 172.5 kilograms, Sweden’s 170 kilograms and Russia’s 163.8 kilograms. As it is never certain which measure is used, and indeed the figures can only be indicative of the average, a ship-pound of 154 kilograms or 338 imperial pounds is used in the calculations here. In the early and mid seventeenth-century Port Books, judging from weight and price evidence, a Last of wood or soap ash equated to twelve barrels, and hence a barrel would be the same as a ship-pound. Confusingly, later customs tariffs also stated that a barrel was two hundredweight (224 pounds, or 102 kilograms), but it seems this only refers to potash and has no set equivalence to a Last. Åström believed that a ship-pound (for all products) weighed 3.25 hundredweight (364 pounds or around 165 kilograms) although for pitch and tar twelve barrels equalled one Last. It is equally clear that both in some earlier Port Book records, and predominately in the second half of the century, actual barrels, or ‘casks’ or ‘vats’, were of very different sizes, some containing only a hundredweight of ash and clearly much smaller than a ship-pound, others as much as a ton, and very much larger. The ‘barrel’ used for the customs tariffs may have been a notional unit simply expressing an equivalence to two hundredweight, rather than the size of any actual barrel recorded in the Port Books. See TNA, E190/15/5; TNA, E190/17/1; TNA, E190/18/3; TNA, E190/20/6; TNA, E190/24/4; TNA, E190/22/1; TNA, E190/65/1. I follow the calculations presented by Bock in 1783. Gelius, ‘Europäische Seehandel mit Waidasche und Pottasche’, 63–4; Mager, Der Wald in Altpreussen als Wirtschaftsraum, 41–2; Åström, From Cloth to Iron, 13; 12 Car. II, c. 4; 2 Gul. III & Mar. II, c. 4. 31 This is unfortunately what was done by Fedorowicz in assessing the size of the Baltic ash trade by volume, not accounting for the fact that the alkali content of each product is very different: Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 116–17. 32 Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 172. 33 TNA, E190/8/1; Bang, Tabeller over skibsfart og varetrasnport gennem Øresund; Gelius notes tiny amounts of potash being exported from Danzig and Königsberg as early as 1530 and 1549 respectively: Gelius, ‘Europäische Seehandel mit Waidasche und Pottasche’, 69. 34 Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 158–61. The currency depreciation may also have encouraged a general expansion of imports from 1620, although English exports were badly disrupted. Millard, ‘Imports Trade of London’, 114, 180. 35 K. Sarnecki, ‘Przyczynek do dziejow otrzymywania potazu w dawnej Polsce’ [A Contribution to the History of Potash Production in Ancient Poland], Sylwan, viii (1960), 82; H. S. Cobb (ed.), The Overseas Trade of London: Exchequer Customs Accounts, 1480–1 (London, 1990), 33–52. 36 Gediminas Isokas, Giriose [In the Woods] (Vilnius, 1979), 40–2; Bang, Tabeller over skibsfart og varetransport gennem Øresund. English vessels carried 1,460 Last in 1575 but generally at this time the amount ranged between 400–500 and 1,000 Last. Of course, some may also have been re-exported from the Netherlands, although the impact of the Dutch revolt was to lower the demand from Dutch vessels and may have opened opportunities to English traders. 37 TNA, SP 12.8., fos. 63–4; British Library, London (hereafter BL), Lansdowne MS 8, fos. 75–6; BL, Cotton Titus MS B IV; see also BL, Lansdowne MS 100, no. 51, for another memo on trade during the office of Burghley. The values amount to less than 1 per cent of total trade. The figure of a tenth is a supposition based on the scale of the English trade as revealed in the late 1580s, and the paucity of other references. The 1567–8 Port Book records 284.5 Last being landed in December−September, a figure considerably higher than that in the Sound Tolls. Where values can be calculated a Last is £3 (£5 in one instance). Brian Dietz (ed.), The Port and Trade of Early Elizabethan London: Documents (Chatham, 1972). 38 TNA, E190/8/1; TNA, E190/82; TNA, E190/8/4. Although he noted the probable importance of an entrepôt trade via the Netherlands, this means that J. K. Fedorowicz’s figures, based on the Sound Tolls, are very misleading, although his was a study of the direct trade rather than imports; he also, as noted above, aggregates together data on soap ashes and potash by volume: Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 74, 115–17. English traders carried 693 Last through the Sound in 1589, only half the number which reached England during the summer months alone: Bang, Tabeller over skibsfart og varetrasnport gennem Øresund. The entrepôt trade by the Dutch and from Hamburg was also very active from at least 1614 until the early 1620s: R. W. K. Hinton, The Eastland Trade and the Common Weal in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1959), 10, 20, 23. 39 The Swedes also began the export of potash from neighbouring Halland, having acquired it in 1645, as well as from Småland further north: D. Torbrand, ‘The Potash Companies in the Province of Blekinge at the Close of the Danish Era (1649–1656)’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, xlvii (1965); Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 7, 13; Maria Bogucka, ‘Der Pottaschehandel in Danzig in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Konrad Fritze, Eckhard Müller-Mertens and Walter Stark (eds.), Autonomie, Wirtschaft und Kultur der Hansestädte (Weimar, 1984), 147, 150; G. D. Ramsay, English Overseas Trade During the Centuries of Emergence: Studies in Some Modern Origins of the English-Speaking World (London, 1957), 124–6. 40 TNA, C78/593; J. T. Kotilaine, Russia’s Foreign Trade and Economic Expansion in the Seventeenth Century: Windows on the World (Leiden, 2005), 184; Åstrom, From Cloth to Iron, 179; Jan Willem Veluwenkamp, Archangel: Nederlandse ondernemers in Rusland, 1550–1785 (Amsterdam, 2000), 101. 41 Åstrom, From Cloth to Iron, 49, 126. 42 Extracted from sources in n. 16. 43 Krünitz, quoting Wildenhayn, drawing on Anglophone work by Dossin and Lewis: Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, 439–40. Perhaps unsurprisingly the German Wildenhayn disagreed (447). 44 Gittins, ‘Innovations in Textile Bleaching in Britain’, 199; Knoppers and Nicholls, ‘Ostseeraum und der Welthandel mit Pottasche’, 81–3. 45 TNA, E190/3/2; TNA, E190/5/5; TNA, E190/6/3; TNA, E190/8/1; TNA, E190/8/2; TNA, E190/8/4; TNA, E190/9/5; TNA, E190/11/1; TNA, E190/12/1; TNA, E190/14/5. A 1608 petition from a John Aston, who appears to have been seeking some kind of monopoly right on the importation of soap ashes, claimed he could reduce the price from £26 to £20 per Last. This corresponds with neither the price in the Port Books nor the implied price of a Last of potashes, and in fact falls roughly midway between them: M. S. Giuseppi and G. Dyfnallt Owen, Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, xx, 1608 (London, 1968), 287–315. 46 See ‘The State of Rates and Impositions’, in G. Dyfnallt Owen, Calendar of the Cecil Papers in Hatfield House, xxi, 1609–1612 (London, 1970), 272–90. 47 Although the Danish Crown had the right to first purchase, creating an incentive to declare values accurately, the Crown had no incentive to arbitrarily confiscate goods and destroy one of their main sources of income. At the rate of four Danish rixdollars to the English pound, a hundred pounds of potash would be valued at around 10s. in Denmark in 1625 and 1645, and 16s. in 1635, as opposed to the official valuation for English customs of 25s. Computed from Hinton, Eastland Trade and the Common Weal, 36, 39, and Bang, Tabeller over skibsfart og varetransport gennem Øresund. 48 Based on a ship-pound containing 364 pounds (lb). On Cockayne’s contract, see Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton, C3023, 27 May 1624. On the Eastland company’s valuation, see Hinton, Eastland Trade and the Common Weal, 45, and Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 115. Fedorowicz notes (correctly) that this valuation is far above that implied in Denmark, but what the company seems to have conveniently been doing was arguing for exchange rates based on English rather than Danzig prices: Edward Williams, Virgo Triumphans (London, 1650), 46; see also TNA, SP 14/155/39. 49 C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660 (London, 1911), 1186–223. 50 That is, at £27. 5s. 6d. for an English long ton. Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 54. 51 Calculated on the basis of potash imports at London selling prices of £13,000 in 1663 and £29,000 in 1669, which match reasonably well the relative size cargoes recorded in the Sound Toll. This assumes a ship-pound of 364 pounds (lbs). BL, Add. MS 36785; see also Hinton, Eastland Trade and the Common Weal, 105. Later data used by Ralph Davis for ‘free on board’ or ‘first cost’ prices (i.e. at the port of departure) in the period 1697–9 does not match the Sound Toll records well for 1697–8. The 1699 figure compared with Customs 3 would imply a ratio of c.445 lb to one ship-pound, as opposed to 364 lb as generally used here. For this year, the ‘East Country’ price implied would be around 21–25s. per hundredweight. Hinton, Eastland Trade and the Common Weal, 113. Notably an inventory of an English soap-maker from 1670 valued soap ashes (before or after use we do not know) at 20s. (presumably per hundredweight) but ‘English ashes’ at only 10s. Entry for ‘English Ashes’ in Nancy Cox and Karin Dannehl, Dictionary of Traded Goods and Commodities, 1550–1820 (Wolverhampton, 2007), British History Online, available at <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/traded-goods-dictionary/1550-1820>; Åstrom, From Cloth to Iron, 158. 52 That is, at 3d. per pound: Cecil Headlam (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies, xxiv, 1708–1709 (London, 1922), 18–33 (7 July 1708). 53 The 1736 price is contained in a petition to set up production in North Carolina, which stated that a ton cost £24 and that around 2,300 tons was imported annually, coming to £55,200: Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies, xlii, 1735–1736 (1953), 151–6. In 1755, Stephens reckoned three thousand tons were imported to Britain (i.e. over six million pounds) at a value of over £100,000, implying 34s. per hundredweight, although the sum of money seems rather generic, and he sold some of his own production at 33s. per hundredweight. Stephens, Method and Plain Process for Making Pot-Ash, 14, 18, 28; Clow and Clow, Chemical Revolution, 66, also cite prices which imply a rise from a mere 14s. per hundredweight in 1740 to around 22s. in 1750; see also ibid., 67; NAS, NG1/1/17; NAS, NG1/7/5; NAS, NG1/16/1; NAS, NG1/42/1; NAS, NG1/53/1. 54 N. W. Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland (Leiden, 1946). 55 It may have been the impact of the War of Austrian Succession that triggered efforts to find cheaper alternatives in Scotland, with similar effects during the Seven Years’ War of 1757–63. See NAS, NG 1/1/17; NAS, NG1/7/5; NAS, NG1/16/1; Hinton, Eastland Trade and the Common Weal, 187. 56 See Gelius, ‘Europäische Seehandel mit Waidasche und Pottasche’, 62. 57 Calculated from data provided by Bob Allen; Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 94. 58 Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 103. 59 TNA, SP/14/158, fo. 79; TNA, SP 14/155, fos. 58, 62; Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 174–87, gives a detailed account of the frequently inept dealings of the British Crown. 60 Fedorowicz, England’s Baltic Trade, 168–73, 207; Clow and Clow, Chemical Revolution, 5, 15–16; David Ormrod, The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770 (Cambridge, 2003), 282. 61 This led to some confusion when German pearl ashes were imported from the Netherlands or Germany and recorded as potashes, but it was agreed in 1692 that this trade was legitimate. This was rectified in statute in 1698 when pearl ash imports from Germany were made legal: W. A. Shaw (ed.), Calendar of Treasury Books, ix, 1689–1692 (1931), 1434–45; see also W. A. Shaw (ed.), Calendar of Treasury Books, i, 1660–1667 (1904), 490–7; 10 Gul. III, c. 34. 62 Bogucka, ‘Pottaschehandel in Danzig’, 151. 63 Calculated from Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 53–4. If the prices were anything like those recorded nearby in 1649, when the price was 21–22s. per hundredweight, the profit margin was slim indeed, but 1649–50 was a very high price year. On the other hand the Company had the right to buy up ordinary wood ash at a price of around 10–11s. (16 öre) that suggests a similar price per hundredweight of potash. This agreement was possibly an error by the company predicated on the high prices early in the decade and the early tests of producing potash from local ash, and would explain the alacrity with which peasants sold to them. Indeed, it may only have been in the 1650s that potash production was at all feasible in southern Scandinavia. Hamilton’s company was bankrupted soon after, not helped by the Swedish−Danish war that broke out in 1658: Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 10, 23, 58, 62–3. 64 See also TNA, SP 82/11, fo. 220, regarding Wallachian shipments in the 1670s; Bogucka, ‘Pottaschehandel in Danzig’, 148–9; Hinton, Eastland Trade and the Common Weal, 158. 65 Kotilaine, Russia’s Foreign Trade and Economic Expansion. 66 Isokas, Giriose, 40–2; E. Navys, ‘Apie reakreacinius misku Lietuvoje’ [On the Recreational Forest in Lithuania], Girios, xii (1976), 13; Kunnas, ‘Potash, Saltpeter and Tar’. 67 Mager, Der Wald in Altpreussen als Wirtschaftsraum, 43–4, 47. 68 H. [Michael] North, ‘Waldwarenhandel und -produktion: Ein Beispiel für die Beziehungen Königsberg-Amsterdam im 17. Jahrhundert’, in W. J. Wieringa (ed.), The Interactions of Amsterdam and Antwerp with the Baltic Region, 1400–1800 (Leiden, 1983), 80; Sarnecki, ‘Przyczynek do dziejow otrzymywania potazu w dawnej Polsce’, 71, 74–5, 83; K. Jablonskis, Lietuvos valstieciu ir miestelenu gincai su dvaru valdytojais [Lithuanian Peasants and Townspeople’s Litigation with Feudal Landholders], Part II (Vilnius, 1961), 21. 69 Ivinskis, Lietuvos prekyba su prusais, 69. 70 J. T. Kotilaine, ‘Competing Claims: Russian Foreign Trade via Arkhangelsk and the Eastern Baltic Ports in the 17th Century’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, iv (2003), 300; Veluwenkamp, Archangel. 71 Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 5–6, 22–3, 26, 28–9, 31, 33–4; TNA, C78/593. 72 TNA, SP 14/141, fo. 165. 73 Sarnecki, ‘Przyczynek do dziejow otrzymywania potazu w dawnej Polsce’, 72, citing M. Wankowicz in Przeglad Kultur, iv (1957); see an appeal for potash makers from 1632 in John Day, A Publication of Guiana’s Plantation (London, 1632), 22, and the suggestion of Newfoundland as a site for ash-making in 1610: G. G. Harris (ed.), Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609–35 (London Record Society, xix, London, 1983), 1. 74 Cecil Headlam (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies, xviii, 1700 (1910), 664–706; Cecil Headlam (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies, xxxi, 1719–1720 (1933), 123–46. 75 Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations, i, April 1704−January 1709, ed. K. H. Ledward (London, 1920), 8–19. 76 The latter claim seems almost certain to be an exaggeration, as it would imply a price of 40–50s. per hundredweight. W. Popple to W. Lowndes, ‘Report upon the Proposals of John Keble’, in Cecil Headlam (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies, xxiv, 1708–1709 (London, 1922), 33–40; Cecil Headlam (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies, xxxvi, 1728–1729 (London, 1937), 455–62. Stephens was experimenting in the Carolinas from the late 1740s and was a leading campaigner for the reduction of duties and obtaining a patent for colonial potash production: see Stephens, Method and Plain Process for Making Pot-Ash, i−viii; see also a further plea for assistance from Eastland merchants in 1632: Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies, ix, 1675–1676 and Addenda 1574–1674 (London, 1893), 73; and a desire for expertise in 1635, Knoppers and Nicholls, ‘Ostseeraum und der Welthandel mit Pottasche’, 70. 77 Roberts, ‘American Potash Manufacture before the American Revolution’, 383; G. M. Herndon, ‘Forest Products of Colonial Georgia’, Journal of Forest History, xxiii (1979), 130. 78 On premiums offered by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, see Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser (London), 29 June 1764; Knoppers and Nicholls, ‘Ostseeraum und der Welthandel mit Pottasche’, 66, 71; Roberts, ‘American Potash Manufacture before the American Revolution’, 384–91; for the subsequent development, see Michael Williams, ‘Products of the Forest: Mapping the Census of 1840’, Journal of Forest History, xxiv (1980), 7, 12–13. 79 Torbrand, ‘The Potash Companies in the Province of Blekinge’, 58; Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 43; for north American methods, see Knoppers and Nicholls, ‘Ostseeraum und der Welthandel mit Pottasche’, 63; Johannis Kunckel, Ars vitraria experimentalis, oder vollkommene Glasmacher-Kunst (Frankfurt, 1679), 321–7; Stephens, Method and Plain Process for Making Pot-Ash, 2–6. 80 Sarnecki, ‘Przyczynek do dziejow otrzymywania potazu w dawnej Polsce’, 72, 78. Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German sources describe a careful process of filtration of the lye to concentrate the alkali content: Woitsch, ‘Potash Industry in Bohemia and Moravia’, 12–14; Dunbar, Smegmatalogia, 2–6, 11–12. 81 Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, 431–2, 451, 458–61, 593–6. The Silesian ash was produced by sintering rather than leaching and calcination. 82 Knoppers and Nicholls, ‘Ostseeraum und der Welthandel mit Pottasche’, 61; also followed by North, ‘The Export of Timber and Timber By-Products from the Baltic Region to Western Europe’, 9. This is very similar to the calculation made by Åhman, where a cubic metre makes 0.65 kg of potash: Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 72. 83 Joachim Radkau, Holz: Wie ein Naturstoff Geschichte schreibt (Munich, 2007), 115. Hasel gives a figure of a cubic metre of wood making a ‘Zentner’ (approximately 50 kilograms) of ash that is so improbably out of line he probably meant a kilogram: Karl Hasel and Ekkehard Schwartz, Forstgeschichte: Ein Grundriss für Studium und Praxis, 3rd edn (Kassel, 2006), 219, although he may well have mistaken the amount of fuel used in heating pots and kettles in the process of distilling the lye with the amount of wood required. On this see Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, 386, 390–1. 84 This is treated by me as from ‘cords superficial’, or stacked wood, but if solid timber was meant the estimate would be more in line with others: Robert Kuhn McGregor, ‘Changing Technologies and Forest Consumption in the Upper Delaware Valley, 1790–1880’, Forest and Conservation History, xxxii (1988). 85 Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Encyklopädie, 466. 86 Kunnas, ‘Potash, Saltpeter and Tar’, 295. Similarly for Sweden, Sundberg et al. reckoned on 1.5–2 cubic metres of beech or birch being required per kilogram of ‘potassium’, by which they seem to mean potash: U. Sundberg et al., Forest Energy Basis for Swedish Power in the 17th Century, suppl. to Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research (Stockholm, 1994), 36. 87 Mager, Der Wald in Altpreussen als Wirtschaftsraum, 41. The doomed Hamilton company managed a conversion rate of 2.2 per cent in Esbjörnamåla, that is, one cask of potash took forty-five casks of ash sold to them by the peasants to make. They had reckoned on a conversion rate of 8.2 per cent, or 1:12: Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 58. 88 Firth and Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1186–223. Seventy-two years allow comparison with the Dutch prices: Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland; Williams, Virgo triumphans, 46. Åhman, erroneously drawing on the Grimm brothers’ dictionary, thought that this ‘woad-ash’ was only used for dyeing and was an altogether different product, but the ‘woad’ probably refers to the colour of soap ashes: Åhman, Om det Hamiltonska Pottaskekompaniet, 15. 89 Dunbar, Smegmatalogia, 7–8. 90 Gelius claimed that the total may have been as high as twenty million cubic metres in the 1580s, almost entirely from ‘woad-ashes’, but this seems improbable from what we know of the general scale of the trade and the implied demand for wood on the Baltic shores. This may derive from an error in the ash to wood conversion: Gelius, ‘Europäische Seehandel mit Waidasche und Pottasche’, 69. 91 ‘Biomes and Regions of Northern Eurasia: Mixed and Deciduous Forests’, Russian Nature, at <http://www.rusnature.info/reg/10_6.htm>; Gelius, ‘Europäische Seehandel mit Waidasche und Pottasche’, 68. 92 Author’s own estimate for Germany with particular reference to E. W. Maron, Forststatistik der sämmtlichen Waelder Deutschlands einschliesslich Preussen (Berlin, 1862); On Poland-Lithuania, the estimate is based on Wiecko’s reckoning of there being fifteen million hectares of forest, with a (possibly high) assumption of three cubic metres of growth per annum. See A. Wyrobisz, ‘La crise de combustible dans l’Industrie Polonaise au Tournant du XVIe et XVIIe s.’, Studiae Historiae Oeconomica, viii (1973), 265. 93 Paul Warde, Energy Consumption in England and Wales, 1560–2000 (Naples, 2007), 32–40; Jaap Buis, Historia Forestis: Nederlandse bosgeschiedenis (Utrecht, 1985). 94 Cited in Clow and Clow, Chemical Revolution, 66. 95 Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000), 275–6. 96 E. A. Wrigley, The Path to Sustained Growth: England’s Transition from an Organic Economy to an Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 2016). 97 Dimitrios Theodoridis, Paul Warde and Astrid Kander, ‘Trade and Overcoming Land Constraints in the British Industrial Revolution: The Role of Cotton and Coal Revisited’, forthcoming, Journal of Global History. 98 TNA, SP 14/155, fo. 62. 99 James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes, Stuart Royal Proclamations, i, Royal Proclamations of King James I, 1603–1625 (Oxford, 1973), 545–9. 100 Stephens, The Method and Plain Process for Making Pot-Ash, 27. 101 TNA, SP 14/155, fo. 62. 102 Craig Muldrew, ‘“Th’ancient Distaff” and “Whirling Spindle”: Measuring the Contribution of Spinning to Household Earnings and the National Economy in England, 1550–1770’, Economic History Review, lxv (2012). 103 Ormrod, Rise of Commercial Empires, 154; Evans, East Anglian Linen Industry, 95, 118–222. 104 Sebastian Keibek, ‘The Male Occupational Structure of England and Wales, 1600–1850’, (Univ. of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 2017). 105 Veluwenkamp, Archangel. 106 Accounts generally ran from Christmas to Christmas. 107 Much of this potash arrived very late in 1671 and would have been recorded in the Sound Tolls under that year, rather than 1671–2 in the Port Book records. © The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2018 This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/about_us/legal/notices)
TI - Trees, Trade and Textiles: Potash Imports and Ecological Dependency in British Industry, c .1550–1770
JF - Past & Present
DO - 10.1093/pastj/gty007
DA - 2018-08-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/trees-trade-and-textiles-potash-imports-and-ecological-dependency-in-WYxzig23c8
SP - 47
EP - 82
VL - 240
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -