Zwischen Arktis Adria und Armenien

Debating the Mercantile Background 359
the one hand, and the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea region on the other: “In this
optimistic project John’s plans to control the most important communication routes
to Russia became manifest. Later on this became a programme for Sweden’s political
leadership.” 20
The construction of the White Sea port of Arkhangel’sk in 1583, which economically
neutralized the Swedish conquest of Russian Narva two years before, posed
great problems for the realization of this programme. In Attman’s view the main reason
for this was the ability of the Tsar to channel Russian foreign trade from the
Baltic to the White Sea. Even at this stage he remarked that this obstacle to Swedish
plans remained in effect in the following century:
The investigation of market relations in the seventeenth century shows that the same preconditions
for using different shipping ports existed as in the sixteenth century, but in the
seventeenth century the trade route to Arkhangel’sk had been stabilized to such a degree
that Swedish attempts to re-route the Arkhangel’sk trade into the Baltic sea by means of
trade policy failed. 21
“Nevertheless, Swedish policy”, he contended, “stuck to the plan to re-route
Arkhangel’sk’s exports into the Gulf of Finland.” 22
In two subsequent small-scale publications, Attman elaborated his interpretative
framework and extended it into the first two decades of the seventeenth century. 23
The opening sentences of his 1945 article on The Baltic policy of the Vasas, 24 typical
of his economical, even curt style of writing, read: “The Baltic policy of Sweden has
a long ancestry. The leading motive from ancient times is interest in the trade routes
to the Russian markets.” 25 Here Attman presented for the first time his revisionist
interpretation of the results of Gustav Adolf’s policy towards Muscovy. In his view,
the young king adopted John III’s programme for control of the East-West trade, but
failed where its northern component was concerned; while the Tsar was successfully
cut off from the Baltic Sea by having been forced to cede Ingermanland to Sweden,
Gustav Adolf did not succeed in acquiring the Russian coasts of the Arctic and the
White Seas. Thus, Sweden was unable to close the ‘back door’ to the Russian market
at Arkhangel’sk. Attman’s categoric and negative judgement on the Muscovite-
Swedish peace treaty of 1617 contrasted sharply with that of previous Swedish historiography:
“The peace of Stolbovo was thus a disappointment for Sweden, a fact
20 Ibid., 281. See also 415–16.
21 Ibid., 25.
22 Ibid., 58.
23 ‘A not yet published work on [Sweden’s] Baltic policy, 1595–1617’, completed by Attman in the
mid-1940s, remained unpublished until 1979. Cf. Artur Attman, ‘Freden i Stolbovo. En aspekt’,
Scandia, Vol. 19 (1948–9), 36–47 (36n), and Chapters XIV–XV in Artur Attman, The Struggle for
Baltic Markets. Powers in Conflict, 1558–1618 (Göteborg 1979), 168–207 (Acta Regiae Societatis
Scientiarum et Litterarum Gothoburgensis. Humaniora, 14).
24 Artur Attman, ‘Vasarnas Östersjöpolitik. Några synpunkter’, Historielärarnas f’örenings årsskrift
(1945), 32–45.
25 Ibid., 32.
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