Zwischen Arktis Adria und Armenien

366 Historiographica
true of Attman, who now also began to work intensively on the seventeenth century.
Some of the results of his research appear not to be available owing to his death in
1988. What he did manage to publish were two slim but important studies. In his
1985 booklet Swedish Aspirations and the Russian Market during the Seventeenth
Century 63 he took up a suggestion made by Klaus Zernack in 1962: “[Es] würde sich
nun lohnen, z. B. einmal die Fragestellung A. Attmans auf das 17. Jahrhundert zu
übertragen.” 64 In this booklet, which well may be regarded as a brusque and rather
stubborn reply to Roberts’s erudite and eloquent 1979 essay, Attman sought to extend
the chronological applicability of his findings concerning the second half of the sixteenth
century well into the eighteenth century: “Throughout the period from 1561–
1721 the Russian market was the subject of great interest in Swedish policy [. . . ]
Sweden’s policy of expansion and her trade policy were concentrated on the Russian
market to a high degree.” 65 Again, the “fundamental objective of Swedish policy was
the acquisition of control over the Russian market.” 66
In marked contrast to the position in the sixteenth century, however, Attman saw
seventeenth-century Sweden as not counting solely on military measures to reach this
objective:
In order to achieve control over the Russian trade routes, Swedish foreign policy had to
grapple with two alternatives: resort to various trade/political measures or the annexation
of areas which could act as springboards for military intervention. The choice between
these alternatives was dictated by political circumstances. 67
Attman also distinguished several periods during which either the one or the other
option was applied. In his view, in the period from Stolbovo to the 1640s Sweden
did not pursue the programme in question. Then, however, Oxenstierna turned to
lowering the transit duties in Sweden’s transbaltic ports in order to attract some of
the Arkhangel’sk trade into the Gulf of Finland. Under Charles X Gustav it was again
the military option that came to occupy the foreground, while the Swedish-Muscovite
treaty of Kardis in 1661 implied a return to a more peaceful trade policy.
Attman was of the opinion that up to the beginning of the Great Northern War, it
was mainly Swedish diplomatic persuasion and the attraction of low customs tariffs
that were supposed to re-route Muscovy’s White Sea trade. In the 1690s, he continued,
two facts became clear to the Swedish leadership under Charles XI (1672–97).
In the first place, the policy of re-routing the Arkhangel’sk trade, as the College of
Commerce stated in 1692, was all-in-all a failure; Swedish measures to monopolize
access to the Russian market were notoriously counteracted by strong Muscovite,
63 Artur Attman, Swedish Aspirations nnd the Russian Market during the 17 th Century (Göteborg 1985)
(Acta Regiae Societatis Scientiarum et Litterarum Gothoburgensis. Humaniora, 24).
64 Klaus Zernack, ‘Russland und Schweden im 17. Jahrhundert. Neue Forschungen 1957–1960’,
Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Vol. 10 (1962), 103–16 (105).
65 Attman, Aspirations, 5.
66 Ibid., 9.
67 Ibid., 17.