Zwischen Arktis Adria und Armenien

368 Historiographica
1988, Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Court, 1655–1656, 72 Roberts still referred
to the “grand prospect [. . . ] to divert the Archangel trade to [. . . ] Narva, Nyen or
Reval” 73 as simply “a favourite pipe-dream of Swedish statesmen” 74 rather than, as
Attman saw it, the raison d’être of empire-building, he soon changed his opinion.
In his 1989 article Karl X Gustav and the Great Parenthesis: A Reconsideration
Roberts came quite close to Attman’s views: “It was the constant hope of Swedish
statesmen to induce the Tsar to agree to the channelling of Russian trade to the West
through Swedish-controlled ports in the Baltic.” 75 But he then went a significant step
further and almost changed sides by embracing large parts of Attman’s mercantile
background argumentation. On the war efforts of Charles X Gustav Roberts wrote:
The aim to recover and consolidate sjökanten i. e. the Baltic coastline between Riga and
Stettin – author], The later interest in north Norway, stem from Johan III’s hope of controlling
the Russia trade, and from those numerous feasibility studies of the possibility of
diverting the Archangel trade to Swedish-controlled Baltic ports which occupied Swedish
statesmen at frequent intervals from the 1620s onwards. In short, from 1560 to 1660 the
game was the same, the players were the same, the basic tactics unchanged. 76
If Artur Attman postulated that the period from Gustav Vasa to Charles XII was
characterized by the pursuit of the programme he had reconstructed, Michael Roberts
now supported this view not only for the pre-Stolbovo period, as he had done before,
but – with certain reservations – also for the reigns of Gustav Adolf and Kristina
(1644–54), and definitely for that of Charles X Gustav. As regards the years 1660–
1700, however, the “Great Parenthesis” of Swedish expansionism in his view, here
he remained unable to detect continuity in such a programme.
3. Results
As demonstrated, the 1980s brought a significant turn in the decade-long Attman-
Roberts debate. Michael Roberts extended the later limit of his approval of the
‘Attman thesis’ from 1617 to 1660, while Artur Attman, between the lines of his
last booklet, conceded that, with the frustrating result of the Swedish embassy to
Moscow of 1673–4, the programme of re-channelling the White Sea trade was de
facto suspended until 1701, when Charles XII sent his naval expedition, albeit unsuccessfully,
against Arkhangel’sk. By tacitly admitting the existence of some major
72 Michael Roberts, trans. and ed., Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Court, 1655–1656. The Missions
of Peter Julius Coyet and Christer Bonde (London 1988) (Camden Fourth Series, 36).
73 Ibid., 19.
74 Ibid.
75 Michael Roberts, ‘Karl X Gustav and the Great Parenthesis: A Reconsideration,’ in Karolinska förbundets
årsbok (1989), 62–108 (65); reprinted in Michael Roberts, From Oxenstierna to Charles XIL
Four Studies (Cambridge 1991), 100–43.
76 Roberts, ‘Karl X Gustav,’ 107.