this period upon the growth of Sea Law, and of the rights of belligerents to interfere with neutral shipping. He does not, however, seem to be aware of the fact, that at the outbreak of war in 1689 both Sweden and Denmark, and more especially Sweden, were commercially the dependants of Holland. The Baltic trade had for many years been practically a Dutch monopoly. Almost all the ships which passed through the Sound were Dutch, and the toll they paid furnished a considerable part of the revenue of the Danish king, and the agriculturists of Denmark largely relied on Dutch capital for the development of the chief industry of the land. In Sweden the iron and copper mines, the factories and the commerce of the country were actually in Dutch hands. The town of Göteborg, founded in 1609 by Christian IX, was built by Abraham Cabelliau, an Amsterdam merchant, at the invitation of the king. Cabelliau made it his lifelong residence; and Göteborg during the seventeenth century was practically a Dutch seaport. In the reign of Gustavus Adolphus another Amsterdam merchant, Louis de Geer, brought into Sweden new and improved methods of mining and forging; and during the Thirty Years' War his factories at Finspong, Norköping, Nyköping and Danwick furnished the Swedes and their allies with all the artillery and munitions of war that they needed. And as with the mining industry, so it was with commerce generally. Every town in Sweden was full of Dutch factors, and the carrying trade of the country was almost entirely in Dutch bottoms. Throughout the second half of the seventeenth century there was a large Dutch colony permanently settled in Sweden, which had become nationalised in the country of their adoption, while fresh bodies of emigrants from Holland continued to find the Scandinavian kingdom specially attractive for trade purposes. Dutch settlers may, in fact, be said to have exploited the commerce of Sweden to their own signal advantage, as well as to the benefit of that State, for a period of time that from first to last extended over the greater part of a century. Their most dangerous rivals and competitors were their own countrymen in Holland. The Batavo-Swedes wished to keep at one and the same time their own markets to themselves, and to share in the world commerce of the mothercountry. This was the meaning of the decree of Charles XI in 1695 (to which Mr. Clark refers, p. 101), forbidding foreign trading factors to reside in Swedish towns unless they paid a heavy tax. The States-General did their utmost to get this decree repealed, but unavailingly. Thus a very large part of the

ships, which in the Nine Years' War traded under the protection of the Swedish flag, were owned by men of Dutch descent, and were manned by Dutchmen. And to a lesser extent this was the case with the Danish mercantile marine during this war. Moneymaking was the ruling passion of the shrewd Dutch trader of those days, and was often stronger than his patriotism.

In this war the Dutch supremacy in sea-borne trade was threatened less by France than by England; and the commercial history of the eighteenth century proved conclusively that the Dutch mercantile classes, whether in Holland or in other lands where their enterprise had secured a dominating influence, were right in looking upon the alliance of the United Provinces with England with great suspicion. It must be remembered also that many of the leading statesmen of Sweden and Denmark likewise looked with suspicion on this alliance of the two chief sea Powers. Previously to 1689 they could always rely on the protection of one of them should disputes arise with the other; now, however, they dreaded the results of their union. Hence the insistence with which they pressed their rights, as neutrals, with the result that both the English Government and the States-General found themselves obliged to agree to a limited number of Swedish and Danish ships (so long as they did not carry contraband) being allowed to trade with France. This concession struck at the very root of the policy of total prohibition from which William III had hoped so much.

GEORGE EDMUNDSON

Commercial Policy in the French Revolution: a Study in the Career of G. J. A. Ducher. By FREDERICK L. NUSSBAUM, Ph.D. (American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., 1923. Pp. vii. +388.)

THE sub-title of this work describes its scope better than the more general title; for the narrative is little more than a conscientious tracking of the work of Ducher and a brief estimate of its influence on such acts as the French Navigation Act of September 21, 1793. Ducher had gained some slight experience of commercial affairs as French Consul at a third-rate seaport of North Carolina which was then much concerned at what is here called British " exclusionism." The " exclusionism consisted in not admitting United States shipping to the advantages of British shipping in our ports, especially those of the West Indies, where Nelson and Collingwood insisted on maintaining

the provisions of the Navigation Act. Those provisions were modified in favour of American shipping by the terms of the Jay Treaty of 1794, a fact which the author does not mention. More than once he refers to the "monopolistic position of England "that too after the Anglo-French Treaty of 1786— though he seems to approve the adoption by France of strict protectionism in 1793, and on p. 119 refers to that and other cases of retaliation as determining "the surrender of the Navigation Acts in 1849."

Ducher's relations to the French Protectionists in the Convention and to their legislation are clearly traced, and the Girondin free-traders come in for criticism. Too much cohesion is, however, ascribed to that party, which rarely acted solidly together. If, as is here shown, Brissot wobbled disgracefully on the subject of the emancipation of slaves, first mooted by him, it is unfair to state that "The Gironde favoured the Slave trade: the Mountain was hostile to it." More scholarly is the conclusion (p. 204)—" whether the economic issue determined the alignment of parties must be left in suspense, pending a more thorough analysis of the economic phases of the Revolution." This work contains no reference to Dr. Hecksher's Continental System, 1922 (reviewed in the ECONOMIC JOURNAL of 1923), which in its early chapters takes a wider survey of the economic policy of 17931801. Dr. Nussbaum, however, has carefully delved in an unexplored corner of French revolutionary policy and has shown its connection with some of the Napoleonic decrees. The book ends with a complete bibliography and index.

J. HOLLAND ROSE

Monetary Theory before Adam Smith. By ARTHUR ELI MUNRO. (Harvard Economic Studies: Harvard University Press, 1923. Pp. xi +312. Price 15s. net.)

PROFESSOR MUNRO points out in his preface that no survey of early monetary theory has been available in English, and no adequate one in other languages." Thus, while most of those who have studied the development of currency are acquainted with the chief epochs in the evolution, there is a distinct advantage in the presentation of the various aspects of the position at different times, and we get a complete view of it, instead of a brief glimpse of its striking characteristics. In this way the book is thoroughly justified, and its merits are enhanced by a clear-cut plan of exposition divided into periods (the ancient

world, the Middle Ages, the beginnings of the modern age, from Davenzati to Locke, the eighteenth century, a final chapter on Money in Mercantilist Theory, and a good bibliography). Under each period there is the same framework consisting of a discussion of the views of the chief writers on the origin and functions of money, questions of monetary policy, the coinage system, the value of money, price changes, principles of circulation, velocity of circulation and monetary reform. In order to maintain the symmetry of these divisions, references to general economic changes have been omitted, and this is the loss of the reader, for it leaves untouched one problem of considerable interest, namely, to what extent monetary discussions were influenced by economic events or conversely. One can see, very clearly, that the topics in the theory of currency which received attention at a given time were precisely those which became prominent in the commercial life of that period. Money is in some respects like a tooth, no one worries about it till it causes inconvenience. Accordingly it will be only those who can supply the background of economic history that will secure the full results of the author's labours. It would be impossible within reasonable space to summarise the variety and extent of opinions on money contained in the volume. More might have been said upon the views and speculations of the Greeks. Their contribution to the subject is far from exhausted in four pages, and this in its turn reacts on the treatment of the Middle Ages, where the doctrine was so largely influenced by classical works. Also the general standpoint of the Schoolmen deserves somewhat more attention than it receives, especially since their views on money represent to some extent a departure from it. The statement (p. 111) that "John Locke was the first Englishman to adopt the quantity theory" is a little perplexing. That theory seems to be understood in this connection as the proportion of present money to present trade," being the beginning of a recognition of the importance of the amount of currency in relation to prices. But there were other writers in Great Britain before Locke who held similar views, e. g. M. L[ewis], D.D. Proposals .. for a Large Model of a Bank, 1678.

66

The last chapter is a well-balanced discussion of the almost perennial problem of Mercantilism. The author gives a judicial summary of the essentials in the position, or at least some of the chief of them. Here, again, perhaps the main difficulty is to realise what precisely were the conditions, and then to determine how they should have been interpreted. As regards the

first, the more we try to reconstruct the state of life, both economic and social, during the early years of Mercantilism, the more it appears how natural and almost inevitable it was to place monetary questions in the forefront of discussion. The error, of course, was not to recognise that the then existing conditions were transitory.

W. R. SCOTT

From Akbar to Aurangzeb. By W. H. MORELAND, C.S.I., C.I.E. (London: Macmillan & Co. 1923. Pp. 364.)

MR. MORELAND is to be congratulated on having made a valuable find; he has discovered in the Dutch Public Record Office a mass of new material for the economic history of India; he has not as yet been able to undertake the systematic examination of these voluminous records, but the existence of this large store of unexplored material should, as he observes, be borne in mind by all students of the period.

From Akbar to Aurangzeb may be described as the second volume of that outline of the economic history of India to which Mr. Moreland has devoted himself since his retirement from India. In his first volume (India at the Death of Akbar), published in 1920, his design was to present a sketch of the economic life of India at the opening of the seventeenth century, and "starting from this date to trace the economic story of the next three centuries, first in the narrations of travellers and the early Letter Books of the East India Company, and then in the more copious official records and publications of later times." The period covered by the present volume is of particular interest for two reasons firstly, it is the opening of a new epoch which is characterised by direct trade between India and Western Europe; and secondly, it is the period when the economic conditions of India are first discussed in the reports and letters of European merchants. On matters of political history Professor Jadunath Sarkar challenges, I think justly, the credibility of European witnesses, but he acknowledges the value of their narratives throwing light on the condition of the people and the state of trade and industry." It is for this purpose that Mr. Moreland makes use of them, and I have no doubt of their value when the assertions of European witnesses are checked against each other and controlled by Mr. Moreland's intimate acquaintance with the industrial organisation of modern India.

as

Did the advent of European commerce produce any marked