Cotton Import to Norway 1835-1920
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Cotton import to Norway 1835-1920 Import, industrialization and globalization Master Thesis Martin Haugland The Institute of Human Studies UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN Spring, 2021 © Martin Haugland 2021 Cotton import to Norway 1835-1920 https://bora.uib.no/ Abstract Cotton today is a part of our daily lives. We use it in clothing, beddings, furnishing and more. For many, cotton is often associated with the dark times. Poor living conditions for millions of people working in the European factories, and forced labour picking the cotton that made a few plantation owners very rich. This has been depicted in many movies, like we can see in the popular movie Django Unchained. This thesis looks at cotton import to Norway and how it developed between 1835 and 1920. Using data collected from the digital archives of Statistics Norway to map out how much and where it came from. Europe and other parts of the world were changing in the nineteenth century. Industrialization and globalization are often words used to describe this period of development. But what exactly does these words mean? And when did these processes happen? This thesis explores different views on industrialization in Norway. Using digitalised data on the Norwegian external trade to look at cotton import, questions arise, but can they be answered? How much did Norway import? And where did the cotton come from? These questions and more will be discussed in this thesis. i Preface I would like to thank Ines Prodöhl for inspiring motivation in the final stage of writing this thesis, as well as good advice on history and how to become a better writer. I would also like to give a thanks to Marte Knudsen for proofreading my analysis chapters. Last, I would like to give credit and thanks to all students who found a way through the pandemic. Bergen, June 2021 ii Table of content 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Thesis statement .......................................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Why this period? ......................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Laws .............................................................................................................................................. 4 1.4 Changing conditions .................................................................................................................... 6 1.4 Globalization ................................................................................................................................ 7 1.5 Previous research ........................................................................................................................ 9 1.5.1 Previous research - The Industrial Revolution and Norway in the nineteenth century 9 1.5.2 Previous research – global history through cotton .......................................................... 11 1.5.2 The Norwegian Industrial Revolution .............................................................................. 13 1.6 Sources, method and source problems .................................................................................... 16 1.6.1 Sources used in this thesis .................................................................................................. 16 1.6.2 Method ................................................................................................................................. 19 1.7 Structure of the thesis ............................................................................................................... 20 2. The history of the first textile industry in Norway ....................................................................... 22 3. Analysis of the cotton import to Norway 1835-1920 .................................................................... 26 3.1 Cotton import to Norway 1835-1844 ....................................................................................... 29 3.1.1 The year 1835 ...................................................................................................................... 29 3.1.2 The years 1838, 1841 and 1844 .......................................................................................... 30 3.2 Cotton import to Norway 1847-1859 ....................................................................................... 31 3.2.1 The years 1847-1855 – First wave of Norwegian textile industry .................................. 31 3.2.2 The years 1856-1859 – The Crimean Wars ...................................................................... 34 3.3 Cotton import to Norway 1860-1869 ....................................................................................... 36 3.3.1 The American Civil War .................................................................................................... 36 3.3.2 Change in unit 1866 ............................................................................................................ 41 3.4 Cotton import to Norway 1870-1879 ....................................................................................... 42 3.5 Cotton import to Norway 1880-1899 ....................................................................................... 45 3.6 Cotton import to Norway 1900-1920 ....................................................................................... 50 3.6.1 Dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden ................................................... 50 3.6.2 The First World War ......................................................................................................... 52 3.7 Raw cotton import to Christiania 1835-1920 .......................................................................... 55 3.8 Chapter conclusion .................................................................................................................... 55 4.2 Where did the cotton between 1835 and 1920 come from? ....................................................... 57 iii 4.1 Where the cotton come from 1835-1844 .................................................................................. 59 4.2 Where the cotton came from 1855-1860 .................................................................................. 61 4.3 Where cotton came from 1865-1870 ........................................................................................ 64 4.4. Where the cotton came from 1875-1880 ................................................................................. 67 4.5 Where the cotton came from 1885-1900 .................................................................................. 68 4.6 Where the cotton came from 1905-1920 .................................................................................. 70 4.7 Arne Fabrikker, trading networks and industry .................................................................... 78 4.8 Chapter conclusion .................................................................................................................... 82 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 83 6. Literature, sources and attachments ............................................................................................. 85 6.1 Bibliography............................................................................................................................... 85 6.2 Sources ........................................................................................................................................ 89 6.2.1 Norges handelsstatistikk .................................................................................................... 89 6.2.2 Bergen byarkiv ................................................................................................................... 94 6.3 Attachements ............................................................................................................................. 95 6.3.1 Tables 1-9 ............................................................................................................................ 95 6.3.2 Figures 1-5 ......................................................................................................................... 105 iv 1. Introduction Much of what we use today is produced in factories and shipped from far across the globe. We have become accustomed to almost overnight shipping with goods from around the world. Although the world today is connected by a complicated transportation network we do not need to go back to many years before trade was on a much smaller scale. In this master thesis I want to go back to the time when inventions helped transformed the globe. Travel and transportation changed, cities grew, factories appeared, and paid work became the new norm. The late eighteenth and most nineteenth century brought with them world changing inventions. Most notably the steam engine which became the foundation for a new way of getting energy. It powered steamships, trains, factories and more. It helped made nations and people extremely rich, but also has dark sides which can be connected to it. People, down to very low ages, worked tirelessly for long hours in textile factories. Slaves were used to pick the massive amounts of cotton that fed these factories, and