Market Positioning over Productivity: Rethinking England’s Eighteenth-Century Grain Export Boom

Several studies have dealt with the extent and development of the English grain trade, based on English sources, but few have attempted to place English grain exports in a broader European perspective by comparison with the Baltic export and the Dutch import trade. Hypotheses as to why England became a net grain exporter in the first half of the eighteenth century range from increased productivity in England to government intervention and the assumption that there was a breakdown in agricultural production in the Baltics. Analysis of data from the Øresundstoldbøgerne, the toll register of ships passing through the Øresund (‘the Sound’) between 1497 and 1857, reveals that this development is more complex than existing hypotheses allow, and that the English success in the international grain trade is explicable more in terms of market positioning than in the quantities of grain available.