Recruitment and conditions of life of Swedish ironworkers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when Sweden was one of the world's leading exporters of bar-iron state regulation of the industry was both detailed and effective. One result of this was that a great mass of official records was created which contains very detailed information on many aspects of the history of the industry. Since these records are much more easily accessible than those in private hands, it is not surprising that for a long time research was mainly based on this evidence and concentrated on those aspects that had been of most interest to the officials of the time. The records in private archives were used chiefly by writers of business histories.