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Scandinavia was one of the few regions in the world whose economic importance to both Great Britain and Germany grew in the course of the 1930s. This change had political implications at a time in which Germany was mounting an increasingly effective challenge to the Versailles system of which Britain was one of the chief props. Although it was never at the forefront of either British or German attention, Scandinavia became a stage on which Anglo-German rivalries were played out. As political relations between the two powers deteriorated in the late 1930s, commercial competition became transformed into a contest for economic and political influence over a region whose geographical position and natural resources ensured that it would be of even greater strategic significance in a future war than it had been in 1914–18. The most obvious indicator of Scandinavia's heightened importance is British and German export performance. Britain's exports to the Nordic countries increased dramatically after 1931, but the degree of improvement varies according to the criteria by which they are measured. The statistics published by the Nordic countries give the most favourable impression of Britain's performance – but also overstate the improvement since they are based on country of purchase rather than country of origin. On this reckoning, Britain overtook Germany as the leading supplier to Denmark in 1933 and retained that lead until 1939. British exports to Finland exceeded Germany's for the first time in 1934 but Germany regained the lead in 1939. Germany never lost its leading position in Sweden's import trade, but Britain narrowed the gap significantly between 1934 and 1937. In Norway the two countries were more evenly matched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The First World War demonstrated that economic and political power were inseparable. Just as economic resources were crucial to the military effort, so war could be used to advance the economic interests of the belligerents. In Britain, the immediate problem of enforcing the blockade of the Central Powers became overlaid with that of meeting the long-term challenge of German industry. From 1916 onwards, attempts were made to supplant German trade in markets where it had traditionally been dominant. Remarkable and sometimes ruthless efforts were made in the years 1918–21 to convert Britain's temporary commercial predominance, the result of abnormal postwar conditions, into something more permanent. The Nordic countries were a particular object of British interest as traditional German markets which had a strong growth potential in their own right, but they were also regarded as a transit route to the much larger market opportunities that were expected to materialise in post-revolutionary Russia. By 1921 the impetus had waned and the British economy had relapsed into stagnation. But this early post-war phase foreshadowed the radical shift of policy which followed the abandonment of the gold standard and the adoption of tariff protection in 1931–2. This time there was a far more systematic employment of state power, through tariffs and trade bargaining, but again the Nordic countries were among the principal objects of attention. The depreciation of sterling, together with the bilateral trade agreements concluded in 1933 with Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, helped to make Scandinavia one of Britain's most important export markets by the mid-1930s. Achieved at a time of German weakness, this success was, however, to be undermined by the revival of German competition after 1933. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before 1914 Scandinavia had felt the repercussions of confrontation between the great powers without being the principal focus of their attention. The Nordic states were affected in a similarly indirect way by the changing international climate of the post-war period: first the transition from war to peace under the auspices of the treaty of Versailles; then, in the Locarno era after 1925, the emergence of a more equitable international order; finally, the onset of the great depression. But although the European powers rarely took a direct interest in Scandinavian affairs, their attention was drawn to northern Europe, especially in the early 1920s, by the persistent instability of the eastern Baltic. After a period of active involvement with the newly independent states of Finland, Estonia and Latvia, Great Britain withdrew its naval presence from the eastern Baltic in 1921 but retained an interest in reducing friction among the states of the region – for example, between Poland and Lithuania over the disputed Vilnius territory – in the interests of European peace in general and as a bulwark against Bolshevik Russia. France was concerned much more overtly with the construction of a cordon sanitaire against Bolshevism centred on Poland and the countries of the ‘Little Entente’, which also had Baltic ramifications. Russia and Germany, at whose expense the new order in eastern Europe had been constructed, had a shared interest in the demise of Poland, the largest of the new states, but were able to find a basis for co-existence with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Nevertheless, the long-term existence of these three small states was precarious and it was widely assumed that they must ultimately be reabsorbed by Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although they had made no direct contribution to the Allied victory, the Nordic countries were substantial net beneficiaries of the peace settlement. Their security had been enhanced by the destruction of Germany and Russia as great powers, apparently for the foreseeable future. The League of Nations, which derived in part from Scandinavian ideas and initiatives, offered a new approach to international security. All four countries saw the end of the war as an opportunity for territorial expansion. For Denmark, of course, it was a matter of regaining territory lost in 1864. Following a plebiscite in 1920, the northern part of Slesvig was returned to Denmark, leaving a small Danish minority to the south of the new frontier and a rather larger German minority to the north. Sweden laid claim to the Åland Islands. Having relied on German patronage in 1918, the Swedes turned in 1919 to the Paris peace conference, which then referred the question to the League of Nations. In 1921 the League decided that the islands should remain in Finnish possession but with a large measure of self-determination, and that they should also be demilitarised. Sweden was thus the only Nordic country which did not gain territorially at the end of the war; but Swedish discomfiture, though vocal for a while, was relatively short-lived. Independent Finland sought to extend the historic frontiers of the Grand Duchy into East Karelia, the cradle of Finnish culture, and northward to the Arctic Ocean. The peacemakers gave Finland an Arctic port at Petsamo but refused to satisfy its designs on Karelia – a source of lasting resentment to Finnish nationalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denmark, Norway and Sweden were more fortunate than most European countries in that they were not directly involved in hostilities between 1914 and 1918. Both the Entente and the Central Powers were persuaded that they had more to gain from Scandinavian neutrality than from drawing the Scandinavian states into the war. Scandinavia proved marginal to the military and naval strategies of the belligerents to an extent unforeseen by pre-war planners. This was partly because the war lasted longer than most people had anticipated: much pre-war planning had been predicated on the assumption of a war of early engagements and rapid movement both on land and at sea – particularly in Scandinavian waters. It was also because attempts to break the deadlock on the western front by a flanking strategy were directed elsewhere: towards the eastern Mediterranean, not the Baltic. And because the war was prolonged, economic pressure became increasingly important to both sides. This heightened the significance of neutral Scandinavia as a transit route to Germany and Russia and as a source of supply to the Entente and the Central Powers. In some respects their economic indispensability was advantageous to the Scandinavian states, or at least to the many individuals and firms who made large profits out of trading with the belligerents. However, most of the problems that confronted Scandinavian governments during the war resulted directly or indirectly from the attempts of the belligerents to conscript the Scandinavian economies into their respective war efforts. All three countries had to accept a drastic diminution of traditional neutral rights while establishing an unprecedented degree of government control and supervision over their domestic economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Towards the end of the nineteenth century the European great powers began to take a more active interest in Scandinavian affairs. Changes in military technology and in the balance of power in Europe as a whole, as well as within Scandinavia itself, heightened the strategic importance of northern Europe and raised questions about both the capacity and the willingness of the Scandinavian states to preserve their neutrality in the event of war. For much of the century Scandinavia and the Baltic had been of strategic interest only in the context of a war between Great Britain and Russia. The Crimean war showed that the Baltic was one of the few regions where British naval power could be brought to bear effectively against Russia, and its lessons were not entirely forgotten in the second half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, ‘the epoch in which an Anglo-Russian conflict seemed the most likely outcome of international relations’ did not come to an end until the peaceful resolution of the Dogger Bank affair in 1904. Already, however, Scandinavia and the Baltic had been profoundly affected by the revolution in the European balance of power brought about by the creation of the German empire in 1871. The destabilising effects of this creation, limited until 1890 by Bismarck's conservatism and diplomatic skill, began to be revealed under his successors. Following the lapse of the Reinsurance treaty, the Scandinavian states began to feel the repercussions of the increasing polarisation of international relations between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy on the one hand, and France and Russia on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small states and great powers in the international system The period bounded by the lapse of Bismarck's reinsurance treaty in 1890 and the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940 was one in which the Nordic countries became enmeshed in international conflict to a degree unprecedented since the early nineteenth century. The progressive erosion of Scandinavian isolation, culminating in the traumatic years of war and occupation between 1939 and 1945 (from which only Sweden was spared), forms one of the main themes of this book. Another is the inability of the Nordic states to fulfil – either individually (apart, again, from Sweden) or collectively – one of the basic functions of any state: the protection of their citizens from external attack. There is another side to the story. Of the minor states of Europe, the Nordic countries were – and remain – among the most fortunate. They have enjoyed a large measure of internal stability and have had few rivalries among themselves. Rapid industrialisation, beginning in the nineteenth century, combined with periods of social democratic rule which were longer and more continuous than anywhere else in Europe, enabled the Nordic countries to construct societies which were, by the late twentieth century, among the most egalitarian and most prosperous in the world. Yet their very success made the Nordic countries vulnerable to external pressures. The first half of the twentieth century was a period dominated by war and the anticipation of war. It was also a period of unprecedented ideological confrontation and economic competition among the European great powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The century which elapsed between the battle of Waterloo and the outbreak of World War I saw changes more profound than in any comparable period in human history. It was one of unprecedented growth: population more than doubled; there was a commensurate growth in agricultural output; industrial production increased tenfold; and Europe's gross product multiplied six times. This growth in economic activity was accompanied by a radical shift in its location, as an older, protoindustrial pattern decayed and was replaced by another which responded to new factors of production and to changing demand. The geography of Europe, when the Napoleonic Wars ended, differed fundamentally from that which saw the lights go out in August 1914. The intervening century was, in the main, one of peace. Most conflicts were short-lived and far from destructive. Many were related to peoples' democratic aspirations or to their demands for independence from the empires which had between them shared much of Europe. But economic growth was, nevertheless, a highly localized phenomenon. Much of the continent remained untouched by progress – industrial, agricultural, or commercial – until late in the century. At the same time, there were areas where growth was rapid and from which the new technology was diffused to other parts of the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two centuries from the early fourteenth to the early sixteenth form one of the more enigmatic periods in European history. It was one of continuous warfare and civil disturbance, yet it saw the birth of humanism and the beginnings of the Renaissance. It has been represented as a period of economic depression, while at the same time the peasantry in some parts of Europe enjoyed a higher material living standard than at any other time in the Middle Ages (Fig. 7.1). It was an era of extreme bigotry, intolerance, and superstition, and at the same time of reason and enlightment. Its art showed a preoccupation with death, and at the same time it could display the lightness and grace which we associate with the Renaissance. These many contradictions spring from the horrific experiences of the Great Plague and its subsequent recurrences. The bubonic plague reached western Europe in the ships of the Genoese at the end of 1347. It came from the Crimea in the bloodstreams of infected rats, having been brought to the Crimea in the baggage of merchants from the Far East. Wherever the ships called, the pathogens of the plague went ashore with the crew and spread rapidly through the local population. Their vectors were the black rat and the flea, the former carrying and nurturing the bacillus, the latter distributing it to all whom it bit. Crowded, dirty, and rat-infested homes were ideal for its diffusion. It spread fast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the early fourteenth century the period of medieval economic growth was over; the population of Europe reached its peak at about this time, and the spatial pattern of cities was to develop no farther before the nineteenth century. POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY The political map of Europe had assumed a form which, with minor changes, it was to retain into modern times. Only in the Balkan peninsula, where the Byzantine empire was clinging desperately to its last foothold, were major changes still to come. In most of Europe political control was becoming more centralized, and kingship more absolute. Feudalism, as a mode of government, was weakening, though its outward symbols were as conspicuous as ever. Only in eastern Europe and Russia were feudal relationships tending to strengthen. In the Spanish peninsula the southward advance of the Christian states had reduced the Moorish kingdom of Granada to the Sierra Nevada and neighboring coastlands. To the north, Castile, having absorbed Léon and other petty states, reached from the Biscay coast in the north to the Strait of Gibraltar (Fig. 6.1). It dominated the Meseta, while around its periphery lay Navarre and Gascony, Aragon and Portugal. Only Castile still had a boundary with the Moors and still continued its centuries-old crusade against them. Portugal and Aragon were casting their eyes beyond the seas and were beginning that commercial expansion which was to take them to Asia and the New World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three centuries from the early sixteenth to the end of the Napoleonic Wars saw changes of fundamental importance in the ways in which European peoples viewed themselves, their continent, and the world. When this period began the emperor Charles V had just triumphed over the French at Pavia (1525) and, in the minds of many, was about to restore an empire, both holy and Roman, and to unify Europe. When it ended, the bid for continental dominance by Napoleon had been shattered at Leipzig (1813) and Waterloo (1815), and Europe was set for a century of nationalism and economic growth. A NEW WORLD The changes which were achieved during this period can, for our purposes, be listed and discussed under five heads. First was the concept of nationalism, which was slowly and unevenly taking shape at this time. A nation is a body of people held together by a sense of belonging together. A common language and culture were important bonds. So also were a common historical tradition, the occupation of a well-defined territory, and, often enough, a common enemy. Many a nation has been forged in conflict with another and perhaps more powerful state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statesmen who gathered at Vienna to bring back peace to a war torn continent set themselves to restore the conditions which had prevailed before the wars began. This proved impossible; too many of the changes of the previous decades were irreversible. This was especially the case in Germany, where the number of separate and autonomous political units was reduced from more than three hundred to thirty-nine. The German empire was snuffed out in 1806, without as much as a whimper. In 1815 it was restored, no longer under the auspices of the Austrian Habsburgs, but as the German Confederation, or Bund, dominated by Brandenburg-Prussia (Fig. 10.1). In western Europe, political boundaries were smoothed out, and much of its feudal debris of enclaves and exclaves was tidied up. France lost marginally and, in retrospect, significantly. Much of the Saar coalfield and of the ironworking Sambre Valley were lost respectively to Prussia and the United Netherlands. Savoy and Nice were restored to the Sardinian kingdom, only to be regained in 1860. Fear of renewed French aggression led to the incorporation of the southern Low Countries, previously Austrian, in the United Netherlands, the purpose being to create a powerful buffer to French expansion. This settlement proved to be unacceptable in the southern Low Countries, which in 1831 broke away to form the kingdom of Belgium, its independence and inviolability guaranteed by the powers. Changes were more fundamental in eastern Europe. Napoleon's Grand Duchy of Warsaw, a kind of revived Polish state created from the Prussian and Austrian shares of the Partitions, was given to the Russian tsars in their personal capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe in the early sixteenth century was still in many respects medieval. Its population was rural and agricultural to the extent of about 80 percent. Cities remained small; craft industries were small-scale and most were carried on domestically. Technology had made little advance during the previous thousand years, and there were few industrial and agricultural processes that would not have been understood by the year 1000. Over much of Europe the rural population was still unfree, bound to the soil and subject to heavy and arbitrary labor demands. One of the complaints made in the German Peasants' War of 1524–5 was of “labor services which … daily increase and daily grow.” Yet there was change; people were becoming more critical and enquiring. It is too early to speak of a scientific attitude, but institutions and beliefs were being questioned; new forms of organization were being adopted, and, in a slow and halting way, a spirit of innovation and experimentation was beginning to develop and spread. NATIONALISM AND THE POLITICAL MAP One of the most important intellectual developments of the age of the Renaissance was the emergence of a new attitude to the state and to public administration. The impact of central government during the Middle Ages had been slight. Its authority was mediated through the ranks of a feudal hierarchy. But now governments – in Britain, France, Spain, and Scandinavia – were beginning to reach down through this feudal structure and to control affairs at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the mid-fifth century B.C. the long ordeal of the Persian Wars was over, and Athens, triumphant leader of a league of Greek city-states, was building a civilization which has been the envy of posterity. The great Athenian dramatists were writing, and work had begun on Athens's crown and glory, the buildings erected on the steep Acropolis overlooking the city. At the same time colonies established by Greek cities in southern Italy and Sicily were in their different ways following where those of the Aegean had led. At this time Rome was a small town spread over a group of low hills beside the Tiber in central Italy. Only a short distance to the north the Etruscan league of cities had created a civilization similar in some ways to that of the Greeks in the Aegean. Rome had once been part of this loose Etruscan federation, and its independence was at this time far from secure. Beyond the Alps the La Tène civilization had been spread by the Celts, armed with iron weapons and war chariots, through much of central Europe. They were pressing into western Europe, the Spanish peninsula, and the British Isles. Beyond them to the north and northeast, a Bronze Age culture still survived, and in the Baltic and Scandinavian regions and on the outermost fringes of the British Isles, Stone Age peoples were beginning to learn the rudiments of agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]