The Baltic as a Crossroads to Other Seas and Oceans
Baltic trade and shipping led the Hanse, the Dutch and the English into other seas and oceans. For example, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Dutch were able to use their monopoly in the Baltic grain trade to intensify their trade with Southern Europe when the harvests failed in the west and south of Europe.
Gradually, the range of goods involved in the Dutch Baltic trade changed. The Baltic countries began to import high-quality goods such as spices, sugar, citrus and southern fruits and textiles as well as they controlled not only the export trade in grain and wood, but also imported finished western goods and luxury products. Following these patterns of trade and shipping, the Dutch gained a foothold in the Mediterranean, famously described by Braudel as ‘Northern invasion’.[650] They transported goods - for example, Spanish salt and wool to Italy - and supplied the Mediterranean area with pepper and spices from the East Indies.Furthermore, without the naval stores (supplied by the Baltic hinterlands) global Dutch and British shipping to the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean would not have been possible. Finally, the Baltic Sea provided the basis for maritime engagements with other seas and oceans. For example, the Russian Empire tried to connect its peripheral provinces on the Baltic and on the Pacific. Behind this attempt was the idea to build up a Russian commercial network across the North Pacific to provide the settlements in the Far East and Alaska with provisions and to link them with Spanish California and Manila as well as the Chinese port of Canton (Guangzhou). For this reason, Baltic German naval officers, such as Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Otto von Kotzebue, were sent out with the ships Nadezda (1803) and Rurik (1815) from the Baltic via the North Sea and the Atlantic to the Pacific. Although the hopes of establishing a Russian trading empire and creating a Russian Pacific did not unfold, Russian explorations and the travel journals of captains had a long-lasting impact on the European public.
Moreover, it was sailing ships from Finland (which was a province of Russia until 1917) that connected the Baltic with other seas and oceans. Finnish ships had specialised in the transport of timber and tar through the Sound, but then increasingly shipped grain in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In the 1870s, Finnish shippers played an important role in the freight and transport revolution across the Atlantic, transporting grain from New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore to Ireland and to British ports on the North Sea as well as petroleum to Western Europe and even into the Baltic Sea region. They also handled timber exports (especially pine) from the southern United States and Canada.[651]