For the first time a workshop of preindustrial times took place in Göteborg in 2012. The Preindustrial Flows and Contacts-theme gathered researchers from Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden and the Netherlands.  In this book the editors present a contribution to commercial history, an empirical study of national institutes, market conditions of the trade, goods of trade, means of trading, business history, merchant bankers, social and cultural research in commercial history. The contributions all understand the Scandinavian heartland Sweden as a pars pro toto for the Baltic as a whole and serving as an example of the development of the economic and cultural space between the late 17th and 19th centuries. Three central intermediaries between northwest Europe and the Baltic ports - Hamburg, Göteborg and Copenhagen - took part in the negotiating of goods, means of payment, information and "commercial culture" between West and East. Thanks to the new possibility to examine the Baltic trade in all its aspects and at all levels of analysis the Baltic presents itself as an ideal field of economic historical research, a true "laboratory" for preindustrial commercial history.

Markus A. Denzel, geb. 1967, seit 2002 Ordinarius für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte an der Universität Leipzig. Forschungsschwerpunkte: Internationale Handels- und Finanzgeschichte der vorindustriellen Zeit, Messen-, Banken- und Börsengeschichte vor 1914