Today, illegal trade is a crucial part of global commerce and prohibited wares and substances can be obtained both through the clear- and the darknet, while untaxed money is squirreled away in tax havens like Bermuda, Ireland, and Jersey. This is nothing new, however, and illegal and extralegal transnational trade have been part of the globalization process since its beginnings. Historians have taken a great interest in how the world became interconnected in the past; they have shown that globalization was a formative force from the fifteenth century onwards, intensifying in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While previous research has mainly explored the legal expressions of globalization, in the last few years new ground-breaking inquiries into smuggling and the global underground have greatly added to our understanding of illegal globalization in the early modern period. 1 In this project I will focus on the transmission sites or halfway houses that came to play a crucial role in the developing global trade. More specifically, I will examine the role of the Nordic peripheries: territories that were very different, representing both remote sparsely populated areas and key intersections in Europe. Most of them have commonly been overlooked as only negligible legal trade was conducted there, however, they were crucial transit sites for illegal whale blubber, pelts, gin, rum, tobacco, tea, and British manufactures. The project focuses on the period 1770-1820, a time when illegal trade flourished in Europe as a result of war. It was a period of great upheaval and conflict, marked by the American Revolutionary Wars, the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Napoleonic Wars. All these conflicts also had a significant commercial dimension, and trade blockades and state sponsored privateering became an integral part of the warfare, further fuelling illegal trade in the peripheries. Moreover, this period also covers the transition from the early modern into the modern world, with the rise of the nation-state, mass-consumption, and price convergence. In order to explore the effects of illegal commercial competition and global trade, this project examines the northern peripheries during a period marked by both peace and war: What types of goods passed through or were derived from these locations? What role did the wares play in the developing consumer market? How did the presence of global trade and the scramble for natural resources affect these areas, their populations, and their means of provision? Finally, and in the light of these questions, how did the standing of these areas change during the European consolidation process and the rise of the nation-state? Through its focus on illegal trade in the Nordic peripheries this study offers a new perspective on globalization during the war-stricken period 1770 - 1820, providing a novel and unique approach to the Nordic entry into the modern world of trade. Furthermore, through looking at the effects of the trade in these areas rather than simply the impact of the goods on their final market, it also focuses on the challenges of commodification, trade exploitation, and market growth at this early stage of globalization. By shifting the perspective away from the nation state it expands on previous smuggling scholarship by arguing that smuggling was not only formative for the development of singular countries but that it was also an important cog in the machinery of world trade and a key tool in international relations particularly during times of war.
