Lars Magnusson and the Historical Emergence of Economic Liberalism in Sweden

Max Skjönsberg

Econ Journal Watch, 2025, vol. 22, issue 1, 187–198

Abstract: In his 2022 book (which is in Swedish), economic historian Lars Magnusson treats economic thought in Sweden from the middle ages to the nineteenth century. Magnusson concedes that the Swedes may not have come up with any new scientific insights within economics in this period, as he shows that they appropriated and adapted an eclectic mixture of ideas from Britain, France, and Germany. They did, however, institute what was one of the first academic professorships in political economy at Uppsala University in 1741. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Swedish economic debate was dominated by mercantilist attitudes, but these were challenged by the notable proto-liberal Anders Chydenius and others in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, national liberals in Sweden engaged critically with Adam Smith, and adopted American and German ideas about limited protectionism alongside the optimistic French classical economics of Jean-Baptiste Say and Frédéric Bastiat, as opposed to the pessimism of Thomas Malthus. The book concludes with a discussion of the pragmatic liberal Johan August Gripenstedt, who championed free trade along with state-owned railways as the finance minister between 1856 and 1866.

Keywords: Sweden; mercantilism; classical liberalism; national liberalism; nationalism; protectionism; Adam Smith; David Hume; free trade; balance of trade; jealousy of trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B1 N13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ejw:journl:v:22:y:2025:i:1:p:187-198

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