The Baltic Trade 229
Slovakian copper-production began. In this situation, south German high
financiers invested a lot of money in then-modern engineering to drain the
mines and to monopolize the trade with metals. In the case of the Slovakian
mining areas the Augsburgian Fugger, together with Johann Thurzo, got a priv-
ilege from King Mathias Corvinus of Hungary for mining, successfully drained
the flooded mines, and obtained from 1472 to 1475 a de facto monopoly in the
copper trade of Slovakia.142 The Thurzo-Fugger company exported one part of
the output to Saxony and to Italy, but sent the other part via the Baltic to the
Netherlands. With their records, we are able to ennumerate the quantities of
exported Slovakian copper around 1500.
Between 1510 and 1513, the annual export of copper was around 43,140
centner—of which 25,911 centner were exported via the Baltic. The old
Hanseatic trade route maintained its importance even if the Hanseatic mer-
chants—to their disappointment—received no part in this trade.143
The situation in Sweden was somewhat better from the Hanseatic point
of view. Here, copper was extracted only in the famous mountain of Falun in
Dalarna. At the so called “big-copper-mountain”, copper had been mined since
the second half of the eleventh century and the city of Falun developed into
Sweden’s most important center for metal trade.144 In the Middle Ages the
copper-mountain was partitioned in interests, which were saleable and
devisable. Shareholders included the Swedish king and the regional bishop
of Westerås but also Hanseatic merchants, who were primarily Lubeckians.145
ostmitteleuropäischen Volkswirtschaften in ihren Beziehungen zu Mitteleuropa, ed. Ingomar
Bog (Cologne, Vienna: Boehlau, 1971), 584–599.
142 Stanisław Gierszewski, “Słowackie zaplecze portu gdańskiego w końcu xv i w pierwszej
połowie xvi w.” In Strefa bałtycka w xvi–xviii wieku, polityka—społeczeństwo—gospo-
darka, Ogólnopolska sesja naukowa zorganizowana z okazji 70-lecia urodzin Professora
Edmunda Cieślaka, ed. Jerzy Trzoska (Gdańsk: Komisja Historyczna, 1993), 123–133; Max
Jansen, Jakob Fugger der Reiche. Studien und Quellen, Studien zur Fuggergeschichte, 3
(Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1910); Friedrich Dobel, “Der Fugger Bergbau und Handel
in Ungarn,” Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben und Neuburg 6 (Augsburg
1879), 33–50.
143 Pierre Jeannin, “Le cuivre, les Fugger et la Hanse.” Annales 10 (1955), 229–236 contrary to
Götz Freiherr von Pölnitz, Fugger und die Hanse. Ein hundertjähriges Ringen um Ostsee
und Nordsee, Schwäbische Forschungsgemeinschaft bei der Kommission für bayerische
Landesgeschichte, R. 4, Vol. 5, Studien zur Fuggergeschichte, Vol. 11 (Tübingen: Mohr,
1953).
144 Bertil Boëthius, Kopparbergslagen fram till 1570-talets genombrott. Uppkomst, medeltid,
tidig vasatid (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1965), 22. Tom Söderberg, Stora Kopparberget
under Medeltiden och Gustav Vasa (Stockholm: Petterson, 1932), 66.
145 T. Söderberg, Stora Kopperberget, 71; Wilhelm Koppe, Lübeck-Stockholmer Handels-
geschichte im 14. Jahrhundert (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1933), 21f. and 29f.