210 HANDEL
Foreign Trade of Danzig, 1641Exported Goods Value: in Prussian groats %
A. Corn 19,693,862 71.3
B. Other agricultural produce 2,302,172 8.4
C. Processed food products 251,290 0.9
D. Timber etc. 1,022,550 3.8
E. Metals, minerals 3,184,996 11.4
F. Manufactures 1,104,118 3.7
G. Fish (Re-export) 115,319 0.5
27,674,307 100.0
Imported Goods- Manufactures 7,041,870 40.7
- Colonial products 3,776,509 21.2
- Fish and fish-oil 1,801,813 10.4
- Alcohol, "Wines and Spirits 1,775,513 10.3
- Salt 357,121 2.1
- Agricultural produce 171,206 0.9
- Fuels, coal, etc. 1,894,012 10.9
- Leather, furs, skins 530,165 3.5
17,348,209 100.0^12
During this era of prosperity, Danzig handled some three-quarters of the
Republic's total foreign trade.
For the eighteenth century, the most minute information on commodities,
prices, and the movement of ships has survived in the reports of the French
'Residents' in Danzig. In the course of the Great Northern War, the government
in Paris was seriously disturbed by the growth of Russian power in the Baltic,
and by the corresponding decline in French trade. Danzig was adversely affected
by the Russian blockade of the Swedish coast, and by severe competition from
Konigsberg. As a result, the French ministers in Danzig were ordered to keep a
detailed record of commercial activities in the port, and to forward their
findings to Paris. At the end of each year, lists were compiled to summarize the
quantity, value, and destination or provenance of every imaginable commodity,
from amber (crude) to marinated sturgeon, exported or imported, during the
previous twelve months. Notes were made of fluctuations of prices in Danzig,
for comparison with equivalent information in France. Most interestingly per-
haps, a special record was kept of every single vessel that entered the harbour.
A report of 23 October 1717, for example, listed the end-of-season traffic in the
five weeks since the end of September. (See Table on p. 211.) It is hard to see that
the French Government made much use of these reports, as so few French ships
were actually engaged. One suspects that the Resident's commercial interests
filled in the long winter evenings between his much more important activities as