PURSUIT OF ALBION^249Scandinavia was ready. Even in die eighteenth century, one sees the
promise of later enterprise: the machine works and ingenious equip
ment of Polhem in Sweden; the Norwegian cobalt mines and refinery,
which supplied brilliant blue colorants to the glass and porcelain works
of Europe, from Wedgwood to Meissen. Much of the craftwork was
crude and dowdy by comparison with that of nations to the south, but
Scandinavia was fast catching up in tools, instruments, and technique.
No better clue than horology: by the end of the eighteenth century, the
best Danish and Swedish clock- and watchmakers were making ma
chines equal to those of London and Geneva; and these were local
artists, not the West European expats of Constantinople, Moscow, and
Peking.
Scandinavia built on free enterprise and quick response, on the ex
port of staples to more advanced industrial countries, on the invest
ment of these gains in more diversified production. The big export
commodities were timber, copper, later on, iron ore; for Denmark,
agricultural products. In all cases, development proceeded by moving
from the raw to the processed—from logs to boards, and then to pulp;
from iron ore to pig iron to wrought iron; from raw fish to canned and
jarred; from milk to cream, butter, and cheese. Much of this was fos
tered by improvements in transportation and banking institutions, and
here the state and foreign capital played a role. But very early on, Scan
dinavia was exporting know-how in the form of its own émigrés, to
ward tsarist Russia for example, where Alfred Nobel was one of the
pioneers of the infant petroleum industry. The Russian state had been
pushing industrial development on and off for hundreds of years, huff
ing and puffing and squeezing the population as it went; the Scandi
navians eased into the process and glided away.
Compare the late industrial development of Mediterranean Europe,
in particular of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. All of these were hurt by re
ligious and intellectual intolerance, and all were plagued by political in
stability. Spain, though nominally united, was divided as before by
regional autonomies, and the weakness of central authority invited for
eign intrusion and dynastic pretensions, with intermittent revolution
and civil war. Portugal, better knit, was politically much the same, with
the exception that the monarchy could flee to Brazil and wait for bet
ter times. Italy remained fragmented, with Lombardy still in Habs-
burg (Austrian) hands as late as 1860 and Venetia to 1866; the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and the south) under Bourbon
rule until 1861; the papal states and Rome under clerical government
until 1870.