At the Baltic gate

In the late eighteenth century, Copenhagen was the second biggest urban centre in the Baltic Sea area. Its port was both an international terminal and the paramount shipping centre of the Danish–Norwegian monarchy. In the 1750s, over 80 per cent of arriving ships still came from the different parts of the monarchy, but this proportion diminished gradually to two-thirds and, in terms of tonnage, foreign vessels probably accounted for about 60 per cent of the incoming cargo at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Traffic in the port of Copenhagen grew slightly faster than overall shipping through the Danish Sound and, at the end of the period, Copenhagen was, on a par with St. Petersburg, one of the busiest ports in the Baltic Sea area. Its role in the commodity flows between eastern Baltic ports and western Europe remained modest, but in several other trades it became more closely integrated with international shipping

Baltic sea · Economic history · Political science · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Geology · Oceanography