Breaking Even: Political Economy and Private Enterprise in the Norwegian Glass Industry, 1739-1803

Rolv Petter Amdam; Robert  Fredona; Sophus A. Reinert

Article | Business History Review | Summer 2019

Breaking Even: Political Economy and Private Enterprise in the Norwegian Glass Industry, 1739-1803

by Rolv Petter Amdam, Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert

Abstract

Using internal debates and surviving account books, this article traces the 18th-century history of the Norwegian glass industry, created to exploit Norway's immense natural resource wealth, and of the chartered company that would later become Norway's iconic Christiania Glasmagasin. The investors in the company, many of them among Norway's “founding fathers,” were individually responsible for its losses and it operated, remarkably, at an annual loss for nearly five decades. The article asks why, beyond the anticipation of a royal import ban on foreign glass, private investors might have continued to accept such losses. It focuses on tensions between cameralist and liberal ideologies in the creation of an important national industry and on older (and perhaps more sustainable) ways of thinking about profitability.

Keywords: glass industry; natural resources; profitability; political economy; cameralism; liberalization; patriotism; Profit; Natural Environment; Business History; Norway;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Amdam, Rolv Petter, Robert Fredona, and Sophus A. Reinert. "Breaking Even: Political Economy and Private Enterprise in the Norwegian Glass Industry, 1739-1803." Business History Review 93, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 275–317.

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Breaking Even: Political Economy and Private Enterprise in the Norwegian Glass Industry, 1739-1803

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