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  • Summer 2019
  • Article
  • Business History Review

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

By: Rolv Petter Amdam, Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert
  • Format:Print
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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

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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About The Author

Sophus A. Reinert

Business, Government and the International Economy
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  • Korea: The Miracle on the Han River By: Forest Reinhardt, Sophus A. Reinert, Dawn Lau and Jonathan Schlefer
  • Before Plagiarism: Lawyers and Copynorms in Europe, 1300–1600 By: Robert Fredona and Sophus A. Reinert
  • Regimes of Political Economy By: Rawi Abdelal and Sophus A. Reinert
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