Migration was at the core of early modern life; the excess mortality of the Early Modern City meant that to keep status quo or to grow, the City relied on migrants to expand.
Fewer opportunities for work and social advancement in the rural areas of Western Europe meant that people there were relying on the City in a similar manner.
This paper explores the characteristics and life cycles of the sailors who travelled great distances to find work in Copenhagen and Stockholm, and contributed to the commercial expansion of the two Scandinavian core cities during the eighteenth century. In doing so, the paper points to two different types of migration and migrants – a sedentary and non-sedentary type – who showed different characteristics but both contributed to the expansion of the cities’ labour market.
When examining labour migration focus has frequently been on the classic push/pull economic relationship; this has been seen as the primary reason for sailors and people in general to migrate. Aske Brock and Dr Jelle van Lottum’s paper seeks to nuance this picture by investigating human capital levels, life cycles of the mariners and the possibility for social advancement for migrant: it challenges the notion that muscle was all which was needed in the maritime sector.
Keywords: Long Eighteenth Century, Labour Migration, Maritime labour market, Human Capital, Social Advancement</strong.