Right in the centre of Gothenburg is the old East India Company House (now the City Museum) which was once the hub of Sweden's trade with the Far East.
Most seafaring nations in the 18th century had an East India company which held a monopoly on trade with the East. Scottish merchants were not part of the lucrative dealings of the English, so Scot Colin Campbell, in association with Niclas Sahlgren in Gothenburg, devised an idea for a Swedish East India Company, which would be Sweden's first international trading company.
The company started up in 1731, and the next year the first ship set off for the Far East. This made Gothenburg a European centre of trade in products from China and the East. The main goods were silk, tea, furniture, porcelain, precious stones and other distinctive luxury items.The Swedish East India Company was extremely successful, making massive profits until the end of the 1700s. In all the company dispatched 132 expeditions in its 74 years of business.Each voyage was set up as a separate enterprise, and once the ship had returned and its cargo had been sold, the profits were shared and all the ledgers burnt. This is why it's hard to calculate the actual size of the dividends.Several Swedish and Scottish businessmen were part-owners, including Chalmers, Finlay, Sahlgren and Alströmer.
Trade with China saw the arrival of some new customs in Sweden. The Chinese cultural influence increased, and tea, rice, arrak punch and new root vegetables started appearing in Swedish homes.Middle and upper class families bought entire porcelain services with their monograms on.The last ship from East Asia arrived in Gothenburg in 1806, by which time the great East India era was already over.
However, profits from the trade formed the foundation of donations which founded such institutions as Sahlgrenska Hospital and Chalmers University of Technology.