The Sound Toll Accounts and the Balance of English Trade with the Baltic Zone 1565-1646

Abstract

The trade balance between England and the Baltic zone in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been debated on the basis of the printed Sound Tables. Hinton and Zins reached conflicting conclusions: Zins argued for a broadly positive English balance from the founding of the Eastland Company, while Hinton expressed reservations about the completeness of cargo declarations. A rigorous quantitative estimate using the manuscript toll accounts has not yet been attempted.
This article investigates the trade balance of English merchants with the Baltic zone in 1565-1646, drawing on both the printed Sound Tables and the unpublished manuscript Sound Toll Accounts in the Copenhagen Rigsarkivet. It tests the representativeness of the sample years, proposes a method for estimating the balance from manuscript sources, and examines the consequences of English trade structure for the Polish ports of Gdańsk and Elbląg.
The study uses the Sound Tables (Tabeller), manuscript Sound Toll Accounts from the Rigsarkivet, and secondary literature by Hinton, Zins, Jeannin, and Heckscher. Cloth export figures and ship counts are used to assess the representativeness of sample years.
The analysis shows that the English trade balance with the Baltic was strongly favourable throughout the period, in contrast with the passive balance of the Dutch and French. English cloth exports consistently outweighed Baltic imports. The manuscript toll accounts reveal discrepancies with the printed Tables and enable more precise cargo valuation. The concentration of English trade in Elbląg through the Eastland Company created a high negative marine trade balance for that port, while Dutch-dominated Gdańsk maintained a high positive balance. Where the trade balance could not be settled in goods, the transfer of specie was the regulating factor. The Eastland Company position in Elbląg is shown to derive structurally from the monetary difficulties generated by the English trade surplus.