INTRODUCTION

Malmö is a port-town situated on the south part of the Swedish west coast (Figure 5.1). With about 250,000 inhabitants, it is the third largest town in Sweden. In 1820, when this investigation begins, it had a population of 6,700 rising to 25,000 by 1870 and to 85,000 by 1914, with a rate of growth considerably in excess of that of most other Swedish towns, especially prior to 1870. Malmö was the chief town for the export of the Scandinavian grain surplus (Fridlizius, 1981; 1984a; 1990), exports of which began to increase as early as the second half of the eighteenth century, the main destinations being Gothenburg, Stockholm and the towns of the Gulf of Bothnia. Following the repeal of the British Corn Laws, this internal trade was increasingly replaced by a growth in exports for the English market. In the late-nineteenth century, butter replaced grain as the main export product and the town became one of the main ports in Sweden for exporting this commodity. Imports tended to consist of colonial goods from Copenhagen, Stettin and other German towns, together with coal and manufactured goods from England. Foreign trade during this period was a means by which intensive economic development spread from a perceptible centre, in the first place England, to outlying parts of the world. The process of ‘give and take’, brought about by foreign trade between highly industrialized and less developed areas, assumed an exceptional importance for economic growth, not least for the urban area under immediate consideration. Did this growing trade function of Malmö also mean that the town became a focal point for the import of different diseases which then spread over the whole country? Or did Malmö, as a port-town, develop a special demographic pattern in relation to mortality levels and trends during the period under consideration? These are the main questions that will be confronted in the present chapter.

From a methodological point of view, an attempt is made here to address these questions by employing a long-run analysis; for the whole period a relatively homogeneous mortality series has been constructed, taking into consideration not only the age-specific development of mortality in Malmö, but also focusing on disease- and sex-specific trends.