In the middle of the 19th century Johan Gripenstedt realised something that his countrymen, like other Europeans, are now in danger of forgetting. By opening up the economy to trade, the then finance minister understood, he could make Sweden more hospitable to entrepreneurs — and in just a few generations, that decision would turn one of Europe’s poorest countries into one of the world’s richest.
Our ancestors were among the Swedes who seized that opportunity to prosper. One of them, Erling Persson, in 1947 opened a womenswear shop in Västerås in central Sweden that was to grow into H&M, whose 3,600 stores across 59 countries sell goods produced all over the world. A century earlier Axel Johnson started his first trade office exporting Swedish iron and importing English coal, a foundation on which his descendants built businesses across Europe and America.
Trade is like a machine that can convert whatever you are good at producing into things you would produce less well. As Gripenstedt said, it allows “the abundance of one country to fill the wants of the other”, creating opportunities even for those that lack the advantages of accumulated capital and advanced education. And he was certain that trade would make people see each other more as partners than enemies, and so facilitate tolerance, respect and peace.