Across the Oceans : Development of Overseas Business Information Transmission, 1815-1875

Earlier studies have shown that the speed of information transmission developed radically during the 19th century. The fast development was mainly due to the change from sailing ships and horse-driven coaches to steamers and railways, as well as the telegraph. Speed of information transmission has normally been measured by calculating the duration between writing and receiving a letter, or between an important event and the time when the news was published elsewhere. As overseas mail was generally carried by ships, the history of communications and maritime history are closely related. This study also brings a postal historical aspect to the academic discussion. Additionally, there is another new aspect included. In business enterprises, information flows generally consisted of multiple transactions. Although fast one-way information was often crucial, e.g. news of a changing market situation, at least equally important was that there was a possibility to react rapidly. To examine the development of business information transmission, the duration of mail transport has been measured by a systematic and commensurable method, using consecutive information circles per year as the principal tool for measurement. The study covers a period of six decades, several of the world's most important trade routes and different mail-carrying systems operated by merchant ships, sailing packets and several nations' steamship services. The main sources have been the sailing data of mail-carrying ships and correspondence of several merchant houses in England. As the world's main trade routes had their specific historical backgrounds with different businesses, interests and needs, the systems for information transmission did not develop similarly or simultaneously. It was a process lasting several decades, initiated by the idea of organizing sailings in a regular line system. The evolution proceeded generally as follows: originally there was a more or less irregular system, then a regular system and finally a more frequent regular system of mail services. The trend was from sail to steam, but both these means of communication improved following the same scheme. Faster sailings alone did not radically improve the number of consecutive information circles per year, if the communication was not frequent enough. Neither did improved frequency advance the information circulation if the trip was very long or if the sailings were overlapping instead of complementing each other. The speed of information transmission could be improved by speeding up the voyage itself (technological improvements, minimizing the waiting time at ports of call, etc.) but especially by organizing sailings so that the recipients had the possibility to reply to arriving mails without unnecessary delay. It took two to three decades before the mail-carrying shipping companies were able to organize their sailings in an optimal way. Strategic shortcuts over isthmuses (e.g. Panama, Suez) together with the cooperation between steamships and railways enabled the most effective improvements in global communications before the introduction of the telegraph.

Järjestö jäänmurtajana : Suomen merimiesunioni työmarkkinaosapuolena ja suomalaisten laivatyöntekijöiden turvallisuuden vankentajana 1944-1980

Like an Icebreaker: The Finnish Seamen s Union as collective bargaining maverick and champion of sailors social safety 1944-1980. The Finnish Seamen's Union (FSU), which was established on a national basis in 1920, was one of the first Finnish trade unions to succeed in collective bargaining. In the early 1930s, the gains made in the late 1920s were lost, due to politically based internal rivalries, the Great Depression, and a disastrous strike. Unexpectedly the FSU survived and went on promoting the well-being of its members even during World War II. After the war the FSU was in an exceptionally favorable position to exploit the introduction of coordinated capitalism, which was based on social partnership between unions, employers and government. Torpedoes, mines and confiscations had caused severe losses to the Finnish merchant marine. Both ship-owners and government alike understood the crucial importance of using the remaining national shipping capacity effectively. The FSU could no longer be crushed, and so, in 1945, the union was allowed to turn all ocean-going Finnish ships into closed shops. The FSU also had another source of power. After the sailors of the Finnish icebreaker fleet also joined its ranks, the FSU could, in effect, block Finnish foreign trade in wintertime. From the late 1940s to the 1960s the union started and won numerous icebreaker strikes. Finnish seamen were thus granted special pension rights, reductions on income taxes and import duties, and other social privileges. The FSU could neither be controlled by union federations nor intimidated by employers or governments. The successful union and its tactically clever chairperson, Niilo Välläri, were continuously but erroneously accused of syndicalism. Välläri did not aim for socialism but wanted the Finnish seamen to get all the social benefits that capitalism could possibly offer. Välläri s policy was successfully followed by the FSU until the late 1980s when Finnish ship-owners were allowed to flag their vessels outside the national registry. Since then the FSU has been on the defensive and has yielded to pay cuts. The FSU members have not lost their social benefits, but they are under constant fear of losing their jobs to cheap foreign labor.

Kalleuksia isänmaalle : Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä taiteen keräilijänä ja taidehistorioitsijana

Treasures of a Patriot Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä as an art collector and art historian Treasures of a Patriot is a study of Eliel Aspelin-Haapkylä (1847 - 1917), professor of aesthetics and modern literature, as an art collector and art historian. The study combines the biographical perspective, art history as a discipline in the 19th-century Finland, and Aspelin-Haapkylä s art historical scholarship. My intention was to answer to questions such as what kind of an art collector an academic art historian was, why he collected art and cultural-historical objects and what the purpose of his collecting was. Aspelin-Haapkylä was an ideal choice for the main character because the ideologies of the era, culture, art and European ideas, especially German ideas about museums, are intertwined in his life. In addition, the ideas of the Fennomen can be found in his ideological background. Together with his wife, Ida Aspelin-Haapkylä, he bequeathed a rich donation to the National Museum of Finland, and a wideranging archive concerning the collection, his writings, and letters to the Finnish Literature Society. I have highlighted the materials from the archives related both to the collection and art history, especially the letters between Aspelin-Haapkylä and artists, fellow members of academia, his spouse and relatives. The content and the structure of the research are divided into seven main chapters. First, I discuss Susan M. Pearce s theory of collecting and the history of collecting. I also introduce some other art historians who were private collectors. The late 19th-century Fennomen and other nationalists who were active in cultural life and the arts, are introduced in the second chapter. In the third I deal with Aspelin-Haapkylä s collection of European art combined with his writings, his early published works, studies and many trips to Europe. The fourth and the fifth chapters are dedicated to those Finnish artists who he wrote biographies of, and the artists of his own era whom he supported. The sixth chapter discusses institutions and channels of influence and power through which the initiative to found the National Museum of Finland, his action in the Antell Delegation and co-operation with the art merchant Henryk Bukowski, rise up to the fore. Finally, I process the last will and the fate of the collection from 1917 until 1932. As an appendix, I have included a report and reconstruction of the art collection. The catalogue is based on the words in Aspelin-Haapkylä s the so-called blue notebooks, which I have completed with additions from other sources.

Kognitiva system i namngivningen av finländska handelsfartyg 1838-1938

This dissertation is an onomastic study of Finland s stock of ship names (nautonomasticon) recorded over the period 1838 1938. The primary material investigated consists of 2 066 examples of ship names from the fleets of coastal towns, distributed over five sample years. The material is supplemented with two bodies of comparative data; one that consists of 2 535 examples of boat names from the archipelago area at the corresponding time, and another that comprises 482 examples of eighteenth century Finnish ship names. This study clarifies the categories of names that appear the frequency of the names, formation, morphology, linguistic origin, functions, and semantic qualities. By comparing the material with boat names from previous centuries, and from other countries, the characteristics of Finnish vessel names are further highlighted. Additional clarification is brought to the chronological, regional, and social variations, and to the emergence of various forms of systematic naming. This dissertation builds on older research from other countries, and uses traditional onomastic methods alongside a more modern methodology. The approach is interdisciplinary, meaning that the names are explored using facts not only from nautical history, but also from a range of other historical disciplines such as economics, culture, art, and literature. In addition, the approach is socio-onomastic, i.e. that the variations in names are studied in a societal context. Using a synchronised perspective, cognitive linguistic theories have provided the tools for this exploration into the metaphorical and the prototypical meaning of the names, and the semantic domains that the names create. The quantitative analysis has revealed the overall picture of Finnish boat names. Personal names, names from mythology, and place names, emerge as significant categories, alongside nonproprial names in Swedish and Finnish. The interdisciplinary perspective has made it possible to explain certain trends in the stock of boat names, for example, the predisposition towards names from classical mythology, the breakthrough of names taken from the national epos Kalevala, names in the Finnish language from around the middle of the nineteenth century, and the continuing rise of place names during the latter part of the period 1838 1938. The socio-onomastic perspective has also identified clear differences between those ship names used in towns, and those ship names used in the archipelago, and it has clarified how naming conventions tend to spread from town centres to peripheral areas. The cognitive linguistic methods have revealed that the greater part of the vessel names can be interpreted as metaphors, in particular personifications, and that many names are related in their content and also form semantic networks and cognitive systems. The results indicate that there is a mental nautonomasticon that consists of a standard set of traditional ship names, but they also reveal the existence of conscious or unconscious cognitive systems (rules and conventions) that guide the naming of boats.

Prisoners of Freedom : A Study on Worldview of Contemporary Finnish Seamen

The aim of this study was to look at the metaphors contemporary merchant seamen use for their ship and for their life at sea. The larger theoretical framework of the study consisted of worldview, which is one of the key concepts of comparative religion. The data for the study consisted of 91 interviews with Finnish professional seafarers that were conducted in 1996, 1999, and 2000, field journals that were written during two periods of fieldwork in 1996 and 1999-2000, and correspondence with some of the Finnish seafarers during 1999-2002. The data was analyzed by using metaphor theory. The study consists of two parts. The first part is ethnography of modern Finnish shipworld. This entails work, organization, hierarchy and gender. The second part discusses the metaphors the seafarers use. The study belongs to the field of anthropology of religions which is part of comparative religion.

Diffusive and ship-mediated spread of dinoflagellates in the Baltic Sea with Prorocentrum minimum as a special case

In this thesis the role played by expansive and introduced species in the phytoplankton ecology of the Baltic Sea was investigated. The aims were threefold. First, the studies investigated the resting stages of dinoflagellates, which were transported into the Baltic Sea via shipping and were able to germinate under the ambient, nutrient-rich, brackish water conditions. The studies also estimated which factors favoured the occurrence and spread of P. minimum in the Baltic Sea and discussed the identification of this morphologically variable species. In addition, the classification of phytoplankton species recently observed in the Baltic Sea was discussed. Incubation of sediments from four Finnish ports and 10 ships ballast tanks revealed that the sediments act as sources of living dinoflagellates and other phytoplankton. Dinoflagellates germinated from all ports detected and from 90% of ballast tanks. The concentrations of cells germinating from ballast tank sediments were mostly low compared with the acceptable cell concentrations set by the International Maritime Organization s (IMO s) International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships Ballast Water and Sediments. However, the IMO allows such high concentrations of small cells in the discharged ballast water that the total number of cells in large ballast water tanks can be very high. Prorocentrum minimum occurred in the Baltic Sea annually but with no obvious trend in the 10-year timespan from 1993 to 2002. The species occurred under wide ranges of temperatures and salinities and the abundance of the species was positively related especially to the presence of organic nitrogen and phosphorus. This indicated that the species was favoured by increased organic nutrient loading and runoff from land and rivers. The cell shape of P. minimum varied from triangular to oval-round, but morphological fine details indicated that only one morphospecies was present. P. minimum also is, according to present knowledge, the only potentially harmful phytoplankton species that has recently expanded widely into new areas of the Baltic Sea.