Klas Rönnbäck

Professor

Economic

History

Telephone

+46 31-786 45 20

Mail

klas.ronnback@econhist.gu.se

Visiting address

Viktoriagatan 13 plan 6

41125 Göteborg

Room number

616

Postal address

Box 625

40530 Göteborg

About Klas Rönnbäck

On other web sites

Google Scholar

Research areas

Economic development
Colonialism
Slavery
Capitalism

Research in progress

Reversal of fortune or persistence of wealth? Institutions and wealth inequality in a Caribbean plantation economy, 1750s to 1917
Imperial Profits: The return on investments in Africa, 1869-1969
The profitability of slavery and the slave trade revisited

Teaching areas

Global economic history
Economic history of slavery
Labour in economic and historical perspective

Selected publications

Klas Rönnbäck & Dimitrios Theodoridis (forthcoming): "Cotton cultivation under colonial rule in India in the nineteenth century from a comparative perspective", accepted for publication in Economic History Review.

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg & Stefania Galli (2021): "A colonial cash cow: the return on investments in British Malaya, 1889-1969", Cliometrica.

Klas Rönnbäck & Oskar Broberg (2019): Capital and Colonialism: The Return on Investments in Africa, 1869-1969. Palgrave Macmillan.

Klas Rönnbäck (2018): "On the economic importance of the slave plantation complex to the British economy during the eighteenth century: a value-added approach". Journal of Global History.

Klas Rönnbäck (2016): Labour and Living Standards in Pre-Colonial West Africa: The Case of the Gold Coast. Routledge.

Publications

The Gains of Going Global: The Return on Investments in International Copper-Mining during the Second Industrial
Revolution

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg, Dimitrios Theodoridis
Global History of Copper (edited by Robrecht Declercq, Hans Otto Frøland and D. J. Money) - 2022-01-01
Fool’s Gold: The Return on Investments in Global Mining,
1869-1969

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg, Dimitrios Theodoridis
Journal of European Economic History - 2022-01-01
Cotton cultivation under colonial rule in India in the nineteenth century from a comparative
perspective

Klas Rönnbäck, Dimitrios Theodoridis
Economic history review - 2021-01-01
Were slaves cheap laborers? A comparative study of labor costs in the antebellum U.S.
South

Klas Rönnbäck
Labor history - 2021-01-01
A colonial cash cow: the return on investments in British Malaya,
1889-1969

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg, Stefania Galli
Cliometrica - 2021-01-01
Governance, value-added and rents in plantation slavery-based
value-chains

Klas Rönnbäck
Slavery & Abolition - 2021-01-01
Land distribution and Inequality in a Black Settler Colony: The case of Sierra Leone,
1792-1831

Stefania Galli, Klas Rönnbäck
Economic history review - 2021-01-01
The Built Environment of the Precolonial West African Coast: Materials, Functions and Housing
Standards

Klas Rönnbäck
Journal of West African History - 2020-01-01
Colonialism and rural inequality in Sierra Leone: an egalitarian
experiment

Stefania Galli, Klas Rönnbäck
European Review of Economic History - 2020-01-01
Factor endowments and international trade: a study of land embodied in trade on the Baltic Sea region,
1750–1856

Dimitrios Theodoridis, Klas Rönnbäck, Werner Scheltjens
European Review of Economic History - 2020-01-01
Aednan och Bolaget: ett kolonialt perspektiv på gruvbrytning i Sápmi vid 1900-talets
början

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg
Historisk Tidskrift - 2020-01-01
Swedish East India trade in a value-added analysis, c.
1730-1800

Klas Rönnbäck, L. Muller
Scandinavian Economic History Review - 2020-01-01
Internationell handel och handelspolitik – Om handelns vinnare och
förlorare

Ellen Hillbom, Klas Rönnbäck
Lena Andersson-Skog, Oskar Broberg, Rodney Edvinsson, Kerstin Enflo & Kristina Lilja (eds., 2020): Vad är ekonomisk historia? - 2020-01-01
Vestindien: St. Croix, St. Thomas og St. Jan (Danmark og
kolonierne)

Klas Rönnbäck
Historisk Tidsskrift - 2020-01-01
The Crumble in the Jungle: The London Financial Press and the Boom-and-Bust Cycles of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation,
1895–1914

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg
Enterprise & society - 2020-01-01
The business of barter on the pre-colonial Gold
Coast

Klas Rönnbäck
Economic History of Developing Regions - 2020-01-01
The Slave Trades out of
Africa

Klas Rönnbäck
Ewout Frankema, Ellen Hillbom, Felix Meier zu Selhausen (eds), The History of African Development - 2020-01-01
Reversal of fortune or persistence of wealth? Comparative evidence on wealth inequality in the Danish West Indies in the mid-nineteenth
century

Dimitrios Theodoridis, Stefania Galli, Klas Rönnbäck
Swedish Economic History Conferece, Uppsala - 2019-01-01
Kolonialism, kapital och ekonomisk
utveckling

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg
Ekonomisk Debatt - 2019-01-01
Working in the ‘White Man’s Grave’: Wages and Migration from Europe to the Gold Coast in the Eighteenth
Century

Klas Rönnbäck, Stefan Öberg, Stefania Galli
Journal of Migration History - 2019-01-01
Enlightenment, Scientific Exploration and Abolitionism Anders Sparrman’s and Carl Bernhard Wadström’s colonial encounters in Senegal, 1787–1788 and the British abolitionist
movement

Klas Rönnbäck
The Moment is Now: Carl Bernhard Wadström’s Revolutionary Voice on Human Trafficking and the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Edited by Anders Hallengren - 2019-01-01
Reversal of fortune or persistence of wealth? Comparative evidence on wealth inequality in the Danish West Indies in the mid-nineteenth
century

Dimitrios Theodoridis, Stefania Galli, Klas Rönnbäck
European Historical Economics Society Conferece, Paris - 2019-01-01
Capital and Colonialism: The Return on British Investments in Africa
1869-1969

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg
- 2019-01-01
African agricultural productivity and the transatlantic slave trade: evidence from Senegambia in the nineteenth
century

Klas Rönnbäck, Dimitrios Theodoridis
Economic history review - 2019-01-01
On the economic importance of the slave plantation complex to the British economy during the eighteenth century: a value-added
approach

Klas Rönnbäck
Journal of Global History - 2018-01-01
Scandinavia in the Atlantic
World

Klas Rönnbäck
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History - 2018-01-01
The Speed of Early Modern Shipping in the Baltic – a Tentative Exploration using
STRO

Klas Rönnbäck
Jan Willem Veluwenkamp and Werner Scheltjens (eds.), Early Modern Shipping and Trade: Novel Approaches Using Sound Toll Registers Online - 2018-01-01
All that glitters is not gold: The return on British investments in South Africa,
1869-1969

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg
Journal for Studies in Economics and Econometrics - 2018-01-01
African agricultural productivity and the transatlantic slave trade: evidence from Senegambia in the nineteenth
century

Klas Rönnbäck, Dimitrios Theodoridis
XVIII World Economic History Conference, Boston, USA - 2018-01-01
Factor endowments, ghost acreages and international trade networks: a study of land embodied in Baltic trade,
1750-1850

Dimitrios Theodoridis, Klas Rönnbäck, Werner Scheltjens
XVIII World Economic History Conference, Boston, USA - 2018-01-01
The economic importance of the slave plantation complex to the British economy in the eighteenth century: a value-added
approach

Klas Rönnbäck
XVIII World Economic History Conference, Boston, USA - 2018-01-01
The challenge of studying inflation in pre-colonial
Africa

Klas Rönnbäck
History in Africa - A Journal of Method - 2018-01-01
Land Inequality in an Egalitarian Utopia: the case of Sierra Leone in the early 19th
century

Stefania Galli, Klas Rönnbäck
European Economic History Society Conference - 2017-01-01
The rhythm of life and work: Introduction to a special issue in honor of Professor Christer
Lundh

Stefan Öberg, Susanna Fellman, Klas Rönnbäck
Essays in Economic and Business History - 2017-01-01
Socioeconomic Differences in Mortality among European Settlers in Pre-Colonial Western
Africa

Stefan Öberg, Klas Rönnbäck
Essays in Economic & Business History - 2017-01-01
The sink as a source: safeguarding the raw water source of Gothenburg, Sweden, 1860 to
1980

Klas Rönnbäck
Environment and History - 2017-01-01
Historicizing the environmental Kuznets Curve: water pollution in Göta Älv, Sweden,
1895–2000

Klas Rönnbäck, Staffan Granér
Water History - 2016-01-01
Labour and Living Standards in Pre-Colonial West Africa: The Case of the Gold
Coast

Klas Rönnbäck
- 2016-01-01
Imperial profits – the return on British investments in Africa,
1869-1969

Klas Rönnbäck, Oskar Broberg
VI Annual Meeting of the African Economic History Network - 2016-01-01
Pre-colonial West African Inflation,
Again

Klas Rönnbäck
African Studies Association 2016 Conference - 2016-01-01
Mortality among European settlers in pre-colonial West Africa: The “White Man’s Grave”
revisited

Stefan Öberg, Klas Rönnbäck
- 2016-01-01
Colonial Institutions and Pre-Industrial Inequality: rural Sierra Leone in 1831, the most equal society of its
time

Klas Rönnbäck, Stefania Galli
6th African Economic History Network Meeting - 2016-01-01
Factor endowments and the Baltic trade – “Ghost acreage“ calculations based on
STRO

Dimitrios Theodoridis, Klas Rönnbäck, Scheltjens Werner
Transport statistics in pre- and early industrial economic history: The challenges and opportunities of Sound Toll Registers Online International Conference, 26-28 Oct. 2016, Leipzig - 2016-01-01
African agricultural productivity and the transatlantic slave trade: evidence from Senegambia in the nineteenth
century

Klas Rönnbäck, Dimitrios Theodoridis
African Economic History Network, VI Annual Conference 21-22 Oct. 2016, Brighton, UK - 2016-01-01
Colonial Institutions and Pre-Industrial Inequality: rural Sierra Leone in 1831, the most equal society of its
time

Klas Rönnbäck, Stefania Galli
2nd European Society of Historical Demography Conference, 21-24 September 2016, Leuven - 2016-01-01
Transaction costs of early modern multinational enterprise: measuring the transatlantic information lag of the British Royal African Company and its successor,
1680–1818

Klas Rönnbäck
Business History - 2016-01-01
Waged Slavery – Incentivizing Unfree Labour at Cape Coast Castle in the Eighteenth
Century

Klas Rönnbäck
Slavery & Abolition - 2016-01-01
The transatlantic slave trade and social stratification on the Gold
Coast

Klas Rönnbäck
Economic History of Developing Regions - 2015-01-01
Kåre Lauring, Slaverne dansede og holdt sig lystige: en fortælling om den danske
slavehandel

Klas Rönnbäck
Sjuttonhundratal - 2015-01-01
Joachim Östlund, Saltets
pris

Klas Rönnbäck
Historisk Tidskrift - 2015-01-01
Sean Stilwell, Slavery and slaving in African
history

Klas Rönnbäck
Economic history review - 2015-01-01
Working in the ‘White Man’s Grave’ - Compensating Wage Differentials and Epidemiological Risk on the 18th century Gold
Coast

Klas Rönnbäck, Stefania Galli, Stefan Öberg
10th New Frontiers in African Economic History Workshop, 30-31 October 2015, Wageningen 2015 - 2015-01-01
The transatlantic slave trade and social stratification on the Gold
Coast

Klas Rönnbäck
World Economic History Congress. 3-7 August 2015. Kyoto, Japan. - 2015-01-01
Working in the ‘White Man’s Grave’ - Compensating Wage Differentials and Epidemiological Risk on the 18th century Gold
Coast

Klas Rönnbäck, Stefan Öberg, Stefania Galli
11th European Historical Economics Society Conference, 4-5 September 2015, Pisa - 2015-01-01
The White Man’s Grave revisited - settler mortality rates on the pre-colonial Gold
Coast

Stefan Öberg, Klas Rönnbäck
11th European Historical Economics Society Conference - 2015-01-01
Slavskeppet Brooks och myten om den rationella kapitalismens
humanism

Klas Rönnbäck
Ord & Bild - 2015-01-01
Copper sheathing and the British slave
trade

Peter Solar, Klas Rönnbäck
Economic history review - 2015-01-01
Interest-group lobbying for free trade: an empirical case study of international trade policy
formation

Klas Rönnbäck
Journal of International Trade and Economic Development - 2015-01-01
The Idle and the Industrious: European Ideas about the African Work Ethic in Pre-colonial West
Africa

Klas Rönnbäck
History in Africa - A Journal of Method - 2014-01-01
SWEET BUSINESS: QUANTIFYING THE VALUE ADDED IN THE BRITISH COLONIAL SUGAR TRADE IN THE 18TH
CENTURY

Klas Rönnbäck
Revista De Historia Economica - 2014-01-01
Climate, conflicts and variations in prices on pre-colonial West African markets for staple
crops

Klas Rönnbäck
Economic history review - 2014-01-01
Sweet Business – Quantifying the Value-Added in the British Colonial Sugar Trade in the Eighteenth
Century

Klas Rönnbäck
Revista de Historia Económica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History - 2014-01-01
’The Men Seldom Suffer a Woman to Sit Down’: The Historical Development of the Stereotype of the ‘Lazy
African’

Klas Rönnbäck
African Studies - 2014-01-01
Living standards on the pre-colonial Gold Coast: a quantitative estimate of African laborers’ welfare
ratios

Klas Rönnbäck
European Review of Economic History - 2014-01-01
Slave ownership and fossil fuel usage – a
commentary

Klas Rönnbäck
Climatic Change - 2014-01-01
Atlantic Early-Modern Migrations and Economic
Globalization

Klas Rönnbäck
Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration - 2013-01-01
Climate, conflicts and variations in prices on pre-colonial West African markets for staple
crops

Klas Rönnbäck
Crossroads in African Studies, Birmingham, 4-6 September 2013 - 2013-01-01
Climate, conflicts and variations in prices on pre-colonial West African markets for staple
crops

Klas Rönnbäck
European Historical Economics Society Conference, London, 6th and 7th September 2013 - 2013-01-01
Climate, conflicts and variations in prices on pre-colonial West African markets for staple
crops

Klas Rönnbäck
Svenska Ekonomisk-Historiska Mötet 2013, Lund 4-5 Oktober 2013 - 2013-01-01
Profiting from the production of
sugar

Klas Rönnbäck
ASOCIACIÓN DE HISTORIA ECONÓMICA DEL CARIBE (AHEC) II CONGRESO, June 26- 29, 2013 - 2013-01-01
Triangelhandeln i
Atlanten

Klas Rönnbäck
Katarina Streiffert Eikeland & Madelaine Miller (red.), En maritim värld – från stenåldern till idag. - 2013-01-01
Enlightenment, Scientific Exploration and Abolitionism Anders Sparrman’s and Carl Bernhard Wadström’s colonial encounters in Senegal, 1787–1788 and the British abolitionist
movement

Klas Rönnbäck
Slavery & Abolition - 2013-01-01
An end and a new beginning: disintegration of inter-continental commodity markets during the Revolutionary Era, 1770s to
1820s

Klas Rönnbäck
Jahrbuch für europäische Überseegeschichte - 2012-01-01
Living standards on the pre-colonial Gold
Coast

Klas Rönnbäck
The global and long-term development of real wages: methods, problems and possibilities, workshop, Amsterdam, november 2012 - 2012-01-01
Living standards on the pre-colonial Gold
Coast

Klas Rönnbäck
World Economic History Congress, Stellenbosch, july 2012 - 2012-01-01
The Speed of Ships and Shipping Productivity in the Age of
Sail

Klas Rönnbäck
European Review of Economic History - 2012-01-01
Power, Plenty and Pressure groups: A comparative study of British and Danish Colonialism in the West Indies and the Role of the State,
1768-1772

Klas Rönnbäck
Journal of Early American History - 2011-01-01
Consumers and slavery: diversified markets for plantation produce and the survival of slavery in the 19th
century

Klas Rönnbäck
Fernand Braudel Center Review - 2011-01-01
Economic Growth and Clean Water in the Göta River A Pilot Study of Collective Action and the Environmental Kuznets Curve
1895-2000

Klas Rönnbäck, Staffan Granér
Ekonomisk-historiska mötet 2011 - 2011-01-01
Konsumenter och
slaveri

Klas Rönnbäck
Svenska Historikermötet 2011: Koloniala drömmar och merkantilistisk praktik. Svenskt 1700-tal i Medelhavet och på Atlanten. - 2011-01-01
Economic Growth and Clean Water in the Göta River A Pilot Study of Collective Action and the Environmental Kuznets Curve
1895-2000

Klas Rönnbäck, Staffan Granér
The Adlerbert Research Foundation Jubilee Conference, Gothenburg, 2011 - 2011-01-01
The Speed of Ocean Shipping and Shipping Productivity, c.
1625–1862

Klas Rönnbäck
European Historical Economics Society Conference, Dublin, 2011 - 2011-01-01
Economic Growth and Clean Water in the Göta River A Pilot Study of Collective Action and the Environmental Kuznets Curve
1895-2000

Staffan Granér, Klas Rönnbäck
- 2011-01-01
Economic Growth and Clean Water in the Göta River - Collective Action and the Environmental Kuznets Curve,
1895-2000

Klas Rönnbäck, Staffan Granér
American Society for Environmental History Annual Conference - 2011-01-01
Who Stood to Gain from Colonialism? A Case Study of Early Modern European Colonialism in the
Caribbean

Klas Rönnbäck
Small is Beautiful? Interlopers and Smaller Trading Nations in the Pre-industrial Period. Edited by Markus A. Denzel, Jan de Vries, and Philipp Robinson Rössner - 2011-01-01
Productivity change in early modern shipping – speed of shipping in the Baltic
trade

Klas Rönnbäck
Soundtoll Registers Online. To the Test, Leeuwarden, 28-29 October, 2010 - 2010-01-01
Who Stood to Gain from Colonialism? A Case Study of Early Modern European Colonialism in the
Caribbean

Klas Rönnbäck
Social Science History Association, 35th Annual Meeting, Chicago, November 18-21 2010 - 2010-01-01
The Sound Toll Chamber Commodity Records: estimating the reliability of a potential source to international trade
history

Klas Rönnbäck
International Journal of Maritime History - 2010-01-01
An early-modern consumer revolution in the
Baltic?

Klas Rönnbäck
Scandinavian Journal of History - 2010-01-01
Balancing the Baltic trade: colonial commodities in the trade on the Baltic ,
1773-1856

Klas Rönnbäck
Scandinavian Economic History Review - 2010-01-01
New and old peripheries - Britain, the Baltic and the Americas in the Great
Divergence

Klas Rönnbäck
Journal of Global History - 2010-01-01
The French block and the Swedish hunt for
colonies

Klas Rönnbäck
(re)searching Gothenburg: essays on a changing city (Helena Holgersson, Catharina Thörn, Håkan Thörn & Mattias Wahlström, eds.) - 2010-01-01
Franska tomten och den svenska jakten på
kolonier

Klas Rönnbäck
Göteborg utforskat: Studier av en stad i förändring (Helena Holgersson, Catharina Thörn, Håkan Thörn & Mattias Wahlström, red.) - 2010-01-01
Från Saint Domingue till Göteborg – kolonialvaror och konsumtion i 1700-talets
Sverige

Klas Rönnbäck
1700-talets Göteborg (red.Charlotta Dohlvik, Jenny Johansson & Christian Peralva) - 2010-01-01
From Saint Domingue to the Baltic: diversified markets for plantation produce, and the semiperipheral exploitation of
slaves

Klas Rönnbäck
From the Northern Seas to the Atlantic: Cities, ecology and exchange; 19 March 2010; IHR, London, Britain - 2010-01-01
Power, Plenty and Pressure groups: British and Danish colonialism in the West Indies and the role of the state,
1768-1772

Klas Rönnbäck
(Trans) colonial (trans) imperial and Atlantic trade in the 18th Century, March 11, 2010, EHESS, Paris, France - 2010-01-01
Christoper Ebert: Between
empires

Klas Rönnbäck
Itinerario - 2010-01-01
Commerce and Colonisation: Studies of Early Modern Merchant Capitalism in the Atlantic
Economy

Klas Rönnbäck
- 2009-01-01
An early-modern consumer revolution in the
Baltic?

Klas Rönnbäck
Consumption, power and culture in the early modern Atlantic world, June 4-5, 2009, Åbo Akademi, Finland - 2009-01-01
Who stood to gain from colonialism? A case study of early modern European colonialism in the
Caribbean

Klas Rönnbäck
World Economic History Congree, Utrecht 2009 - 2009-01-01
Socker och slavplantager i svensk
historia

Klas Rönnbäck
Global historia från periferin. Norden 1600-1850. Red. Leos Müller, Göran Rydén & Holger Weiss - 2009-01-01
Who stood to gain from colonialism? A case study of early modern European colonialism in the
Caribbean

Klas Rönnbäck
Itinerario - International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction - 2009-01-01
Erik Ringmar, Why Europe Was
First.

Klas Rönnbäck
Itinerario - 2009-01-01
Integration of global commodity markets in the early-modern
era

Klas Rönnbäck
European Review of Economic History - 2009-01-01
En amputerad
historia

Klas Rönnbäck
Ord & Bild - 2008-01-01
Dick Harrison, Slaveri – 1500 till
1800

Klas Rönnbäck
Historisk tidskrift - 2008-01-01
Profits from colonialism in the Americas – a semiperipheral
perspective

Klas Rönnbäck
Graduate Student Research Conference on Latin America and the Caribbean, november 2008 - 2008-01-01
Transforming consumption in the European periphery – colonial commodities in Scandinavia during the early modern
era

Klas Rönnbäck
European Business History Association 12th annual conference - 2008-01-01
Counter-weight and complement: economic and cultural aspects of the Swedish imports of colonial
commodities

Klas Rönnbäck
Svenska Historikermötet 2008 - 2008-01-01
Sveriges koloniala
spöke

Klas Rönnbäck
Ord & Bild - 2008-01-01
Clé Lesger, The Rise of the Amsterdam Market and Information
Exchange

Klas Rönnbäck
Scandinavian Economic History Review - 2008-01-01
The price of sugar in Sweden : Data, source &
methods

Klas Rönnbäck
- 2007-01-01
From extreme luxury to everyday commodity Sugar in Sweden, 17th to 20th
centuries

Klas Rönnbäck
- 2007-01-01
Free-riding on European colonialism - Swedish trade in colonial sugar during the early modern
era

Klas Rönnbäck
Seventh Conference of the European Historical Economics Society, Lund, juni 2007 - 2007-01-01
From extreme luxury to everyday commodity - – sugar in Sweden, 17th to 20th
centuries

Klas Rönnbäck
Ekonomisk-historiska mötet, Stockholm, oktober 2007 - 2007-01-01
"Alltid något att visa upp för nationens ögon" - Franska tomten och den svenska jakten på
kolonier

Klas Rönnbäck
Ord & Bild - 2007-01-01
Dick Harrison - Slaveri: från forntid till
renässansen

Klas Rönnbäck
Historisk tidskrift - 2007-01-01
Kolonialismens söta smak - Svensk och dansk handel med kolonialvaror under tidigmodern
tid

Klas Rönnbäck
Hans Albin Larsson (red.): Aktuellt om historia. Forskningsfronten flyttar fram. Närings- och handelshistoria. - 2007-01-01
Ole Justesen (red.), Danish sources for the history of Ghana
1657–1754

Klas Rönnbäck
Historisk tidskrift - 2007-01-01
Flexibility and protectionism - Swedish trade in sugar during the early modern
era

Klas Rönnbäck
Christer Ahlberger & Pia Lundqvist (red.): Varans vägar och världar - Handel och konsumtion i Skandinavien ca 1600-1900 - 2007-01-01
James Rawley, The transatlantic slave
trade

Klas Rönnbäck
Historisk tidskrift - 2007-01-01
Flexibility and protectionism. Swedish trade in sugar during the early modern
era

Klas Rönnbäck
- 2006-01-01