The main goods were black pepper, spices, silk, tea, furniture, porcelain, precious stones and other distinctive luxury items.

The cultural influence increased, and tea, rice, arrack (a drink made from fermented sap or sugarcane) and new root vegetables started appearing in Swedish homes.

Drinking tea, wearing Indian Chintz clothes and having Chinese objects became the height of fashion among Swedish socialites and the middle class.

This culminated during the 18th century, when many Swedish scientists and politicians even suggested that Sweden should be governed by intellectual bureaucrats, "mandarins", led by a sovereign king in a Chinese manner.

The town was considered ideal for Sweden's international trade since most of the goods were transported on ships and this was the only major Swedish port accessible without having to pass the Danish customs at Øresund.

[8] On 14 June 1626, Usselincx received royal privileges for a trading company for twelve years, from the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf.

Political difficulties and Sweden's participation in the Thirty Years' War, where King Gustav II was killed, put an end to the plans.

[10] At the end of the 1660s, a petition from diplomat and London resident Johan Leijonbergh was sent to the Swedish King Charles XI regarding one Olle Borg who had worked in the Dutch East India Company for eighteen years.

Knut Kurck, Peter Schnack and Johan Olivecreutz were appointed directors for the company, but the political unrest in Sweden at that time plus trouble with actually getting the money that had been promised from the investors thwarted this venture as well, and in 1674, the charter was dissolved.

They started by offering the Swedish King Charles XII half a million pounds sterling and 25 armed ships for his protection, but the matter was not resolved.

The new offer was for 60 ships, armed and stocked with goods, if the pirates were allowed to settle down in Gothenburg and start a trade with the East Indies under the Swedish flag.

One privateer by the name of Morgan actually obtained a charter for an East India Company and a letter of appointment for himself as governor over the colonies that could be the result of such an enterprise.

[14] What finally made the Swedish venture possible was the strong support from foreign traders and merchants, foremost British but also Dutch, who had been shut out from the companies in their respective countries.

[15] Granting permission for a charter was not entirely uncontroversial during that time when mercantilism, which advocated regulations so that the production of export goods was promoted and import reduced, was the dominant idea for trade.

[16] Demands were made in the Riksdag for sanctions and restrictions for the trade company, a number of pamphlets were written, arguing that Swedish steel and timber were wastefully being exchanged for such "worthless goods" as tea and porcelain.

He even spoke of the moral aspects, saying that the Swedish population "would be weaned from work and crafts and lose their health, strength and spirit by using products from a warmer climate".

He supported his request on the charter given previously to other applicants, but the reaction from the Swedish government was reluctant: the closing of the Ostend Company in 1731, following British diplomatic pressure as part of the Treaty of Vienna, boded ill for the Swedes' competition against the main powers when trade and politics were so intimately associated.

König took the matters to the Swedish parliament and succeeded, gaining royal privileges for the company on 14 June 1731, initially for a period of 15 years.

[25] The charter was given to Henrik König & Compagnie and consisted of eighteen precise paragraphs on how the trade should be conducted:[26] The issuing of shares was such that early subscribers subscribed for each voyage and had the option of withdrawing their capital after its completion, in a traditional form of corporate trading partnerships; in 1753,[21] this having been found inconvenient, it was determined that capital should be considered invested in the company as a whole, on the model of other East India companies.

[35] His only interests were hunting and women; the king's absence gave the Riksdag and the bureaucrats a free rein to promote trade and science.

The captain of the Fredericus was Georg Herman af Trolle, a seasoned sailor who had been brought up in Amsterdam and previously served on British, French, Dutch and Danish ships.

[56] The expedition started well – passing the Cape of Good Hope and crossing the Indian Ocean, the vessel arrived safely in Canton (now known as Guangzhou), the trading port for foreigners in China at that time, in September 1732.

According to the ledgers of the Gothenburg Main Customs Cambers for Sea Trade in 1733 to 1734, goods for 518,972 riksdaler were exported; the rest stayed in Sweden.

In addition to Colin Campbell, Niclas Sahlgren and Teodor Ankarcrona, the directors were former secretary of the Executive Board Magnus Lagerström, the Stockholm merchants Anders Plomgren and Abraham Grill.

[66] When it was time to renew the charter in 1766, the first directors were Robert Finlay of Irish and Scottish origin, Swedish Fabian Löwen and Georg Herman Conradi of German descent, all residing in Stockholm.

The company would not allow idle passengers on board, so most of the scientists were given "crash courses" in theology and were hastily ordained to serve as ship's chaplains.

[l] Among his other joking and casual racism, Wallenberg parodies the serious accounts published by traveling naturalists in the wide web of Carl Linnaeus' correspondence.

With the investors' faith in the trade now broken, no ships were sent out and at a shareholders meeting on 13 December 1813, the company folded, eight years before the octroi ended.

Much of the tea was re-exported and smuggled into England, undercutting the prices of that country's own trade monopoly held by the East India Company.

With the renewal of the charter in 1746, the company was allowed to add its name cypher, or monogram, to the flag in order to distinguish the ships from other trading vessels.