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In 2017 the website Anders Chydenius Selected Works was launched as the final stage of a research project started over ten years ago. This site contains the principal writings of Anders Chydenius, an eighteenth-century pioneer of freedom and democracy, translated into English by Peter C. Hogg. The English site is part of a multilingual online publication, the main content of which is the scholarly edition of Chydenius\u2019s collected works in their original language, Swedish, and translated into Finnish.<\/p>\n
Five more translations of Chydenius\u2019s works by Hogg have now been added to the website. Thematically, they touch upon the subject areas most important to Chydenius, such as the freedom of trade and industry, the freedom of the press and the rights of the rural working class. At the same time, these five small pieces enrich the image we have of Chydenius and highlight his versatility.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerican Birchbark Boats\u201d<\/a> (1753) was Chydenius\u2019s master\u2019s thesis at the Academy of Turku. The exotic subject of the dissertation originated from Professor Pehr Kalm, who had just arrived from his famous voyage to North America. Chydenius believed that lightweight Indian canoes could enhance transport and trade on Finland\u2019s lakes.<\/p>\n \u201cThree Politico-Economic Questions\u201d<\/a> (1761\u201362) is Chydenius\u2019s first known political writing. The manuscript was not published during his lifetime, but it shows that he was already working with ideas about monetary policy and the position of servants and hired labour, which were central in his later writings.<\/p>\n \u201cAccount of the Chinese Freedom to Write\u201d<\/a> (1766) is a translation that Chydenius made from a Danish text, but the original source is \u201cDescription de la Chine\u201d (1735), written by the French Jesuit historian Jean-Baptiste Du Halde. The text presents China as \u201ca model country\u201d of freedom of expression and its publication in April 1766 was clearly motivated by Chydenius\u2019s ongoing struggle for the enactment of a Freedom of the Press Act.<\/p>\n