A bank in a monarchy: an early modern anomaly? The Swedish Bank of the Estates of the Realm

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyse credit as a core element in the political changes and processes of state formation that took place in Sweden in the second half of the seventeenth-century. The study focuses on discussions within the Council of the Realm and at the Diets about how to use the two Swedish seventeenth-century banks as creditors to the state. The two banks were essential parts of an elaborate attempt to the shift public debt regime from one based on private creditors and the personal credit of the king and the men in the government to a regime based on institutional creditors and the credit of the Estates of the Realm. The outcome of the procesess was contingent upon some of the core topics of early modern Europe’s political and financial discourses: the nature of the sovereign, the relationship between private interests and the public good, and the role and functioning of representative assemblies. This process marked the beginning of a development in which sovereign borrowing became a public concern, eventually strengthening the Estate’s position vis-à-vis the government, and is a significant example of the interconnectedness of politics and credit.