International payments and credit movements by the swedish merchant-houses, 1730–1815

Abstract

Abstract During the 18th and the early 19th centuries there was one main dynamic factor in the Swedish economy: the merchant houses of Stockholm and Gothenburg. Their dynamic power derived from their especial role in capital accumulation and in international credit movements. Many of these houses were at that time helping to finance the Swedish iron industry. Later, during the industrial revolution, many of them were to make decisive contributions, as entrepreneurs, financiers and exporters, to the building of the Swedish forest industries. Not until then did their true dynamic power make itself felt; before the industrial revolution the generally stationary state of the economy had prevented any significant number of innovations. But in so far as there were innovations in the economic life of pre-industrial Sweden, they were due to these merchant houses.