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Networks, Migration and the Transformation of the Merchant Elite in 18th Century Stockholm
| The paper aims to problematise the origin, cohesiveness and reconstruction of financial networks between internationally active trading houses in Stockholm during the late early modern period. In particular, it discusses the importance of credit and trust and of being creditworthy in the interplay between private and public administrators for the reconstruction of private financial networks in crisis between 1740 and 1800. The study is part of a larger project concerning the transformation of the Swedish institution of bankruptcy from a European perspective, 1734–1862. The results discussed concern ongoing studies.
The background to the project is a number of studies which have shown that well-developed public credit institutions favoured the development of the private credit market, including the so-called institution of notary which was most developed in southern Europe. Although ‘notary’ was more restricted in the Scandinavian countries, this present study of the institution of bankruptcy in Stockholm indicates that municipal and state lawyers actively contributed to the private credit networks’ reconstruction during the financial collapses of merchants. The city’s civil servants administered the bankruptcy in cooperation with special ‘trustees’ from the industry, who would possess in-depth knowledge of the debtor’s business. A number of local, state and private representatives also acted for claimants who lived far away during the often drawn-out proceedings. The study of wholesalers who became bankrupt between 1740 and 1800 suggests that notaries and lawyers in Sweden, too, were important players in the reformation of the bankruptcy laws and judicial practice which took place from the end of the 1760s onwards.
The reconstruction of the trading houses’ financial networks acquired their special dimension from the fact that terms such as credit, security, property and dowries during the early modern period were not just seen as strictly economic quantities. Financial relations between companies in the market were embedded in various types of networks between individuals which were made up of social and professional relations, family, gender, ethnicity and confession. The migration patterns in Stockholm during the 18th century were, above all, influenced by the trade, maritime and manufacturing policies at the time, which featured several significant immigrant groups. They were of the Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic confession as well as Jews. The majority of these were part of European trade and family networks where the establishment of the networks in Stockholm was just part of the larger networks originating mainly from Northern Germany, England, Ireland, the Low Countries and France.
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