In the literature on the development of public debt in Europe during the early modern period, it is often emphasized that the Swedish state implemented various forms of paper money, such as fiat coins and bank notes, as a way to fund warfare or preparations for war. Some of these increases of liquidity were also seen as a method to support economic activity, such as helping landowners or merchants to promote their businesses. Thus, there were interactions between the public and private uses of the financial instruments. Besides relying on domestic organizations such as the Bank of the Estates (the Riksbank) to fund government activity, the Swedish state also started to borrow externally on the capital markets in Amsterdam and Genoa in the 1760s. Thus, Swedish government borrowing was organized in a different way than the often cited systems of the Dutch and English, which relied more on domestic long-term government bonds.
In my presentation, I will explore the question why the Swedish system of public debt developed the way it did in the eighteenth century by paying particular attention to the interaction between the private and public markets, as well as the connections between the internal and external markets. Moreover, it is important to examine the people who got involved in the system of public debt. Such analyses will show that the outcome was partly driven by domestic political circumstances, and partly by the wayt he local and international financial markets were structured.