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Inequality Challenged and Restored

The Political Economy of War Finance in Sweden, c. 1715–1721

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2024

Peter Ericsson  and
Patrik Winton
Peter Ericsson
Affiliation:
Swedish Defense University peter.ericsson@fhs.se
Patrik Winton
Affiliation:
Örebro University patrik.winton@oru.se
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Abstract

In the 1710s, under pressure from an ongoing war, Sweden’s absolute king, Charles XII, implemented a number of fiscal and monetary measures that displayed a disdain for traditional privileges and carried a potential for social change. Taxation was made progressive and credit became more important to finance the war. Liquidity was radically expanded, most significantly by the release of very large amounts of fiat coins. Following the death of Charles XII in November 1718, there was a political reaction against the war policies and the fiscal and monetary measures were reversed, resulting in the dismantling of royal absolutism and a partial government default. This study consists of two parts. In the first, we investigate the impact of the war policy and the monetary measures of Charles XII’s regime on the social redistribution of resources in Swedish society, especially in the years 1715 to 1718. In the second, we focus on how the socioeconomic changes were addressed by political agents between the death of Charles XII and the default of 1719. Our results show that the fiat money permeated the economy and reached all social groups, and that in some locations its distribution upset the prevailing social order. Peasants and other low-ranking groups were targeted by the partial default, which largely deprived them of their monetary assets.

Dans les années 1710, sous la pression d’une guerre en cours, Charles XII, le roi absolu de Suède, met en œuvre une série de mesures fiscales et monétaires qui remettent en question les privilèges traditionnels et impliquent de profondes transformations sociales. La fiscalité est rendue progressive et le crédit de plus en plus important afin de financer la guerre. Les liquidités sont radicalement augmentées, notamment au moyen de la mise en circulation d’une grande quantité de pièces de monnaie fiduciaire. La mort de Charles XII, en novembre 1718, entraîne une réaction hostile à ses politiques militaires. Les mesures fiscales et monétaires sont abolies, provoquant le renversement de l’absolutisme royal ainsi qu’une défaillance partielle de l’État. Cet article s’organise en deux parties. Dans la première, nous cherchons à vérifier l’hypothèse selon laquelle la politique militaire et les mesures monétaires du régime de Charles XII ont conduit à une redistribution des ressources dans la société suédoise, en particulier dans les années 1715-1718. Dans la seconde partie, nous analysons la façon dont les acteurs politiques suédois ont réagi à ces changements socio-économiques entre le décès de Charles XII et le défaut de paiement de 1719. Nos résultats montrent que la monnaie fiduciaire imprégna l’économie et atteint l’ensemble des groupes sociaux, allant même, dans certains endroits, jusqu’à en bouleverser les hiérarchies en vigueur. Les paysans, parmi d’autres groupes de rang inférieur, ont été particulièrement affectés par le défaut de paiement partiel, car ils ont été en grande partie privés de leurs actifs monétaires.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , First View , pp. 1 - 35
Copyright
© Éditions de l’EHESS 2024

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Footnotes

This article was first published in French as “Réduire puis rétablir les inégalités. Économie politique et financement de la guerre en Suède (vers 1715-1721),” Annales HSS 79, no. 2 (2024): 213–49.

References

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3. The main part of the extraordinary taxes that were levied each year throughout the seventeenth century and up to 1713 was also called the kontribution. This was thus a new form of kontribution.

4. We have tried to use the protocols from the 1714 assessment meetings. If a protocol from that year has not been preserved, we have used the protocol from 1715.

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8. Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 109.

9. Julian Hoppit, “Attitudes to Credit in Britain, 1680–1790,” Historical Journal 33, no. 2 (1990): 305–22; Thomas E. Kaiser, “Money, Despotism, and Public Opinion in Early Eighteenth-Century France: John Law and the Debate on Royal Credit,” Journal of Modern History 63, no. 1 (1991): 1–28; Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 325–53; Sonenscher, Before the Deluge; Carl Wennerlind, Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620–1720 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011); Koji Yamamoto, “Piety, Profit and Public Service in the Financial Revolution,” English Historical Review 126, no. 521 (2011): 806–34; William Deringer, Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018).

10. Åsa Karlsson, Den jämlike undersåten. Karl XII:s förmögenhetsbeskattning 1713 (Uppsala: Studia Historica Upsaliensia, 1994), 57–84; Peter Ericsson and Patrik Winton, “The Rise and Fall of a New Credit System: Transnational Financial Experiments and Domestic Power Struggles in Sweden 1710–1720,” in Boom, Bust, and Beyond: New Perspectives on the 1720 Stock Market Bubble, ed. Stefano Condorelli and Daniel Menning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 23–44, here pp. 25–30 and 37–42.

11. Peter Ericsson, Stora nordiska kriget förklarat. Karl XII och det ideologiska tilltalet (Uppsala: Studia Historica Upsaliensia, 2002), 23–28 and 173–91.

12. Karlsson, Den jämlike undersåten; Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721 (Harlow: Longman & Co., 2000), 226–95; Ericsson and Winton, “The Rise and Fall of a New Credit System.”

13. Karlsson, Den jämlike undersåten, 99–184.

14. Ericsson, Stora nordiska kriget förklarat, 173–230.

15. Jan Lindegren, “From Ystad to Frederikshald: Charles XII and the Great Northern War, 1716–1718,” in Perspektiver på Den store nordiske krig 1700–1721: 300 år etter Carl XIIs fall, ed. Knut Arstad (Oslo: Forsvarmuseet, 2018), 307–36, here pp. 316–36.

16. Jan Lindegren, “Karl XII,” in Kungar och krig. Tre essäer om Karl X Gustav, Karl XI och Karl XII, ed. Anders Florén, Stellan Dahlgren, and Jan Lindegren (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1992), 163–210, here pp. 197–206; Lindegren, “From Ystad to Frederikshald,” 323–36.

17. Jonatan Julén, Om Sveriges statsskuld 1718 och betalningen av densamma (Gothenburg: Wettergren and Kerber, 1916), 27 and 90; Gösta Lindeberg, Svensk ekonomisk politik under den Görtzka perioden (Lund: Gleerup, 1941), 108–109; Jan Lindegren, “Krig och skuld. Den svenska statsskuldens historia ca. 1600–1800,” Kungl. Vetenskapssamhällets i Uppsala Årsbok 37 (2007–2008): 92–101, especially p. 97; Ericsson and Winton, “The Rise and Fall of a New Credit System,” 31–37; Peter Ericsson and Patrik Winton, “Surge, Retraction, and Prices: The Performance of Fiat Coins in Sweden, c. 1715–1720,” Financial History Review 27, no. 2 (2020): 256–82, here pp. 260–61.

18. Ericsson and Winton, “Surge, Retraction, and Prices,” 263–79.

19. Årstrycket, Placat Angående Myntetekns och Ständernes Mindre Zedlars owägerlige emottagande til des annat redbart Mynt blifwer anskaffat, Stockholm, December 11, 1718; Ericsson and Winton, “Surge, Retraction, and Prices,” 263–73.

20. See table 1 below.

21. Årstrycket, Kongl. maj:ts nådige Förordning, Angående Mynteteknens Och Mynte-Zedlarnes Indragande och Afsättiande, Stockholm, April 23, 1719.

22. Frost, The Northern Wars, 294–96.

23. Sven Lilja, Historisk tätortsstatistik, D. 2, Städernas folkmängd och tillväxt: Sverige (med Finland) ca 1570-tal till 1810-tal (Stockholm: Stads- och kommunhistoriska institutet, 1996), 30f; Janken Myrdal, Det svenska jordbrukets historia, B. 2, Jordbruket under feodalismen 1000–1700 (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 1999), 233–45; Carl-Johan Gadd, Det svenska jordbrukets historia, B. 3, Den agrara revolutionen 1700–1870 (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 2000), 22–42, 185f, and 361f.

24. Sten Carlsson, Svensk historia 2. Tiden efter 1718 (Stockholm: Svenska bokförlaget, 1961), 55–62; Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner 1700–1865. Studier rörande det svenska ståndssamhällets upplösning (Lund: Gleerup, 1973), 15–24 and 233–39; Kaarlo Wirilander, Herrskapsfolk. Ståndspersoner i Finland 1721–1870 (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1982), 12–22, 29–32, and 56–63.

25. Sofia Ling et al., “Marriage and Work: Intertwined Sources of Agency and Authority,” in Making a Living, Making a Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society, ed. Maria Ågren (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 80–102.

26. Börje Harnesk, Legofolk. Drängar, pigor och bönder i 1700- och 1800-talens Sverige (Umeå: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1990), 25–31 and 216–18; Hanna Östholm and Cristina Prytz, “Less Than Ideal? Making a Living Before and Outside Marriage,” in Ågren, Making a Living, Making a Difference, 103–106; Jonas Lindström and Jan Mispelaere, “Interdependent Living: Labouring Families and the Swedish Mining Industry in the Late Seventeenth Century,” History of the Family 22, no. 1 (2017): 136–55; Jonas Lindström, “Labouring Poor in Early Modern Sweden? Crofters and Lodgers in Västmanland in the 17th Century,” Scandinavian Journal of History 44, no. 4 (2019): 403–29; Paul Borenberg, Tjänstefolk. Vardagsliv i underordning i Stockholm 1600–1635 (Gothenburg: Göteborgs universitet, 2020), 4–26, 70–76, and 275–91.

27. See Erik Bengtsson, Mats Olsson, and Patrick Svensson, “Mercantilist Inequality: Wealth and Poverty in Stockholm, 1650–1750,” Economic History Review75, no. 1 (2022): 157–80.

28. The translation of the Swedish administrative unit län as “county” can be slightly misleading. The län was geographically larger than an English county; one of the largest, Västernorrland, situated in the north, was only slightly smaller than England itself. Finland was under Russian occupation from 1714 to 1721, and was not affected by the process studied here.

29. Lindegren, “From Ystad to Frederikshald,” 316–22.

30. On Närke as a transit route for the army in 1718, see Martin Linde, Statsmakt och bondemotstånd: allmoge och överhet under stora nordiska kriget (Uppsala: Studia Historica Upsaliensia, 2000), 216–29.

31. On the copper mine in Falun, see Hedvig Widmalm, Exploring the Mores of Mining: The Oeconomy of the Great Copper Mine, 1716–1724 (Uppsala: Uppsala Studies in Economic History, 2018), 53–65.

32. Björn Helmfrid, Norrköpings historia, B. 3, avsnitt 6, Tiden 1655–1719 (Stockholm: Norrköping stads historiekommitté, 1971), 6–11 and 523–27; Lilja, Historisk tätortsstatistik, D. 2, 30f; Lennart Andersson Palm, Folkmängden i Sveriges socknar och kommuner 1571–1997. Med särskild hänsyn till perioden 1571–1751 (Gothenburg/Visby: L. A. Palm, 2000), 371. Calculations of the numbers of residents in towns and parishes may differ slightly between researchers. For the sake of consistency, we have used the numbers from the latest and the most comprehensive study: Andersson Palm, Folkmängden i Sveriges socknar och kommuner.

33. Göran Nilzén, “Befolkning, ekonomi och politik i 1700-talets Kalmar,” in Kalmar stads historia, ed. Ingrid Hammarström, B. 3 (Kalmar: Kulturnämnden, 1984), 13–17; Lilja, Historisk tätortsstatistik, D. 2, 30f; Andersson Palm, Folkmängden i Sveriges socknar och kommuner, 267.

34. Carl-Fredrik Corin, Arboga stads historia, B. 2, Från 1500-talets mitt till 1718 (Arboga: Arboga Kommun, 1978), 523–27; Lilja, Historisk tätortsstatistik, D. 2, 30f; Jan Lindegren, “Generalmajor och landshövding. Länsstyrelsen i Örebro och 1718 års norska fälttåg,” in Krigsmakt och bygd. Soldater, ryttare och befäl i Örebro län under indelningsverkets tid, ed. Lars-Otto Berg, Sören Klingéus, and Hans Norman (Örebro: Stiftelsen Nerikes regementen, 1997), 329–51, here pp. 329–30 and 337–49.

35. Uppsala, Landsarkivet i Uppsala (hereafter “ULA”) Landskontoret i Södermanlands län, Mantalslängder, Oppunda härad 1715, Vingåker.

36. Vadstena, Landsarkivet i Vadstena, Länsstyrelsen i Östergötlands län, Skattningskontributionens handlingar 1715, Normlösa, Herrberga.

37. ULA, Landkontoret i Västmanlands län, Kontributionsböcker 1716, Norberg.

38. Stockholm, Swedish National Archives (hereafter “SNA”), Kopia av Kontributionsränteriet 1714–1719, Jönköpings län, Skattningslängder 1716, Rydaholm.

39. SNA, Kopia av Kontributionsränteriet 1714–1719, Göteborgs län, Skattningslängder 1715, Stenkyrka.

40. SNA, Kopia av Kontributionsränteriet 1714–1719, Gävleborgs län, Skattningslängder 1716, Delsbo; Knut Nilsson Lenaeus, Delsboa Illustrata [1764], ed. Anne Brügge (Hudiksvall: Winberg, 2008), 130–32 and 146–50.

41. Lindegren, “Generalmajor och landshövding.”

42. For grain prices in Östergötland, see Ericsson and Winton, “Surge, Retraction, and Prices,” 268–69.

43. Publication och Förklaring /på hwad sätt Contributionerna efter en billig jämlikhet skola utgiöras til undersåtarnas lindring, Stockholm, June 4, 1712; Kongl. maj:ts nådige Förordning, Angående Mynteteknens Och Mynte-Zedlarnes Indragande och Afsättiande, Stockholm, April 23, 1719.

44. Publication och Förklaring /på hwad sätt Contributionerna efter en billig jämlikhet skola utgiöras til undersåtarnas lindring, Stockholm, June 4, 1712.

45. Andersson Palm, Folkmängden i Sveriges socknar och kommuner, 354.

46. Fredrik Thisner, Indelta inkomster. En studie av det militära indelningsverket 1721–1833 (Uppsala: Studia Historica Upsaliensia, 2014), 56.

47. SNA, Riksens ständers kontor, Kammarkontoret, Nummerlistor över 14-öres försäkringssedlar, vol. 1779.

48. SNA, Riksens ständers kontor, Kammarkontoret, Nummerlistor över 14-öres försäkringssedlar, vols. 1779, 1782, and 1787.

49. Nils Forssell, Borås stads historia, D. 1 (Borås: Borås stad, 1952), 175–85 and 341–47; Forssell, Borås stads historia, D. 2 (Borås: Borås stad, 1953), 12–18; Lennart Andersson Palm, Borås stads historia, D. 1, Stad och omland fram till 1800-talets mitt (Lund: Historiska media, 2005), 59–67 and 109–11.

50. SNA, Riksens ständers kontor, Kammarkontoret, Nummerlistor över 14-öres försäkringssedlar, vol. 1792.

51. For example, SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384; Lennart Thanner, Revolutionen i Sverige efter Karl XII:s död. Den inrepolitiska maktkampen under tidigare delen av Ulrika Eleonora d.y:s regering (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1953).

52. Ericsson, Stora nordiska kriget förklarat, especially 22–49 and 172–230.

53. Patrik Winton, “La hiérarchie contestée : la reconfiguration de l’équilibre des pouvoirs au sein et entre les ordres du Riksdag suédois, 1750–1772,” Revue d’histoire nordique 10 (2010): 31–47, here pp. 32–37.

54. SNA, Det odelade kansliet, Rådsprotokoll vol. 127, December 15, 1718, December 22, 1718, and January 30, 1719.

55. SNA, Det odelade kansliet, Rådsprotokoll vol. 127, January 30, 1719.

56. SNA, Det odelade kansliet, Rådsprotokoll vol. 127, February 11, 1719, February 17, 1719, and March 6, 1719.

57. SNA, Det odelade kansliet, Rådsprotokoll vol. 127, March 6, 1719.

58. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, March 5, 1719.

59. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, March 5, 1719.

60. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, March 5, 1719.

61. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, March 5, 1719.

62. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, March 9, 1719.

63. SNA, Det odelade kansliet, Rådsprotokoll vol. 127, December 15, 1718, and February 11, 1719.

64. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, March 5, 1719.

65. For example, J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 75–82 and 129–40; Hoppit, “Attitudes to Credit in Britain,” 307–11; Wennerlind, Casualties of Credit, 161–62; Yamamoto, “Piety, Profit and Public Service,” 806.

66. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, March 5, 1719.

67. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, April 8, 1719.

68. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, March 5, 1719.

69. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, April 9, 1719.

70. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, April 16, 17, and 21, 1719.

71. SNA, Sekreta utskottets protokoll 1719, vol. R2384, April 16, 1719: “bita uti et surt äple.”

72. SNA, Det odelade kansliet, Rådsprotokoll vol. 128, April 22, 1719.

73. On the assurances, see SNA, Det odelade kansliet, Rådsprotokoll vol. 128, May 13, 1719. On the military situation, see Herman Wrangel, “Svenska örlogsflottan 1719 och dess förhållande till ryssarnes härjningar,” Historisk tidskrift (1892): 103–46 and 289–330, passim.

74. Ericsson, Stora nordiska kriget förklarat, 75–277.