This study demonstrates the existence of a private, informal and lively creditmarket in rural Sweden during the 1840s, a period that predates the developmentof a modern banking system. The market, mainly based on private promissorynotes, was concentrated in the hands of a limited number of wealthy farmers whospecialized in lending, They facilitated access to credit to well-off farmers,regardless of whether they owned their farms or leased taxed land. By usinginformation from probate inventories, the article analyses the wealth portfolioand characteristics of the lending business of the largest creditors(‘parish bankers’) in a judicial district of southern Sweden in1841–5. The heart and soul of their business was an intimate knowledge ofborrowers’ creditworthiness and mutual trust, as typical of local creditnetworks. The article also explores the existence of an intergenerationaltransmission of parish banking business – a dimension of private lendingthat opens an original path of research on local credit markets in early modernEurope.
