Credit at Court : Court servants and urban credit markets 1688-1708

Sammanfattning: This thesis studies the debts and claims of court servants in Stockholm from 1688 to 1708 as a case study of early credit markets, exploring the transition from pre-modern informal systems based on personal trust and peer-to-peer lending to modern institutional banking. The thesis shows that the court servants were prominent moneylenders with relatively little debt and argues that these characteristics were by influenced their greater access to cash through their wages from the court. Furthermore, institutional banking and formal credit instruments are shown to have been frequently used by court servants at the turn of the 18th century, bringing nuance the idea of linear progress from traditional systems of credit to modern banking.