ABSTRACT
An attempt will be made to make an overall assessment which gives a partly new picture of Stockholm’s credit market and the people that worked within its boundaries, against a wider European background and in the light of the demographic and economic stagnation of the city between 1760 and 1850. The development of the Stockholm credit market and luxury industries must first and foremost be understood in light of the fact that its economy was one of Europe’s weakest urban growth areas, together with trading cities in southern Europe and the capitals Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Lisbon. Stockholm was among the long-term stagnant European cities that emerged in the eighteenth century. The city was on the northern outskirts of a European periphery, where Italian, Spanish and Portuguese cities in the Mediterranean made up the southern.
