Monetary policies and practices

The aim of the project is to study the introduction of copper coins and paper bills in Sweden in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We argue that these innovations required new types of knowledge and understanding both from the authorities and the population at large. What is value? What is money? What is proper money and why? This meeting between government policy and popular practices was not without friction, which is what we want to study.

A stable, comprehensible and transparent monetary system yields societal stability, enables realistic expectations and trust. Yet, creating such a system can be very difficult, as can be seen in early modern Sweden. Our aim is to analyse the social and political ramifications of this process by examining money as a practical and political problem, involving not only the élite but also regular people; their concepts of money; and the impact their practices and complaints had on the Swedish monetary evolution and the state-formation process. The period was a financially tumultuous with many failed and some successful monetary experiments. Different interests and shifting monetary policies led to cumbersome realities, putting high demands on people to accept and to learn about new forms of money—but also to unlearn old practices and conceptions. Reforms generated political discussions involving ordinary subjects and the different stakeholders of the state: monetary changes created a profound and contested connection between policy and everyday life. By analysing the development from the perspective of different social groups we can establish a socioeconomically based, multifaceted chronology of monetary change in early modern Sweden. We can also understand the experiences of regular people, as well as their impact on the process.