Fashion, luxury, credit and trust. From early modern to modern bankruptcies

The project aims to publish a scholarly anthology with an international publisher. The anthology analyzes the significance of the reform of the bankruptcy institute 1767-1830 for the modernization of the pre-industrial credit market with the credit market in Stockholm as a case study. An aristocratic lavishness on credit was replaced by merchants' increasingly business-like borrowing. The results will be presented in a Swedish section of the anthology which will then be compared with contributions by international specialists. They will be recruited at an already announced session with the project's name at the ESSHC social science historians' conference in Belfast in 2018. The Swedish part of the project has its background in a historical interactive database, www.tidigmodernakonkurser.se on the bankruptcy institute in Stockholm. The project participants have participated in three international anthologies and presented even more papers at symposia and conferences and are part of several research networks in the field. Our latest book was published this spring under the title "Economic Cultural History" (see note in Axess No. 5: 2017). We have, among other things, a series of evidence of the modernization of the bankruptcy institute in Stockholm (streamlining, industry distribution, changing practices, etc.) which we now intend to compile into a whole and compare with other countries in Europe and North America. One important finding is that state lawyers played an important role in the implementation of the comprehensive legislation after 1767. Another finding is that conditions differed across industries.