Christopher Pihl

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MA Uppsala University, 2007

PhD History Uppsala University, 2012

Christopher Pihls work focuses on different ways to make a living in the early modern era. He has been studying how the gender division of labour affected and was affected by the state formation process in sixteenth century Sweden. His current work deals with the Swedish credit market c. 1660 – 1700 and the role of the Bank of Sweden (founded in 1668).

Creating and maintaining trust after the first Swedish banking crisis: Riksens ständers bank (The Bank of the Estates of the Realm) 1668-1721. Financed by the Swedish Research Council

The aim of the project is to study how Riksens ständers bank (the Bank of the Estates of the Realm) acted to create and maintain trust and legitimacy at the Swedish credit market 1668 to 1721. As a bank, it had to appear trustworthy for people to commit it their trust and capital and as a bank placed under the Estates of the Realm, it had to be legitimate in the eyes of the members of the estates. The project brings together the political and organizational aspects of the bank with its every-day business. In an international context, Riksens ständers bank was in many ways unique: it was an early bank created in the economic periphery of Europe, it managed to recreate the trust for banks after a major bank-crash and its position under the diet was rather unique - its most famous counterpart regarding this type of construction was the Bank of England, founded in 1694. The study will combine economic and cultural perspectives to understand the economic development in a certain context. The project will be studying how the representatives of the bank talked about how to create trust and a good reputation, but also how it was done in practice: how the bank acted to establish trust in both its daily business and in its relation to its head and how people were responding to the bank’s actions, and how the bank perceived and reacted on these responses.