Erik Bengtsson

Senior lecturer

Rika och fattiga: Klassrelationer och historisk ekonomisk ojämlikhet i Stockholm på 1600–1700-talen

Author

Erik Bengtsson

Summary, in English

English summary
”Class Relations and Historical Economic Inequality: Stockholm in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”.
Erik Bengtsson
Arbetarhistoria, 2020

This article describes and discusses economic inequality in seventeenth and eighteenth century Stockholm. I describe the distribution of wealth, using probate inventories from 1650, 1700 and 1715, and wealth tax data from 1715. The distribution was very unequal: the ten percent wealthiest in the population held around 90 per cent of total wealth. I discuss why inequality was so high, focusing on the class structure of the city with a large working class, with quite poor living standards, and small elites of merchants and noblemen, and on the repressive character of the state. I argue that the high inequality was to a large degree shaped by class power, exercised through the state apparatus. I argue that the class perspective is important for the study of historical economic inequality.

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