The Economics Of The Swedish Empire

0:00 - One Hill, One Metal 1:01 - The Great Copper Mountain 2:32 - Why Copper Was Never Optional 3:17 - A Government-Run Cartel in 1620 4:25 - Putting the Currency on Copper 5:25 - Money You Had to Load onto a Sled 6:59 - Importing an Arms Industry 8:26 - 1630: Finding the Largest War Available 10:06 - The French Defence Contract 11:35 - Tolls on Somebody Else's Trade 12:16 - The War Will Feed Itself 14:07 - An Army That Was Mostly Not Swedish 15:47 - The King Dies, the Machine Does Not 17:04 - Paying an Army to Go Home 18:01 - An Empire of Tollgates 19:57 - The First Banknotes in Europe 21:30 - The First Bank Run in Europe 23:17 - Selling the Country to Win the War 24:09 - 1680: The Crown Takes It All Back 24:56 - A Standing Army That Cost Nothing 25:45 - 1700: Three Neighbours at Once 27:33 - Marching Into Empty Country 28:47 - What Poltava Cost the Parishes 29:54 - Inventing Money in an Emergency 31:20 - The Scapegoat and the Devaluation 32:21 - The Ring Around the Baltic Breaks 33:31 - Four Pillars, Twenty Years 34:43 - A Price Somebody Else Set Sweden had one hill. For most of the seventeenth century, the hole in it produced two thirds of the copper on earth. That is the whole foundation. A country of roughly one million people, cold, forested, with no colonies, no spice trade and no silver, became a great power on a single commodity - and then built the strangest monetary system in European history on top of it. Because Sweden had too much copper and not enough silver, it put its currency on a copper standard in 1624. To make a copper coin worth as much as a silver one you need an enormous quantity of metal, so the coins stopped being coins. A ten daler plate weighed around nineteen and a half kilograms. That is one unit of currency. You did not carry your money. You loaded it onto a sled. That single physical fact produced the first banknotes issued in Europe - and then the first bank run in Europe, on the first paper currency in Europe. The two arrived together, which is not a coincidence. This is the story told as accounting. Why France paid Sweden 400,000 riksdaler a year to keep an army in Germany. Why the war could not be stopped once it started feeding itself. Why the German estates paid five million riksdaler in 1648 to have the Swedish army disbanded. Why the Swedish Empire's army was mostly not Swedish. Why Charles XI took back the entire nobility's land by law in 1680. And why the man who tried to fix the currency in 1716 was executed for it three years later. Four pillars held the empire up. All four failed within about twenty years. If you want more breakdowns like this one, subscribe - it genuinely helps the channel keep making them. #history #economics #sweden #swedishempire #gustavusadolphus #charlesxii #thirtyyearswar #economichistory #balticsea #europeanhistory #documentary