191 The Budget The practice of drawing up a financial estimate to calculate state revenues and expenditures for the coming year developed in Sweden during the reign of Gustaf II Adolf. Previous to that time, state expenditures had been met as they arose and with funds from whatever sourceof income happened to be available at the moment. Extensive planning of the state finances was introduced with the budget estimates, which soon came to be known as state budgets, and which were drawn up annually fromthe 1620s onward. This new way of financing state expenditures grew out of the need to find a more regular basis for the maintenance of the armed forces and for the salaries of the crown’s civil servants in the central and local administration. The bailiffs had been ordered as early as 1615 to notify the raknekammaren^ or chamber of accounts, annually about the revenues that were available, and in 1616 the räntekammaren was instructed to compile a list of all the individuals serving in the government and to divide up the royal estates and revenues as a means to support them.-'^*^ The attempts to calculate the fiscal needs of the state and to find the resources to meet them constituted one aspect of a general improvement of the administrative apparatus brought about by the constant wars with Russia over the economic and political hegemony of the Baltic that had raged since the sixteenth century. To support the extremely expensive military forces, it was necessary to search constantly for new sources of revenue, and this led to a system of customs duties, excise taxes, poll taxes {mantalspengar), and so on. In this context, a systematic administration of the crown’s finances was certainly needed in order to conduct more efficiently the collection and control of the state revenues, which were derived primarily fromthe peasants. The basic element in the crown’s fiscal administration was the technique of double entry bookkeeping, which had been borrowed fromcontemporary merchants. In the 1620s, the Dutch merchant Abraham Cabiliau set up the Swedish state bookkeeping system “in the bookkeeper’s manner,” and soon the method was also being used in drawing up the budgets.-•’* The practice of drawing up a salary budget indicating in detail the needs that existed was introduced in the 1630s. To meet the requirements of this special, or personnel, budget, an appropriations budget {anordningsstaten) was developed to show how the state revenues had been appropriated in relation to the expenditures listed in the special budget. While the special budget specified only titles of expenditure, the appropriations budget listed in 2no Edén (1902), 208, 229. Birgitta Odén, Rikets uppbörd och utgift. Statsfinanser och finansförvaltning under senare 1500-talet (Lund, 1955), 392.
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