the svea court of appeal in the early modern period 266 the amalgamation of town law and rural law in the Code of 1734.721 In the early seventeenth century, there had been attempts at regulating bankruptcy only as a matter of town jurisdictions. These could have served as a basis for a bankruptcy law of a kind that was typical of many other countries, special legislation for persons engaged in commerce and industry.722 The contrast between ordinary courts and special jurisdictions is important because it underlines the interplay between material and procedural aspects of bankruptcy law. Although this aspect has been touched upon in some earlier research by both historians and legal scholars, much remains to be studied.723 It is clear that the two alternative perspectives on insolvency, one commercial and pragmatic and the other based on the doctrine of Roman law can be traced to earlier seventeenth-century Swedish legal history. While bankruptcy is not conceived as part of commercial law in Sweden, the earliest attempts at bankruptcy legislation were concerned with the interests of Swedish commerce. In the seventeenth century, the privileges of Swedish commercial towns established exceptional legal regimes with the purpose of attracting foreign merchants and promoting large-scale trade. According to the Gothenburg privileges of 1607 and 1621, if an insolvent debtor could prove himself innocent, he was allowed to negotiate a composition with the creditors. According to the 1607 version, approval by the majority of creditors, representing more than half of the claims in money terms, bound the minority as well. In the 1621 privileges, it was specifically stated that liens and other rights to priority in payment did not exempt recalcitrant creditors from the effects of the composition (“quod major pars creditorum cum debitore concludat, sådant skal den minsta hopen jämväl bewilja och wara pligtige sine ulla prioritatis aut hypothecæ vel pignoris prærogativa”).724 For those who had become insolvent through shipwreck or mål /angående giäldz betalning emellan Ächta Folck/samt Debitorers sökte anstånd och befrielse, 28 May 1687, Kongl. stadgar, ed. Schmedeman, pp. 1120-1124. 721 Montgomery, Robert 1874 p. 324. 722 Montgomery, Robert 1874 p. 319. 723 Nyström, Per 1955 pp. 211-229; Matz, Siegfried 1919 pp. 45-46, 59-62. 724 Article 30 of the 1607 privileges, quoted in Wolff, Emil 1894 pp. 86-87; Article 20 of The Commercial Outlook on Insolvency in Seventeenth-Century Sweden
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