The Social Distribution of Public Debt in Portugal, 1529–1680

This article examines the social distribution of public debt in Portugal between 1529-1557 and 1641-1682 and explores the extent to which the Portuguese debt system relied on personal relationships. A newly compiled dataset on the socioeconomic characteristics of lenders reveals a shift over time: from an elite group consisting of nobles and royal officials to a broader social base in the mid-seventeenth century when institutions and merchants entered the market. The data show that the changing social distribution of Portuguese public debt is the result of interest rate reduction operations and a fund-raising campaign, the latter of which involved some degree of financial repression