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This volume explores the emergence of the state in Europe between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through a series of case studies and historiographical, methodological and theoretical essays, it challenges the traditional top-down model of state development long held by historians. Instead it explores the numerous ways in which non-elite groups could influence the formation of national political institutions
This book investigates the forms that the aggression and violence of peasant elites could take in early modern Fennoscandia, and their role within society. The contributors highlight the social stratification, inner divisions, contradictions and conflicts of the peasant communities, but also pay attention to the elite as leaders of resistance against the authorities. With the formation of more centralised states, the elites’ status and room for agency diminished, but regional and temporal variations were great in this relatively drawn-out process, and there still remained several favourable contexts for their agency. Even though the peasant elite was not a homogenous entity, the chapters in this collection present us one uniting feature – the peasant elites’ tendency to assert themselves with an active and aggressive agency, even if this led to very different outcomes.
Internationally, the case of early modern Sweden is noteworthy because the state building process transformed a locally dispersed and sparsely populated area into a strongly centralized absolute monarchy and European empire at the beginning of the 17th century. This anthology provides fresh insights into the state-building process in Sweden. During this transitional period, many far-reaching administrative reforms were carried out, and the Swedish state developed into a prime example of the early modern ‘powerstate’. The contributors approach Sweden’s rise to greatness from the point of view of personal agency. In early modern studies, agency has long remained in the shadow of the stud...
In the early modern era, two Nordic countries that are neighbours today, Sweden and Finland, formed one realm. Yet, modern history writing has largely ignored this unity, instead developing analysis and discussion in close connection to nationalistic ideas, national politics, and processes of state-building. Historians of both countries have therefore mostly approached their common past separately and academic history in both countries has taken its own course of development, leading to different emphases. This volume explores the common early modern history between Sweden and Finland from the Middle Ages to beginning of the 19th century, and how this history has been created in professional...
The history of man is to a large extent the history of organisations. For as long as there are written records to study, people have co-operated to make use of scant resources in a more effective way. This book focuses on the dynamic interaction of organisations, norm systems and institutional changes.
This book is a long-term study of organisational capabilities as parts of early modern state formation. Sweden was a largely non-maritime society which nevertheless maintained a large navy as part of the armed forces which created a Baltic empire. Many of the resources came from the peasant society which was exploited in an entrepreneurial fashion by a highly ambitious dynasty. For a long time Sweden was organisationally more advanced than its neighbours but the empire ceased to grow and finally collapsed when other Northern powers developed strong states. The book provides detailed information about the strength of the navy in terms of warships, equipment, guns and men and it relates changes in size and structure to changes in policy.
Prior to the high Middle Ages, the Baltic Rim was largely terra incognita-but by the late Middle Ages, it was home to diverse small and large communities. But the Baltic Rim was not simply the place those people lived-it was also an imagined space through which they defined themselves and their identities. This book traces the transformation of the Baltic Rim in this period through a focus on the self-image of a number of communities: urban and regional, cultic, missionary, legal, and political. Contributors look at the ways these communities defined themselves in relationship to other groups, how they constructed their identities and customs, and what held them together or tore them apart.
This book deals with six critical junctions in early modern Sweden between 1538 and 1810. It highlights intense periods of change when a prevailing system of government was challenged and replaced by something radically different - a new political regime. Drawing on both history and the social sciences, this book presents a novel interpretation of Sweden's early modern political history. Sweden's conflict-ridden history is highly relevant as an example to understand the process of state formation in early modern Europe. How did the turbulent changes in government affect Sweden's subsequent development into a modern, democratic state?