Farmers

The project "Dynamic peasants?" is led by professor Mats Olsson and assistant senior lecturer Erik Bengtsson and is funded by a grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The project runs from 2017 through 2020. Carolina Uppenberg is working as a postdoc within the project in 2019 and 2020, and in 2020 Magnus Olofsson is working as a researcher in the project.

The project finished in December 2020.

Research question and aim of the project

The over-arching research question of this project is: which role did peasant farmers play in Sweden’s economic modernization from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the development from a poor agrarian economy to an industrialized, wealthy welfare state? In the 20th century Sweden distinguished itself as one of the world’s richest and most equal countries, with a generous welfare state. In this vein, Swedish modernization is often labelled “successful” (e.g. Sørensen and Stråth 1997, Jerneck 2005), and to explain this outcome, researchers have sought for historical roots, and the peasant farmers have been pointed to as the key factor (e.g. Sørensen and Stråth 1997). In Sweden the peasant farmers were free since the mediaeval times, not subject to serfdom as on most of the European continent, and since the 15h century they were represented as an estate in parliament: something unique in an international perspective. That this early modern legal-socioeconomic equality is the foundation of the 20th century equality of the industrial welfare state Sweden, is an analysis – or, rather, assumption – widespread in economics (Delong 2007), history (Anderson 1974, ch. 7; Winberg 1990), sociology (Alestalo and Kuhnle 1987) as well as political science (Tilton 1974). But there is no comprehensive empirical study testing this hypothesis in the Swedish case. There are critical pieces, questioning the alleged continuity from the early modern free peasants to the Social Democratic equality of the 20th century (Harnesk 2002, Nyzell 2009, Hilson 2009), but no empirical test of the hypothesis. The aim of the project is to provide such a study, spanning the “long 19th century” from the time of the French revolution at the end of the 18th century to the advent of universal suffrage in the aftermath of the First World War. In doing so, the project will not only contribute to the specific discussion on Swedish history and the role of peasants in Swedish modernization, but also to wider theoretical debates in economics and history on the role of institutions in long-run economic development, on “routes to modernity” and the implications of class constellations for political and economic outcomes, especially economic equality and the growth of the welfare state.

Project outputs (as of January 2022)

1. Mats Olsson & Erik Bengtsson, "Peasant aristocrats? Wealth, social status and the politics of Swedish farmer parliamentarians 1769–1895", Scandinavian Journal of History, published online 27 februari 2020.

2. Erik Bengtsson, "The Swedish Sonderweg in Question", Past & Present, augusti 2019.

3. Erik Bengtsson, "Reconsidering the Role of Farmer Politics in Swedish Democratization", Lund Working Papers in Economic History, August 2019. Accepted for publication in Social History, forthcoming in 2022.

4. Erik Bengtsson, "The Swedish labour market c. 1870–1914: a labour market regime without repression?", forthcoming in Matteo Millan and Alessandro Saluppo (eds.), In Defence of Freedom: Corporate Policing, Yellow Unionism, and Strikebreaking, 1890-1930. Routledge Studies in Modern History. London: Routledge, February 2021. See book site here.

4. Erik Bengtsson, "The evolution of popular politics in Sweden: the rural folkmöten of the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s". Presented at the 13th Swedish Economic History Meeting, Uppsala, 12 October 2019. Will be presented at the Nordic Labour History Conference in Copenhagen, November 2020. Submitted to a journal.

5. Carolina Uppenberg, "Masters writing the rules: how peasant farmer MPs in the Swedish Estate Diet understood servants’ labour and the labour laws, 1823–1863". Agricultural History Review 68 (2): pp. 238-256, 2020.

6. Carolina Uppenberg & Mats Olsson, "Under the Landlord’s thumb. Municipalities and local elites in Sweden 1862–1900". Accepted for publication in Social History.

7. Magnus Olofsson, "“What do the New Liberals want?” A Republican Moment in Swedish Politics, 1867-1872". Work in progress.