Artikeln belyser Erik Nydahls avhandling I fyrkens tid som tar avstamp i en omdiskuterad, om än relativt väl utforskad, fråga: hur formades svensk politisk kultur i övergången från jordbrukarsamhället till det moderna industrisamhället? Viktiga faktorer i det sammanhanget var att svensk industrialisering i många avseenden ägde rum utanför de framväxande storstadsregionerna, att jordbruksnäringen samtidigt spelade en fortsatt viktig roll under lång tid och att urbaniseringsprocessen internationellt sett var mera utdragen.
Previous research has deemed the secretary of the peasant estate in the Swedish Riksdag of the Age of Liberty an important figure. Yet, historians have not scrutinized the secretaries, their function, or their influence over the peasantry. This article examines the incumbents, their ability to guide the peasant estate and vice versa, and their political and bureaucratic function in the Age of Liberty. The results have bearing on discussions about the peasantry's political influence in the early modern era, on the significance of parties in the Age of Liberty, and on the relationship between bureaucracy and politics within the early modern Diet. The results show that most of the secretaries had ties to the Council of the Realm, with education in and experience of legal and administrative matters. Secretaries were meant to control the peasantry but cannot be exclusively understood as an instrument for oppression or a facilitator of political mobilization; they served both purposes at the same time, although the emphasis varied over time and between issues. The results thus emphasize the complexity of political interaction in early modern Sweden. Additionally, the changing function and role of the secretary was very much caused by party struggle. Parties are, therefore, key in understanding the peasantry's political influence and position in the Age of Liberty. Lastly, the article reveals a rapid bureaucratization of the peasantry's political activities from the 1750s onwards. The chancery expanded manifold and diversified its tasks. This process played an important role in the peasantry's political mobilization towards the end of the period but has previously been largely unacknowledged. Thus, the article's results contribute to a vast, important, but generally understudied research field. Bureaucratization and specialization processes in politics are not only of relevance for the study of the peasantry and the Age of Liberty, but for the study of political history in Sweden and the world at large.
This article analyzes Swedish–German interactions with focus on Nazi-Germany's methods of infiltrating Swedish–German associations, based on sources in German and Swedish archives. German university teachers in the Deutsche Akademie, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauchdienst were sent to Sweden as agents by Nazi Germany. Parallel to their work as language teachers they should "secretly conquer the Swedish soul". Because they were obliged to send regular reports from Sweden there is a huge amount of documents in German archives revealing not only Swedish attitudes to Nazism, but also how for example Swedish-German associations became special targets for the infiltration. The analyses reveal differences between the associations: In Göteborg and Uppsala they did not want to cooperate. When John Holmberg, professor of German in Uppsala, criticized the anti-Semitic ideology and rector Curt Weibull in Göteborg defended the university against the Nazi infiltration they were reported to Berlin as dangerous enemies. In Stockholm however speakers as representatives for the Nazi regime were welcomed. One of the invited speakers 1935 was Rudolf Hess who spoke of "The New Germany". After the fall of the Nazi regime there was no self reflection what so ever in the written programs of the Association in Stockholm.One explanation why many in Sweden did not resist the Nazi propaganda was that the Nazis worked under the cloak of traditional German culture and rhetoric. Glorification of the Nordic ideal and traditional values were recommended propaganda tools. The semantic changes of the words were not always observed in Sweden, but documents in German archives show that there were strong critical voices.
The number of Swedish citizens who migrated to Brazil between 1881 and1914 reached between 3,000 and 5,000. Most were labourers or peasants, hopingto find a better life in a new country. Although it did not compare to thesheer size of the migration flows to North America, it still received some attentionin the Swedish press. Newspapers often presented Brazil as an exoticdestination, but there were those who doubted whether it was appropriatefor Swedes to emigrate to Brazil.This article draws on Swedish migrants’ letters and diaries, written andpublished either while the writers were living in Brazil or, sometimes, afterthey had returned to Sweden. The narratives constructed an image of Brazilas a contact zone between cultures, and are best understood as a discourseand social practice in which the individual journeys played out. The textsprovide insights into people’s experiences of the kind we focus on in our analysis:daily life and observations about nature, the environment, and livingconditions as well as other peoples.There are not only extensive sources for how Swedish migrants reportedtheir attempts to ensure the success of their migration projects inthe European settler colonies in southern Brazil, but they are also sufficientlybroad and varied to provide a good overview, while the existenceof several series of letters by the same writers makes it possible to followindividual migration projects. The article explores the contradictions between migrants’ stories, the evolution of individual Swedes’ views onlife in Brazil, and how their known ideas about colonisation, nationalism,racism, and power related to the contact zone between Brazilianand Swedish society and history.By analysing the texts from an interdisciplinary perspective, consideringboth the Swedish and Brazilian contexts, we map Swedes’ migration projectsand contribute to the discussion of settler migration and its social andcultural implications. We find the Swedish migrants’ discourse to have beenheavily impacted by processes at a level that individuals rarely influence. Yetat the same time, their writings reflected the pragmatic realities of life as amigrant. We would argue that most Swedish migrants who wanted to defendtheir decision to emigrate (and perhaps never return) chose to present it inthe best possible light, whereas those who wanted to return and become partof the Swedish community again adapted their descriptions accordingly, offeringa negative picture of life in their new country and often of their ownemigration projects.
This article analyses the decision-making processes and the mobilisation of actors surrounding the investments in private railways in Sweden by means of a case study of the East Coast Line between Gävle and Härnösand around the year 1900. An effective regional interest group was formed with the aim to construct a coastal railway in Norrland. It consisted of a small, but well-connected and well positioned, group of industrialists, politicians and railway promoters, who would all benefit from the construction of the railway.
The limited size and homogenous character of the regional political and economic elite made it easier to form a cohesive interest group. It also enabled the use of personal networks to influence the policy process. Furthermore, the impact of the interest group also depended on institutional factors. Before the electoral reforms beginning in 1906, the Swedish political system gave regional elites considerable political influence, which enabled the merging of political and financial power. In municipalities controlled by industrial interests, municipal resources were channelled into a railway investment that catered mainly for industrial interests. The landsting were another source of public funds for railway projects, and different regional elites fought to have access to their funds. The regional elite also had channels into policy-making on the national level, since their firm grip of local and regional politics allowed them to obtain parliamentary seats. This increased the impact of the interest group, and also helped to shift some of the investment burden from companies and financial investors to the taxpayers.
Hence, the process of building a private railway was not only about engineering and economy. It was also about the mobilisation of the regional elite behind the project, in order to be able to perform the political manoeuvres and power brokering necessary for the railway to become a reality.
In this article the notion of ”Swedish sin” is traced in the Swedish pornography debate and in pornographic magazines with a focus on the 1960s. The connection between sexuality and Sweden, or the notion of ”Swedish sin”, began in an article in Time Magazine in 1955, and an international debate about the moral implications of the Swedish welfare state and of secularization followed. Sweden became an example of how socialist influenced politics and an excess of welfare affected morality. Furthermore, Swedish films also became increasingly famous abroad for its depictions of free love.
Concerns about Sweden’s reputation in connection with sexuality were thus already established in the 1960s when in spite of existing obscenity regulations the pornographic publishing industry grew quickly. Pornographic magazines in Sweden also started to use the idea of Swedish sin as a kind of marketing tool, clearly directed to an international market.
The Swedish pornographic press and its relation to an anxious society reflect how in the pornography debate nationality was connected to sexuality and gender. The article argues that the debate about pornography was based on strong heterosexual norms and a battle over the interpretation of what was to be termed normal sexuality. Behind the anxiousness about descriptions of Swedish women in sexual terms was also an underlying assumption about male sexuality and its impact on the profitability of the pornography industry.
The article studies commercial actors and advertisements in the Swedish weekly press in order to trace how the transformed gender roles during the Second World War were handled and negotiated in the commercial sphere. Two key dimensions of consumer society constitute the objects of study: 1) the weekly press’ and advertising industry’s actions and promotion of the role of female consumers during the war; and 2) how commercial advertisements represented female consumers. The weeklies we study, Svensk damtidning, Hemmets Veckotidning and Vecko-revyn reached national readerships and were directed towards households and especially women. The paper concludes that although women were described as essential to national defenseby keeping up home front morale, the war was largely absent in the advertisements. Instead, the latter tended to remind consumers of peacetime affluence and family-based gender ideals. This meant that while many women’s everyday lives changed dramatically as a consequence of national wartime mobilization, their desires were commercially channeled just as they had been in peacetime: toward looking after their appearance, caring for the household and choosing the right consumer goods.
The article studies commercial actors and advertisements in the Swedish weekly press in order to trace how transformed gender roles during the Second World War were handled and negotiated in the commercial sphere. Two key dimensions of consumer society constitute the objects of study: 1) the weekly press’ and advertising industry’s actions and promotion of the role of female consumers during the war; and 2) the commercial advertisements’ representation of female consumers. The weeklies studied, Svensk damtidning, Hemmets Veckotidning and Vecko-revyn, reached a national readership and were directed towards households and especially women. The article concludes that although women were described as essential to national defence by keeping up home front morale, the war was largely absent in the advertisements. Instead, the ads tended to remind consumers of peacetime affluence and family-based gender ideals. This meant that while many women’s everyday lives changed dramatically as a consequence of national wartime mobilization, their desires were commercially channelled just as they had been in peacetime: towards looking after their appearance, caring for the household and choosing the right consumer goods.
Debattartikel om historiska sanningskommissioner, och historikers roll i förhållande till dessa utifrån den andra delrapporten från "Utredningen om vanvård i den sociala barnavården".