Mats Olsson
Head of the Department of Economic History, Professor
Under the Landlord's Thumb. Municipalities and Local Elites in Sweden 1862-1900
Author
Summary, in English
The Swedish Municipality Act, issued in 1862, consolidated a plutocratic system in which ownership and income, and the resulting level of taxation, translated into political power. However, as a measure to hinder large landowners from holding a majority of the votes, the Act guaranteed voting rights for tenants. The aim of the article is to analyse how power relations played out after this challenge to landlords’ hegemony. Through an analysis of tenants’ contracts, appeals to the King in Council and minutes from municipal board meetings, we show how landlords did not trust a political culture of deference to secure power, even if they had demanded subservience in contracts. In a deliberate and specific way, they also reserved voting rights for themselves, which we find to have been a widespread pattern although it was repeatedly pointed out as illegal by the King in Council. However, through the analysis of the board meetings, it becomes clear that the position of manorial landlords in these municipalities was so obvious that they rarely had to confront their tenants with their illegal contractual restrictions. The results empirically challenge a narrative of slow
but steady democratization and theoretically challenge the alleged reciprocity of landlord-tenant relations.
but steady democratization and theoretically challenge the alleged reciprocity of landlord-tenant relations.
Department/s
- Department of Economic History
- Centre for Economic Demography
Publishing year
2021
Language
English
Publication/Series
Lund Papers in Economic History
Issue
2021:218
Full text
- Available as PDF - 888 kB
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Document type
Working paper
Topic
- Economic History
Keywords
- landlord
- tenant farmer
- municipality
- Swedish Municipality Act
- 1862
- deference
- local politics
- voting rights
- political culture
- N43
- N53
- N93
Status
Published
Project
- Dynamic peasants? Agency and inequality in Swedish modernization