Mats Olsson
Prefekt Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen, Professor
Under the Landlord's Thumb. Municipalities and Local Elites in Sweden 1862-1900
Författare
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.
Avdelning/ar
- Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen
- Centrum för ekonomisk demografi
Publiceringsår
2021
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Lund Papers in Economic History
Issue
2021:218
Fulltext
- Available as PDF - 888 kB
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Dokumenttyp
Working paper
Ämne
- Economic History
Nyckelord
- landlord
- tenant farmer
- municipality
- Swedish Municipality Act
- 1862
- deference
- local politics
- voting rights
- political culture
- N43
- N53
- N93
Status
Published
Projekt
- Dynamic peasants? Agency and inequality in Swedish modernization