Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-4hvwz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T15:59:30.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Peasants and Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Transformation of Sweden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Patrick Svensson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In post-World War II agricultural research, a new perspective on “peasant society” developed. This approach is still vigorous today and implies that peasant society—defined by subsistence production, the safety-first principle, and a stable village system with moral obligations—leads to conservative behavior toward change. It also assumes that only external forces can tear down the system and force peasants into markets. However, many researchers throughout Europe have challenged these opinions of peasant mentality and peasant behavior. This study investigates five parishes in southern Sweden (Scania) to analyze the behavior of peasants during the agricultural transformation (c. 1750–1850). Important organizational and institutional changes, such as enclosures, the emergence of a formal credit market, and the growing land market, are analyzed. Results reveal that some peasants actively participated in the agricultural transformation in a number of ways and that peasant farmers in Scania did not demonstrate a conservative attitude toward change.

Type
Special Section: The Commons and Collective Property in Cross-National Perspective
Information
Social Science History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , Fall 2006 , pp. 387 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2006 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahlberger, C. (1988) Vävarfolket: Hemindustrin i Mark, 1790-1850. Göteborg: Institutet för lokalhistorisk forskning.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C. (1982) “The efficiency and distributional consequences of eighteenth-century enclosures.” Economic Journal 92: 937–53.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C. (1992) Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450-1850. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Aronsson, P. (1992) Bönder gör politik: Det lokala självstyret som social arena i tre små-landssocknar, 1680–1850. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Bäck, K. (1984) Bondeopposition och bondeinflytande under frihetstiden: Centralmakten och östgötaböndernas reaktioner i näringspolitiska frågor. Stockholm: L. T. förlag.Google Scholar
Bjørn, C., ed. (1988) Det danske landbrugs historie, 1536-1810. Odense: Landbohistorisk selskab.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. (1966) French Rural History: An Essay on Its Basic Characteristics. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bokholm, R. (1998) Kungen av Skåne: En bok om statsmannen Arvid Posse. Lund: Historiska media.Google Scholar
Boyd, R., and Henrich, J. (2004) Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brenner, R. P. (1985) “Agrarian class structure and economic development in preindustrial Europe,” in Aston, T. H. and Philpin, C. H. E. (eds.) The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 10–63.Google Scholar
Brenner, R. P. (2001) “The Low Countries in the transition to capitalism,” in Hoppenbrouwers, Peter and van Zanden, Jan Luiten (eds.) Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages-Nineteenth Century) in Light of the Brenner Debate. Corn Publication Series no. 4, Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area. Turnhout: Brepols: 275–338.Google Scholar
Chayanov, A. V. (1925) Peasant Farm Organization. Moscow: Co-operative Publishing House.Google Scholar
Cipolla, C. M. (1969) Literacy and Development in the West. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Clark, G. (1998) “Commons sense: Common property rights, efficiency, and institutional change.” Journal of Economic History 58: 73–102.Google Scholar
Collett, D. (1994) Modeling Survival Data in Medical Research. London: Chapman and Hall.Google Scholar
Dahl, S. (1941) “Storskiftets och enskiftets genomförande i Skåne: Tabeller och kartor.” Scandia—tidskrift för historisk forskning 14: 86–98.Google Scholar
Dahlman, C. J. (1980) The Open-Field System and Beyond: A Property-Right Analysis of an Economic Institution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
de Vries, J. (1974) The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500–1700. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
de Vries, J. (2001) “The transition to capitalism in a land without feudalism,” in Hoppenbrouwers, Peter and van Zanden, Jan Luiten (eds.) Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages-Nineteenth Century) in Light of the Brenner Debate. Corn Publication Series no. 4, Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area. Turnhout: Brepols: 67–84.Google Scholar
Dewald, J., and Vardi, L. (1998) “The peasantries of France, 1400–1789,” in Scott, T. (ed.) The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Addison Wesley Longman: 21–47.Google Scholar
Dribe, M. (2000) Leaving Home in a Peasant Society: Economic Fluctuations, Household Dynamics, and Youth Migration in Southern Sweden, 1829–1866. Lund Studies in Economic History no. 13. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Dribe, M., and Lundh, C. (2005) “Retirement as a strategy for land transmission: A micro-study of pre-industrial rural Sweden.” Continuity and Change 20: 165–91.Google Scholar
Dribe, M., and Nystedt, P. (2003) “Information, trust, and diffusion of smallpox vaccination: The case of Scania, Sweden, 1802-1835.” Scandinavian Economic History Review 51: 9–28.Google Scholar
Dribe, M., and Olsson, M. (2003) “Spelade äganderätten någon roll? Om friköp av frälsejord i Skåne under 1800-talet.” Paper presented at the Swedish Economic History Conference, Lund, October.Google Scholar
Fenoaltea, S. (1976) “Risk, transaction costs, and the organization of medieval agriculture.” Explorations in Economic History 13: 129–51.Google Scholar
Firth, R. (1967) “Themes in economic anthropology: A general comment,” in Firth, R. (ed.) Themes in Economic Anthropology. London: Tavistock: 1–28.Google Scholar
Fridholm, M., Isacson, M., and Magnusson, L. (1976) Industrialismens rötter: Om förutsättningarna för den industriella revolutionen i Sverige. Verdandi-debatt. Uppsala: Föreningen Verdandi.Google Scholar
Fridlizius, G. (1957) Swedish Corn Export in the Free Trade Era. Lund: CWK Gleerups förlag.Google Scholar
Fridlizius, G. (1979) “Population, enclosure, and property rights.” Economy and History 22: 3–37.Google Scholar
Gadd, C.-J. (1983) Järn och potatis: Jordbruk, teknik och social omvandling i Skaraborgs län, 1750–1860. Göteborg: Meddelanden från ekonomisk-historiska institutionen vid Göteborgs universitet 53.Google Scholar
Gadd, C.-J. (2000) Den agrara revolutionen, 1700–1870: Det svenska jordbrukets historia, del 3. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur/LTs förlag.Google Scholar
Gaunt, D. (1998) “The peasants of Scandinavia, 1300–1700,” in Scott, T. (ed.) The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Addison Wesley Longman: 313–37.Google Scholar
Hanssen, B. (1977) österlen: Allmoge, köpstafolk och kultursammanhang vid slutet av 1700-talet i sydöstra Skåne. Stockholm: Gidlunds förlag.Google Scholar
Heckscher, E. (1949) Sveriges ekonomiska historia från Gustav Vasa, del 2: 1. Stockholm: Bonniers förlag.Google Scholar
Helmfrid, S. (1961) “The storskifte, enskifte, and laga skifte in Sweden—General features.” Geografiska Annaler 42: 114–29.Google Scholar
Henningsen, P. (2001) “Peasant society and the perception of a moral economy.” Scandinavian Journal of History 26: 271–96.Google Scholar
Herlitz, L. (1974) Jordegendom och ränta: Omfördelningen av jordbrukets merprodukt i Skaraborgs län under frihetstiden. Göteborg: Meddelanden från ekonomisk-historiska institutionen vid Göteborgs universitet 31.Google Scholar
Hoffman, P. T. (1996) Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450-1815. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Holmberg, N. (1939) Enskiftet i Malmöhus län: Förebilder och resultat. Lund: CWK Gleerups förlag.Google Scholar
Hoppe, G., and Langton, J. (1994) Peasantry to Capitalism: Western östergötland in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography 22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Houston, R. A. (2002) Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education, 1500–1800. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Hughes, J. (1998) “Re-evaluating Stalin’s peasant policy in 1928–30,” in Pallot, J. (ed.) Transforming Peasants: Society, State, and the Peasantry, 1861–1930; Selected Papers from the Fifth World Congress of Central and East European Studies, Warsaw, 1995. London: Macmillan: 238–57.Google Scholar
Isacson, M. (1979) Ekonomisk tillväxt och social differentiering 1680–1860: Bondeklassen i By socken, Kopparbergs län. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Jörberg, L. (1972) A History of Prices in Sweden, 1732–1914. Vol. 1, Sources, Methods, Tables. Lund: CWK Gleerups förlag.Google Scholar
Klose, G. (1992) “Folkundervisningens finansiering fore 1842.” Licentiate thesis, Department of Economic History, Lund University.Google Scholar
Köll, A.-M. (1983) Tradition och reform i västra Södermanlands jordbruk, 1810–1890. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Land Surveyor’s Office, Malmö (LMK), Sweden. Land enclosure registers. Google Scholar
Land Surveyor’s Office, Malmö (LMK), Sweden. Land enclosure acts. Google Scholar
Langton, J. (1998) “Conclusion: The historical geography of European peasantries, 1400–1800,” in Scott, T. (ed.) The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Addison Wesley Longman: 372–400.Google Scholar
Larsson, L.-O. (1983) Bönder och gårdar i stormaktspolitikens skugga: Studier kring hemmansklyvning, godsbildning och mantalssättning i Sverige, 1625–1750. Växjö: Hegborn.Google Scholar
Lilja, K. (2004) Marknad och hushåll: Sparande och krediter i Falun 1820-1910 utifrån ett livscykelperspektiv. Uppsala Studies in Economic History 71. Uppsala: Ekonomiskhistoriska institutionen.Google Scholar
Lindmark, D. (1994) Pennan, plikten, prestigen och plogen: Den folkliga skrivkunnightens spridning och funktion före folkskolan. Album Religionum Umense 4. Umeå: Institutionen för religionsvetenskap.Google Scholar
Linneman, P. D. (1978) “An econometric examination of the English parliamentary enclosure movement.” Explorations in Economic History 15: 221–28.Google Scholar
LLA. See Regional Archives of Lund. Google Scholar
LMK. See Land Surveyor’s Office, Malmö. Google Scholar
Löfgren, O. (1980) “Historical perspectives on Scandinavian peasantries.” Annual Review of Anthropology 9: 187–215.Google Scholar
Lundh, C. (1999) “The social mobility of servants in rural Sweden, 1740-1894.” Continuity and Change 14: 57–89.Google Scholar
Macey, D. A. J. (1998) “‘A wager on history’: The Stolypin agrarian reforms as process,” in Pallot, J. (ed.) Transforming Peasants: Society, State, and the Peasantry, 1861–1930; Selected Papers from the Fifth World Congress of Central and East European Studies, Warsaw, 1995. London: Macmillan: 149–73.Google Scholar
Magnusson, L. (1997) Sveriges ekonomiska historia. Stockholm: Rabén Prisma.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. (1975) “The persistence of English common fields,” in Parker, W. N. and Jones, E. L. (eds.) European Peasants and Their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 73–119.Google Scholar
Möller, J. (1989) Godsen och den agrara revolutionen: Arbetsorganisation, domänstruktur och kulturlandskap på skånska gods under 1800-talet. Lund: Kulturgeografiska institutionen.Google Scholar
Moon, D. (1999) The Russian Peasantry, 1600–1930: The World the Peasants Made. London: Addison Wesley Longman.Google Scholar
Neeson, J. M. (1993) Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure, and Social Change in England, 1700–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nilsson, A. (1995) Skrivkunnighetens utveckling under 1800-talet: Skattningar för lands-bygdsbefolkningen i Skåne. Lund Papers in Economic History no. 42. Lund: Lund University, Department of Economic History.Google Scholar
Nilsson, A., Pettersson, L., and Svensson, P. (1999) “Agrarian transition and literacy: The case of nineteenth-century Sweden.” European Review of Economic History 3: 79–96.Google Scholar
Nygren, I. (1981) Svensk kreditmarknad, 1820–1875: översikt över det institutionella kreditväsendets utveckling. Göteborg: Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen.Google Scholar
Olai, B. (1983) Storskiftet i Ekebyborna: Svensk jordbruksutveckling avspeglad i en östgötasocken. Studia Historica Upsaliensa 130. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Nygren, I. (1987) “…till vinnande af ett redigt Storskifte…”:En komparativ studie av storskiftet i fem härader. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Olsson, M. (2002) Storgodsdrift: Godsekonomi och arbetsorganisation i Skåne från dansk tid till mitten av 1800-talet. Lund Studies in Economic History no. 20. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Olsson, M. (2005) Skatta dig lycklig: Jordränta och jordbruk i Skåne, 1660–1900. Hedemora: Gidlunds förlag.Google Scholar
Overton, M. (1996) Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500–1850. Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography 23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pallot, J. (1998) “Introduction,” in Pallot, J. (ed.) Transforming Peasants: Society, State, and the Peasantry, 1861-1930; Selected Papers from the Fifth World Congress of Central and East European Studies, Warsaw, 1995. London: Macmillan: 1–12.Google Scholar
Palm, L. A. (2000) Folkmängden i Sveriges socknar och kommuner, 1571-1997. Göteborg: Palm.Google Scholar
Perlestam, M. (1998) Den rotfaste bonden—myt eller verklighet? Brukaransvar i Ramkvilla socken, 1620–1820. Malmö: Team Offset and Media.Google Scholar
Persson, C. (1992) Jorden, bonden och hans familj: En studie av bondejordbruket i en socken i norra Småland under 1800-talet, med särskild hänsyn till jordägande, sysselsättning och familje-och hushållsbildning. Meddelanden serie B 79. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, Kulturgeografiska institutionen.Google Scholar
Pettersson, L. (1996) “Reading and writing skills and the agrarian revolution: Scanian peasants during the age of enclosure.” Scandinavian Economic History Review 3: 207–21.Google Scholar
Pettersson, R. (1983) Laga skifte i Hallands län 1827-1876: Förändring mellan regeltvång och handlingsfrihet. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Pettersson, R. (2003) “Några blad ur allmänningarnas historia under 1800-talet i Sverige, Frankrike och England.” Paper presented at the Swedish Economic History Conference, Lund, October.Google Scholar
Popkin, S. L. (1980) “The rational peasant: The political economy of peasant society.” Theory and Society 9: 411–71.Google Scholar
Ray, D. (1998) Development Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Regional Archives of Lund (LLA), Lund, Sweden. Archive of the Agricultural Society. Google Scholar
Regional Archives of Lund (LLA), Lund, Sweden. Lund Diocese Archive. Google Scholar
Regional Archives of Lund (LLA), Lund, Sweden. Mortgage register for Albo district court. Google Scholar
Regional Archives of Lund (LLA), Lund, Sweden. Mortgage register for Harjagers district court. Google Scholar
Regional Archives of Lund (LLA), Lund, Sweden. Poll tax registers for Albo härader. Google Scholar
Regional Archives of Lund (LLA), Lund, Sweden. Poll tax registers for Harjagers härader. Google Scholar
Regional Archives of Lund (LLA), Lund, Sweden. V. Karaby Church Archive. Google Scholar
Reis, J. (2005) “Economic growth, human capital formation, and consumption in western Europe before 1800,” in Allen, R. C., Bengtsson, T., and Dribe, M. (eds.) Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 195–225.Google Scholar
Richardson, G. (2003) “What protected peasants best? Markets, risk, efficiency, and medieval English agriculture.” Research in Economic History 21: 299–356.Google Scholar
Rösener, W. (1994) The Peasantry of Europe. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, W. B. (1985) “The emergence of a capital market in rural Massachusetts, 1730–1838.” Journal of Economic History 45: 781–808.Google Scholar
Sandberg, L. G. (1978) “Banking and economic growth in Sweden before World War I.” Journal of Economic History 38: 650–80.Google Scholar
Sandberg, L. G. (1979) “The case of the impoverished sophisticate: Human capital and Swedish economic growth before World War I.” Journal of Economic History 39: 225–41.Google Scholar
Sandin, B. (1988) “Skolans mål för 300 år sedan: Hålla fattiga stadsbarn från gatan.” Forskning och framsteg 3: 34–40.Google Scholar
Scanian Demographic Database (SDD). Department of Economic History, Lund University.Google Scholar
Schön, L. (1987) “Järnet i jordbruksomvandling och industrialisering i Sverige, 1800–1870,” in Krantz, O. and Ohlsson, R. (eds.) Ekonomisk-historiska vingslag. Lund: Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen: 206–27.Google Scholar
Schön, L. (1997) “Internal and external factors in Swedish industrialization.” Scandinavian Economic History Review 45: 209–23.Google Scholar
Schön, L. (2000) En modern svensk ekonomisk historia: Tillväxt och omvandling under två sekel. Stockholm: SNS förlag.Google Scholar
Schultz, T. W. (1964) Transforming Traditional Agriculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. (1976) The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, R. M. (1998) “The English peasantry, 1250-1650,” in Scott, T. (ed.) The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. London: Addison Wesley Longman: 339–71.Google Scholar
Sommarin, E. (1917) Det skånska jordbrukets ekonomiska utveckling, 1801–1914. Del 1, Penning och bankväsen. Skrifter utgivna av de skånska hushållningssällskapen med anledning av deras hundraårsjubileum 1914. Lund: Berlingska.Google Scholar
Sommarin, E. (1939) Det skånska jordbrukets ekonomiska utveckling, 1801–1914, del 2–3. Skrifter utgivna av de skånska hushållningssällskapen med anledning av deras hundraårsjubileum 1914. Lund: Berlingska.Google Scholar
Svensson, P. (2001) Agrara entreprenörer: Böndernas roll i omvandlingen av jordbruket i Skåne ca. 1800–1870. Lund Studies in Economic History no. 16 (English summary). Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Svensson, P. (2004) “Was there a social differentiation and pauperisation during the agricultural transformation? The case of southern Sweden, 1780–1860.” Paper presented at the meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, November 18–21.Google Scholar
Thoen, E. (2001) “A ‘commercial survival economy’ in evolution: The Flemish countryside and the transition to capitalism (Middle Ages-nineteenth century),” in Hoppenbrouwers, Peter and Zanden, Jan Luiten van (eds.) Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages-Nineteenth Century) in Light of the Brenner Debate. Corn Publication Series no. 4, Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area. Turnhout: Brepols: 102–57.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1971) “The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century.” Past and Present 50: 76–136.Google Scholar
Tilly, L. A. (2000) “The food riot as a form of political conflict in France,” in Rotberg, R. (ed.) Social Mobility and Modernization: A Journal of Interdisciplinary History Reader. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 179–213.Google Scholar
Tortella, G. (1994) “Patterns of economic retardation and recovery in south-western Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” Economic History Review, n.s., 27: 1–21.Google Scholar
Utterström, G. (1957) Jordbrukets arbetare: Levnadsvillkor och arbetsliv på landsbygden från frihetstiden till mitten av 1800-talet. Den svenska arbetarklassens historia. Stockholm: Tidens förlag.Google Scholar
van Bavel, B. (2001) “Elements in the transition of the rural economy: Factors contributing to the emergence of large farms in the Dutch river area (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries),” in Hoppenbrouwers, Peter and Zanden, Jan Luiten van (eds.) Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages-Nineteenth Century) in Light of the Brenner Debate. Corn Publication Series no. 4, Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area. Turnhout: Brepols: 179–201.Google Scholar
Vivier, N. (2003) “Collective property in western Europe, eighteenth to nineteenth centuries.” Paper presented at the meeting of the Social Science History Association, Baltimore, November.Google Scholar
Weibull, C.-G. (1923) Det skånska jordbrukets historia intill 1800-talets början. Lund: Skrifter utgivna av de skånska hushållningssällskapen med anledning av deras hundraårsjubileum 1914.Google Scholar
Winberg, C. (1975) Folkökning och proletarisering: Kring den social strukturomvandlingen på Sveriges landsbygd under den agrara revolutionen. Meddelanden från Historiska institutionen i Göteborg 10. Göteborg: E & B förlag.Google Scholar
Winberg, C. (1985) Grenverket: Studier rörande jord, släktskapssystem och ståndsprivilegier. Rättshistoriskt bibliotek, trettioåttonde bandet. Stockholm: Institutet för rättshistorisk forskning.Google Scholar
Wohlin, N. (1909) Den jordbruksidkande befolkningen i Sverige, 1751–1900: Statistisk-demografisk studie på grundval af de svenska yrkesräkningarna. Emigrationsutredningen, Bilaga IX. Stockholm: Boktryckeriet P. A. Norsted.Google Scholar
Wolf, E. R. (1966) Peasants. Foundations of Modern Anthropology Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar