Preliminary Programme

Wed 22 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 23 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Sat 25 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

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Wednesday 22 March 2006 8:30
R-1 ElI01 ELI01: Enlightened Loyalties: Conceptual Construction of Social Identities in Europe
Room R
Network: Elites and forerunners Chair: Pasi Ihalainen
Organizers: - Discussant: Britt-Inger Johansson
Peter Hallberg : The Making of "the Middle Classes": Ideology and Identity Formation in the Age of Democractic Revolutions
This paper examines the making of "the middle classes" from the view of contemporary efforts in eighteenth-century Sweden to forge new ideologies and identities. The paper critically examines the relationship between estates and "classes"; it analyzes the relationship between ideology and identity formation; and, finally, questions historical accounts that describes ... (Show more)
This paper examines the making of "the middle classes" from the view of contemporary efforts in eighteenth-century Sweden to forge new ideologies and identities. The paper critically examines the relationship between estates and "classes"; it analyzes the relationship between ideology and identity formation; and, finally, questions historical accounts that describes major transformations of political culture without paying close attention to rhetorical strategies and agency. (Show less)

Jouko Nurmiainen : Particular interests in common good. Finnish politicians, fatherland and nation in the 18th century
Historians of ideas have often characterized 18th-century Sweden as a promised land of practically oriented utilitarianism (cf e.g. Sten Lindroth or Tore Fränsgmyr). In Sweden of that era several scientists (Anders Celsius or Carl von Linné) as well as many politicians (Anders Nordencrantz, Anders Chydenius) commented on the utility and ... (Show more)
Historians of ideas have often characterized 18th-century Sweden as a promised land of practically oriented utilitarianism (cf e.g. Sten Lindroth or Tore Fränsgmyr). In Sweden of that era several scientists (Anders Celsius or Carl von Linné) as well as many politicians (Anders Nordencrantz, Anders Chydenius) commented on the utility and the best of the realm. This Swedish 18th-century utilitarianism was often economical, and it emphasized the effective use of natural resources (including population) in the same time as the first chairs of economics were established at the universities and “mercantilism” and physiocratism were discussed in national economics.

The utilitarian common good of the realm was understood as perhaps the most legitimate motive for political decisions and actions. The good of particular citizens was unarguably subordinated to common good, if public and particular interests were ever to be in conflict. The initiators behind the economic activity were, however, independent gentlemen and burghers who were engaged in trading and manufacturing industries as well as in politics in a privilege-based estate society. For instance, it was necessary in 18th-century Sweden to motivate privileges for new commercial enterprises through not only particular, but also public interests.

Meanwhile, there were differences in circumstances for economic activity in the different parts of the Swedish realm, based upon differences in the distribution of natural resources and other given facts. For instance, the easternmost third of the realm, now Finland, traded mostly with timber, while the foreign trade of Sweden as a whole was dominated by the iron industry, with an interest to spare all possible timber resources for the refining of iron. Common good and the best of Sweden were understood in different, even contradictory and conflicting ways in different parts of the realm.

This paper examines these crossroads of common Swedish good and particular interests through the case of politicians representing the Finnish regions of the realm. Because later history was to divide Finland as an independent nation and a nation state separate from Sweden, modern Finnish historians have often tried to find 18th-century examples of the propagation of particular Finnish national interests before the division of the old Swedish realm. This paper reassembles such cases, including arguments about especially Finnish regional interests on capital city level. The problem is in which sense this kind of argumentation was regarded as valid in Swedish political culture and in which extent this kind of economical regionalism was derived from the idea that there were several separate nations or fatherlands inside the Swedish realm.

The main questions of the paper are: Were the Finnish special interests regarded as common or particular ones in 18th-century Sweden? Was the fatherland Sweden or Finland, and what did nationhood and fatherland mean to the politicians? What was the meaning of national interests in Swedish parliamentary politics in the 18th century; was this all about the utilitarian common good, or about particular interests too? (Show less)

Jon Stobart : Who were the urban gentry? A social elite in English provincial towns, 1680-1760
English urban society in the eighteenth century was both finely graded and increasingly fluid. Social standing was based a wide range of factors, including family background; the size and source of income; social, religious and political affiliations, and personal conduct. Distinctions were often slender and, with the emergence of a ... (Show more)
English urban society in the eighteenth century was both finely graded and increasingly fluid. Social standing was based a wide range of factors, including family background; the size and source of income; social, religious and political affiliations, and personal conduct. Distinctions were often slender and, with the emergence of a ‘middling sort’ of professionals, (retired) military officers, merchants and tradesmen, town dwellers found it increasingly difficult to differentiate between the finer gradations, particularly at the upper ends of the social order. Who was genteel and respectable? And what made them so? Such questions exercised not just contemporaries, but also modern scholars. Two groups have attracted particular interest in recent years: a landed rural gentry with long-standing, but growing interests in the social and political life of towns; and the emergent middling sort, who increasingly came to characterise and dominate many towns. Lying somewhere between these two, and arguably helping to bridge the social divide, lay a third important group: the urban gentry. Variously identified as members of minor landowning families more or less permanently resident in town, and professionals and tradesmen enjoying a wealthy and leisured retirement, the urban gentry formed a potentially large and significant section of urban society. And yet we know comparatively little about precisely who these people were and what position they occupied within urban society.
This paper thus forms an attempt to discover something of the identity and social worlds of the ‘urban gentry’ of Chester (an important provincial town in north-west England) as they developed through the eighteenth century. Specifically, the paper has two objectives. Firstly, it attempts to delimit the membership of this social group. Taking the self-defined ‘occupational’ titles of probate records as a starting point (i.e. who called themselves a ‘gentleman’?), I attempt to uncover the background of various members of the urban gentry. Were they ‘true’ gentry, retired tradesmen, or perhaps self-aggrandising men or lesser means? Second, I build up a detailed picture of their social affiliations. Who did they know and trust – were kinship, friendship or professional ties most evident? How did they mix with other members of Chester’s elite – what was the ‘social glue’ which bound them together? From this it is possible to explore the social world in which the urban gentry operated. Was it primarily urban and local, or did it stretch further afield? And was it defined by links up or down the social hierarchy? Answers to these questions provide us with important insights into the identity and consciousness of this section of the urban elite, and the ways in which they were linked to wider urban society. (Show less)

Charlotta Wolff : Love of fatherland and hate of sovereignty. Aristocratic philosophy of state in 18th-century Sweden
It has often been said that 18th-century Sweden, during the Age of Liberty, was an aristocratic republic, where the fierce and proud nobility dominated politics and concentrated power to its influential party networks. The political system reposed on the diet, dominated by the nobility and its party elite. The political ... (Show more)
It has often been said that 18th-century Sweden, during the Age of Liberty, was an aristocratic republic, where the fierce and proud nobility dominated politics and concentrated power to its influential party networks. The political system reposed on the diet, dominated by the nobility and its party elite. The political ideology of this aristocracy was freedom from tyranny, e.g. from royal absolutism.

By a conceptual analysis of the political writings of the nobility, it is possible to track the values that kept this system up. One key to the value system is in the expressions of community and loyalty, dominated by the common value of the fatherland. Another common value was the defiance of sovereignty, sovereignty being defined as arbitrary use of royal power, or as royal power imposed from abroad.

At end of the Age of Liberty, noble privileges and the political dominance of the aristocracy were questioned by pamphleteers, to a degree that it seems to have diminished the legitimacy of the aristocratic party system, overthrown by the coup royal of Gustav III in 1772. The king then filled the empty political space with royal authority and diminished the political power and privileges of the nobility. This can be seen as part of a larger process in Western Europe, a process of transition from indirect estate and kinship loyalties towards direct subordination to central power. This has been described alternatively as the crisis of the estate society, as the rise of a ‘third estate’, or as the transition towards a democratic mentality.

How did the Swedish nobility, which had seen itself as a class of citizens – with frequent references to classical Rome – adjust to this new situation? How did a formerly privileged class define state, society and political community, in an age of transition? Did the nobility see itself as privileged subjects becoming loyal citizens, or as privileged citizens that had became loyal but oppressed subjects? How was criticism against royal autocracy expressed, and which were the possible alternative political communities or fatherlands? As it was typical for the aristocracy to contract several parallel loyalties, at home and abroad, these questions also imply a reflection on political loyalty and national identity. What is a patriot? A man who loves his fatherland? A man in opposition? Or is he a traitor? What is a citizen? Is he an obeying subject, or a republican?

Many of the political concepts used in Sweden during the Age of Liberty were repeated and corrupted by Gustav III, who gave them another sense that make it difficult for us to grasp them. The ultimate aim of this analysis is to better understand the historical meaning of concepts such as ‘liberty’, ‘citizen’ and ‘patriot’ in their 18th-century context. (Show less)



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