In July 1743 around 5,000 peasants, mainly from the province of Dalarna, were marching into Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The peasants were organised like a military force and many of them were armed; those who didn’t had a gun wore farmer-tools like axes, shovels or pitchforks. One cause behind ...
(Show more)In July 1743 around 5,000 peasants, mainly from the province of Dalarna, were marching into Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. The peasants were organised like a military force and many of them were armed; those who didn’t had a gun wore farmer-tools like axes, shovels or pitchforks. One cause behind the long march to Stockholm was a broad popular discontent with the ongoing Russian war. Another reason was an aim to guarantee the succession after the old and child-less king, Fredrik I. Just outside the city-border the king himself was meeting up the peasant-army promising to listen to – and negotiate about – their demands. In spite of nice promises from both sides, already at the next day violence broke out in the city-centre. More than twenty dead bodies were found after the battle. The epilogue of the so called dala-uprising includes a judicial process where several thousands of dala-peasants were hold as prisoners in the city of Stockholm, charged for rebellion against the crown.
Popular contentions of this kind have not been common in the early-modern or modern Scandinavian history. During the medieval era and the time of the early Vasas there was almost constantly social disturbances and riots in Sweden (like the Engelbrekt-uprising at 1430’s, and the rebellion of the peasantry of Dalarna and Småland around 1530 respectively in the beginning of the 1540’s). In a European perspective the early-modern period was a time of riots and uprisings, but Sweden has, at least since the 17th century, been more characterised by the absence of that kind of disturbances. This pattern has in earlier research been explained in terms of a typical Swedish political negotiation-culture. Conflicts and dissatisfactions were canalized and solved in a peaceful way through official legal channels like the local and regional courts, but also in the national parliament (riksdagen) where the peasantry was represented.
This picture of the Swedish political culture is only partly true. Previous research has – as we see it – focused too much on consensus, and has therefore tended to neglect the real conflicts. By studying the conflicts themselves we’ll be able to investigate not only the course of events and the dynamics of the riots, uprisings and social disturbances, but also the role of the authorities and the actions of the local government. Some conclusions can already be made: First, we can notice that open conflicts have not been so rare as previous research has indicated. Second, the early-modern riots and uprisings included forms of political manifestations that we didn’t know before. Third, the city authorities were often careful in their actions. The common method of the authorities of Stockholm dealing with public unrest in the ‘calm’ early-modern era was to talk to – and negotiate with – the most active leaders of the mob. That was also the situation in the dala-uprising – even though it failed in 1743 it became a fairly successful strategy over time.
At mid-19th century, the pendulum swung back to harder repressions from the city authorities. There was no longer time or space for discussions or negotiations. The Crusenstolpe-riots in1838 as well as the march-riots in 1848 ended both up with the use of violence, and several people in the crowd were shot by the military. The hunger-riots of 1917, the youth-rebellion in the late 1960’s and recent demonstrations against globalization have as well met hard resistance from the city government and the police forces. During intervening periods softer measures seem to have been used. Our ambition is to analyse this long-term changes and how they are related to general traits in the development of Stockholm and Sweden.
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