7.3.4 Sweden History: The Consolidation Of The State
Description
This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
7.3.4 Sweden History: The Consolidation Of The State
1560-1660
The construction of Sweden as a Great Power of Europe. The nobility fights
for its rights and privileges.
Gustaf Vasa's son, the mentally unstable Erik XIV, becomes king 1560, and in
1561 he starts Sweden's overseas conquests by capturing northern Estonia
from the Teutonic Knights.
During Erik's regime measures against corrupt sheriffs and despotic nobility
were prioritized, and a peasant army was organized (the first time in Europe
on the side of the authorities'). In 1563 the highest nobility, the Danish
king and the Duke Johan (of Åland and parts of Finland) had started a
combined war and coup d'etat. In despise for the peasants (and discontent at
the king) the noble general refuses to use peasant infantry in battle.
(Which saved the Danish army that time.)
King Erik XIV chose a commoner as chancellor, Jöran Persson, and 1568 Erik
married a common soldier's daughter Karin Månsdotter after unsuccessfully
courting e.g Elizabeth I of England and Mary Stuart of Scotland. The Swedish
nobility acts against Erik's plans wishing to get the king closer to them
through marriage with any of their daughters. In the same year his brother
Duke Johan, who had been pardoned after the coup 1563, turns against Erik
and imprisons him. The Duke becomes king Johan III and Erik, having been
sent from one prison to another for nine years, is finally poisoned in 1577
after several death sentences by the national council, however never
executed due to fear of the public reaction.
King Johan doesn't summon the peasantry to the next diets, declares commons
to be unfit as chancellors (Erik's chancellor Jöran Persson get severely
tortured before beheading) and pay back to the nobility by reliefs and more
privileges.
Immigration encouraged
Skillful smiths were recruited from what today is Belgium; Dutchmen were
recruited to build new towns, particularly Gothenburg; Scottish men were
hired as soldiers. The western parts of the kingdom, great uninhabited woods
around the sea Vänern, were colonized by skillful farmers from Savolax in
Finland encouraged by the kings brother Duke Karl (Duke of Dalarna and other
western parts of Svealand).
The Finns from western Finland, who came to work in Svealand's towns, mines,
industries and agriculture were soon integrated.
A popular tradition represented also in school books describes the relations
between the Swedes and the migrants from eastern Finland as violent.
Established historical science and official sources give no such
indications. The Savolaxians in the woods were isolated and remained
culturally different for hundreds of years (the migration was ended at 1680
when maybe 10'000 Finns had moved to the woods of western Svealand). The
annals from the courts give the impression of the Finns living in peaceful
co-existence with the Swedish peasants.
When the situation had settled after the Thirty Years' War Sweden's
territories were bigger than ever later or before. Inside the new realm
people came to move between the different parts. A policy of swedifying hit
the new provinces, maybe most in Scandinavia, including founding
universities and change of priests and some noble men. The year 1682 the
king decided that Finns had to learn Swedish or to return to Finland. This
official policy was however impossible to enforce in the distant woods, but
has remained until recent days.
1590-95
Sweden fights a smaller war with Russia that ends with the peace of Teusina
and the recognition of Sweden's right to northern Estonia.
1596-99
Civil war between king Sigismund of Poland and Sweden and his uncle, Duke
Karl. Most nobility supported the king, but Sigismund is kicked out, and the
Duke becomes king Karl IX. (Appointed by the estates 1600 although the
under-age crown prince Johan, son of king Johan III, rightfully stood closer
to the throne. Prince Johan abdicated 1604.) The brief personal union with
Poland is over. King Karl follows up on Erik's anti-feudal policy, while his
son Gustav II Adolf instead increase the privileges of the nobility for
instance by monopoly to army- and state-offices.
1630-48
Gustav II Adolf (Gustavus Adolphus) interferes in the Thirty Years' War
(1616-48) and Swedish troops fight in Russia, Poland, Austria and Germany.
The "Lion of the North" achieves legendary status as the defender of
Protestants, he receives crushing victories but his appetite for conquest
grows and eventually the king is killed in the battle of Lützen, 1632, after
which the war fortunes waded back and forth for the following 16 years.
Gustav's daughter Christina becomes queen; as she is still under age until
1644 the country is led by Sweden's perhaps most famous statesman Axel
Oxenstierna.
The year 1638 Sweden's American colony, "New Sweden" (in present day
Delaware) is founded and settled by Swedish and Finnish pioneers. The colony
remains in Swedish hands only for 17 years, and is lost to the Dutch.
1644-54
The reign of queen Christina, the daughter of Gustav II Adolf, was at the
same time one of favoring arts, culture, science and philosophy, and on the
other hand a period of continued expensive wars on the continent, which had
ruined Sweden's economy by raising hundreds of new families into nobility
who were exempted from taxation. This was more or less made undone by her
followers, her cousin king Karl X and his son Karl XI, in the second half of
the century.
The year 1654 the queen converts to Catholicism and gives up the crown. The
conversion of the daughter of the greatest enemy of Catholicism was a
brilliant propaganda victory for the Catholic counter-reformation. She
spends the rest of her life in Rome.
1675-79
Denmark declares war. King Karl XI, who newly have came to age, discovers
the great fleet and the state finances being ruined. Scania is taken back by
the Danes, then again conquered by the Swedes. The diet 1680 makes the state
council (representing the highest nobility), which was governing when the
king was under age, personally responsible for the bad state finances. The
diet also makes the king independent of the state council, and the diet also
accepted to hand over its lawgiving power to the king. The king Karl XI used
his dictatorship also for radical reforms of the state administration, the
Army and the education of the commoners. On later diets the nobility was
(collectively) forced to give back some of the land which had been given
them as reward for services to the State.
1680-1720
Successive incorporation of the Scanian provinces in the Swedish national
state. 1680 the province Blekinge is declared incorporated in Sweden in
connection with the construction of a navy base. 1682/83 the Scanian civil
and clerical laws were replaced by Swedish laws. 1693 Halland is
incorporated in Sweden.
1700-21
The Great Northern War. Sweden is attacked by an alliance of Denmark, Poland
and Russia. The young king Karl XII invades Denmark forcing it to accept a
separate peace. He then turns toward Russia, lands in Estonia with 10 000
men and achieves a glorious victory in the battle of Narva against a three
times larger Russian army.
With Russia and Denmark beaten, Karl XII ignores all suggestions of
negotiating peace and attacks Poland. This gives Peter I of Russia time to
raise a new army and to start reconquering the Swedish territories. Karl XII
eventually succeeds in subduing Poland, and starts a new campaign against
Russia heading for Moscow. The troops that were planned to come to aid the
main army, however, never manage to show up, and Karl is forced to turn
south to Ukraine because of problems with supply. There he suffers a
crushing defeat in the battle of Poltava June 28th 1709 and most of the
Swedish army surrenders while Karl XII manages to escape with a thousand men
to Turkey. He spent several years there trying to form a new alliance
against Russia.
With Finland occupied by Russians, most of the Baltic provinces lost and
Sweden itself threatened by a Russian invasion, the estates decide 1714 that
a peace is necessary, but since the king was still in Turkey a messenger was
sent there to inform that Sweden would accept any peace terms given unless
the king soon returns to Sweden. Karl XII reacts immediately, rides through
the whole Europe with only one man accompanying him in 15 days. After the
king had returned, all talk of peace was banned. In 1716 he still manages to
raise an army of 40 000 men, and attacks Norway in 1718.
Karl XII gets killed 1718 while laying siege to Fredrikshald in Norway. To
this date, it isn't known whether the bullet came from the Norwegian or
Swedish side. Whether he was assassinated or not, his death put a welcome
end to the Swedish campaigns and the exhausted nation could eventually
achieve peace.
Peace treaties with Hanover, Prussia, and Denmark leave Sweden only
Stralsund, Rügen and parts of Vorpommern of its former "German territories".
The most severe of the peace treaties is, however, the one with Russia
signed in Nystad in 1721. Sweden loses all its Baltic territories, the
southeastern part of Finland, and ultimately its status as a major power.
Continue to:
My Books
