242 land despite the fact that they were clearly aware that this would bring about lower land prices. The explanation can be looked for in the fact that the monopoly of the nobility was part of a “feudal doctrine” which was constituted by the following points: — the nobdity had the sole right to higher civil and military positions - the nobility were obliged to bring up their sons as officers or holders of civil office — remuneration from the Crown was insufficient for this purpose and the nobility had to have income from the free lands - the lands of nobility had to be free fromtax and in order to justify being free fromtax they had to hinder everyone who could not be expected to bring up their sons as servants of the state (i.e. all commoners) fromowning free land. The monopoly on free land is then a restriction on the right to dispose of one’s property something which the nobility accepted — a free land market is incompatible with the “feudal doctrine”. This doctrine, however, loses credibility during the course of the 18th century due to the fact that poor noblemen were selling land to commoners and attempts to monopolize the higher civil offices led to rather tough conflicts with the common estates. At the same time calls began to be made in the peasant’s estate that even free land should be taxed. When Gustavus III mhis second coup d’itat in 1789 partly did away with the land monopoly of the nobility the criticism from the nobility was rather weak. At the same time an important principle was set, that free land was free of tax even if commoners owned it. During the years around 1790 a new doctrine for the nobility was formulated which was a response, among other things, to the demand for the taxation of free land. The important thing for the nobility was to keep free land untaxed. Therefore the monopoly on free land should be completely abolished so that being untaxed was no longer a privilege for an estate. As free land was untaxed it commanded a higher price than other land. Thus, being free fromtax was an asset which could be bought and sold on the open market and to tax free land would be an infringement of the security of the property. Fully consistent with this is that in 1810 the nobility divested themselves of the remaining sole right to free land and consequently this was criticised by various peasant M.P.’s who feared that peasants would also buy free land and that this would split the estate in the question of land taxation. 8. Some concluding reflections This chapter is related among other things to the opening question of collectivism as opposed to individualism. There exist essentially two interpretations of the history of the Western World during recent centuries. According to one -
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