Summary The Crown’s Taxes and the Peasants’ Bread. Local Administration and the Swedish Peasants 1719-1775 Sweden is a good example of the strong, centralized state which developed in Europe during the early modern period. The expansion, which had taken place during the 17th century, and the maintenance of the state’s authority, required large resources which first and foremost were used for the salaries of officials. Thus was the case even during the period investigated in this thesis - the Age of Liberty (1719-1772) and a part of the Gustavian era (-1775). Even if this was a relatively peaceful time, approximately 60 % of state revenue was applied to the military; principally to the salaries of officers. The remainder was used for the salaries of civil officials. Taxation rested mainly on the peasants. The Swedish Crown functioned as a distributor of society’s surplus from the great mass of peasants to a small stratumof officials, both nobles and commoners. The officials were part of the state-sustaining social stratum along with the propertied aristocracy and the wealthy burghers. The peasants can hardly have perceived that they were given anything substantial by the Crown in return for the taxes they paid. Since the state, from the beginning of the 17th century, built up and later took over a major part of this task of redistribution of income from the nobility, I have chosen to use the concept of late feudalism when speaking of the particular phase which characterized the 18th century. Fromthis point of view, an investigation of tax collection is essential for an understanding of the basic character of Swedish society. In earlier research, taxation has been underlined as an important field of conflict between state and the peasants. The principal question taken up in this thesis is how the local administration functioned as an instrument for class dominance and as a point of contact between state and the peasants. The interaction found differing expressions: coercion, conflict, compromise and agreement. In the few Swedish studies which have been carried out within this area, three major lines of interpretation can be found: one group of scholars emphasizes conflicts and coercion, another the dialogue and cooperation. A third possibility is to focus on the concept of interaction, which opens up possibilities for different results in the concrete analyses. In my analysis of the local administration and its civil officials I apply two of
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=