As was mentioned in part I, Folke Schmidt claimed that the emergence of “modern thinking about contract law” in Swedish labour law occurred in 1878 when Alfred OssianWinroth published his treatise on the “Master-Servant relationship”.53 Winroth placed the master-servant relationship under the law of obligations, which according to Schmidt was in marked contrast to most previous writers who had categorised the master-servant relationship as a part of family law.54 Moreover,Winroth is also credited with being the first Swedish scholar who paid attention to an important distinction between the hiring of things and the hiring of services.55 In other European countries this distinction, which is said to have been important for the development of the modern contract of employment, seems to have been elaborated at a considerably earlier date than the late 19th century.56 As was noted in part I, the emergence of the modern contract of employment generally is placed as late as around 1900. Nevertheless, it represents a confusing mixture of freedom of contract and notions of hidden terms that prescribe subordination and inequality, which calls for attention to be given to its roots further back inWestern legal thinking. One point of departure is the idea that the same rule can have different functions at different times depending upon changes in society.Alan Supiot57 refers to the change in function of the Romanistic concept of locatio conductio (letting and hire) in the civil law countries. This reference is of special interest in analysing Swedish labour law history before its formative period 18851930, for example the Swedish Code of 1734 and David Nehrman’s writings of 1729 and 1746. p a r t 1 i , c h a p t e r 2 38 53 Winroth 1878. 54 Schmidt, F 1959, p. 13. 55 Peterson, C1984, pp. 60-64. 56 Coing 1985, p. 456 with reference to Domat, Pufendorf,Wolff and Pothier; Nikisch 1926; Lotmar 1908, pp. 925, 928; Kaser 1966, pp. 564-565. 57 Supiot 1994.
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