43 Summary Seventeenth Century Peasants and their Lords: On Land Ownership, Taxation, and Social Transformation in the Light of Newer Research BY DOCENT MARGARETA REVERA Seventeenth century Sweden provides a contradictory picture of simultaneous progress and stagnation. Within the areas inwhich thestate was active, politically, administratively, and militarily, the changes were significant and radical; the same was true for certain aspects of the cultural life. In order to describe the development inthese areas the terms Europeanization, and even modernization, have come into use. The distance is great fromthere to the agricultural plane whichappears as undeveloped and old-fashioned incomparison with the conditions in many other countries. The conception of a non-dynamic seventeenth century agrarian society, however, is based upon a stage in historical research which is rather advanced in years and which must be rejected on the grounds of principle. Characteristic for this older approach is thepriority giventheskattefrälsefrågan. That implied that interest has mainly been directed toward the freeholders who were considered to have been especially strongly effected by the »rule of the nobility» in the seventeenth century in that their duties to the Crown were abalienated to the nobility. The great Reduction {reduktionen) was therefore regarded as having saved these peasants and theestateof peasants in general, and it has been seen for several reasons as the basis for the development of agriculture. With such a view it has been natural to date the start of the transformation of society to the beginning of the eighteenth century. In opposition to that viewthis articlehas maintained that seventeenth century agrarian society deserves to be further investigated fromthe perspective of the transformation of society as seen against the backdrop of the massive concentrationof power duringtheAgeof Greatness. Several relevant areas arepointedout including the development of the real estate market for both the land owned by
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