Peasant Aristocrats? Wealth and Social Status of Swedish Farmer Parliamentarians 1769–1895
(2018) In Lund Papers in Economic History. General Issues- Abstract
- Sweden was unique in early modern Europe, in that its parliament included a peasant farmer estate. It is commonplace in Swedish and international research to consider the peasant farmer politicians as the guarantee of a liberal and egalitarian path of development. On the other hand, in the Swedish-language political history literature, the peasant politicians are often seen as rather narrow-minded, their common political program limited to the issue of keeping (their own) taxes as low as possible, and opposed to any expansion of social policy and citizenship rights. To address the role of peasant farmer politicians, this paper presents a novel dataset of the social and economic status of the peasant MPs, with benchmarks for the 1769, 1809,... (More)
- Sweden was unique in early modern Europe, in that its parliament included a peasant farmer estate. It is commonplace in Swedish and international research to consider the peasant farmer politicians as the guarantee of a liberal and egalitarian path of development. On the other hand, in the Swedish-language political history literature, the peasant politicians are often seen as rather narrow-minded, their common political program limited to the issue of keeping (their own) taxes as low as possible, and opposed to any expansion of social policy and citizenship rights. To address the role of peasant farmer politicians, this paper presents a novel dataset of the social and economic status of the peasant MPs, with benchmarks for the 1769, 1809, 1840, 1865 and 1895 parliaments. We show that the politicians were three to four times wealthier than their voters, and in the 1895 parliament even 7.8 times wealthier. They were more likely to take bourgeois surnames and their children were likely to make a transition away from the peasant class and into the middle class. The exclusiveness of the peasant politicians, which increased over the nineteenth century, has implications for their policies, and helps explain the increasing conservatism and right-ward drift of Swedish farmer politics over the century. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/427c01fb-4c5f-48da-9d00-1f220865c82f
- author
- Bengtsson, Erik LU and Olsson, Mats LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2018
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- peasant farmers, parliaments, Sweden, political economy
- in
- Lund Papers in Economic History. General Issues
- issue
- 2018:175
- pages
- 27 pages
- project
- Dynamic peasants? Agency and inequality in Swedish modernization
- Parliamentarian and farmer wealth database 1769–1895
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 427c01fb-4c5f-48da-9d00-1f220865c82f
- date added to LUP
- 2018-06-19 11:24:32
- date last changed
- 2021-09-30 12:17:56
@misc{427c01fb-4c5f-48da-9d00-1f220865c82f,
abstract = {{Sweden was unique in early modern Europe, in that its parliament included a peasant farmer estate. It is commonplace in Swedish and international research to consider the peasant farmer politicians as the guarantee of a liberal and egalitarian path of development. On the other hand, in the Swedish-language political history literature, the peasant politicians are often seen as rather narrow-minded, their common political program limited to the issue of keeping (their own) taxes as low as possible, and opposed to any expansion of social policy and citizenship rights. To address the role of peasant farmer politicians, this paper presents a novel dataset of the social and economic status of the peasant MPs, with benchmarks for the 1769, 1809, 1840, 1865 and 1895 parliaments. We show that the politicians were three to four times wealthier than their voters, and in the 1895 parliament even 7.8 times wealthier. They were more likely to take bourgeois surnames and their children were likely to make a transition away from the peasant class and into the middle class. The exclusiveness of the peasant politicians, which increased over the nineteenth century, has implications for their policies, and helps explain the increasing conservatism and right-ward drift of Swedish farmer politics over the century.}},
author = {{Bengtsson, Erik and Olsson, Mats}},
keywords = {{peasant farmers; parliaments; Sweden; political economy}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Working Paper}},
number = {{2018:175}},
series = {{Lund Papers in Economic History. General Issues}},
title = {{Peasant Aristocrats? Wealth and Social Status of Swedish Farmer Parliamentarians 1769–1895}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/46511829/2018_175.pdf}},
year = {{2018}},
}