Absolutism and constitutionalism in agrarian states: the case of Scandinavia

The comparison between Britain and the Dutch Republic, on the one hand, and France and Spain, on the other, has largely confirmed the theory of a connection between capital and constitutionalism and an agrarian economy and absolutism.

These two countries, today regarded as largely similar and examples of Scandi­navian democracy and welfare state, followed different paths in the early modern period. Sweden was one of the few countries where the medieval Diet continued into the nineteenth century — it was transformed into a modern parliament with two chambers in 1866 — whereas Denmark became the most absolutist country in Europe, actually the only one with a formal constitution granting the king absolute power. This does not correspond to any great social difference between the two countries. Both were largely agrarian, with a strong aristocracy, but Denmark was clearly more urbanized and commercialized than Sweden in the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century. Scania was the centre of the lucrative trade in herring and Bergen in Norway — at the time (1536—1814) a part of Denmark — played a similar part in the trade in stockfish. Moreover, timber and eventually also metal from Norway were important export articles. In addition, the king of Den­mark profited from the control of the most important sea route in Northern Europe, through the Sound (0resund) which until 1658 was surrounded by Danish land on both sides. The only comparable asset for Sweden was the export of iron from Dalarna, which, however, had the added advantage that it could be used in the country’s own armament industry.

Thus, according to the theory, we should have expected the opposite result, constitutionalism in Denmark and absolutism in Sweden.

Denmark in the seventeenth century was a wealthy agricultural country where the nobles owned most of the land and shared the central power with the king through the council of the realm.⁶⁴ By contrast, the wider assembly of estates, dating back to the thirteenth century, was of little importance and met rarely. The council restricted the king’s power in many ways and was generally reluctant to engage in war. Thus, Christian IV had to enter the Thirty Years War in 1625 as a German prince, not as king of Denmark, because the council vetoed the war. For this purpose, he was able to use the Sound toll, which amounted to around one- fourth or a little more of the royal revenues in the first half of the seventeenth century and which was available without consent from the Council.⁶⁵ The result of the war indicates that the council was right.

The introduction of absolutism in Denmark was the result of the critical finan­cial situation after the wars of 1657—60. The war debt amounted to a sum so large that its interest exceeded the annual income of the kingdom. To deal with this problem, an assembly of nobles, burghers and clerics was summoned in Copenha­gen on 10 September 1660, which ended in an unanimous decision to make the monarchy hereditary, to return the election charter to the king and leave it to him to organize the government of the realm. On 10 January 1661, the king issued a charter proclaiming absolute monarchy, which was then formally accepted by the assembly and later by assemblies summoned for the purpose in the other countries under the Danish crown.

The introduction of absolutism led to a series of reforms. The debt was largely repaid by massive sales of crown lands. The loss of revenues resulting from this nevertheless had to be compensated for by taxes which increased drastically and had to be paid by the whole population, including the nobility, although large estates were later exempted. Moreover, extensive and costly military reforms were intro­duced, which created a modern army and navy, partly based on conscription of the peasants, partly on mercenaries. The most important source of recruitment of sol­diers was Norway, which had the same advantage as Sweden of peasants who pro­duced relatively little surplus and thus were more easily available for military purposes. The new army and navy performed well in the next wars against Sweden in 1675—79 and 1709—20, although neither of them led to recovery of lost territory.

Finally, a number of administrative reforms were introduced, partly influenced by the French departmental system.⁶⁶ However, the administration did not consist of ministers responsible for particular sectors, but of colleges of officials who were supposed to prepare the cases for the king’s decision. Each member was to present his own proposal, so that the king would not in practice be bound by unanimity among his councillors. Only very minor decisions were left to the members of the colleges; which of course meant a heavy burden for the king. The first three absolute kings nevertheless personally decided a large number of cases, notably Frederick IV (1699—1730), who was extremely hard-working. In the local admin­istration, the old officials, appointed by the king, usually nobles, who governed their districts like a kind of mini-kingdoms, were replaced by specialists, responsible respectively for the military, judicial and general administrative sector. The appointment of officials was based on previous administrative experience and edu­cation and was subject to detailed control by the royal government.

The introduction of absolutism has often been regarded as the solution to Den­mark-Norway’s problems in the first half of the seventeenth century. Although most historians blame the kings for beginning the wars without sufficient preparation, they have usually explained the lack of military preparation by the noble council’s unwillingness to spend money on the army and the stalemate between the king and the council. Apparently, Denmark therefore forms a perfect example of the ineffi­ciency of constitutional government in agrarian states and absolutism as the solution to the problem. Recently, however, this interpretation has been questioned.⁶⁷ Both the size and capacity of the army and the bureaucracy increased gradually throughout the period, while the council actually strengthened its power in the 1640s and 1650s. Thus, a modernization might possibly have taken place even without absolutism.

Rather than being the solution to the country’s long-term problems, the intro­duction of absolutism may therefore be explained by specific events in 1657—60. The king had distinguished himself during the siege of Copenhagen in 1658—60 while the nobles were blamed for having been unwilling to make sacrifices for the sake of the country. The king’s main supporters were the clergy and the burghers, in addition to the army, which was now less dominated by the nobility than pre­viously. In addition, the king could exploit the resentment of the lower nobility against the higher nobility.

Turning to Sweden, the advantage of this country from a military point of view was that it was poor. It had some wealthy agricultural areas but large parts of the country consisted of forest and poor and thinly populated land. Thus, it had a relatively large agrarian population that could be used as soldiers without any great loss to agricultural production.⁶⁸ Most of the nobles were also relatively poor and more inclined to military adventure than their wealthier Danish counterparts. When Gustaf II Adolf landed in Germany in 1630 to join the German Protestants in their struggle against the Emperor, he commanded a small, but well-trained and experienced army from previous wars in Poland and the Baltic area. He was also a brilliant general and a charismatic figure who managed to involve the Swedish nobility and largely also the peasantry in the war effort. Sweden, in addition, had a long tradition, back to the fifteenth century, of political rhetoric addressed to the common people.

In the following years, the Swedish army was supplemented by mercenaries financed by French subsidies, although there was also a substantial recruitment of Swedes. During the Thirty Years War, its size was more than 100,000 men, an enormous number, considering that the population of the country was hardly more than 1 million. Around 20 per cent of the Swedish army at Breitenfeld consisted of native Swedes but this percentage declined in the following period. Native Swedes were also more often used for garrison duty and in addition formed an elite corps of the army.⁶⁹ When the French subsidies dried up later in the century, Charles XI (1660—97) organized a new army based on conscription: the whole country was divided into districts in which a certain number of farms had to send one man to the army or navy — Sweden also had a strong navy, recruited from the population along the coast.⁷⁰ In this way, Sweden became the most militarized country in Europe in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, a country in which around 30 per cent of all adult men died in war.⁷¹ Sweden thus forms a clear counter-example to the theory of a connection between constitutional government and a strong commercial sector, the difficulty in making a landed nobility pay for war and the connection between militarization of an agrarian country and absolutism.

Both Sweden and Denmark are examples of the connection between warfare and state formation but differ regarding the constitutional consequences of this. The difference between the two countries can largely be explained by their pre­vious history. The Danish council of the realm was a small and exclusive body with little contact with the rest of society, corresponding to the dominance of the aris­tocracy and the relative weakness of the common people. It could therefore easily be abolished during a period of crisis, with the support of the clergy, bourgeoisie and the lower nobility. By contrast, the internal and external struggles affecting Sweden in the fifteenth century show the importance of the common people, notably the gentry and miners of Dalarna, who were mobilized by the Sture at various assemblies. This in turn led to the formation of the Swedish Diet (Riksdag), which met for the first time with its later composition in 1527, but has its back­ground in a series of meetings of popular assemblies in the previous period.⁷² Sweden first established strong royal government in cooperation with the people and the nobility under Gustaf Vasa (1523—60) and then embarked on foreign conquest, although without introducing royal absolutism.

During the most successful of its wars of conquest, Gustaf Adolf s victories in the Baltic and Poland and the following participation in the Thirty Years War, the king and the regency after his death acted in close cooperation with the top nobility, which profited more than any other class from the country's new status as a great power. In particular, the Chancellor, Axel Oxenstjarna (1584—1654), one of the great statesmen of the seventeenth century, for a long time had held a central position in the government of the country. He was the leader of the first two regencies and played an important part in the adult reigns of Gustaf Adolf as well as his daughter Christina. Eventually, trade, industry, towns, intellectual life and uni­versities expanded, which consequently increased the importance of burghers, cle­rics, civil servants and professionals of various kinds, but this was the consequence of strong government and military success, not its cause. Sweden thus shows that constitutional government could be as efficient as absolutism even in a largely agrarian society. The only way for a small and poor country like Sweden to become a great power was to mobilize the nobility and the people for this pur­pose — in addition to receiving subsidies from abroad. In the following period, however, there were tendencies in a similar direction as in Denmark. The Diet reacted against the dominant position of the aristocratic council and supported an increase in the king’s power. Thus, the period 1672—1718 is often referred to as a period of absolutism, but the Diet still existed, although it met less often and was less important.

In the context of European power politics in the seventeenth and early eight­eenth centuries, both Denmark and Sweden may be considered failures. Despite some military success, Denmark never managed to regain the lost provinces and Sweden’s period as a great power came to an end with the defeat by Russia at Poltava (1709) and the Peace of Nystad in 1721. Both countries were ultimately too small to compete with the emerging great powers in the region, Prussia and, above all, Russia, in addition to the two great naval powers, Britain and the Dutch Republic. However, they would probably have managed better if they had been allies rather than enemies. Sweden, with its Baltic empire and Denmark with its control of the Sound would seem a formidable combination, but a long tradition of enmity and rivalry made such an alliance unlikely.

By contrast, if we consider the internal conditions in the two countries, the picture becomes different. Neither of them declared bankruptcy and both over­came the financial crises resulting from the wars. Both developed reasonably effective and competent bureaucracies with an increasing level of education and neither practised sales of offices. Although the importance of absolutism for the recovery of Denmark after 1660 is open to discussion, the regime that developed in this country in the following period must be regarded as reasonably efficient.

Both countries entered a more peaceful period after 1720. Denmark had almost continual peace until 1807, whereas Sweden was involved in some wars against Russia, although far less than in the previous century. Both were influenced by the Enlightenment in the second half of the century and introduced some liberal reforms regarding the economy, agriculture and freedom of expression. To what extent their different constitutions led to differences in this respect has been dis­cussed in a great comparative project on the decision-making process, which con­cludes that the differences were not dramatic but that they did exist.⁷³ Absolutist Denmark was not arbitrary and constitutionalist Sweden was not democratic. As a matter of fact, Sweden had a more developed and efficient bureaucracy than Denmark. Whereas most of Sweden was governed directly from the capital in Stockholm, the Danish nobility still retained some administrative power over their peasants. Norway was from this point of view more absolutist in practice, as this country had only very few estates, but here the distance involved greater delega­tion to local officials. Both in Denmark-Norway and Sweden, the subjects had ample opportunity to influence the authorities through petitions. In both countries, these were most likely to favour wealthy and influential people, although peasants also made frequent use of them, sometimes with success. Here, however, the dif­ferent constitutions led to significant differences. In Denmark-Norway, the subjects had to confine themselves to asking the authorities for a certain course of action, whereas in Sweden they had the opportunity to engage in a political process through their elected representatives. Thus, Sweden resembles England in having a strong tradition of popular representation and cooperation between the nobility and the commoners.