By Benjamin Groth
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The mid-nineteenth century was, in many ways, a period of pronounced transition in Sweden’s history and bore multifarious paradigm shifts in almost every facet of Swedish society. Of particular note are demographic and infrastructural development; Sweden, like much of Europe at this time, underwent industrialization and institutional reform, though the processes were sometimes more ambiguous and later-occurring than continental trajectories.1 Pronounced urbanization and growth of per capita GDP began only in the later part of the century, and then still not to the extent that the same phenomena occurred in a country like the United Kingdom. However, the development of rural industry and economic growth were still very present features across the entirety of the century.2 Causally, this is related to an uptick in agricultural production and transportation technology, the consequences of which would initiate a bevy of both intra- and international migration and the redrawing of social structures. Consequently, happenings in the agricultural sector shaped the movement and consciousness of Sweden’s people significantly during this time.
Sweden began the nineteenth century with a boon in agricultural output; enclosure programs and lax taxation allowed for production at capacity. In addition, agriculture was becoming an increasingly efficient process due to technological advances and an increased awareness of agricultural axioms among farmers. The latter point was largely a consequence of the advent of education programs that taught scientific approaches to farming. This, in turn, gave rise to an increasing number of rural workers that could optimize the output of their land. On the former note, technological innovation was rapid and, as a result, agriculture became increasingly mechanized and less reliant on labor. Farming underwent a streamlining, with its practitioners able to rely on better seeds and animal breeding techniques, as well as tools like horse-drawn plows and mowers.3 For their part, the enclosure acts beget a wave of nascent freeholding in the form of individual homesteads (formed from the fragmentation of the previous open field system) and property consolidated by estates or purchased by crown tenants.4 This primed the transition of Sweden’s agriculture from a feudal to a quasi-capitalist enterprise, with changes to the practical and structural elements of farming giving rise to a new agricultural economy.
Under the new model, the majority of a tract’s output was largely sold for profit rather than directly consumed by its proprietor and diverted toward the estate; the profits that did accumulate were invested back into production.5 The lapse in taxation furthered the drive to produce, and this, coupled with new markets and increased demand, propelled the development of agriculture. International trade had expanded as well, and Sweden became a net exporter of staple crops such as buckwheat and potato. This together with the beginnings of urban growth (along with its attendant value-added goods, improvements in transportation infrastructure, and merchant classes), meant an ample demand for rural product. In this way, urban growth and agricultural development can be seen as mutually beneficial; cities provided an outlet for a plenitude of rural product, while the large-scale production of agricultural goods ensured their availability to urban populations.
The emergence of cities can, in multiple ways, be tied to changing modes of resource management and agrarianism. As touched on above, high-output, profit-oriented agriculture allowed for the growth of communities with no direct access to cultivated lands and crops themselves. Consequently, established cities could host greater numbers of inhabitants, with basic goods being provided from the country. In addition, infrastructural improvements (themselves a product of trade profits, which were used to cover social overhead in the form of roads, railways, and the like)6 and increased resource extraction made possible new settlements near to remote sites of collection. These concomitant developments in transportation and agriculture were, aside from being individually stimulating, something of a synergetic unit as well. Raw material from the country was shipped to cities in increasing volume and diversity, whereupon it became the substrate for many new manufacturing and processing jobs. New industries and, consequently, an array of new stations and communities emerged. This period saw the arrival of an urban working class, as well as a rural and urban middle class. Many new migrants to the city came to staff factory positions, whereby a new proletarian collective was amassed, particularly in Stockholm. The new features of Sweden’s industrial economy also enabled some of the general populace to accumulate wealth and monetary security. As a result, a middle class with expendable income surfaced, comprising professionals like factory managers and engineers. Stockholm saw the larger part of this sort of growth, although a significant number of people also migrated to the north where mining jobs were prevalent. Regions around Stockholm and in the north of the country (near lumber and mineral deposits) experienced the most marked growth generally.7
Although the movement described above was the predominant pattern during this time, migration across rural regions was also prevalent and influxes of population were by no means exclusive to established cities and hinterlands. Extensive land reclamation and the aforementioned enclosures both increased the land available for production and gave rise to farms much larger than those seen previously. This was accompanied by changes in the tenant farming system, and many pre-enclosure farmers were evicted after the consolidation of their land and were replaced by overseers and statare (farmhands that typically received payment in kind and were employed on a yearly basis).8 This, along with the disappearance of villages in the process of enclosure, displaced a fair portion of Sweden’s rural population, who either moved to other parishes or became statare on the new farms. Therefore, much of the rural migration was to areas with a large proportion of freeholders, particularly Skåne, which offered newly diversified employment to supplant the labor duties of the previous tenant farmers.9
Even with the cultivation of formerly marginal land and the expansion of production, these positions could not absorb the entirety of the peasantry. To add to the problem, agricultural labor positions were increasingly undercut by machines. However, jobs opened by industrialization somewhat ameliorated the loss of jobs it precipitated and cities, peripheral lands, and small town factories saw the arrival of many from the countryside. Ultimately, the net effect of industrialization on available work for Sweden’s labor force was negative. Urban jobs did not account for the entirety of Sweden’s peasantry and, to add to the pressure, Sweden’s population was growing at a significant rate, outpacing the already rapid economic and infrastructural development. As a consequence, Sweden could not, at the time, fully accommodate its growing population and many had to look beyond its borders for employment.10
Many peasants and evicted farmers viewed America as a land with ample opportunities for rural work and, beginning around 1850, Sweden saw large swathes of its people leave with the aim of securing plot of land (or at the very least, a chance to work on one) overseas.11 America was in the midst of rapid development itself, and as Sweden’s agricultural and industrial sectors were quickly exhausted of permeability, emigration seemed an increasingly viable prospect. After some delay following the glut of domestic labor, the first wave of international migrants popularized and made feasible the journey and many emigrated in their wake.12 The exodus, which continued into the latter half of the century, became increasingly motivated by necessity as the labor market became thoroughly saturated and many city-dwellers found themselves out of work.13 Factory positions were plentiful in America and in this way, Sweden’s few urban areas reached capacity without retaining an excess of urban poor. On the whole, work-motivated emigration did much to ensure Sweden was not overpopulated beyond its means.
While it may be true that Sweden lacked the ability to fully accommodate an expanding population itself, it should not be forgotten that the years of the mid- to late-nineteenth century were very productive for the country.14 As mentioned, the rise of novel transportation systems such as the railway allowed for convenient exchange between the city and country and allowed both to develop and flourish.15 The number of production centers for goods and the scale of organization had also increased drastically and Sweden’s agricultural revolution spilled beyond the domestic economy and changed the country’s foreign trade relations; in particular, the export of grain became an important new fixture in Sweden’s exchange with other nations.16 However, later in the century, a surfeit of American and Russian grain invaded the international market, and Sweden’s grain exports declined.17 Though grain, and crops generally, became less important in the twilight years of the century, the effects of the progress of agriculture were lasting and numerous.
The ramifications of Sweden’s agricultural industry make it the likely primary factor in changing the country’s makeup. However, such large-scale changes in the distribution of people are often multivariate in nature, and this holds true for the demographic reordering of Sweden. The movements of Sweden’s citizenry at this time were not exclusively motivated by the country’s agricultural revolution and the consequent changes to job and resource availability. For instance, many emigrated to America not just because of the “push” from a saturated labor market in the home country, but also because of the prosperity many associated with life overseas at this time. Also, toward the end of peak emigration in the mid-1870s, emigrants were increasingly culled from artisans and city-workers, as opposed to the peasantry, and most sought industrial jobs once in America.18 The greater diversity of activities and opportunities that arose in cities at this time can also be seen as significant attractants not necessarily bound to economic considerations.19 Considering the broadness and ubiquity of its consequences, though, agriculture still seems preeminent in initiating the large-scale demographic changes in nineteenth-century Sweden.
During the nineteenth century, Sweden’s agricultural system underwent massive changes that had lasting impacts on the country. Sweden also experienced significant rearrangement of its demographic order at this time and, by applying factorial insight, it becomes apparent that the two phenomena are related. The demographic consequences of agriculture in nineteenth-century Sweden were manifest as an increasing urban population, a large emigration campaign, and new socio-economic categories. Agriculture and the industry associated with it induced population growth while at the same time extirpating a large number of rural Sweden’s inhabitants and channeling them to unfamiliar parts of the country, to Stockholm, and out of the country itself. The influence, both direct and indirect, that agriculture had on population shifts in nineteenth-century Sweden is hard to overstate and, though other developments also contributed to redistribution significantly, it can be seen as the paramount determinant thereof. Agriculture and its effects on population distribution and industry were, most importantly, instrumental in shaping Sweden’s evolution during this period; with an equilibrated populace, a consolidated infrastructure, and an established material supply, Sweden entered the twentieth century as a developed, modern nation.
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Endnotes
1 Lars-Erik Borgegård, et al., “Population Redistribution in Sweden: Long Term Trends and Contemporary Tendencies,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 77, no. 1 (1995): 36.
2 Pernilla Jonsson, et al., “Towns and Rural Industrialisation in Sweden 1850–1890: A Spatial Statistical Approach,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 57, no. 3 (2009): 230.
3 Byron J. Nordstrom, “New Economies and New Societies,” in Scandinavia Since 1500 (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2000), 243.
4 Mats Olsson and Patrick Svensson, “Agricultural Growth and Institutions: Sweden, 1700–1860,” European Review of Economic History 14, no. 2 (2010): 284.
5 Jens Möller, “Towards Agrarian Capitalism: The Case of Southern Sweden during the 19th Century,” Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 72, no. 2/3 (1990): 60.
6 Jonsson, et al., 232.
7 Borgegård, et al., 36.
8 Möller, 63.
9 Olsson and Svensson, 296.
10 Richard L. Morrill, “The Development of Spatial Distributions of Towns in Sweden: An Historical-Predictive Approach,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 53, no. 1 (1963): 6.
11 Ibid.
12 Thor Norström, “Swedish Emigration to the United States Reconsidered,” European Sociological Review 4, no. 3 (1988): 230.
13 Ibid.
14 Jonsson, et al., 232.
15 Borgegård, et al., 36.
16 Olsson and Svensson, 275.
17 Nordstrom, 243.
18 Norström, 230.
19 Morrill, 12.