The Rise and Fall of Imperial Sweden
By Ben Pflughoeft University of Wisconsin–Madison The early sixteenth century heralded transformations to the organization of Sweden’s state formation, which elevated the poor and sparsely populated country to the status of a powerful and influential Scandinavian empire. Imperial Sweden, a dynamic government, proved itself to be an eclectic state of military, centralist, and localist influences distinct from many European contemporaries. For approximately two hundred years, this identity of a uniquely structured empire would operate under a complex formula defined by…