Aggressive and Violent Peasant Elites in the Nordic Countries, C. 1500-1700

✍ Scribed by Ulla Koskinen (eds.)

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 320
• Series: World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book investigates the forms that the aggression and violence of peasant elites could take in early modern Fennoscandia, and their role within society. The contributors highlight the social stratification, inner divisions, contradictions and conflicts of the peasant communities, but also pay attention to the elite as leaders of resistance against the authorities. With the formation of more centralised states, the elites’ status and room for agency diminished, but regional and temporal variations were great in this relatively drawn-out process, and there still remained several favourable contexts for their agency. Even though the peasant elite was not a homogenous entity, the chapters in this collection present us one uniting feature – the peasant elites’ tendency to assert themselves with an active and aggressive agency, even if this led to very different outcomes.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xvi
The Story of Aggressive and Violent Peasant Elites in the North....Pages 1-29
Front Matter....Pages 31-31
Peasants and the Political Culture in Norway (c. 1400–1700)....Pages 33-62
Did the Rich Lead the Poor to Rebel in the Finnish Peasant Revolts of the 15th–17th –Centuries?....Pages 63-107
Front Matter....Pages 109-109
What Kind of Interaction Was There Between Norwegian Peasants and Danish Authorities in the Period Between the Nordic Seven Years’ War (1563–1570) and the 1640s?....Pages 111-144
A State of Aggression? Swedish Peasant Elites and the Art of Bargaining During the Nordic Seven Years’ War (1563–70)....Pages 145-170
The Lost Political Uprisings....Pages 171-188
Front Matter....Pages 189-189
Violence and the Peasant Elite in Lower Satakunta (1550–1680)....Pages 191-228
The Fordell Family: A Struggle for Trade After Three Generations in Power....Pages 229-260
Conclusion: Resisting, Cooperating, and Fighting....Pages 261-272
Back Matter....Pages 273-312

✦ Subjects

History of Early Modern Europe;History of Medieval Europe;Crime and Society;Social History;Cultural History