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In his Wiles Lectures for 1977 Professor Roberts examines some of the problems raised by Sweden's brief career as a great power, and seeks to answer some of the questions that flow from them. Were the underlying considerations which prompted the unexpected development geopolitical, or social, or economic? How was it possible to produce the financial resources and the manpower which the enterprise demanded? How far was seventeenth-century Sweden a militarized society? What importance had official propaganda and national myths? Did the consititutional situation help to make an expansionist foreign policy easier? The structure of the empire is next examined: its administration, the ties that held it together, the differing interests of the provinces, the varying responses of the metropolitan power was there, in fact, anything deserving the name of an imperial policy? How did the provinces view the Swedish connexion? In a final chapter the author tries to answer the question why, if Sweden could acquire an empire without undue strain, she could not retain it; why the collapse was so rapid and so total; and whether her career as a great power had real relevance to the country's subsequent history. On almost all these topics little information is available in English, and no comparable treatment of them on this scale exists in any language.
List of contents
List of maps; Preface; 1. The making of the empire; 2. Resources, material and moral; 3. The character of the empire; 4. The unmaking of the empire.
About the author
Michael Roberts works in IT Support but has always enjoyed writing. As a child, he wrote a short story about a boy with a magic tea tray; when Michael's father entered it into a national competition, this story became a runner-up.
Mick is a huge fan of Manchester United and has seen over a thousand matches in fourteen countries. He writes articles for a Manchester United fanzine and is in the process of putting together stories for a book following the club.
Mick enjoys walking in the British countryside and, as a keen real ale imbiber, loves the country pubs that he is often fortunate enough to find at the end of nearly every walk. He will shortly have a piece published in the Fylde Ale CAMRA magazine.
