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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.
List of contents
1. The Story of the Aggressive and Violent Peasant Elites in the North; Ulla Koskinen.- Part I: Confronting the Authorities with Violence.- 2. Peasants and the Political Culture in Norway, 1400-1700; Knut Dørum.- 3. Did the Rich Lead the Poor to Rebel in the Finnish Peasant Revolts of the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries?; Kimmo Katajala.- Part II: Aggressive Transactions with the Authorities.- 4. What Kind of Interaction was there between Norwegian Peasants and Danish Authorities in the Period between the Nordic Seven Years' War and the 1640s?; Øystein Rian.- 5. A State of Aggression? Swedish Peasant Elites and the Art of Bargaining during the Nordic Seven Years' War; Mats Hallenberg.- 6. The Lost Political Uprisings; Johan Holm.- Part III: Conflicts within the Communities.- 7. Violence and the Peasant Elite in Lower Satakunta, 1550-1680; Ulla Koskinen.- 8. The Fordell Family: A Struggle for Trade after Three Generations in Power; Tiina Miettinen.- 9. Conclusion; Ulla Koskinen, Knut Dørum, Mats Hallenberg, Johan Holm, Kimmo Katajala, Tiina Miettinen and Øystein Rian.
About the author
Ulla Koskinen is Research Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her work focuses on forms of interaction, communication and agency in sixteenth-century Finland. She has also studied the social dynamics of early modern peasant society, especially the Western Finnish peasant elites.
Summary
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.
