From Vanguard to Rearguard: The Swedish Court as a Motor of Change in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Royal courts could profoundly influence other parts of government. While government bureaucracy has usually been seen as leading the charge towards new, more efficient and stronger centralised authority, this article demonstrates how the Swedish court acted as an engine in the transformation of the dysfunctional Swedish state of 1600 into something much more formidable. At the encouragement of monarchs, noble courtiers became more attentive in their service to the state, more educated, more diverse in their origins, and more skilled in the arts of war. But such change was not everlasting, and the article compares characteristics of the court at the beginning of the seventeenth century with those of the later decades — the Caroline period. In these years the court turned inward on itself, declining from a position of innovation and leadership to one of reaction and decay, more rearguard than vanguard.