Landständische Verfassungund bäuerliches Eigentumsrecht in Schwedisch-Pommern und Schweden 1720-1815

Abstract

The peasantry of Swedish Pomerania practically perished in the 18th Century. The farms had been expropriated, the peasants' lands added to the manors. In Sweden, however, the peasantry had come off strengthened from the constitutional fights of 1789 and 1809 and substantially participated in political life. The fact that Swedish- Pomerania as a tier of the German Reich was ruled according to the laws of the German Reich, whilst the development in Sweden followed its own laws, explains this discrepancy only to some extent. On the basis of the internal development in Sweden and Swedish-Pomerania in the 18th Century, the present article tries to find additional answers to the question, how the developments of both parts of the entire State of Sweden could differ to such an extent. Starting points are function and part of the land-register in the conflicts between Crown and provincial diet as regards the assessment of land. While in Brandenburg- Prussia the absolutist royalty effectively protected the peasants' properties against the nobility, the government of the diet of the time of liberty (1718-1772), which was dominated by the Swedish nobility, gave the Swedish-Pomeranian nobility a free hand as regards the peasants. After as early as in the 16th Century ordnance-survey had been started in Sweden and the peasants' holdings registered to fiscal purposes, in 1691 Charles XI ordered the geometrical survey for Pomerania as well. In 1709 the land-register, the so-called Lagerstromsche Matrikel, was finished on the basis of this ordnance-survey. After in 1718/20, however, absolutism had been replaced by government of the diet, the Swedish-Pomeranian provincial diet was successful in preventing the Lagerstromsche Matrikel from being passed into law. By this they also were successful in preventing the peasants' holdings from being registered in the sovereign's tax-lists. On the other hand, the Swedish government of the diet which was dominated by the nobility, pushed forward the introduction of the Lagerstromsche Matrikel by far less energetically than the absolutist royalty did before. Not least, the Pomeranian nobility itself gained more influence on the Swedish government than before, when many Pomeranian knights held high Swedish government offices. The sovereign did not immediately contact the peasants as tax payers, on the contrary, the raising of the levy was organized by the landowners and, irrespective of the actual number of peasants' holdings, calculated and paid for according to the manors. Therefore the sovereign was not interested in the number of peasants' holdings. Thus in Swedish Pomerania the expropriation of the peasantry could reach its climax in the second half of the 18th Century, after it was already prohibited in neighbouring Brandenburg. When in the beginning of the 19th Century, in his absolutist endeavours concerning the Swedish-Pomeranian provincial diet, Gustav IV Adolf wanted to fall back upon the peasants who had the tradition to Support the royalty in Sweden, he did not find any more peasantry; just as the Prussian authorities, when they wanted to perform the Regulation Edict of 14 September 1811 in former Swedish Pomerania after 1815.