THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE REDEFINITION OF POLITICAL LOYALTIES

Abstract

This article discusses the study of modernization in the conceptions of political identities and loyalties in Scandinavia in the late 18th century. Opening with a review of recent Scandinavian research on political cultures, the language of politics and emerging nationalism in the 18th century, it locates the ensuing case studies in this burgeoning field and also in a wider, European and comparative context. The construction of identities and loyalties among the nobility, the clergy, burghers, civil servants and peasants is examined. The author argues that, despite much of apparent continuity of values, there was a surprising degree of potential for innovation within Scandinavian political cultures in the Age of the Enlightenment. He emphasizes the need to study past political thought in the appropriate contexts of entire realms and North‐Western Europe as a whole and not just in the context of present‐day nation states. He also suggested that – due to the common traditions of representative government, unusually well‐preserved archival sources and the intensity of scholarly work on the 18th century in Scandinavia – Scandinavian cases should more frequently be used as objects of comparison in international studies of 18th‐century political cultures.