REVIEWS 559 Screen, J. E. O. The Army inFinland Dming theLast Decades of Swedish Rule (1JJO-1809). Studia Hist?rica, 75. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, 2007. 534 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Biblio graphy. Index. 32.00 (paperback). Finland was an integral part of the Swedish Realm until 1809 when itwas annexed by theRussian Empire. In terms of status and rights, the eastern part of the realm was equal to the western, or Swedish half but, in practice, remained a poor periphery and was treated as such.With her overwhelm ingly superior resources, Russia had risen above Sweden during the Great Northern War (1700?21), becoming the leading power inNorthern Europe. In the 1788-90 war, King Gustav III of Sweden tried to reconquer the territories lost to theRussians in 1721.Although the situationwas favourable as Russia was preoccupied with hostilities against Turkey thewar ended inconclusively. In early 1808 theRussian army penetrated Finnish territoryto conquer itand force Sweden to join Napoleon's Continental System to exclude British trade from Europe. In the late seventeenth century, Swedish peasants had been released from hated conscriptions, agreeing with the Crown on a substitution system used formaintaining infantrysoldiers, in Swedish roteh?ll or knekteh?ll. Three or four peasant farms constituted a military tenure unit, or rote, which provided one soldier and assigned him a croft to farm.The wealthy peasant farmswere able tomaintain and equip a cavalryman and his horse, and theCrown granted a certain tax exemption against this.The Crown also provided officersand non commissioned officerswith a residence to farm (or to lease out), with a certain amount of thepeasants' taxes assigned to these residences. The tenure system (indelningsverk) was based on a societal compromise. Compulsory military ser vice and conscriptions no longer burdened the peasants and theirworkforce. The tenure systemwas also favourable from the point of view of the nobility because itprovided them with regular income, that is crown taxes in kind, determined in terms of crown values lower than their real market value and also protected against inflation.The poor and mosdy agrarian nation acquired an army which was, in principle, standard size, maintained mosdy through the natural economy paid in kind. Sweden came out of the Great Northern War as a nation led by the upper estates, especially the nobility, until Gustav III institutedautocracy. Despite these enormous societal changes, nobody was strong enough to change the tenure system although its shortcomings were obvious. The rapid population growth of the eighteenth century meant that an increasingly small proportion of society served in the army. In 1808, soldiers accounted for 2.1 per cent of the Finnish population while itwas less than 2 per cent in Sweden. The tenure army in Finland had 13,000men, comple mented with 6,000 enlisted soldiers. Despite the country's much smaller population at the time, 50,000 men had been taken from Finland to fight in theGreat Northern War, firstthrough the tenure system and after through conscriptions. The relative 'undersize' of thepost-1721 Swedish armywas thus not only due to the inflexibilityof the tenure system, but also because there was no longer such a strongmonarchy in Sweden that could have squeezed out thevery last resources of society.The shortcoming of the post-1721 tenure 560 SEER, 88, 3? JULY 20I0 systemwas thatwhile it employed many resources, it only produced a rela tively small army, ill-suited for the purpose. The officers,non-commissioned officersand rankswere full-time farmers,with their military training based on annual exercises that lasted for only a few weeks. Although the army had individual officers trained in warfare both through theoretical studies and service in foreign armies, the level of the officers left much to desire. Some of the soldierswere too old. Both in terms of leadership, maintenance and train ing, theRussian armywas far superior to the Swedish army.Moreover, ithad unrivalled resources in terms ofmateriel and men. Geography was another major problem for the Finnish defence. Sweden could provide additional troops only between May and November, or the sailing season. Moreover, the threat of Sweden's old arch enemy, Denmark, tied up forces for thedefence of thewestern half of the kingdom. At thebegin ning of thewar in 1788, 11...