Contracted Coercion: Land, Labour and Gender in the Swedish Crofter Institution

ABSTRACT

In the early modern rural setting, labour was organized with varying degrees of coercion depending on landowning, social standing, and gender. This article analyses the crofter institution, characterized by corvée labour (obligatory work as payment), from the perspective of gender and coercion. The purpose is to answer the question of how the crofter institution was created, shaped, enabled and questioned. The right to establish a croft made the position as head of household available for men but it also increased social stratification. While crofters were masters of their households in contract signing, their position was ambiguous when it came to the organization of labour. Regarding physical integrity, crofters could be forced by physical violence and were subject to rules not connected to work, such as subservience. I argue that this was made acceptable through marriage and allowing the position as head of household to landless men. Crofters held an intermediate position, caught between the market logic of leasehold of land and the coercive logic of labour extraction, and this continued to colour the crofter institution until its final dissolution in 1943.

KEYWORDS:

• Crofters
• torpare
• coercion
• gender
• labour
• contract

Introduction: Contracted coercion

In the early modern agrarian setting, labour was organized and structured with varying degrees of coercion depending on landowning, social standing, and gender. Crofters (Sw: torpare¹) were a rural social group situated between peasant farmers with secured landholding and the landless population who relied only on their labour. The defining characteristic of the crofter institution was payment through corvée work for the croft (obligatory work specified in number of days, specific tasks and/or unregulated when called for by the landowner), which was specified in the contract in gendered ways. Crofters were part of the labour force of a landowner, but at the same time they made up independent households with a married couple at the centre.² Thus, crofters were neither dependent live-in servants, nor ‘double free workers’ in the Marxian sense,³ but rather part of parallel labour relations. In this article, the institutional structure for labour extraction in the Swedish crofter institution is analysed from the perspective of coercion in work and gender. The question to be answered is: how was the position of the crofter and the crofter household created, shaped, enabled and questioned.

This is important in three ways, which are addressed here. The first is the conspicuous research gap regarding the institutional framework of the Swedish crofter institution. Crofters are well known in Swedish rural history, but in previous research the group has mostly been studied as part of the labour force of manors or in analyses of the group’s demographic pattern, as well as in studies on croft buildings as material artefacts.⁴ A newly published study has analysed the living standards of crofters through probate inventories, which provides an illuminating analysis of the changing position of the group during the 18^th and 19^th centuries as ‘proletarianization without pauperization’.⁵ Nevertheless, there is a tangible lack of studies on the social relations created in the crofter institution.⁶ The briefly mentioned presentations of the legal frame of the crofter institution have sometimes been based on century-old misunderstandings which have continued to colour the view of the crofters.

Secondly, there is a modernization focus in the historiography of labour, as discussed in the introduction to this Special Issue, in which the ‘double free’ worker of industrial capitalism is seen as the endpoint towards which the previous development was inevitably heading. This is also prevalent in Swedish rural historiography. Rather than assuming that free markets will render ‘free’ labourers, this article analyses the coercive structures of the laws regulating labour extraction in the crofter institution.⁷

Thirdly, there is a need for a gender perspective to understand the crofter institution. Ongoing research regarding the gender division of labour in crofters’ households points to an institution experienced very differently by men and women. The work obligations differed between estates, but on average, women did around ten per cent of the total share of the household’s labour duties to the landowner.⁸ Nevertheless, to my knowledge there is no study analysing the institutional framework of Swedish crofters from a gender perspective.

The gender perspective here means both that men and women were differently positioned in regard to the crofter institution, and that certain features of the institution carried connotations of masculinity and femininity which enabled, but also prevented, various kinds of development. Crofters were married to a very high degree, and I understand marriage as a gendered institution. The relationship between marriage and gender in early-modern societies has been a much-debated issue in recent works. The debate is fundamental for gender history since it deals with the core question of to what extent it is useful to understand ‘women’ as a separate, analytical category.⁹ Since the pioneering works which uncovered the hidden history of women in the 1970s and 1980s, the theoretical development has been profound and can hardly be summarized here.¹⁰ The intersectional approach of understanding gender as interacting with other categorizations, most frequently class, ethnicity and sexuality, has been indispensable for the field. Furthermore, there is an influential strand of research understanding marriage as a structure separate from gender; a structure that outmanoeuvres gender since there could be larger differences between married and unmarried women (or men) than between married men and married women in regard to labour extraction.¹¹ However, I take another approach in this analysis and argue that for crofters, gender was a basis for labour extraction for both men and women, and it was organized through marriage.

The other theoretical tool is based on the framework for this Special Issue, the new direction in social and labour history analysing coercion in work. More specifically, I use the analysis presented by Robert Steinfeld in The invention of free labor, in which he points to the existence of parallel structures of coerced labour and capitalistic market economy.¹² In essence, a croft was established because a landowner had excessive land, tilled or not, and a need for more labour. A croft thus included a relationship between a landowning person and a landless person or someone with insecure landholding, based on the two analytically distinct features which Steinfeld discerns: market exchange and submissive labour extraction. The crofter contract included a market exchange of land through a leasehold contract resembling that made between a present-day landlord and tenant. It also involved a coercive labour relation in which the contract stipulated an unregulated work duty, and with the landowner holding power over the crofter’s person. Thus, crofters are an ideal group to study in order to understand the ambiguities of rural hierarchies and labour extraction through the lens of coercion.

The aim of this study is to increase the understanding of early modern labour relations, more specifically how gender and coercion in work shaped the crofter institution. This is done through an analysis of laws, regulations, contracts and debates regarding the position of the semi-landless group of crofters in the Swedish 18^th and 19^th centuries. Why would laws and debates tell us about the lived experience of people? My argument here is twofold. Firstly, although people obviously did not always act according to laws and contracts, it is not possible to analyse practices without an understanding of regulations and norms. A systematic study of the legal structures provides a frame for understanding other aspects of the institution; such a study is lacking in the case of Swedish crofters, and is therefore necessary. Secondly, laws, debates and written contracts are not disconnected with what people actually did, but rather part of an ongoing societal negotiation, where new laws are based on an understanding of the actual doings of people. Laws are normative, but not in the meaning of being detached from everyday actions, they are part of these actions although do not correspond exactly to them.

The article proceeds in the following way. After a brief presentation of the demographic features of the Swedish crofter institution and research on equivalent groups in other Nordic countries, the analysis is structured around three aspects of the institutional structure of labour extraction in the crofter institution. Through the lens of coercion in work and gender, the article discusses, in turn: who had the right to establish a croft; what rights to demand labour came with it; and what it meant to the physical integrity of the crofter. All three sections follow a chronological structure, meaning that some laws are mentioned several times. In order to facilitate reading, the most important laws and regulations regarding the crofter institution are listed in Figure 1. Throughout the article, the statements made in previous historiography are evaluated.

Figure 1. The most important laws, decrees and regulations regarding crofters’ position in Sweden, 18^th-20^th centuries (shortened and translated titles, see Bibliography for full titles)

Sources: See Bibliography: Law texts. Author’s adaptations.

Crofters in the Nordic region

The Swedish crofter institution has generated comparatively little interest compared to the other Nordic countries, although certainly not because of the groups’ insignificance. In the mid-18^th century Sweden, crofters were a relatively small group of ca 28 000 households, as compared to 187 000 peasant farmer households. At its height in 1860, there were 100 000 crofter households, while the group of peasant farmers had only increased to 223 000, a situation which sheds light on the proletarianization process. In 1900, the number of crofter households had diminished to 72 000.¹³ When the crofter institution disappeared in legal terms in 1943, only a fraction of the former number persisted, 5000 in 1940, down from 35 000 in 1920.¹⁴

The Danish laws have been thoroughly studied from the perspective of the master’s right by Anette Faye Jacobsen, who puts the social relationship at the centre.¹⁵ Danish agrarian relations have also received recent attention. In this context, the older historiography of understanding crofters and tenant farmers as not subject to serfdom under stavnsbånd has been criticized as a romanticization.¹⁶ The institutional structure of the Icelandic rural labour relations has been treated by Gudmundur Jónsson.¹⁷ The Norwegian historiography regarding crofters certainly stands out regarding its quantitative precision and level of detail. What is salient in this rich literature is the great interest in comparisons between laws and practices, regional variations, and the origins of the crofter system.¹⁸ Anna Tranberg has ambitiously studied the gender division of labour in the Norwegian crofter institution.¹⁹

Finland was part of the same realm as Sweden until 1809, and thus had the same laws until then, and many of them were kept under Russian sovereignty. The position of Finnish crofters became a central political issue, and unlike their Swedish counterparts, Finnish crofters organized themselves to protest against the leasehold laws. The Finnish structure meant that more crofters had a peasant farmer as landlord rather than a person of rank. This led to fierce antagonism between different parts of the rural population, and Matti Peltonen has argued that the inadequate political solutions to the crofter issue were one important reason for the Finnish civil war in 1918.²⁰ In the Finnish historiography, Pirjo Markkola and Ann-Catrin Östman have studied the crofter issue from a gender perspective. More specifically, this concerns how the dependent and non-owning position of the crofter was perceived as a threat to masculinity, and thereby one reason for the political rise of the labouring classes.²¹

Land, labour and gender in the Swedish crofter institution

To take up a position as a crofter had obvious benefits for the large and growing landless population for whom freeholding was out of reach. It offered a place to live, a plot of land to till, and the possibility for members of the household to find extra work for wages. Day labouring beyond the contracted corvée labour could mean an important extra income for the crofter household, but the contracts did not usually contain any entitlement to this, but it was contingent on the landowner. Just as important, the crofter position protected the household from accusations of vagrancy. The early modern labour market was characterized by a major coercive feature, called laga försvar (literally legal protection), which forced landless people into compulsory service in a landed household, under threat of being accused of vagrancy. Holding a croft, like being a freeholder or parish artisan, offered protection from being considered a vagrant.²² Although a married landless person might be accused of vagrancy, being married could also function as a protection. Marital status was an important distinction between crofters and servants, which means that a comparison between the legal position of the two groups will prove fruitful to the understanding of gendered features both of the rural hierarchy and of labour extraction.

Agreements on land

This section deals with the right to establish a croft, which differed between the nobility and the freeholders,²³ and the requirements for the crofter contracts. It is relevant for an understanding of coercion, since it established who could coerce whom in the rural hierarchy. The institutional framework of the nobility’s crofts had its roots in noble privileges formulated for their tax-exempt land: they were allowed to make their land as profitable as they could (göra sitt gods nyttigt).²⁴ This included the right to build and populate crofts in order to establish a suitable work force, without the interference of the Crown. Crofts on tax-exempt land could be built as the landowner thought suitable, and were free from taxes and, importantly, its inhabitants were free from conscription, which increased the attraction of taking up a position as a crofter for a noble landowner.²⁵ This means that the nobility’s right to establish crofts and apply what terms they thought appropriate and could reach agreement on was far-reaching.

Crofts on freeholders’ land and the importance of marriage

Three principles guided freeholders’ right to establish crofts: their duty to keep their farm large enough to be able to pay taxes to the Crown; forest decrees to save the common resources, which created a conflict of interest between the nobility and the peasant farmers on land use; and the Servant Acts, curbing the right of the peasantry to employ more than a certain number of labourers, which included crofters. The contested issue was what land ownership should include. In 1719, a regulation based on an appeal from the peasant farmers’ estate meant the first step towards allowing freeholders to build and keep crofts on their land.²⁶ The mid-18^th century involved further increases in peasant farmers’ ownership rights, which were strengthened and confirmed by the end of the 18^th century.²⁷ There was a convergence in what the landowning nobility and the freeholders could do with their land. This rise of the political and economic force of the peasant farmers and especially the freeholders is well known in Swedish historiography, but is usually understood in relation to the other estates,²⁸ the nobility, the clergy and the burghers, although it established hierarchies based on labour extraction between the landed peasants and their landless neighbours as well.

The argument that would substantially increase the freeholders’ rights was a demographic one: the belief that the population of Sweden was too small. Three 18^th-century decrees based on these demographic concerns pointed to the role of marriage in the establishing of crofts. In 1762 a decree confirmed the right of freeholders to establish cottages and houses for their married servants. In 1770, ‘permanently settled and married’ people could be exempt from the previous requirement for those without other suitable occupation of becoming servants under the Servant Acts.²⁹ The physiocratic idea behind this was a wish that servants should be able to establish a household, get married and have children earlier in their lives in order to increase the rural population, even if they could not become freeholders. At the same time, the perceived lack of people made it legitimate to limit the number of workers or servants on each holding.³⁰ As crofters were part of the workforce of a landowner, the establishment of crofts was limited on the basis of this principle. However, the intermediate position of the crofter also acknowledged them as separate households, which entitled them to certain rights. The third decree, issued in 1764, allowed crofters to employ servants, which underlines both the complexity of rural hierarchies and the importance of marriage in establishing that hierarchy.³¹ Thus, with marriage, the position as head of household became available to a man, which in turn legitimated other rights, such as employing servants, and not being forced to become a servant. Yet in spite of these rights, the fact that the crofter did not form an independent household, effectively undermined that position in various ways explored further below.

Crofters’ contracts and the leasehold law 1800

The governing principle regulating the relationship between landowners and crofters was stated in the general law of 1734, in the Land Code (Jordabalken), which assured the parties the right to make contracts freely, and stated that any contracted terms overruled the laws.³² Crofters were understood as leaseholders, and thus targeted by the leasehold law issued in 1800. However, this was primarily adapted to people of standing who were leasing large areas of land, and aimed to protect their right to make agreements freely. The only right that was not possible to withhold from the leaseholders through a contract was the right to stay until the general moving day (laga fardag) if they were dismissed.³³ Thus, this law did not deal with the main feature that set crofters apart from other leaseholders: the labour duties. This is a conspicuous difference compared to the careful regulation of servants, which restricted agreements on length of contracts, wages and living arrangements.³⁴

The 1800 law also demanded written contracts which were to be filed by the local court.³⁵ Being a rather formalistic requirement, it is likely that many landowners and crofters relied on custom and social proximity in order to uphold the contracted terms. It also seems likely that many agreements continued to be made orally, since this was a recurrent theme in the debate even a century later. Indeed, some scholars have claimed incorrectly that written agreements were required for the first time in 1907 or 1943.³⁶ My interpretation is that the law of 1800 stipulated written contracts, but that it was characterized by weak compliance. More importantly, when public interest in the crofter institution rose at the end of the 19^th century (see below), written contracts were seen as a solution to the poor situation of crofters, a solution which did not threaten fundamental power relations. It was a non-threatening measure to suggest – however, it was not so non-threatening that it was fully enforced even after the intense debate that ended with the law of 1907.³⁷

The Swedish crofter institution was less coercive than the Danish before the 1788 tenant reforms (landboreformerna³⁸), since the Swedish crofters were not tied to the land or the specific landowner but could move. However, in Sweden the right to stay on the croft was severely curtailed by the principle that contracts took precedence over laws. Landowners used a formulation in contracts called ‘reciprocal termination’.³⁹ While ‘reciprocal’ sounds like an agreement, in practice this meant that landowners could evict crofters at any time, leaving the crofter household without a home and nothing to live on. The crofter’s right to terminate the contract equalled the right to move (i.e. not being tied to the land as serfs). Waves of evictions did take place from time to time and aroused despair and anger, although it seldom led to organized resistance.⁴⁰ It was not until 1907 that arbitrary reasons for terminating the contract or ‘home-made’ termination clauses in contracts were prohibited.⁴¹

The right to stay at the croft was a gendered issue as well. According to the 1734 law, a widow had the right to keep the contract after her husband died, as long as she was already married to him when the contract was signed in the first place. If she remarried, the landowner had the right to cancel the contract.⁴² For a man, the loss of his wife did not alter his contract. This shows how marriage as a basis for labour extraction was differently organized for men and women, since women’s right to the status as crofter was contingent on her gender and civil status.

Parallel structures of land agreements: The 20^th century

At the end of the 19^th century, the debate concerning crofters’ poor and insecure position intensified, and resulted in a new law in 1907.⁴³ However, the most prominent feature of this law was its continuation of the older laws – it did not deliver the changes requested in the debate. The much-debated question of whether crofters should be compensated for improvement work on the croft holding resulted in a weak compromise: only the cost for pipes used for pipe draining was to be compensated.⁴⁴ However, another leasehold law was issued only two years later, with a radically different content. It became known as Norrlandslagen, the law of northern Sweden. Northern Sweden was by this time dominated by huge forest companies buying up large areas of forests from landowners (sometimes by unfair methods), but also acting as leaseholders in order to make use of the forests. This law strengthened the position of the leaseholders, at the expense of landowners, which mirrored the economic power of the parties – the leaseholders were the powerful companies, while the landowners were rather insignificant peasant farmers.⁴⁵ This means that there were two leasehold laws with totally different outcome for the parties, illuminating the circumstance pointed out by Steinfeld that different principles regarding free/unfree dimensions could exist side by side.

It was not until a law was issued in 1918 that the position of crofters changed in a more profound way. This new law gave crofters rights to buy their crofts, if certain requirements were met, even against the will of the landowner. However, by this time, crofters were expressing their view of the crofter position by abandoning the institution altogether and turning to industrial work or emigration.⁴⁶

Right to demand labour

Crofters were heads of households, ‘free men’ capable of signing or denying the contract, but once the contract was signed, their own and their whole household’s labouring capacity were at the disposal of the landowner. The peculiar feature of this labour contract was that it could – and often did – include a paragraph that permitted unlimited work, and that the specified days could be used at any time. This could be written like in this example from Torpa estate in western Sweden: ‘… and the user [the crofter] must whensoever requested perform extra corvée labour’ (bold in original).⁴⁷ It might seem like an unattractive contract to sign, but for a married couple during proletarianization of the 19^th century, alternatives were scarce. The contracts also resembled those made by manorial tenant farmers, who often had even more corvée labour in their contracts.⁴⁸ Moreover, since the contract included the whole household, I argue that a marriage and gender theoretical perspective provides new insights into the coercion of labour extraction in the crofter institution and why this position could be accepted.

Servants were regulated in such ways that they were forced to do any reasonable work demanded by the master; all work they did, they did with the master’s approval, and they did not have duties to others.⁴⁹ Crofters on the other hand had many duties but could not plan the work themselves since they were subject to decisions by the landowner and needed to fit in both specified and unspecified chores, some as piecework, some as day work. They had duties towards the community and the obligation to restore buildings, but when called upon by the landowner, the crofter household always had to prioritize that work. This example of a contract from Ryholm’s estate in western Sweden, signed by the crofter Eric Ericsson in 1864, is fairly typical. His household was obliged to: take care of the croft’s buildings, fields and ditches, do 156 days of male corvée work and 8 days of female corvée work per year when called for, deliver post according to a certain structure, do extra days of work, provide transport and produce charcoal as demanded, transport charcoal to the estate, guard the forest from damage, bring their own tools to work and pay all taxes and insurances.⁵⁰

When the crofter signed a contract, he did so as head of household and therefore in control of other people’s labour. While servants were dependent and deprived of self-determination, they were eligible for certain rights, such as the right to receive sufficient food and wages on time, as well as the right of not being forced out from their position unless something extraordinary had happened.⁵¹ Crofters had no such protection in the law, but were left, as household heads, to fend for themselves in negotiating contracts with landowners. This position of being responsible for certain tasks but at the same time deprived of the means to plan for it, could be illustrated by one of the very few parliamentary debates about crofters before the end of the 19^th century.⁵²

When the Building Code (Byggningabalken) of the general law of 1734 was discussed, it led to a conflict between the estate of the peasant farmers and the other three estates, especially the estate of the nobility. The issue concerned participation in the organized search and hunt for predators threatening the livestock, which was an obligation for all inhabitants owning cattle. The peasant farmer estate considered it necessary that crofters be part of the search as well. The estate of the nobility, on the other hand, argued that crofters should not be called upon to search separately, but only on the orders of the landowner since they were part of the landowner’s work force. Thus, the nobility argued that as noble landowners they should organize the men going to search, without interference from the law. In the end, the language of the law concluded that every second crofter should take part in the hunt.⁵³ This is interesting since it points to the intermediate standing of male crofters: as their own head of household, often owning some cattle, but at the same time not really their own masters with the right to make decisions regarding their labouring capacity.

For women, this intermediate position was characterized by another level of coercion. A wife was expected to work for the benefit of the household, and the household position was determined by the husband’s position. A wife was explicitly forbidden to serve someone else without the consent of her husband, but when the husband had signed a crofter contract with unlimited corvée labour, he could not freely give such a consent.⁵⁴ The ultimate decision about the labour of all members of the crofter household was then in the hands of the landowner. Once again, the position of the crofter was an intermediate one. Marriage did not give the right to a husband to force his wife to certain work, but a crofter contract often included the work of the wife.⁵⁵ If a male crofter had signed such a contract, he could be deemed liable for damages if the wife did not perform the work – but he as a husband could not force her. However, if he employed a servant, the position as master gave the right to lend the servant to others.⁵⁶ On the one hand, the crofter’s wife had fewer days of corvée labour, as mentioned in the introduction, meaning fewer days under the surveillance of the landowner and more subsistence work, presumably a less coerced form of labour.⁵⁷ On the other hand, the wife was legally obliged to obey her husband, and contractually obliged to obey the landowner.

When servants’ unfree position was discussed in public during the 18^th century, it was their unmarried status and the lack of future prospects of becoming head of a household that were at the centre of the debate. As servants they could not reach this important milestone of manhood and marriage, and were thus to be pitied. Others argued that since servants could get married after their period in service, and for example become crofters, servanthood was an acceptable position.⁵⁸ I argue that for crofters, marriage played a role that mirrors the debate about servants, although crofters’ position was not debated until the end of the 19^th century. The crofter institution was perceived as ‘natural’ through its complementary organization of the household, when husband and wife could help each other out and the wife could do her tasks in close connection to the home and the children.⁵⁹ Since independence for the male crofter was signified by marriage, it was not the lack of independence that led to the questioning of the poor status of crofters, but the perceived impossibility of this position. When the hard work of the couple could not offer a reasonable living or even survival, when the crofter household was too strongly governed by the landowner and the crofter could not secure his position or the future of his household, he could not meet the standards for manhood.⁶⁰

The 20^th century: Continuation of coercive labour

The intense debate concerning the position of crofters at the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th century occurred in the context of national economic worries about crofters being poor workers and the fear that workers in agriculture would leave the countryside or even the country altogether. There was a growing social democratic belief that crofters and other workers in the countryside needed better terms. The law issued in 1907 was one of the most important outcomes of this debate. Although the continuity in regard to the position of the crofters was strong, as discussed above, it made one important change. In 1907, the right to demand an unregulated workload was abandoned and the landowners could no longer order labour more or less as they pleased. Crofters had to be called for day labouring at least two days in advance – this was strongly opposed by the wealthy landowners in the upper chamber.⁶¹ However, a parliamentary investigation carried out in 1918 revealed that corvée labour was still common and that many landowners violated the 1907 law and its prohibition against unregulated day labour duties and duties unevenly distributed over the year.⁶² Although cash payments gradually became more common than corvée labour after the end of the 19^th century, it was not until 1943 that corvée labour was forbidden.⁶³

The master’s right: Physical discipline in the crofter institution

The master’s right (husbonderätten) was the right of the head of household, as master of his family and other subservient members of the household. This was a patriarchal right including the administration of chastisement and the enforcing of religious worship for all members of the household, and the right to expect the subordinate to be subservient, diligent and obey the master.⁶⁴ In crofters’ households, the male crofter was head of his own household, but also part of the extended household of the landowner. This intermediate position was part of the contract, which often ended with a paragraph in which the crofter promised that, ‘not only he himself was to be faithful, diligent, sober, obedient and polite to the master or his representative, but also to ensure the same behaviour among his subservient people’.⁶⁵ Thus, the position as male household head gave power over ‘his’ people, while at the same time the position as a head of a crofter household made the male crofter subservient – a situation hard to endure, as shown in the Finnish debate by Markkola and Östman.⁶⁶

The subservience of the crofter was manifested in two features of the crofter institution: the right of the landowner to use physical violence towards crofters, and the right to prevent crofters from leaving the position. The development of these regulations further brings into question the modernization approach in previous research.

In Sweden the right of the nobility to exercise judicial power (gårdsrätt) over their subordinates was never particularly strong, unlike in Denmark (hals- og håndsret).⁶⁷ However, in the 17^th century the noble estate fought to achieve this right but they were opposed by the Crown and the Commoner estates.⁶⁸ The noble privileges of 1723 implied a compromise, and the judicial rights of the Swedish nobility over tenants’ and crofters’ persons were never further extended. These specified the right to physically chastise crofters and other subordinates for ‘minor crimes, insubordination, and neglect’. It was the same principle as discussed above, which involved that a noble person had the right to make use of his holdings and labour force without the interference of the Crown.⁶⁹ This right of the nobility to chastise their crofters was not repealed until 1864, when a new penal code was implemented. Thus the privileges of 1723 neither protected the rights of crofters nor abolished chastisement. They only slightly limited the judicial rights of the nobility.⁷⁰ The abolition of chastisement of adult servants by their masters, as a comparison, came into effect in 1858 after a long and heated debate in which the position of servants was discussed in detail.⁷¹

Crofters (like servants and tenant farmers) were especially severely punished if they committed a crime against the landowner/head of household/master; that is, harder than if committing the same crime against someone else. In 1776, a specific regulation made the penalty more rigorous for tenant farmers, crofters and male servants if they deliberately, in order to take revenge for a supposed injustice, committed a theft or tried to kill their master. The law defined the subjects of the regulation – tenant farmers, crofters and male servants – in two ways. Firstly, it specified that ‘servants or subordinates’ were in essence, in their very position, ‘connected to the master in faithfulness’ and therefore a crime against a master was especially serious. Secondly, servants, tenant farmers and crofters were in a specific relationship because they served the master with ‘work or corvée day labour’.⁷² This means that work duties were connected to subservience – it was because the tenant, crofter or servant worked for the landowner that he stood in a specific relationship to him or her. This regulation was reissued with only insignificant changes in 1841.⁷³ Rather than work being a market exchange and limited in time, for crofters it was connected to coercion and subservience. Thus, through the theoretical lens of coercion, it is possible to challenge the meaning of modernity as a development towards free labour markets.

The obligation to stay in the crofter position constituted another aspect of physical coercion. This was specified in the Land Code. The Land Code seldom explicitly mentions crofters, the term used is landbo, this means a person living on the land of the landowner, which includes crofters. The rule was that if a runaway landbo, or crofter, was found, the landowner could take him back by force. If he put up resistance, and he or any person helping him were hurt, there were no legal penalties for the landowner. If the landowner or his assistant were hurt, the crofter was punished with double fines. If the crofter had already found a new place, he could not be taken back violently, and the landowner could only demand fines.⁷⁴ After 1845, this rule was changed so that the landowner was not allowed to use violent measures himself, but had to go through a public official to bring back the crofter.⁷⁵ This means that the violent enforcement measures connected with the servant position applied to the crofter as well, while the crofter did not have the same rights to nourishment and clothing as included in the servants’ subservience. Moreover, it means that it was only in the mid-19^th century that the landowner ceased to be able to physically force the crofter to return if the latter ran away.

The combination of the weak protective rights for crofters, such as contracts overruling the laws and the master’s right, meant that it was possible to continue to demand subservience if it was included in contracts. This option was indeed used by the landowners in contracts that spanned all the decades of the 19^th century.⁷⁶ The 19^th century is thought of as heading towards industrialization and liberalization of the labour market, but the crofters were not considered to be in need of protection until 1907, and subservience and labour services continued to be demanded in the crofter institution until 1943.⁷⁷

Conclusions

Crofters were an intermediate group, neither belonging to the feared masterless vagrants,⁷⁸ nor inhabitants of taxable units of interest to the Crown. The crofter institution was part of an increasing social stratification by which peasant farmers strengthened their position both vis-à-vis the nobility through a convergence of rights to make use of their land, and vis-à-vis proletarianized groups through enhancing their ability to make use of other peoples’ labour.⁷⁹ Furthermore, crofters was an intermediate group governed by two distinct logics: market exchange of land, and coercive features of labour extraction. This article has provided the first comprehensive analysis of the legal and contractual position of the Swedish crofter institution and the social relations of which it was part. The article has revealed how the group’s legal status was characterized by its lack of regulations, whereby crofters were left to negotiate contracts with landowners and did not enjoy the same protective rights as servants. The development of the crofter institution involved the organization of land use, labour extraction, and the physical integrity of the crofter’s person, and these were combined in a way that illustrates Steinfeld’s point about parallel structures. Rather than following a general trend of liberalization of labour markets, the labour extraction in the crofter institution continued to follow a specific trajectory of combining coercion in work and market exchanges of land well into the 20^th century.

Furthermore, through a gender analysis, this article has provided an explanation for the lack of interest in regulating and debating the crofter institution. For rural landless men, to become a crofter was to become head of a household; this was a trade-off between the subservient position in relation to the landowner and the superior position in his household. This has been contrasted with the position of unmarried, live-in servants, for whom the lack of household supremacy was understood in the contemporary debate as difficult to endure for grown-up men. Thus, labour extraction in the crofter institution was based on gender and organized through marriage.

This article has provided a correction to the modernization approach in rural history, as discussed in a broader perspective in the Introduction to this Special Issue. The notion that the 18^th century was a period when repressiveness peaked, and was replaced by a liberalization of labour relations during the 19^th century, does not fit the story of crofters.

Special Issue

This paper is part of the Special Issue of Scandinavian Journal of History, titled “Labour and coercion in the Nordic region in the early modern period: Connections, ambiguities, practices“, edited by Vilhelm Vilhelmsson, Johan Heinsen and Hanne Østhus.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under Grant no. 2020-02523, “Challenging the domestic. Gender division of labour and economic change studied through 19^th century crofters’ households”.

Notes on contributors

Carolina Uppenberg

Carolina Uppenberg (b. 1982) is an economic historian with a doctoral degree from the University of Gothenburg 2018, with the thesis I husbondens bröd och arbete. Kön, makt och kontrakt i det svenska tjänstefolkssystemet 1730–1860 [Servants and masters. Gender, contract, and power relations in the servant institution in Sweden, 1730–1860]. She is currently researcher and PI for the project “Challenging the domestic. Gender division of labour and economic change studied through 19^th century crofters’ households”, a three-year project funded by the the Swedish Research Council, at the Department of Economic History and International Relations at Stockholm University. Her main research interests are agrarian social relations during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, gender history and labour history. She is a participant in the COST Action funded network Worlds of Related Coercions in Work. https://www.su.se/english/profiles/cali2396-1.315409

Notes

1. Translated terminology is complicated, and not much has been written in English about the Swedish group I am studying here. I follow the terminology in a relatively recent collection by influential Swedish agrarian historians Myrdal and Morell, The Agrarian History of Sweden, see Gadd, “The Agricultural Revolution in Sweden,“ 140–1 for terminology regarding the landless groups. Other translations for torpare or Norwegian and Danish husmenn are: cotters or cottars. I reserve the term cottager for the poorer backstugusittare, a group who stood in a looser relation to the landowner and, at least before the mid-19^th century, were often not fully able-bodied.

2. For a general overview of crofters, see Gadd, “The Agricultural Revolution in Sweden,” 140–3; Morell, “Agriculture in Industrial Society,“ 176–8; Elgeskog, Svensk torpbebyggelse; Jonsson, Jordmagnater, landbönder och torpare, 41–71; Svensson et al., “Empowering Marginal Lifescapes“; Lindström, “Labouring Poor“.

3. Marx, Capital, ch. 6, esp. 244.

4. Bäck, Början till slutet; Elgeskog, Svensk torpbebyggelse. For crofters and tenant farmers on large estates, see Olsson, Storgodsdrift; Nyström, Potatisriket; Jonsson, Jordmagnater, landbönder och torpare; Magnusson, Ty som ingenting angelägnare är; Dribe, Olsson, and Svensson, “The Agricultural Revolution“, for demographic and economic patterns, see Gadd, “The Agricultural Revolution in Sweden“; Morell, “Agriculture in Industrial Society“; Nordström, “Torp och backstugebebyggelsens framväxt“; Persson, “Något om torp och torpare“. For crofts as material artefacts, see Lagerqvist, Torpets transformationer; Svensson et al., “Empowering Marginal Lifescapes“.

5. Bengtsson and Svensson, “The Living Standards,“ 63.

6. For short discussions on the lack of studies analysing crofters as a social group, see van Bavel and Hoyle, “Introduction,” 13–6; Næss, “The Crofters as a Social Group“.

7. Introduction to this Special Issue. See also Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor, 3–9. For influential Swedish historiography Utterström, Jordbrukets arbetare, 825; Lundh and Olsson, “Tenancy Contracts in Scania“; Myrdal and Morell, The Agrarian History of Sweden.

8. Manuscript under review: Uppenberg and Nilsson, “The crofter is a woman”. In the ongoing research project “Challenging the domestic. Gender division of labour and economic change studied through 19^th century crofters’ households” (Swedish Research Council, no. 2020–02523), crofters’ contracts from about ten large estates in southern and western Sweden are being compiled, and examples given in this article are based on this compilation. Research project web page: https://www.su.se/english/research/research-projects/challenging-the-domestic.

9. The classical essay is Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category”. For an argument of historicizing the gender category further, see Boydston, “Gender as a Question“.

10. For a recent overview with a Nordic perspective, see Arnberg, Larsen, and Östman, “Gender and Economic History”.

11. Ågren (ed.), Making a Living.

12. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor.

13. Myrdal and Morell, The Agrarian History of Sweden, 286.

14. Hyrenius, SOU 1944:65, 21; SOU 1946:42, 125.

15. Jacobsen, Husbondret. See also Kook Lyngholm “Absolute Obedience“.

16. Henningsen, Stavnsbåndet, 15–6, 74–9, 96–8.

17. Jónsson, “Institutional Change“.

18. See for example Heimen 2/2004, vol. 41, Special issue on husmenn; Dørum, “Fikk overgangen til selveie betydning?“; Næss, “The Crofters as a Social Group“; Sogner, “Freeholder and Cottar“; Dyrvik, “Husmannsvesenet i Norge“; Prestesæter, Husmannskontrakter og lovregulering and the recent compilation by Østrem, En kort introduksjon. There is even an ambitious Wikipedia compilation of studies on crofters, husmannsvesenet: https://lokalhistoriewiki.no/wiki/Husmannslovgivning#Bibliografi, pointed out to me by Hanne Østhus.

19. Tranberg, Ringsakboka III; Tranberg, “’Ledighed taales ikke’”.

20. Peltonen, “Från osäkerhet till hat”.

21. Markkola and Östman, “Torparfrågan tillspetsas”. See also Östman, “Gendered Understandings“.

22. Servant Acts 1723 §1; 1739 art. 1 §1; 1805 art. 1 §1; 1833 art. 1 §1.

23. Wohlin, Emigrationsutredningen, 7–12.

24. Noble privileges 1723 §25.

25. Noble privileges 1723 §8–9.

26. Royal decree 3 June 1719 regarding peasantry’s appeal §3; Bäärnhielm, “Arrende och agrarpolitik,” 42; Lindström, “Skattelandbor och hälftenbrukare,“ 62.

27. Royal letter 18 Feb. 1757 regarding croft establishment; Royal decree 21 Feb. 1789 regarding sales of Crown land to freehold, §2; Royal confirmation 4 April 1789 of the rights of the peasantry, §7 (unrestricted number of servants).

28. Olsson and Morell, “Scandinavia, 1750–2000,” 331–7; Christensen, “Radikalism som strategi“; Winberg, “Another Route to Modern Society“.

29. Royal decree 20 July 1762 regarding married servants; Royal decree 8 March 1770 regarding improved agriculture.

30. Servant Acts 1686 §2; 1723 §3; 1739 art. 3 §1–3.

31. Royal decree 25 June 1764 regarding crofters’ servants.

32. General law of Sweden 1734, The Land Code (Jordabalken) ch. 16, 6§. Sw: “Leger man ut eller till lega tager gods och gårdar med vilkor, rätte sig båda sidor efter det, som aftaldt är”.

33. Royal decree 13 June 1800 regarding leasehold, §1; Wohlin, Emigrationsutredningen, 17–20.

34. Uppenberg, I husbondens bröd och arbete, 89–115.

35. Royal decree 13 June 1800 regarding leasehold, §3. Sw: ”det mellan Arrendator och Jordägare uprättade Contract skal sist wid det Ting, som infaller sex månader sedan Contractet slöts, för Härads-Rätten upwisas, der offenteligen upläsas och uti Intecknings-Protocollet til hela innehållet intagas”.

36. Gadolin, Öfversikt af jordlegorättens, 52–4; Elgeskog, Svensk torpbebyggelse, 224, believed that the law of 1800 demanded written contracts, while the 19^th century authors Wahlberg, Om lega af jord, 132–4; Tisell, Äro några förändringar önskvärda, 9–10, considered that no written contracts were demanded at the time they wrote their texts (in 1892 and 1870). Agrarian historians Morell, Jordbruket i industrisamhället, 70, and Olsson and Morell, “Scandinavia, 1750–2000,“ 319, writes that it was the 1907 law on leasehold that demanded written contracts for the first time, although acknowledging that this could be negotiated out of the contract, while legal historian Bäärnhielm, “Arrende och agrarpolitik,“ 53, mentions the 1943 law as the moment when written contracts were required.

37. Lundqvist, “Striden om en modern arrendelag,” 48–9. Although in an unpublished bachelor thesis, it is to my knowledge the only detailed study of the debate concerning the 1907 leasehold law. She concludes with clear references that the 1907 law did not demand written contracts, although it was one of the most desired changes in the debate. However, in some cases written contracts had a stronger legal validity. Cf Tranberg, Ringsakboka III, 170–1 finds that written contracts were demanded in 1750 for crofts on common land, and in 1792 for crofts on enclosed land.

38. Jacobsen, Husbondret, 111ff.

39. Sw: “ömsesidig uppsägning”. See note 8.

40. See Olsson, “Manorial Economy”; Olofsson, Tullbergska rörelsen, on evictions of tenant farmers in southern Sweden during the 19^th century. Cf. Peltonen, “Från osäkerhet till hat“ for the analysis that the dissatisfaction among crofters was one reason for the Finnish civil war.

41. The expression ’home-made termination clauses’ comes from Bäärnhielm, “Arrende och agrarpolitik,“ 50 (’”hemmagjorda” uppsägningsklausuler’). See also Undén, Arrendators rättigheter, 11–3.

42. General law 1734, Jordabalken, ch. 16, §2–3; Wahlberg, Om lega af jord, 158–9.

43. Bäärnhielm, “Arrende och agrarpolitik,” 46–50; Lundqvist, “Striden om en modern arrendelag“; Edling, Det fosterländska hemmet, 63–9, 179–83; SFS 1907:36.

44. SFS 1907:36, §17; Lundqvist, “Striden om en modern arrendelag,“ 46–8. Once again, different scholars presents divergent statements about the content of this compensation. Morell, Jordbruket i industrisamhället, 70, says that crofters were compensated, while Wästfelt, “Arrende och annan nyttjanderätt,“ 23, says they were not. Probably the weak compromise is the reason for this diverging statements.

45. Bäärnhielm, “Arrende och agrarpolitik,“ 51; Undén, Arrendators rättigheter, 5–6.

46. SFS 1918:569.

47. Sw: “… samt skall brukaren när så påfordras utgöra öfver-dagsverken“ (bold in original). GLA, Torpaarkivet C22, F2:4 (the same wording in many contracts in this file, but see for example contract signed by crofter Frans Johansson 28 Nov 1887).

48. Olsson, Storgodsdrift.

49. Servant Acts 1739 art. 7 §1; 1805 art. 2 §3, art. 3 §6; 1833 art. 2 §5, art. 3 §10.

50. Sw: ansvara för ”all åbyggnads underhållande, jordens häfd och dikning, samt ägornas hägnande”; ”156 Mansdagsverken”; ”8 Qvins dito”; ”postförning […] i tur med det öfriga godset, såsom tillförene”; ”dagsverken, körslor samt kolningar utöfver hvad här är bestämdt, åligger brukaren, efter erhållande befallning, verkställa efter nedanstående betalning”; ”åligger Brukaren, om så påfordras, verkställa sommarkolningar och kolen framköra till Bruket”; ”Brukaren åligger att tillse freden å skogen”; ”håller till arbetet erforderlig redskap”; ”Brukaren åligger sjelf alla personella utskylder till Kronan och Prest m. m. […] samt brandstodsafgiften”. Contract signed by Eric Ericsson 12 March 1864, GLA, Ryholms gård C111:1, vol F1:3.

51. Uppenberg, I husbondens bröd, 97–105, 147–54.

52. There are few mentions of crofters in the Diet’s minutes. In 1812 the estate of the clergy mentions the decree regulating crofters corvée labour to the priest, which they did instead of paying tithes, however this led to no debate and no decision, and I have not included it since it does not deal with the relation between landowner and crofter although it was a part of crofters’ total workload. In 1817/1818 and in 1823, there were memoranda from the peasant farmer estate about the relation between poor laws, servant acts and crofters. The peasant farmer MP stated that too many crofters would lead to impoverishment and increased costs for poor relief. This was not debated and the committee rejected the memorandum by stating that there were already enough regulations against taking in too many workers. Finally, in 1850/1851, there was a discussion on older crofters duty to pay a certain tax, mantalspenningar. Register for minutes from the Diet of the Four Estates, 1809–1866, search term ’crofter’ (Torpare), 869–70.

53. Minutes from the Estate of the Nobility, April 29, 1731, 249. See also Riksarkivet, Svenska riksdagsakter, 6–7; Minutes from the Estate of the Peasant Farmers, April 29 1731, 187–8; General law of Sweden 1734, The Building Code (Byggningabalken), ch. 23 §2.

54. Winroth, Svensk civilrätt, 15–24.

55. See note 8.

56. Winroth, Svensk civilrätt, 20–4.

57. See note 8; Nordström, ”Kvinnans roll”.

58. See for example Schönberg, Bref til C.R.W.H.H.A., who considered that servants were free enough, debating this with for example Chydenius, Swar på den af. I have analysed this debate in Uppenberg, I husbondens bröd, 205–18.

59. Tisell, I arbetarefrågan, 33–4.

60. Tisell, Om en tidsenlig arrendelag; Wästfelt, “Arrende och annan nyttjanderätt,” 23; Tisell, Äro några förändringar önskvärda; Utterström, Jordbrukets arbetare, 781–9.

61. SFS 1907:36; Lundqvist, ”Striden om en modern arrendelag,” 50–1.

62. Olsson, “Varför har Sverige,” 77–8.

63. SFS 883:1943 § 45–46; Skarstedt, Ekberg, and Anderberg, Arrendelagstiftningen av år 1943, 25, 76.

64. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor, 55–7.

65. Sw: “Brukaren förbinder sig, att icke allenast sjelf vara trogen, flitig, nykter, lydig och höflig emot husbonden eller den i hans ställe förer dess bud och befallningar, utan ock att hålla sitt folk till detsamma, och ansvara för dess uppförande”. For example a contract signed by Sven Andersson in 1843, GLA, Ryholms gård C111:1, vol. F1:1. This was a common wording in the contracts, see also contracts in GLA, Torpaarkivet F3:1–4 and LLA, Knutstorps godsarkiv SE/LLA/31031 C:1:1–5 (the latter kindly made available to me by professor Mats Olsson, Lund University). See also a compilation on this demand in tenant farmers’ contracts in Olsson, Storgodsdrift, 97.

66. Markkola and Östman, “Torparfrågan tillspetsas”.

67. Jacobsen, Husbondret, 124–7.

68. Scherp, De ofrälse och makten, 230–45.

69. Sw: ”små förbrytelser, upstudsigheter och försummelser”, Noble privilegies 1723 §31.

70. SFS 1864:11.

71. Uppenberg, ”Masters Writing the Rules,” 251–5.

72. Royal decree 16 July 1776 regarding punishment for harming masters. Quotations in Swedish: ”Tjenstehion eller Underhafwande”; ”til trohet emot honom [husbonden] äro besynnerligen förbundne”; ”enskildte Tienare, Bönder eller Torpare, hwilka betiena med arbete eller dagswerken”.

73. SFS 1841:21.

74. Jordabalken ch. 16, §7–8; Servant Act 1739 art. 6 §4, 1805 art. 8 §8, 1833 art. 8 §52.

75. SFS 1845:11.

76. See note 65.

77. Wahlberg, Om lega af jord, 142–43; Utterström, Jordbrukets arbetare, 825. It was possible to demand labour services in contract even after 1943, but only for cash payment, not as part of the leasehold. This means the contract resembled an ‘ordinary’ labour contract, SFS 883:1943 § 45–6.

78. Cf. Vilhelmsson in this Special issue.

79. See also Sogner, “Freeholder and Cottar” for a theoretical discussion on the role of crofts and cottages in stratification.