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- Author: Maria Ågren x
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Service to others was integral to medieval and early modern European culture. It played a prominent role in the Christian world view. People tend to think of state service as the typical male form of work. However, this notion does not do justice to the early history of states and their servants, and it obscures the role of women and gender entirely. Teasing out these entanglements, this book shows how early modern state formation was subsidized by ordinary people's work and how, the then changing relationship between state authorities and families shaped the understanding of work and gender. It introduces the people, the period, the urban environments and the state administration under consideration. The book then analyses the role of violence and hostility in state servants' working lives and the expectations of servants to behave in certain ways. It demonstrates the vital role of small-scale market relations and of cooperation and mutual help among women. The book also analyses the relationship among lower state servants' families, discussing how social control and contact were parts of daily life and how society was knit together through these many practices. It discusses why early modern state formation created more opportunities for men than for women, when another outcome seems equally possible. The history of state formation throws new light on how different forms of service for others were understood and gendered over time, while people's everyday activities elucidate the mechanisms by which states were formed.
Service to others was integral to medieval and early modern European culture. In the early modern period, a new form of service was inserted into this cultural grid: service of the state. The process of state formation hit European societies at a time when the relatively independent household run by two spouses was the dominant model. Offering paid jobs on an unprecedented scale to men of modest backgrounds, state formation contributed to the process by which households with limited resources became more numerous. In many ways, these men were working-class men. They did subordinate, unpleasant and physically demanding work. Swedish state servants were sometimes described as assistants of the king, just as wives could be described as assistants of their husbands. In Sweden, a tangible lack of men necessitated an open attitude and a flexible gender division of labour. The chapter also presents some concepts discussed in this book.
The process of state formation has been described both as a form of bargaining between states and subjects and as an open-ended and dynamic process of trial and error. The regional state administration and the customs administration were the parts of the state network with the lowest proportions of noblemen. Between 1650 and 1780, the Swedish state administration did undergo change, but the continuities were stronger. In 1648, the Thirty Years War had come to an end, and not long after the peace the Swedish customs administration was expanded and reorganised. The case study of Örebro is only one of the legs on which the investigation stands. The other two being data from other Scandinavian small towns and information found in the Gender and Work (GaW) database. This database offers the possibility of finding evidence on lower state servants, and on married women in urban contexts, in Sweden.
This chapter explores the ways in which animosity and violence were integral parts of many state servants' lives. It argues that state servants needed street-smartness, rather than theoretical knowledge. The chapter shows how early modern states such as Sweden had to draw a fine but firm line between behaviour that their servants could legitimately engage in and that they must under no circumstances display. The work of customs officials was public in a number of ways, and it was often this public character of their duties that would involve them in difficult and conflict-ridden situations. Just like private soldiers on a battlefield, lower customs officials were in the front line and the first to be attacked by angry subjects. When the Swedish state instituted the excise courts, the professed purpose of the reform was to provide better protection for both customs officials and customs payers.
The networks channelling money, goods and services between families were hierarchical, but at the same time linked women from different echelons of society to each other, making them collaborators. This chapter explores the ways, in which Lars Staf's and Brita Stina Berg's work linked them to the state and to other households. Wives who made numerous economic contributions to lower state servants' households, contributions that were probably unremarkable at the time, left few traces in the sources and are now easy to overlook. In a national survey conducted in 1748, Swedish customs officials' wives were reported to have income from making beer and liquor, baking, weaving, spinning, sewing, and midwifery. They also cultivated tobacco, ran public houses and rented out rooms. Some of them were involved in the credit market. There is some evidence that suggests a makeshift economy, in which many people relied on a precarious combination of incomes.
This chapter focuses on three aspects of the system of control. They are the tangible ways in which, the levy of customs and excise was organised, the role played by customs inspectors in controlling their subordinates, and the use of courts to control both officials and customs payers. In its efforts to get a grip on society and to control its own servants, the Swedish early modern state had a number of tools and strategies at its disposal. The belongings of ordinary domestic servants could be hard to disentangle from those of their master, since they lived on the same premises. The fluid boundaries between workplace and home could confuse the distinction between the property of the state and that of the state servant. To prevent officials from fraternising with customs payers, the state devised a policy that meant that they had to move at intervals from town to town.
This chapter analyses identity formation among state servants and suggests that it explains why bureaucracy would eventually be gendered as unquestionably masculine. The built environment is served to inculcate a sense of selection and identity in state servants. State administration was built on notions of service to a master and further buttressed by a requirement of mutual help among state servants. Soldiers, customs officials and other lower state servants were constantly instructed, criticised, monitored, punished, supported and praised in their capacities as state servants. Marriage brought status, authority and resources to both men and women, in early modern Sweden and elsewhere. The activity patterns of Swedish women clearly show that marriage was a decisive factor for their agency. In the interactions with the state, the ideas about women's and men's roles were shaped and reshaped.
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in this book. The book argues that old and widely accepted notions of service to others provided the cultural template for early modern Swedish governments, as they mustered new resources to expand their spheres of influence. It focuses on charting social tensions and explores how they were dealt with in everyday life. The book unpicks the detailed mechanisms of state formation. It shows that the military connotations of early modern state service account for its original connections to manhood. Service was not the only cultural template used by early modern Swedish governments; the household, with its gendered division of work, was another. Such work was transformed, involving both the reconceptualisation of state service as civil service and the gradual exclusion of women. The book also shows how the wives of lower state servants earned income through various commercial and other pursuits.