Patrick Svensson

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Demographic responses to economic hardship are important indicators of the robustness of a society, and the efficiency of its institutions. Considerable attention has been devoted to the impact of grain price fluctuations on mortality in preindustrial society. Often, prices are assumed to be a proxy for harvest outcome, and even though this might be a reasonable assumption at very high levels of aggregation it is clearly not as reasonable when looking at local communities. In this paper we study the mortality response to short-term fluctuations in local grain output, and focus special attention on how this changed during the course of the agrarian transformation and how harvest failures affected different farming region. Using panel data for 274 localities in southern Sweden between 1750 and 1860, the outcomes are measured by the age-specific mortality rates, and local grain production is assessed using data from a recently assembled production database covering more than 2,000 farms (about 80,000 observations). The findings show a clear mortality response to harvest fluctuations in general, and to harvest failures in particular. The response differed greatly between different farming areas, being strongest in the areas most dependent on grain production. The response also diminished during the agricultural transformation, showing the increasing efficiency of the local economy. At the same time vulnerability to fluctuations in market prices remained high and was also quite similar across different farming regions. This shows that prices and output serve as independent indicators of the economic conditions that faced people in preindustrial society. Paper for the World Economic History Conference, Stellenbosch July 9–13, 2012. Financial support from the Linnaeus Centre for Economic Demography and the research project ‘Work, production and agrarian transformation 1700–1860’, both funded by the Swedish Research Council, is gratefully acknowledged.

The datasets presented here enable historical longitudinal studies of micro-level geographic factors in a rural setting. These types of datasets are new, as historical demography studies have generally failed to properly include the micro-level geographic factors. Our datasets describe the geography over five Swedish rural parishes and a geocoded population (at the property unit level) for this area for the time period 1813-1914. The population is a subset of the Scanian Economic Demographic Database (SEDD). The geographic information includes the following feature types: property units, wetlands, buildings, roads and railroads. The property units and wetlands are stored in object-lifeline time representations (information about creation, changes and ends of objects are recorded in time), whereas the other feature types are stored as snapshots in time. Thus, the datasets present one of the first opportunities to study historical spatio-temporal patterns at the micro-level. (2016-09-25

Pre-industrial Sweden is famous for its self-owning and independent peasant farmer class and the peasant farmers have often been considered as carriers of equality and a particular brand of Scandinavian road to modernity. Moreover, it has been argued that rising income and wealth within this large segment of the population resulted in increased demand for non-agrarian products and thus that this provided the start of a domestic industrial expansion. However, quantitative studies of the wealth and inequality of Swedish farmers have been limited to studies on smaller localities. This paper contributes with the first comprehensive study of the wealth of the Swedish farmers, using a national sample of almost 5 000 probate inventories for the benchmark years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900, of which about 1 730 inventories are for farmers. The paper maps the farmers’ wealth positions in relation to other social groups as well as the wealth stratification within the farmer class. We show that i...

The first part of this paper aims at identifying the timing of famines in the Nordic countries since the middle ages. This is done by using qualitative famine reports from the literature since quantitative data on famines are scarce or non-existent, at least before the early modern period. We supplement the reports with climate data and price data. Our survey indicates that widespread famine was always a rare occurrence in the Nordic countries, despite frequent crop failures. The second part studies the regional famine pattern and its demographic characteristics in Sweden 1750–1910. This part is based on demographic data on parish level from the official statistics and price data. We identify two periods of excess mortality: the last major famine in Sweden in the early 1770s and the excess mortality in 1809 due to epidemic outbreaks. Examining the age-specific mortality and seasonality pattern in these two years of mortality crises in Sweden we show a highly similar pattern explaine...

The dating of, and explanation for, the agricultural revolution in Europe remains an elusive research task. When and why did a low-productive pre-industrial agricultural sector turn into a fast-growing, more productive one? Unique data from Sweden, consisting of more than 80,000 observations of farm production output for the period 1700–1860, are used to calculate and explain decisive changes in pre-industrial agricultural production. Our estimations show that crop production more than quadrupled during the period studied, and from the 1780s and onwards production growth by far outstripped population growth. Furthermore, the data allow us to estimate the determinants of change at individual farm level. The results show that enclosures, markets and property rights were of significant importance. Institutional changes, affecting the incentives and the organization of production, made peasants invest in production and productivity. In a general sense this shows the flexibility and awar...

The Historical Database of Scanian Agriculture (HDSA) is a micro-level database over farm production in the most southern Swedish region of Scania (Skane) based on flexible tithes. It contains over 85,000 farm level observations of both vegetable and animal production for the period 1702 to 1881. Moreover, this information is supplemented by information on the farmer, the farm, on enclosures, natural conditions, and distances from the farmstead to towns. The database is an open source and this paper provides information on the sources behind the data, the composition of the sample, and the way the database can be used to estimate production. The second part of the paper performs an overall analysis of the agricultural revolution in the area, showing the development over time of the vegetable and animal production, their respective significance, and an estimation of production per capita 1702 to 1865.

This article examines the evolution of wealth inequality in Sweden from 1750 to 1900, contributing both to the debate on early modern and modern inequality and to the general debate on the pattern of inequality during industrialization. The preindustrial period (1750–1850) is for the first time examined for Sweden at the national level. The study uses a random sample of probate inventories from urban and rural areas across the country, adjusted for age and social class. Estimates are provided for the years 1750, 1800, 1850, and 1900. The results show a gradual growth in inequality as early as the mid-eighteenth century, with the sharpest rise in the late nineteenth century. Whereas the early growth in inequality was connected to changes in the countryside and in agriculture, the later growth was related to industrialization encompassing both compositional effects and strong wealth accumulation among the richest. The level of inequality in Sweden in 1750 was lower than for other west...

The introduction of turnpike trusts has been considered to be an integral part of the rapid decline in transport costs in England. Institutional change in the transport system or the lack thereof has been used to explain if, and when, a transport revolution occurred. However, improved roads are just one component of declining inland transport costs. In this paper, we specifically analyse how the forms of transport employed on roads developed in the absence of major institutional changes to the road system. We use Scania, a province located in southernmost Sweden, during the period 1750–1850 as a case study of the development of transport means during the transformation from a rural economy to an emerging industrial one. Our main finding is the independent role of individuals in lowering their own transport costs, as demonstrated by the large increase in the value of wagons relative to other commodities, and the increasing share of wagons equipped with iron instead of wooden wheels a...

"The level of transport costs is a central part of economic development and change. Transports costs are dependent on a multitude of factors, such as for example access to and quality of roads, rivers or seas, the transport means used to travel on them, and energy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate one part of the transport costs in preindustrial Europe: the transport means, a somewhat neglected area in previous research on transport costs. More specifically, our aim is to make a comprehensive and disaggregated study of the improvements in the means of transports on roads. We use Scania during the period 1750– 1850 as a case to study the development of transport means during the transformation from a rural economy to an emerging industrial economy. Information from probate records allows us to study quality of horses, the development of wagons and decompose the technical changes. Our results show that peasant farmers made substantial investments in particularly wagons leading to technical improvements and lower transport costs, and that these investments took place regardless of the fact that there was not an institutional change of the road system."

The Historical Database of Scanian Agriculture (HDSA) is a micro-level database over farm production in the most southern Swedish region of Scania (Skane) based on flexible tithes. It contains over 85,000 farm level observations of both vegetable and animal production for the period 1702 to 1881. Moreover, this information is supplemented by information on the farmer, the farm, on enclosures, natural conditions, and distances from the farmstead to towns.A presentation of the sources behind the data, the composition of the sample, and the way the database can be used to estimate production is found in Olsson, M. & P. Svensson (2017), “Estimating agricultural production in Scania, 1702–1881. User guide for the Historical Database of Scanian Agriculture.”Lund Papers in Economic History 151, Lund University.

Using about 1,730 probate inventories, this article studies the wealth of peasant farmers in Sweden for the years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. Average wealth grew rapidly, tripling over the nineteenth century, but it did not grow equally: the Gini coefficient for the farmers’ wealth grew from 0.46 in 1750 to 0.73 in 1900. Farmers who lived close to the major grain markets in Stockholm and the mining district of Bergslagen were wealthier than others, as were farmers on fertile plains and, in 1900, those living in coastal areas. Increased market access – in terms of cities and foreign demand – meant that farmers well placed in terms of geography and infrastructure benefited much more than farmers on what became the periphery. The diversity of farmers’ wealth grew, as did their financial sophistication.

The introduction of turnpike trusts has been considered to be an integral part of the rapid decline in transport costs in England. Institutional change in the transport system or the lack thereof has been used to explain if and when a transport revolution occurred in different localities. However, improved roads are just one component of declining inland transport costs. In this paper, we specifically analyse how the transport means on roads (i.e., animal carts and wagons) developed in the absence of major institutional changes to the road system. We use Scania, a province located in southernmost Sweden, during the period 1750–1850 as a case study of the development of transport means during the transformation from a rural economy to an emerging industrial one. Our main finding is the independent role of individuals in lowering their own transport costs, as demonstrated by the notably large increase in the value of wagons relative to other commodities and by the increasing share of wagons equipped with iron wheels instead of wooden wheels and with iron axles instead of wooden axles. This finding indicates that it was possible to lower transport costs in preindustrial Europe without an institutional change of the road system. (Less)

The introduction of turnpike trusts has been considered to be an integral part of the rapid decline in transport costs in England. Institutional change in the transport system or the lack thereof has been used to explain if, and when, a transport revolution occurred. However, improved roads are just one component of declining inland transport costs. In this paper, we specifically analyse how the forms of transport employed on roads developed in the absence of major institutional changes to the road system. We use Scania, a province located in southernmost Sweden, during the period 1750–1850 as a case study of the development of transport means during the transformation from a rural economy to an emerging industrial one. Our main finding is the independent role of individuals in lowering their own transport costs, as demonstrated by the large increase in the value of wagons relative to other commodities, and the increasing share of wagons equipped with iron instead of wooden wheels a...

Abstract: Earlier research has shown that links between early-life conditions and health in later life exist (eg Barker 1998; Bengtsson and Lindström 2003; Fridlizius 1989). Furthermore, other researchers have found that life-course factors, eg social status at ...

Abstract All over preindustrial Europe the manorial estate was an important institution in the rural economy. Despite a widespread view that the estates insured its tenants against uncertainties, there is little evidence that measures taken were efficient. This study uses ...

RésuméDans toute l’Europe préindustrielle, le domaine manorial était une institution importante de l’économie rurale. Il est une vue largement répandue dans les textes publiés sur le sujet selon laquelle le propriétaire du domaine garantissait les paysans locataires contre les imprévus, par exemple dans les temps de difficulté économique. En distribuant des céréales, ou en acceptant de déférer le paiement de la rente, les seigneurs des domaines aidaient à réduire les effets de la faim dans les périodes de pénurie. Si cette forme d’assurance s’était avérée efficace, alors les paysans locataires des domaines auraient dû subir des fluctuations moins importantes que les autres paysans dans leur revenu ou leur alimentation. On ne rencontre que peu de confirmations empiriques du fait que les domaines de l’ère préindustrielle eussent de fait fourni une assurance de ce type. Cet article utilise l’impact du prix des céréales sur la démographie pour mesurer l’efficacité du système manorial à ...

The SOCPO (social power) scheme is a tool for the classification of occupations into a limited number of classes. SOCPO, which is fully integrated with the HISCO (Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations) occupational classification scheme, is characterised by a coherent theoretically-driven set of principles for social stratification; explicit coding rules derived from these principles; and a comprehensive list of occupations classified by class (Van de Putte & Miles, 2005). Consequently, we believe SOCPO opens up what has hitherto been the 'black box' of occupational classification. Clearly, the SOCPO scheme does not solve all problems related to the classification of occupations. A major challenge is posed by the comparative analysis in class-related phenomena such as social and marital mobility. This type of analysis requires that in every research area, class is measured in a similar way. This inevitably raises the question whether one can simply ...

This study deals with the agricultural transformation in 19th century Sweden. The aims are: firstly, to analyse the peasants' role as entrepreneurs in the transformation of agriculture, and secondly, to identify the distinctive characteristics of the agrarian entrepreneurs by studying particular aspects of entrepreneurial dealings during the agricultural transformation in Scania between 1800 and 1870. The background is that basic economic relationships in agriculture were changed during the 18th century. The more clearly defined property rights in agriculture, together with changes in other areas, created new possibilities for improved efficiency and thereby for increased production. These possibilities could be utilised by peasants who possessed certain distinctive characteristics.Empirical investigations of the enclosures and the credit market in three parishes, Brosarp, Saxtorp and V. Karaby, has been carried out. In the context of enclosures, an entrepreneur is defined as on...

The role of the European nobility and their ability to retain their political and economic power are part of the debate on the modernization of the European economy. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the wealth of the Swedish nobility as Sweden evolved from an agrarian to an industrial economy. We use a sample of 200+ probate inventories of nobles for each of the benchmark years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. Medieval and early modern Sweden often has been described as not fully feudal. In line with this, and the (perceived) comparative strength of the peasantry, the nobility is assumed to have been comparatively unimportant and less economically dominant than elsewhere in Europe. We show that the nobility, less than 0.5 per cent of the population, was very dominant in 1750: the average noble was 60 times richer than the average person, and the nobles held 29 per cent of private wealth while 90 per cent of the nobles were richer than the average person. In 1900 the n...

Abstract Enclosures is a multifaceted concept implying consolidation of dispersed landholdings into one unit, either through transfer of land from some people to others or through rearrangements of land between different landholders. The most debated part of ...

Session 1 (Friday 08.30-10.00) Discussant: Karl Gunnar Persson (Copenhagen, Denmark) Chair: Aud Mikkelsen Tretvik (Trondheim, Norway) Stephen Broadberry (Warwick UK), Bruce M. S. Campbell (Belfast, UK), Bas van Leeuwen (Warwick, UK) English agricultural output 1250–1450: some preliminary estimates Alexis Wilkin (Liege, Belgium/Harvard, USA) The productivity in Early Medieval Europe: the case of Eastern Belgium

This paper maps social structure, poverty, wealth and economic inequality in Stockholm from 1650 to 1750. We begin by establishing the social structure, using census data and other sources. To study wealth and poverty, the main sources are a sample from the wealth tax of 1715, and probate inventory samples from 1650, 1700 and 1750. These provide detailed and sometimes surprising insights into the living standards of both the poor and rich. Stockholm in this period was a starkly unequal city, with the top decile of wealth holders owning about 90 per cent of total wealth. We argue that this inequality was the result of deliberate policy – the Mercantilist conviction of “just rewards” for each and every one according to his or her standing. The case of Stockholm shows the need for the historical inequality literature to consider class and power relations to understand the determinants of inequality.

This paper presents new estimates of the living standards among the rural labouring classes in Sweden from 1750 to 1900. Starting with a database of more than 1,000 probate inventories of rural landless and semi-landless people from the benchmark years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900, we study the development for crofters in particular. We measure their assets and debts in great detail, mapping the development of material living standards over time. We show that the typically used real wage approach to living standards gives only a partial impression of the development of proletarian living standards. Above all, the decline of Swedish living standards from 1750 to 1800 is overestimated because of overreliance on grain prices for the CPI. We show the advantages of using probate inventories for studying living standards, since they give a composite estimate of households’ material conditions, no matter what combinations of wage-labour, subsistence work and by-employment are used. This has r...

"Land transmission affected the possibility for families to plan for generational shifts, marriages and retirements. For tenants on manorial land most of this decision-making potentially was left to the landowner. However, although differences existed within Europe, intergenerational transfers of tenancies seem to have existed in all parts of the continent. In this paper we study land transfers, and their determinants, among tenants on noble land in southern Sweden, where the manorial system appears more akin to the east European system than to the manorial system of other parts of Western Europe. We study all land transmissions in two parishes, Halmstad and Kagerod, in the period 1766–1859 using data from the poll-tax registers. Family composition at the time of the transfer is registered using family reconstitutions and catechetical examination registers. We hypothesize that it was a rational landowner strategy, at least until the 1820s, to promote intergenerational transfers of tenancies. After that, we expect that a new and more interventionist landlord strategy appeared. Our results clearly indicate that similar strategies of land transmission applied in the manorial system as on free land owned by peasants. As was the case on freehold land, transfers to children were most important when tenancies were transferred in conjunction with retirement but there was also a considerable proportion – about 30 percent – of these transfers that went to non- kin. It is important to note, however, that these kinds of intergenerational transfers only constituted a part of all transfers. In more than 40 percent of all transfers the outgoing tenant was under 50, and in almost 30 percent of the transfers the outgoing tenant moved to become a tenant elsewhere or left the parish altogether. This clearly contradicts a simple picture of the manorial system where tenants were born and died on the same farm, without possibilities of migration or changing living conditions. As the agrarian economy developed in the nineteenth century, the management of estates changed, and the impression given is that the landlords took firmer control over the process of land transmission as land values increased."

Previous research has consistently found demographic responses to grain price fluctuations in preindustrial Europe, both at macro and micro level. Grain prices serve as a summary measure of the workings of the preindustrial economy, reflecting not only local harvest conditions but trade patterns and market integration. All over preindustrial Europe the manorial estate was an important institution in the rural economy. It offered opportunities to insure tenants against extreme events such as harvest failures, impossible to achieve for independent peasants in a society without well-functioning markets for capital or insurance, and in the absence of state subsidies. In this paper we look at the impact of regional economic fluctuations on demographic behavior and study whether the presence of estates lowered the demographic impact of economic crises on the population. We will do this by utilizing a newly developed database on agrarian output together with county-level grain price data a...

Throughout pre-industrial Europe, the manorial estate was an important institution in the rural economy. Related literature communicates the widespread view that the estates insured their tenants against uncertainties, for example, in times of economic hardship. By distributing grain or accepting deferment of rents, the manors helped to alleviate hunger in times of scarcity. If this insurance was indeed effective, then manorial tenants should have experienced less fluctuation in income or food availability than other peasants. However, there has not been much empirical confirmation that the pre-industrial estates were effective in providing this kind of insurance. This study uses the impact of grain prices on demographic outcomes as a measure of the efficiency of the manorial system in protecting its inhabitants against economic stress. Looking at four hundred parishes in Sweden (1749-1859), the manorial estate seems to have been able to insure its inhabitants against risks of econo...

This paper presents datasets that enable historical longitudinal studies of micro-level geographic factors in a rural setting. These types of datasets are new, as historical demography studies have generally failed to properly include the micro-level geographic factors. Our datasets describe the geography over five Swedish rural parishes, and by linking them to a longitudinal demographic database, we obtain a geocoded population (at the property unit level) for this area for the period 1813-1914. The population is a subset of the Scanian Economic Demographic Database (SEDD). The geographic information includes the following feature types: property units, wetlands, buildings, roads and railroads. The property units and wetlands are stored in object-lifeline time representations (information about creation, changes and ends of objects are recorded in time), whereas the other feature types are stored as snapshots in time. Thus, the datasets present one of the first opportunities to stu...