Distribution & Differences
Stratification & the System of
Reproduction in a Swedish Peasant
Community 1620-1820
By Jonas Lindstrom
December 2008
Uppsala University
Distributed by
ISBN: 9789155473112
255 pages, Illustrated
$67.50 Paper Original
Resources were unevenly distributed among the landed peasants of early modern Sweden. This is evident from taxation registers and probate inventories. Yet the implications of this observations are far from evident. Was life in the old peasant society characterized by great and enduring economic inequalities? Or were resources redistributed within the community in order to better adjust to the changing needs and abilities of different households? In what ways did the principles of resource distribution among peasants change as the Swedish society was transformed during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?
By studying resource holding among peasants in a Swedish parish over a time period of 200 years, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of the social structure of the small rural communities that once dominated not only Sweden, but also most of medieval and early modern Europe.
