Resumen de Scottish involvement in the Swedish Riksdag of the seventeenth century: the period from Parliamentarianism to Absolutism, c.1632-1700
Alexia Grosjean, Steve Murdoch
This article discusses the role of one migrant ethnic group (in this case the Scots) and follows its involvement in the Swedish Parliament (Riksdag) in the Swedish in the early modern period. It seeks to establish whether the Scots used their ethnicity to form a particular constituency within the Swedish Parliament, or if they had become so well integrated into Swedish society that they sat in the Riksdag as Swedes regardless of their ethnic links. In doing so, this article contributes to a number of areas of interest beyond parliamentary history, not least in the fields of ethnic integration and societal acceptance in early modern Sweden.
Although notable forays have been made into the history of the Swedish Riksdag (Parliament),2 the emphasis has usually been placed on the development of the institution rather than on a targeted study of particular individuals, or even national groups, who took part in the meetings. The Riksdag was far from a mono-ethnic institution, being open to not only Swedes, but also Finns and a variety of foreigners (including Dutch, Germans, French and, as we shall see, Scots) who had made Sweden their new home. All these individuals took up their seats as �naturalized� Swedes, but there are sometimes indications that their decisions in the Riksdag may have been influenced by their own ethnic origins. Given the frequency of the meetings and the vast numbers of participants involved, this article cannot present an exhaustive account of all the Scots who served the Swedish state, nor of the discussions in which they participated. Instead, it is intended to give an indication of the role that particularly vocal Scots played in the specifically governmental and related social changes that Swedish society experienced in the period prior to Swedish absolutism.
Research into the military relations between Scotland and Sweden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has revealed a Scottish military participation in the Swedish armed forces of over 50,000 men in the early modern period, of which a significant number became ennobled and settled in Sweden.3 Large communities of civilian Scots have also been identified in Stockholm and Gothenburg, with smaller clusters of Caledonians in a number of smaller towns across Sweden and Finland.4 Building on the scholarship surrounding these migrants, this article explores whether the Scottish presence at the Riksdag ever expressed itself as a coherent group or whether those Scots who sat in the Swedish institution were so integrated into their host society that they acted simply as �new Swedes� in their parliamentary roles.
