This chapter studies how host communities in the Danish town of Aarhus and the Swedish town of Uppsala approached the question of providing security in everyday interaction with prisoners of war during the Great Northern War (1700–1721). Blomqvist argues that the prisoner policy of the Danish and Swedish crown tapped into established systems of public hospitality, modeled on the billeting of military personnel. The crown employed norms of hospitality to mobilize local resources for the war effort, delegating the cost of feeding and guarding the prisoners onto the host community. At the same time, negotiations between the state and the host community regarding the legitimacy of the prisoner policy redefined the very notions of hospitality. The prisoner policy relinquished the idea that public hospitality was founded on a fundamental solidarity between members of the community of the realm. Prisoners of war were entitled to hospitality, despite the fact that they were not members of the realm, but, quite the opposite, identified as enemies. Instead, the prisoners were expected to compensate their host by performing labor. Through service arrangements, the prisoners were formally placed in a subordinate position to their hosts and employers, expected to serve and obey. This negotiated hospitality served both as an integrative and an excluding force in the two towns.
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