During the early eighteenth century, the eastern coastline of Sweden received an unprecedented number of internal refugees fleeing from Russian attacks in Finland and Sweden’s Baltic territories. This chapter traces the reception of these refugees in terms of delegated and conditional hospitality, and the responses it provoked. While the king formulated policies of hospitality, he delegated the coordination of efforts and the responsibility for separating deserving refugees from undeserving ones to a commission. The practical tasks of providing funds and performing day-to-day hospitality were delegated to local communities and individual subjects. The conditions of hospitality are revealed in the security measures that authorities and communities imposed on the refugees. By analyzing these measures and the responses they provoked from the refugees, I argue that hospitality hinged on the refugees being in Sweden temporarily—as soon as the war ended, they were expected to return home. Furthermore, the hospitality proved frail as the security measures led to autoimmunization: attempts by the commission to separate deserving from undeserving refugees created rifts between hosts and guests, aggravating the situation.
In this paper, we address some of the social impacts of war, including issues of negotiating identity during displacement caused by war. What it meant to be Swedish or Danish-Norwegian in a town where there was a not insubstantial population of foreign merchants would clearly be an ambiguous situation. Burghers were elected by fellow citizens, who were themselves from other parts of Sweden, Scandinavia, and Northern Europe, including Germany, Holland, England, and Scotland. Allegiances were contingent, and in many cases among aliens probably more local than national. The social impacts of war in modern-day west Sweden extended beyond the towns directly affected, such as Nya Lödöse and Ny Varberg. The degree to which individuals could act with agency and autonomy was contingent and context-specific. Forced migration and the negotiation of identity are issues that remain relevant today; Int J Histor Archaeol (2018) 22:226-244
This article introduces the concept of securitisation for early modern studies. It identifies security studies� implicit state-centric approach as one of the main culprits for early modern scholars� hesitance to use the concept and argues that, for historians, there is a twofold problem with placing the state at the centre of research. The problem pertains to how scholars have dealt with the interactions between time and space when approaching the state. First, the definition of state is space- and time-centred; it is built to accommodate the system of 19th- and 20th-century Europe, with the idea of the sovereign state at its centre. To fit the early modern period, we need to acknowledge the role of other entities and varieties in securitisation processes. Second, the concept of the state needs to be problematised by acknowledging the changing nature of its space�that is, by temporalising its spatiality. The second part of the text focuses on two interconnected areas especially prone to securitisation, where historians have much to offer those studying securitisation processes: migration and border making. Questions of how to control the future and how to secure it are most often translated into a spatial problem: as long as the border is secure, change will not enter. By focusing on local responses to perceived security threats and studying the effects that measures taken had on local communities, historians can seek not only to understand the underlying assumptions made about the future by our objects of investigation, but also to gain considerable insight into de-securitisation processes.
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