Unfree labour by free peasants: labour service in the Swedish and Finnish countryside, from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries

Abstract

This article discusses the received image of free Swedish and Finnish peasants, charting parallels with peasants in the Baltic region. It draws upon the post-Cold War discussion of free and unfree rural labour in early modern Europe. The discussion maintains that the labour service by free Swedish and Finnish peasant landholders and peasant tenants at its heaviest point may have been on a par with the corvée in the early modern Baltic provinces. It is suggested that the Cold War mental map may have led to an overstatement of the East-West distinction between peasants’ circumstances in the Baltic Sea region.