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Swedish Armed Forces (Military History)

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Jul 12th, 2017
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  1. Introduction
  2. This article deals with the history of the Swedish armed forces. Swedish military history before the 16th century is omitted. Numerous general works on Swedish political and diplomatic history, biographies of monarchs, military leaders, and politicians as well as literature on the Swedish arms industry, the absolutist state during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the constitutional struggle during the 19th century, or Swedish neutrality during the 20th century are also not included. The easiest way to understand the role of the armed forces in Swedish history is to take as one’s point of departure the shifting relations between the Swedish state, which until 1809 also included present-day Finland, and the surrounding world during the past 500 years. Several phases can be delineated. The reign of King Gustav Vasa (r. 1523–1560) saw the founding of a standing army and navy in Sweden and constitutes the first phase. During the century that followed—the second phase—Sweden entered into intensive territorial expansion during which the country found itself in constant struggle with other powers around the Baltic Sea. The period after 1660, when the Swedish Empire switched to a defensive strategy, forms a third phase, which ended with a major defeat in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). In the fourth phase (1721–1814), Sweden could be characterized as an aggressive revanchist middle power, trying to regain its former position in northern Europe without the ability to mobilize resources at the same level as rivals such as Russia or Prussia. The Napoleonic Wars and the loss of Finland and the territories in Germany signified a major catastrophe, for which the subjugation of Norway in 1814 could not compensate. Only from the early 19th century did Sweden begin to develop a small-power identity, viewing national survival rather than territorial aggrandizement as the chief mission of its armed forces. During the ninety years that followed, Sweden coexisted with Norway in a dynastic union, which contained both mutual security obligations and the potential for internal military conflict. The union with Norway should thus be regarded as a distinctive, fifth phase in the history of the armed forces (1814–1905). The rest of the 20th century following 1905 forms a continuous sixth phase, one in which Sweden constituted a neutral small power. Since 2000, globalization has revolutionized both relations with the surrounding world as well as the structure of the nation’s military forces, which is why it is possible to talk of a seventh phase. This article begins with presentations of general overviews, official histories, journals, etc., following which it is structured according to this chronology, and it includes a focus on (a) defense policy and strategy, (b) doctrine and operations, and (c) personnel. The last chronological section on the post-2000 period is treated less comprehensively. It should be pointed out that few works on the history of the Swedish armed forces exist in languages other than Swedish, which is why the ability to read Swedish—not too hard to acquire for a speaker of English—is strongly recommended. Finally, for language reasons, it has been impossible to include works on the Swedish armed forces before 1809 that have been published only in Finnish.
  3. General Overviews
  4. Most modern overviews have been produced as textbooks for cadets at the Swedish Military Academy at Karlberg, but they can be useful to civilian students as well, not least because many of these works are richly illustrated and contain useful maps. Artéus 2003 is the only work in English. Ericson Wolke 2007 and Ericson Wolke 2009 offer overviews of Swedish intellectual and operational military history, while Ericson, et al. 2003 portrays the history of Sweden’s wars in analyzing individual battles on land and sea from the Middle Ages to the Napoleonic period. Ericson Wolke and Hårdstedt 2009 focuses on the history of the Swedish navy from the 16th to the 21st centuries.
  5. Artéus, Gunnar. A Brief History of the Swedish Armed Forces. Stockholm: Swedish National Defense College, 2003.
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  7. A very short but informative overview of Swedish military institutions from the 16th to the 21st centuries, and the only modern such work available in English. Co-author Roth has written on the period after 1901.
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  9. Ericson Wolke, Lars. Krigets idéer: Svenska tankar om krigföring, 1320–1920. Stockholm: Medström, 2007.
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  11. Ericson Wolke’s work is the only major overview of Swedish military thought and covers the period from the Middle Ages to the dawn of “machine warfare” in the interwar period. Places its subject neatly into a contemporary international and intellectual context and brings attention to the long-standing Swedish concerns—due to geographical circumstances—with light infantry tactics and amphibious warfare.
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  13. Ericson Wolke, Lars. Svensk militärmakt: Strategi och operationer i svensk militärhistoria under 1 500 år. 2d rev. ed. Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, 2009.
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  15. This is an accessible account with many useful maps that focuses on the operational level. Begins with the Vikings and concludes with Swedish troops in Kosovo and Afghanistan in the 21st century, written for students at the Karlberg Military Academy and the National Defence College.
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  17. Ericson Wolke, Lars, and Hårdstedt Martin. Svenska sjöslag. Stockholm: Medström, 2009.
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  19. This is a follow-up volume to the previous work written by two of its authors, dealing with the Swedish navy from the 16th to the 21st centuries. In spite of the title it focuses as much on the navy as a system and a constituent part of Swedish society as on naval operational history; covers shipyards, ordinance, recruitment, base structure, etc., in great detail.
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  21. Ericson Wolke, Lars, Hårdstedt Martin, Iko Per, Sjöblom Ingvar, and Åselius Gunnar. Svenska slagfält. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 2003.
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  23. A volume authored by military historians of the National Defense College in Stockholm, containing fifty-four chapters on Swedish battles on land and sea from Visby in 1361 to the Swedish participation at Leipzig in 1813. Intended for a general audience but frequently cited as a reference work in scholarly publications. It has inspired military historians in Denmark and Finland to publish similar works.
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  25. Official Histories
  26. As is the case in many countries, much Swedish military history has been produced by the armed forces themselves in the form of official histories with the aim of establishing “lessons learnt” for the future or merely to commemorate particular units or events. The quality of these works is uneven and perspectives and explanatory frameworks are often outdated today. At the same time, they are based on thorough archival research and contain lots of useful data, valuable maps, and extracts from primary sources, which is why they remain indispensable reference works for any serious inquiry into Sweden’s military past. The most famous official histories are the “general staff histories,” which were produced from 1890 onward by the military history section of the Swedish General Staff and the various successors of that institution. The first half of the twentieth century saw the publication of monumental works on Sweden’s wars against Denmark and Russia in 1808–1809 (Generalstaben 1890–1922), the campaigns of Charles XII in 1700–1718 (Generalstaben 1918–1919), and the campaigns of Gustavus Adolphus in 1611–1632 (Generalstaben 1936–1939). During the last half of the century these works were supplemented by a series of impressive volumes on the wars of Charles X in the 1650s (Militärhögskolan 1965–1979). There has also been a lively tradition of official naval history, dating back to Admiral C. A. Gyllengranat’s Sjökrigshistoria (Naval War History), published in 1840. This genre culminated during the Second World War with the publication of a four-volume history of the Swedish navy: Lybeck 1942–1949. All units of the Swedish armed forces that existed during the 20th century have published their regimental history at least once. The quality and scope of these works vary, one and the same volume often containing serious scholarly investigations together with more unassuming contributions, such as personal recollections, etc. The present space does not allow for a detailed discussion of the hundreds of titles in question, but the website Förbandshistoriska verk: Sammanställning över Förbandshistoriska verk contains such information. However, two such unit histories that constitute essential contributions to the general historiography of the Swedish armed forces, Barkman and Lundkvist 1963 and Hedberg, et al. 1975–2005, deserve special mention.
  27. Barkman, Bertil C:son, and Sven Lundkvist. Kungl. Svea livgardes historia. Vol. 3, 1, 1611–1632. Stockholm: Stiftelsen för Svea Livgardes Historia, 1963.
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  29. In this volume of the regimental history of the Swedish army’s oldest and most prestigious unit—the Royal Svea Life Guard—that treats the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, author Sven Lundkvist initiated a revision of the general staff interpretation, dating from the 1930s, that viewed the king’s tactical system as predominantly offensive.
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  31. Förbandshistoriska verk: Sammanställning över Förbandshistoriska verk.
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  33. This website lists some three hundred official histories dedicated to special services, branches, regiments, military schools, and other units, that are still available for purchase through the book club Svenskt militärhistoriskt bibliotek (Swedish Library of Military History). The oldest works are from the 1950s.
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  35. Generalstaben, Krigshistoriska avdelningen. Sveriges krig åren 1808 och 1809. 9 vols. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1890–1922.
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  37. The first of the general staff histories; compiled during an extended period of time, it lacks coherency and focus but cannot be overlooked by any serious student of this the most disastrous war in Swedish history due to the mass of empirical data that it contains. For an introduction to the subject, however, it is better to look elsewhere (see Sweden as a Revanchist Middle Power, 1721–1814).
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  39. Generalstaben. Karl XII på slagfältet: Karolinsk slagledning sedd mot bakgrunden av taktikens utveckling från äldsta tider. 5 vols. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1918–1919.
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  41. This romantic-nationalistic interpretation of King Charles XII as the ruler who embodies the apogee of a unique Swedish tactical tradition, focused on offensive action and victories of annihilation, has now long since been abandoned by Swedish military historians. In spite of these deficiencies, however, this work has still been influential and provides a good overview of relevant primary sources. Includes maps.
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  43. Generalstaben. Sveriges krig, 1611–1632. 8 vols. Stockholm: Generalstaben, 1936–1939.
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  45. Originally intended to cover the entire Thirty Years War, this work ends at the death of Gustavus Adolphus at Lützen; carries weight through the mass of data. Like the previous general staff work on Charles XII it ascribes to the Swedish army a unique, highly offensive tactical tradition, a nationalistic interpretation that has remained influential outside Sweden through the works of Michael Roberts.
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  47. Hedberg, Jonas, Sten Claëson, Hans Ulfhielm, and Eric Granefelt, eds. Kungl Artilleriet. 8 vols. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1975–2005.
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  49. These volumes, published during many years by a group of retired artillery officers, cover organizational, operational, tactical, technological, and social aspects of the history of the Swedish army artillery from the Middle Ages to 1815 and in all provinces of the former Swedish Empire. The ninth and final volume covering the post-1815 period was published in 2011 by Hedéns grafiska konsult (Linköping).
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  51. Lybeck, Otto, ed. Svenska flottans historia: Örlogsflottan i ord och bild från dess grundläggning under Gustav Vasa fram till våra dagar. 4 vols. Malmö, Sweden: Allhems, 1942–1949.
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  53. Written by naval officers but published through a private publishing house, lavishly illustrated; combines serious scholarship with patriotic education of Swedish citizens during the Second World War on the need for naval preparedness; remains authoritative in some respects but has little to say on the role of the navy in state-building during the Early Modern period and other such issues discussed by modern historians.
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  55. Militärhögskolan, Militärhistoriska avdelningen. Carl X Gustaf-studier. 9 vols. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1965–1979.
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  57. This is the last of the great official histories on Sweden’s wars and it differs from its predecessors through a more conventional academic approach: The names of authors appear on the cover, historians from “the other side” (Poland, Norway, and Denmark) have been invited to contribute and the relationship between war and society is illuminated through special volumes treating recruitment and financial problems.
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  59. Official Histories of Procurement Agencies
  60. An important subgenre within official historiography, which is neither general staff nor regimental history, covers history of the procurement agencies of the armed forces through the centuries. These works are hardly page turners; nonetheless, they are essential reference works on how Sweden was able to wage its wars and equip its armed forces. Steckzén 1930–1937 deals with the army administration until the 1860s while Wendt, et al. 1950–1983 treats the naval administration. Östergren, et al. 1987 considers independent army procurement from the 1860s to the 1960s, whereas FMV 1993 offers a rough outline of the joint procurement agency that was created in 1968.
  61. FMV. FMV, 1968–1993. Stockholm: Försvarets materielverk, 1993.
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  63. This is a brief overview of the joint defense procurement agency, covering the last decades of the Cold War. It cannot be compared with the earlier procurement agency histories in depth, but it is to date the only work available.
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  65. Östergren, Stefan, Carl Wilhelm Lindblad, and Erik Norberg. Arméförvaltningens historia, 1865–1968. Stockholm: FMV, 1987.
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  67. An official history of the successor institution to the War Collegium, the Army Administration, which existed for about a century before merging with the other service procurement agencies in 1968.
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  69. Steckzén, Birger. Krigskollegi historia, 1630–1865. 3 vols. Stockholm: Kurt Lindberg, 1930–1937.
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  71. The official history of the War Collegium, which was first established in 1630 as a military court and then transformed in the constitution of 1634 to become one of the five central collegia that made up the Swedish government; impressive as a one-man work, written by the then director of the Swedish Military Archives.
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  73. Wendt, Einar, Folke Wedin, et al. Amiralitetskollegiets historia. 5 vols. Malmö, Sweden: Allhem, 1950–1983.
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  75. This official history was written by several authors during three decades; although the original Admiralty Collegium, established in the 1634 constitution, was abolished in 1791, this work covers Swedish central naval administration up to 1968, when a joint procurement agency was created for all three services.
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  77. Archives and Museums
  78. The Military Archives of Sweden and the visual archives of Föreningen Armé- Marin och Flygfilm contain important source material, while the central museums of the army, navy, and air force (Army Museum, Marinmuseum, and flygvapenmuseum) publish yearbooks that also contain interesting articles.
  79. Army Museum.
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  81. The army museum is situated in Stockholm in former artillery barracks that date from the 18th century, and it has been publishing a yearbook—Meddelande: Armémuseum—since 1932.
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  83. flygvapenmuseum.
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  85. The Air Force Museum is situated in Linköping, a city that is also the center of the Swedish aircraft industry. The museum publishes a yearbook—Ikaros: Flygvapenmusei årsbok—since 1991.
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  87. Föreningen Armé- Marin och Flygfilm.
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  89. The visual archives of Armé- Marin och Flygfilm [Army, Navy and Air Force Film Association] contain some 7,000 documentaries, newsreels, and instruction films, depicting life in the Swedish armed forces from 1906 onward. The catalogue can be searched online.
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  91. Marinmuseum.
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  93. The naval museum is situated in Karlskrona in southeastern Sweden (where the main naval base has been located since the 1680s). The museum is administratively united with the Vasa Museum in Stockholm and has been publishing a yearbook——Årsbok för marinmusei vänner—since 1961.
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  95. Military Archives of Sweden.
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  97. The Military Archives of Sweden (Krigsarkivet) in Stockholm, which since 1995 is a division of the National Archives, preserve documents from the Swedish armed forces from the late 16th century onward. Its publication series Meddelanden från Krigsarkivet [Communications from the Military Archives] has been appearing since 1884 and often contains interesting material.
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  99. Journals
  100. Four scientific journals are of particular interest with respect to the history of the Swedish armed forces. Militärhistorisk Tidskrift has been published since 1953 and contain articles on military history in the broadest sense as well as reviews of recent literature. The journal’s website offers an overview of contents since 1953. The journals Kungl. Krigsvetenskapsakademiens Handlingar och Tidskrift and Kungl. Örlogsmannasällskapet have been appearing since 1836 and 1797, respectively. Interesting articles on the history of the armed forces are occasionally published here, but these journals are, above all, valuable as sources for discussions on doctrine in the Swedish armed forces, for which they have been the principal forums during the past two centuries. Finally Forum Navale has been published annually since 1939 and frequently contains interesting material on the history of the Swedish naval forces.
  101. Forum Navale. 1939–.
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  103. The journal of the Society of Maritime History.
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  105. Kungl. Krigsvetenskapsakademiens Handlingar och Tidskrift (KKrVAHT). 1836–.
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  107. The journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences.
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  109. Kungl. Örlogsmannasällskapet: Tidskrift i Sjöväsendet. 1797–.
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  111. The journal of the Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences.
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  113. Militärhistorisk Tidskrift. 1953–.
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  115. Published annually by the Division of Military History at the Swedish National Defence College. It was called Aktuellt & Historiskt until 1978.
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  117. The Formation of the Swedish Nation-State, 1521–1560
  118. King Gustav Vasa (r. 1523–1560), who in 1521 became the leader of a Swedish secessionist rebellion against the medieval union between the Scandinavian kingdoms, is traditionally regarded as the founder of modern Sweden in endowing the country with a strong central government and a Lutheran state church (which became independent only in 2000). Gustav Vasa’s uprising against the Danish union king became successful only after he had hired mercenaries and warships in Germany, which he kept employed in his service after the rebellion had been brought to a successful end. Consequently, a standing army has existed in Sweden since 1521 and a navy since 1522. In the 1540s, recruitment to the armed forces shifted from foreign mercenaries to the domestic population. At the end of Gustav Vasa’s reign, the army counted some 16,500 soldiers (1.5 percent of the population). Apart from the uprising in 1521–1523, Sweden was involved in the Danish Civil War in the 1530s, experienced a major peasant uprising in the 1540s, and fought a war against Russia in the 1550s. A shift in interpretation among Swedish historians concerning this period can be seen in the view of Gustav Vasa’s nation-state project and to what extent it reflected a long-term strategy. Departing from the traditional image of Gustav Vasa as the founding father of modern Sweden, historians beginning in the late 20th century have emphasized, among other factors, the element of chance and temporary expedients in the state-building process and the role of dynastic rather than national concerns behind the king’s policies. To some extent, the traditional interpretation of Gustav as the conscious founder of modern Sweden also explains the view, which long predominated, of his foreign policy as a cautious one (which would harmonize better with the nonadventurous foreign policy of Sweden in the 19th and 20th centuries), a view that was modified by historians in the late 20th century (see Lundkvist 1960, cited under Defense Policy and Strategy). Regardless of the king’s intentions, however, consensus is general among historians that Gustav Vasa’s reign had a decisive impact on the course of Swedish history and that the needs of the armed forces—the army and not least the navy—came to be crucial in that process.
  119. Defense Policy and Strategy
  120. Written in English, Glete 2010 is a recent work of great importance that covers many aspects of Sweden’s armed forces during the entire period 1521–1721, including defense policy and strategy, and it provides illuminating international comparisons. With regard to King Gustav Vasa’s foreign policy in particular and the military dimensions of that policy, Lundkvist 1960 revised the established view among Swedish historians at the time and remains a standard work.
  121. Glete, Jan. Swedish Naval Administration, 1521–1721: Resource Flows and Organisational Capabilities. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
  122. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004179165.i-816Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  123. In this posthumous work, the author summarized a life-long research in navies and state formation in the Early Modern period, focusing on Sweden in 1521–1721 and drawing frequent comparisons to other European states. The first part of chapter 2 is of special interest with regard to Gustav Vasa’s defense policy and strategy, and the first part of chapter 4 with regard to defense financing.
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  125. Lundkvist, Sven. Gustav Vasa och Europa: Svensk handels- och utrikespolitik, 1534–1557. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1960.
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  127. Lundkvist’s doctoral dissertation revised the earlier perception of King Gustav Vasa’s foreign policy as cautious and passive. See the author’s article in English: “The European Powers and Sweden in the Reign of Gustav Vasa,” in Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, edited by E. I. Kouri and Tom Scott (London: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 502–515.
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  129. Doctrine and Operations
  130. Glete 2010 offers the best overview in English of the two first military campaigns fought under Gustav Vasa—the campaign that brought his dynasty to power in 1521–1523 (traditionally referred to as the “War of Liberation”) and the Swedish intervention in the Danish Civil War in 1534–1536. Barkman 1937 is also valuable on the 1520–1523 uprising and has served as a main source in Glete 2010. On the subjugation of the so-called Dacke Rebellion in 1542–1543, see Larsson 1992. On Gustav Vasa’s war against Russia in 1555–1557, Viljanti 1957 is the standard work.
  131. Barkman, Bertil C:son. Kungl. Svea livgardes historia. Vol. 1, 1523–1560. Stockholm: Stiftelsen för Svea Livgardes historia, 1937.
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  133. This is the first volume of the regimental history. It also contains Barkman and Lundkvist 1963, cited under Official Histories. Barkman’s account of the Guard Regiment’s participation in crucial campaigns offers valuable insights into doctrinal thinking during the earlier part of the 16th century, and it has served as an important source for Glete 2010.
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  135. Glete, Jan. Swedish Naval Administration, 1521–1721: Resource Flows and Organisational Capabilities. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
  136. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004179165.i-816Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  137. The beginning of chapter 3, covering naval operations in the period, also contains some valuable observations on Swedish naval doctrine. So too does chapter 5, which treats different types of ships and galleys. Glete emphasizes the concern with joint amphibious warfare and the loose boundary between land and sea warfare in the Baltic region in the period.
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  139. Larsson, Lars-Olof. Dackeland. 2d ed. Växjö, Sweden: Diploma, 1992.
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  141. A basic overview by the leading expert in the field on how popular discontent in the province of Småland concerning rising taxes, Lutheran church policies and curtailed forestry rights exploded into the greatest peasant rebellion ever in Scandinavia. The rebellion, which was named after its leader Nils Dacke, was put down with German mercenaries and Danish military aid but inspired new recruitment policies for the army of the Vasa monarchy. Illustrations by Björn Gidstam. Originally published in 1979.
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  143. Viljanti, Arvo. Gustav Vasas ryska krig, 1554–1557. 2 vols. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1957.
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  145. This work by a Finnish historian remains the basic study on the Russo-Swedish conflict of the 1550s. Viljanti shows how repeated skirmishes along Sweden’s eastern border unexpectedly escalated into full-scale war and how the newly reorganized Swedish military forces demonstrated a surprising capability when it came to mobilizing and deploying large troop formations across the Gulf of Bothnia.
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  147. Personnel
  148. Fundamental works on the recruitment of troops and commanding personnel are Larsson 1967 and Hallenberg 2002, respectively, while Glete 2010 covers personnel in the navy.
  149. Glete, Jan. Swedish Naval Administration, 1521–1721: Resource Flows and Organisational Capabilities. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
  150. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004179165.i-816Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151. In chapter 8, Glete shows how the Swedish navy in the 16th and 17th centuries differed from other European navies in the period. Because Sweden lacked a maritime population with long-distance seafarers who had served on large square-rigged ships, the country developed a manning system linked to the coastal population and peasant society.
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  153. Hallenberg, Mats. “Militär eller civil? Kungatjänare och våldsverkare före professionaliseringen.” Militärhistorisk tidskrift (2002): 145–172.
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  155. The author, whose dissertation dealt with Swedish local administration in the 16th century, studies the important role of royal bailiffs in organizing Gustav Vasa’s army, pointing out that, at least in the eyes of the Crown, some of these local officials qualified as military leaders through their readiness to use violence in dealings with the local peasantry.
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  157. Larsson, Lars-Olof. “Gustav Vasa och ‘den nationella hären.’” Scandia 33.2 (1967): 251–269.
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  159. Through a close reading of King Gustav Vasa’s correspondence, Larsson in this article refutes an established view that a certain parliamentary decision in 1544 led to the introduction of general conscription in Sweden. Rather, the impetus for its use stemmed from developments around 1544, when recruitment for the existing professional army shifted away from German mercenaries toward the domestic population.
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  161. The Age of Territorial Expansion, 1560–1660
  162. No doubt, this is the period in the history of the Swedish armed forces that has attracted the most attention internationally. The gradual dissolution of the state of the Teutonic Order in the present-day territories of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the middle of the 16th century created a political vacuum along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. At the same time, the growth of transatlantic shipping that followed from the discovery of the Americas created an increased demand in western Europe for tar, hemp, flax, and timber produced in the Baltic region, rendering a major strategic-economic significance to Baltic trade. From 1561, when Swedish king Erik XIV took the city of Reval (present-day Tallinn) and the surrounding areas under his protection, Sweden was involved in a constant struggle for regional supremacy with rival powers that included Denmark, Poland, and Russia. The reign of Gustavus Adolphus (r. 1611–1632) constituted a decisive phase in this development. During this period Sweden added the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea to the Swedish Empire, and the country entered into the Thirty Years War. Swedish society was thoroughly organized to sustain a prolonged war effort, and Gustavus Adolphus introduced military reforms which would have a crucial impact on the evolution of warfare in the West. Although the Thirty Years War left Sweden with additional territories in northern Germany, the attempts under Charles X (r. 1654–1660) to make the Baltic Sea a Swedish inland sea through the acquisition of conquered territories from Poland and Denmark failed. The Netherlands now intervened on the side of Denmark to prevent the Baltic approaches from falling under the sole control of one power. The Swedish Empire, which had reached its largest extent at the conclusion of the Roskilde Peace Treaty in 1658, began to shrink as early as 1660 when some of the recent territorial gains from Denmark had to be returned (the island of Bornholm and the province of Trondheim in Norway). The traditional issues of debate concerning this period have dealt with the motives for Swedish expansion (trade or security?), the character of Gustavus Adolphus’s military reforms (his originality in relation to the Dutch, the balance between offensive and defensive elements in his tactical doctrine), and the establishment of a military aristocracy (its connection to traditional Swedish and foreign aristocratic families and the weight of its military expertise). Another theme that has achieved dominance more recently concerns the mobilization of resources for warfare. Whereas in other parts of western Europe during the 17th century, the military-fiscal state provoked protest and rebellion, Sweden remained largely calm even though the exploitation of resources at times reached higher levels than almost anywhere else. It has been suggested that the participatory elements in Swedish political culture—the involvement of local society in administering taxes and conscription, the right of the peasantry to parliamentary representation, etc.—helped to ease tensions between state and society.
  163. Defense Policy and Strategy
  164. Villstrand 2011 provides the most recent synthesis of research on this period in Swedish history. Roberts and Lundkvist 1973, an edited anthology, provides a decent introduction in English, although it is now somewhat dated. Böhme 1994 offers a convenient overview with an emphasis on the expansion phase and contains an interesting discussion on how the wars were financed. A central issue in the historical discussion has been the principal motives for Swedish expansion. Is it to be explained by the desire to control the lucrative East-West trade flows through the Baltic region, as asserted in Attman 1979, or by honest strategic concerns, as stated in Roberts 1979? Nilsson 1990 provides what is still the dominant perspective among Swedish historians on the “age of greatness,” Lindegren 1985 presents the Marxist version of this story, while Glete 2002 puts the Swedish Empire in a contemporary European perspective, which is often overlooked by Swedish historians.
  165. Attman, Artur. The Struggle for Baltic Markets: Powers in Conflict, 1558–1618. Gothenburg, Sweden: Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhället, 1979.
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  167. Attman, who was an authority on Sweden’s economic history in the seventeenth century, convincingly analyzes the early phase of Swedish expansion as characterized by continuous strife to secure control over the shifting Baltic trade routes.
  168. Find this resource:
  169. Böhme, Klaus-Richard. “Building a Baltic Empire: Aspects of Swedish Expansion, 1560–1660.” In In Quest of Trade and Security. Vol. 1, 1500–1890. Edited by Göran Rystad, Klaus-R. Böhme, and Wilhelm M. Carlgren, 177–220. Stockholm: Probus, 1994.
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  171. Böhme’s article offers a convenient overview in English of the expansion phase, and the author also discusses the driving forces behind Swedish expansion and how the wars were financed.
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  173. Glete, Jan. War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500–1660. London: Routledge, 2002.
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  175. Armed with modern organizational theory, Glete in this remarkable study compares the Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish empires during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, describing the Swedish Vasa monarchy as a successful joint venture in “protection selling” made possible through constructive cooperation between the dynasty and the country’s leading aristocratic families. In comparison to the view presented in Nilsson 1990, Glete “normalizes” Sweden as a great power by emphasizing the contemporary European context.
  176. Find this resource:
  177. Lindegren, Jan. “The Swedish ‘Military State,’ 1560–1720.” Scandinavian Journal of History 10.4 (1985): 305–336.
  178. DOI: 10.1080/03468758508579070Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  179. In this article that stems from his dissertation written several years earlier, Jan Lindegren, a former student of Sven A. Nilsson, attempts to present within an international context his own interpretation of Sweden as a great power. Nilsson’s authoritarian military state is placed into the wider framework of historical materialism as the wars are seen as a necessary instrument for feudal exploitation.
  180. Find this resource:
  181. Nilsson, Sven A. De stora krigens tid: Om Sverige som militärstat och bondesamhälle. Uppsala, Sweden: Studia Historica Upsaliensis, 1990.
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  183. In this volume, famous Uppsala professor Sven A Nilsson reprinted the major articles from his life-long study of Sweden as a great power. His image of a highly militarized society, organized for “total war” at staggering human costs, remains influential among Swedish historians.
  184. Find this resource:
  185. Roberts, Michael. The Swedish Imperial Experience, 1560–1718. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
  186. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511622274Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  187. In his short but impressive overview of Sweden’s history as a great power, Roberts argues against the “economist interpretation” of Sweden’s expansion, pointing out that security and strategic aspects dominated the discussions of the Swedish Privy Council while trade considerations were rarely mentioned.
  188. Find this resource:
  189. Roberts, Michael, and Sven Lundkvist, eds. Sweden’s Age of Greatness, 1632–1718. London: Macmillan, 1973.
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  191. This anthology on Sweden’s age of greatness generally reflects the consensus of researchers working in the 1950s and 1960s. Alf Åberg’s contribution, “The Swedish Army: from Lützen to Narva,” has some value as a guide in English to the armed forces in the period.
  192. Find this resource:
  193. Villstrand, Nils Erik. Sveriges historia. 1600–1721. Stockholm: Norstedt, 2011
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  195. This is Volume 4 in a recent 8-volume series History of Sweden, published by Norstedt, covering Sweden’s period as a European great power. The author, a professor of Nordic History at the Åbo Akademi University in Turkku, Finland, is a leading specialist of military history who neatly sums up the latest research on Swedish society in an age when most aspects of life were in some way influenced by war and the mobilization of resources for warfare.
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  197. Doctrine and Operations
  198. In addition to the literature listed under General Overviews and Official Histories, Frost 2000 and Glete 2010 could be mentioned as accessible accounts in English concerning this period, while Barkman 1939 needs to be consulted on the wars under Gustav Vasa’s sons (1560–1611). Lundkvist 1963 deserves mentioning as one among few valuable contributions on doctrine and operations during the last half-century, Försvarsstabens, krigshistoriska avdelning 1948 is a fine example of official history, while Ericson Wolcke 1998 is the first attempt to trace the deployment of the Swedish army over an extended period.
  199. Barkman, Bertil C:son. Kungl Svea Livgardes historia. Vol. 2, 1560–1611. Stockholm: Stiftelsen för Svea Livgardes Historia, 1939.
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  201. As sources seldom allow us to discern the experience of individual units during the campaigns of the early Vasa period, the author of this regimental history produced the first general account based on primary sources of Swedish military operations during the Northern Seven Years War (1563–1570), the wars against Russia in 1570–1595, and those against Poland and Russia in 1600–1610.
  202. Find this resource:
  203. Ericson Wolcke, Lars. “Armén är under Alperna . . . och garnisonerna kring hela Tyskland”: Den svenska krigsmakten i Östersjöområdet från 1590-talet till 1670-talet.” In Vägen till Westfaliska freden: Sverige och trettioåriga kriget. Edited by Lars Ericson Wolke, 39–82. Lund, Sweden: Historiska Media, 1998.
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  205. To date the most comprehensive study of troop deployments in the Swedish Empire during the period of expansion, including the rapid demobilization after the Thirty Years War.
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  207. Försvarsstabens, krigshistoriska avdelning. Från Femern och Jankow till Westfaliska freden: Minnesskrift. Stockholm: Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalts Förlag, 1948.
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  209. In the final months of the Second World War, shortly before the arrival of Soviet troops, Swedish military historians went to study archives and tour battlefields in central Europe to produce this volume in commemoration of Sweden’s final victory in the Thirty Years War. Not least the section on roads and communications in 17th-century Germany still deserves attention.
  210. Find this resource:
  211. Frost, Robert I. The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721. Harlow, UK: Longman, 2000.
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  213. Apart from being a comparatively modern overview, Frost’s work offers a Polish perspective as much as a Swedish one, which helps to balance the nationalist bias in some of the older Swedish literature.
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  215. Glete, Jan. Swedish Naval Administration, 1521–1721: Resource Flows and Organisational Capabilities. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
  216. DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004179165.i-816Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  217. Parts of chapter 3 cover naval operations in the period. Swedish naval doctrine is also discussed in chapter 5, which treats different types of ships and galleys. Glete emphasizes the loose boundary between land and sea warfare in the Baltic region.
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  219. Lundkvist, Sven. “Slaget vid Breitenfeld.” Historisk tidskrift 83.1 (1963): 1–38.
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  221. This groundbreaking analysis of the primary sources to the most famous victory of Gustavus Adolphus emphasizes the defensive character of the Swedish triumph as well as the contribution of the Saxon cavalry; a fine piece of historical research rarely known outside Sweden, where Breitenfeld is still often depicted as a victory of annihilation in the tradition of the general staff work from the 1930s.
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  223. Personnel
  224. Artéus 1986 and Nilsson 1989 analyze the formation of a professional officer corps in Sweden before 1610. Lindegren 1980, Villstrand 1992, and Huhtamies 2004 investigate conscription in the 17th century and its impact on local communities, addressing the general relationship between state and society in 17th-century Sweden as well. According to some estimates, conscription between 1620 and 1720 affected some 600 000 men in present-day Sweden and Finland, four-fifths of whom never returned (out of a population that never exceeded 2 million). Together, these studies demonstrate that the reality of conscription varied greatly between different parts of the Swedish realm. What is still missing in the literature is a thorough study of the enlisted regiments of the Swedish army, units that constituted more than 80 percent of the Swedish forces during the Thirty Years War and conducted most of the active campaigning. So far, the lack of reliable archival sources has posed a major problem for such studies. Sjöberg 2008 is an attempt to write a history of women in the Swedish armed forces during the Early Modern era.
  225. Artéus, Gunnar. Till militärstatens förhistoria: Krig, professionalisering och social förändring under Vasasönernas regering. Stockholm: Probus, 1986
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  227. Using the modern concept of professionalization, Artéus studies the careers of a large number of individuals—immigrants from France and Scotland, noblemen from threatened border areas like Finland and the Baltic provinces—to show how the military profession took shape in Sweden in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This study, which reflects the optimism among historians of earlier decades about applying 20th-century social theory in analyzing preindustrial societies, remains an interesting contribution.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Huhtamies, Mikko. Knektar och bönder: Knektersättare vid utskrivningarna i Nedre Satakunda under trettioåriga kriget. Helsinki: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2004.
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  231. This study of conscription focuses on Satakunta in the southwestern part of present-day Finland; describes in great detail how conscripts were selected and how poor people “sold” their sons as conscript replacements. Huhtamies argues convincingly that the professionalized militia-type indelta army in practice was established by the 1640s through pressure from below to alleviate the burden on the peasantry.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Lindegren, Jan. Utskrivning och utsugning: Produktion och reproduktion i Bygdeå, 1620–1640. Uppsala, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1980.
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  235. Jan Lindegren’s doctoral dissertation was written in the Marxist tradition. Using unique local tax registers from the parish of Bygdeå in the province of Västerbotten, Lindegren shows the horrendous effects of conscription on a local communityin the far north of Sweden. Essential reading, which later historians in the field constantly refer to (and quarrel with).
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Nilsson, Sven A. På väg mot militärstaten: Krigsbefälets etablering i den äldre Vasatidens Sverige. Uppsala, Sweden: Studia Historica Upsaliensis, 1989.
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  239. A parallel study to Artéus 1986, investigating the political and economic conditions of the officer corps; concludes that officers preferred exercising their parliamentary influence through the noble estate rather than the estate of military commanders and that fiefs were economically more important to them than salaries, which is why the establishment of the officer corps led to a minor refeudalization of Sweden.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Sjöberg, Maria. Kvinnor i fält, 1550–1850. Hedemora, Sweden: Gidlunds, 2008.
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  243. Struggling with fragmentary sources, the author studies the history of women in the Swedish army during the Early Modern period, suggesting that the Swedish experience conforms to an international pattern according to which soldier-wives were an accepted part of any army and played an important logistical role, the all-male armies of the 20th century representing an historical exception.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Villstrand, Nils Erik. Anpassning eller protest: Lokalsamhället inför utskrivningarna av fotfolk till den svenska krigsmakten, 1620–1679. Åbo/Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademis Förlag, 1992.
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  247. Villstrand’s study of conscription in Österbotten in present-day Finland points out how the pressure of conscription differed over time and between different parts of the Swedish realm. Peasants in Österbotten could alleviate the pressure from conscription by hiring replacements among the rural poor, and they acquired the means to pay them by producing tar for the international market.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. The Age of Imperial Decline, 1660–1721
  250. Traditionally, Swedish historians have blamed the regency of Charles XI (who was only four years old at the death of his father) for Sweden’s decline as a great power. Finances and military preparedness were neglected in a way that almost brought about total disaster when Sweden was dragged into war in the 1670s. In this traditional narrative of the reign of Charles XI (r. 1672–1697), the young monarch not only saves his realm on the battlefield, but also reorganizes it after the war and punishes the neglectful aristocracy. Absolute monarchy is established, corrupt officials purged, estranged lands of the Crown taken back and the defense of the realm strengthened through building of the Karlskrona naval base, the new indelta militia army, and numerous fortresses along the borders. Since the mid-20th century, historians have tended to emphasize Charles XI’s dependence on his advisers and the social struggle within the aristocracy between the noblesse de robe and the noblesse d’épée as factors that are reflected in his reforms. Charles XII (r. 1697–1718), his son, has traditionally been portrayed as the heroic or tragic defender of his father’s empire against aggressive neighbors, eventually falling in action while campaigning in Norway. In the subsequent peace settlements the empire was lost, and the king’s personal responsibility for the outcome has been a matter of controversy among Swedish historians, not least because Charles XII in Swedish 20th-century politics became an ideological symbol for radical nationalism—and, consequently, somewhat of a red rag to the political left. During the 19th century, liberal historians of the “Old School” had argued that the king’s soldierly virtues and personal bravery could not excuse his lack of political judgment, his refusal to seek peace when it was offered, and his rather callous attitude to the suffering of his subjects. During the 1890s, when Sweden and other western European countries experienced a nationalist revival and an ideological turn to the right in the wake of industrialization, a “New School” emerged that was more positive with regard to Charles XII, arguing that the king’s role must be set in a larger European context to obtain a fair appreciation of the reign in taking into account Sweden’s role as a defender of Western civilization against Russian expansion. It could be argued that the New School maintained a dominate position among Swedish historians until the 1950s, when a more critical appreciation again became influential. Today, the dispute between the Old School and the New School is merely of historiographical interest. In modern research, attention has shifted from discussing the king’s personal abilities as a monarch to discussing the power base of the Swedish Empire. Although Charles managed to mobilize substantial resources for warfare throughout his reign, the demographic imbalance between Sweden and her opponents was truly great. The population of Sweden and Finland amounted to less than 2 million in 1700, that of Russia alone to 23 million. From that perspective, it seems unlikely that internal Swedish factors, such as the shift in government after the death of Charles, played a major role in bringing about a termination of the Great Northern War.
  251. Defense Policy and Strategy
  252. An introduction to the older historiography on how defense policy and strategy were reoriented toward a defensive stance under King Charles XI and how the empire around the Baltic Sea subsequently collapsed under Charles XII is best provided in Upton 1998 and Hatton 1968, good biographies in English on these two autocratic monarchs. Charles XII’s strategic thinking and his conduct of the Great Northern War are subjects that no longer animate Swedish historians the way they did a century ago, when Sweden’s defeat was discussed as a result of various fateful decisions rather than as a consequence of major structural imbalances. The focus has moved from explaining the fall of the Swedish Empire to explaining its ability to survive for as long as it did. In recent years, Swedish historians have focused on the role of ideological mobilization in that context, a strand of research that is represented here in Forssberg 2005. Finally, the Karolinska förbundets årsbok has been appearing since 1910 and often contains interesting articles on various aspects of the period’s military history.
  253. Forssberg, Anna Maria. Att hålla folket på gott humör: informationsspridning, krigspropaganda och mobilisering i Sverige, 1655–1680. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2005.
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  255. Forssberg, who studies ideological mobilization during the wars of Charles X and Charles XI, identifies patriotic as well religious elements in domestic war propaganda and demonstrates how these elements were brought together by the Lutheran Church, which disseminated patriotic war news to the population but urged them to make sacrifices using religious arguments.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Hatton, Ragnhild M. Charles XII of Sweden. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1968.
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  259. Hatton’s biography on Sweden’s controversial warrior-king paints a less critical portrait than modern Swedish historians usually do, but she manages to synthesize the vast 20th-century literature in an admirable way.
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  261. Karolinska förbundets årsbok. 1911–.
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  263. The yearbook of the Caroline Association, a learned society dedicated to the study of the period of the Pfalz dynasty in Swedish history, 1654–1721; it has appeared since 1911.
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  265. Upton, Anthony F. Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
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  267. A standard work in English on the Swedish monarch who after the disastrous Scanian War of 1675–1679 (which is the Swedish term for the Franco-Dutch War) established the absolute monarchy, reclaimed lands of the Crown from the aristocracy and used these new-won powers and resources to reorganize the armed forces along defensive lines.
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  269. Doctrine and Operations
  270. Rystad 2005 is the modern standard work on the Scanian War (1675–1679). Recent years have witnessed a substantial outpouring of new research on the Great Northern War, partly because of the triennial celebration of the conflict. That the general staff history of 1918 (see Generalstaben 1918–1919 cited under Official Histories) grossly misrepresented Swedish tactical doctrine during the period is convincingly shown in Wernstedt 1957 and Artéus 1972. Charles XII’s fateful Russian campaign is given a modern treatment in Petri 1958, Englund 2003, and Lyth and Konovaltjuk 2009. Lindegren 1992 contributes important logistical aspects to our understanding of the Great Northern War while Ericson Wolke 2012 offers a good overview of naval operations.
  271. Artéus, Gunnar. Krigsteori och historisk förklaring. Vol. 2, Karolinsk och europeisk stridstaktik, 1700–1712. Gothenburg, Sweden: Historiska institutionen, 1972.
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  273. In this second part of his doctoral dissertation, Artéus carried on in the steps of Wernstedt and made a systematic comparison between the field manuals of the Caroline army and those of its Russian, Danish, and Saxon opponents, recognizing a clear offensive emphasis in the Swedish manual although common traits dominated among the various countries. Little of substance has been added to this discussion since.
  274. Find this resource:
  275. Englund, Peter. The Battle That Shook Europe: Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire. London: I. B. Tauris, 2003.
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  277. An international bestseller originally published in Swedish in 1988 and then translated into many languages; written with a general audience in view but still valuable as a scholarly introduction to Charles XII’s Russian campaign, not least thanks to the concluding bibliographical essay.
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  279. Ericson Wolke, Lars. Sjöslag och rysshärjningar: Kampen om Östersjön under stora nordiska kriget, 1700–1721. Stockholm: Norstedts, 2012.
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  281. A modern, concise overview of the Baltic Sea as a theater of naval operations during the Great Northern War, including the intervention of the British Royal Navy and the Russian campaign of devastation along the Swedish eastern coast in the final stage of the conflict.
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  283. Lindegren, Jan. “Karl XII.” In Kungar och krigare: Tre essäer om Karl X Gustav, Karl XI och Karl XII. Edited by Anders Florén, Stellan Dahlgren, and Jan Lindegren, 149–225. Stockholm: Atlantis, 1992.
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  285. An interesting article which gives an unusually positive appreciation of Charles XII’s generalship and provides new information on the massive logistical preparations before the king’s last campaign—the invasion of Norway in 1718, which was planned to be supplied entirely from home by means of horse and cart.
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  287. Lyth, Einar, and Pavel Konovaltjuk. Vägen till Poltava: Slaget vid Lesnaja 1708. Stockholm: Svenskt Militärhistoriskt Biblioteks Förlag, 2009.
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  289. A modern study on the “Mother of Poltava”—the Russian victory over the Swedish supply column under General Lewenhaupt at Lesnaya in present-day Belarus in September 1708, authored by a Russian military historian and a retired Swedish brigadier; contains interesting logistical calculations and uses new sources from the court-martial proceedings after the battle, which shed new light on events.
  290. Find this resource:
  291. Petri, Gustaf. “Slaget vid Poltava.” Karolinska förbundets årsbok (1958): 125–161.
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  293. In this article, published on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the battle, Petri provides a critical reappraisal of Carl Bennedich’s interpretation in the general staff work of 1918 that Poltava constituted a near victory; rather, he returns to the view generally held by Swedish historians in the 19th century that Poltava had been a desperate undertaking doomed to failure.
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  295. Rystad, Göran, ed. Kampen om Skåne. Lund, Sweden: Historiska Media, 2005.
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  297. This is a Swedish-Danish anthology, originally published in 1983 but revised and reprinted under new editorship, covering most aspects of the 1675–1679 conflict and its consequences for Scandinavia, including the strategic and financial dimensions, the main battles on land and sea, the peace treaty, the campaign against the Danish loyalist irregulars in Skåne, and the reintegration of the province after the conflict.
  298. Find this resource:
  299. Wernstedt, Folke. “Lineartaktik och karolinsk taktik: Några reflektioner med anledning av framställningen i Karl XII på slagfältet.” Karolinska förbundets årsbok (1957): 153–164.
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  301. This article constituted the first major blow against the nationalist-romantic idea presented by the main author of the 1918 general staff work, Carl Bennedich, that there had been a distinct Swedish-Caroline tactical system, essentially different from the linear system of other contemporary European armies.
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  303. Personnel
  304. Research in this field is well integrated with research in social history in general. Ericson Wolke 1995 provides a general introduction to the so-called indelta army organization (indelta is sometimes translated as “allotted,” which is not entirely correct). Cavallie 1981 and Asker 1983 are studies of the changing social structure of the officer corps during the latter half of the 17th century, while Backlund 1993 examines the relationship between military service and social differentiation in the countryside. Tessin 1965–1967 is, to date, the most substantial study on Sweden’s foreign, professional regiments, while Perlestam 2008 represents a rare attempt to study the mentality and ideology of the Caroline army.
  305. Asker, Björn. Officerarna och det svenska samhället, 1650–1700. Uppsala, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1983.
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  307. Asker takes a broader look at the officers as an interest group in Swedish society during the latter half of the 17th century—their social origins, careers and system of patronage and how the landowning elites of the Swedish aristocracy handled the tensions that followed from the influx of “new” families due to the rapid expansion of the officer corps.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Backlund, Janne. Rusthållarna i Fellingsbro, 1684–1748: Indelningsverket och den sociala differentieringen av det svenska agrarsamhället. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1993.
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  311. A study of risk-taking entrepreneurs in the peasant community of Fellingsbro in the province of Västmanland, who benefited from the favorable tax reductions that came with supplying and equipping a horseman for the cavalry under the indelta system—a reminder of the opportunities for social advancement offered through the militarization of society.
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  313. Cavallie, James. De höga officerarna: Studier i den svenska militära hierarkien under 1600-talets senare del. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1981.
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  315. Cavallie studies the military elite in the Swedish empire in 1654, 1672, and 1699 (colonels/rear-admirals, and above), and concludes that a fairly large portion of these individuals had a diverse social and ethnic background in comparison with senior officers in other European states at the time.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Ericson Wolke, Lars. Svenska knektar: Indelta soldater, ryttare och båtsmän i krig och fred. Lund, Sweden: Svenska Historiska Media, 1995.
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  319. An introduction to the militia-type army organization introduced by Charles XI in the 1680s, which remained the basic element in Sweden’s military defense until 1901; written partly as a tool for genealogical research, this book also provides generous information on archives and various types of sources available on the Swedish indelta army.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Perlestam, Magnus. Lydnad i karolinernas tid. Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic Press, 2008.
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  323. A study of discipline and obedience in the Caroline army—how discipline was formulated in regulations and how the regulations were interpreted in a number of court-martial cases; suggests that discipline rested less on draconian punishments than on a reciprocal, mutual understanding between officers and men.
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  325. Tessin, Georg. Die deutschen regementer Krone Schwedens. 2 vols. Cologne: Böhlau, 1965–1967.
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  327. A massive study of the German regiments in the service of the Swedish Crown, covering the period from Charles X’s wars in the 1650s to the end of the Great Northern War; this book has the character of a catalogue but is valuable as the only work of its kind.
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  329. Sweden as a Revanchist Middle Power, 1721–1814
  330. No good study exists that covers the entire era as Swedish historians traditionally divide the period 1721–1814 in delineating the “Age of Liberty” (1721–1772), the Gustavian era (1772–1809), and the Karl Johan era (1810–1844). The Age of Liberty is generally associated with the doctrines of the Enlightenment, constitutional freedom, and “parliamentarian absolutism.” The Gustavian era signifies continued cultural progress but a gradual resurrection of absolute monarchy, and it comes to a close in 1809 through the only successful military coup in Swedish history. At this time the country begins to settle into its role as a European small power under the Bernadotte dynasty, having lost Finland and its German lands in the Napoleonic Wars. Debated issues in research on this period include the character of Swedish society during the Age of Liberty (Sweden as an exceptionally militarized or a quite normal society in aristocratic, 18th-century Europe?), naval policies (the Age of Liberty as a period of naval decline or systematic progress?), the loss of Finland (could military defeat have been avoided in 1808–1809? Were the elites in Finland gradually alienated from Stockholm during the 18th century?). These debates are reflected in the works cited in the following subsections. Although Swedish historians have never doubted that the wars of 1741, 1757, and 1788 had revanchist motives, they have been unwilling to discern a long-term pattern of military aggressiveness among the political elites, one that contributed to instability in northern Europe and eventually brought about the disaster of 1809. Nor was it the desire for serenity as a small power that secured the election of Jean Baptiste Bernadotte (Karl Johan), Napoleon’s marshal, as heir to the throne in 1810, but rather dreams of revenge and restored glory. Sweden’s last war is, in fact, a successful war of aggression against Norway in 1814. The two centuries of peace that followed have tended to obscure that perspective.
  331. Defense Policy and Strategy
  332. No work has appeared as yet focusing on Swedish revanchist sentiments from the end of the Great Northern War to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Roberts 1986 provides a general overview of the Age of Liberty. Winton 2012 deals with financing war during the Seven Years War and links the part played by Sweden to the international debate on the long-term consequences of this first global conflict. Müller 2010 offers an interesting perspective on the genealogy of Swedish neutrality in studying the League of Armed Neutrality of 1780. Otherwise, no good introductions to the Gustavian era are available in English. Jörgensen 2004 and Scott 1935 can be used for the Napoleonic Wars.
  333. Jörgensen, Christer. The Anglo-Swedish Alliance against Napoleonic France. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
  334. DOI: 10.1057/9780230287747Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. Jörgensen’s book is a study both of Sweden in the Napoleonic Wars from 1805 to 1810 and of the Baltic theater in British strategy during this period.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Müller, Leos. “The League of Armed Neutrality, 1780–1783.” In Strategy in the American War of Independence: A Global Approach. Edited by Donald Stoker, Kenneth J. Hagan, and Michael T. McMaster, 202–220. New York: Routledge, 2010.
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  339. An interesting study of the naval cooperation among Russia, Sweden, and Denmark to protect their shipping against British privateering during the American War of Independence; shows among other things how the wars of the 18th century taught the Swedes the commercial potential of staying neutral in a global conflict (which would prove to be a valuable lesson in the 20th century).
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Roberts, Michael. The Age of Liberty: Sweden, 1719–1772. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
  342. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511562730Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. Roberts’s book remains one of the best overviews in any language on Sweden during the Age of Liberty and on the complex factors that influenced Swedish foreign policy in the period.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Scott, Franklin D. Bernadotte and the Fall of Napoleon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935.
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  347. After almost eighty years, this short book remains the standard work in English on Sweden’s participation in the final struggle against Napoleon. In the same year, a much more detailed Swedish study on the subject was published by Torvald Höjer, which presents a similar picture of Bernadotte’s shrewd diplomatic maneuvering to secure Norway for Sweden and his half-hearted participation in the final struggle against Napoleon.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Winton, Patrick. “Sweden and the Seven Years’ War: War, Debt and Politics.” War in History 19.1 (January 2012): 5–31.
  350. DOI: 10.1177/0968344511422308Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. The most recent contribution to an otherwise neglected war in Swedish history, linking the Swedish case to the international debate on the Seven Years War and the collapse of the finances of European governments.
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  353. Doctrine and Operations
  354. The 18th-century rivalry between the archipelago fleet and the fleet of the line came to shape Swedish historiography well into the 20th century. Until the 1990s, the Age of Liberty was generally seen as a period of naval decline, terminated only by Gustavus III who used the archipelago fleet as an instrument for naval revival and eventually triumph over the Russians in 1790. Glete 1994 questions this picture and calls attention to the continuity in Swedish naval doctrine in the Baltic, while Norman 2000 provides a modern overview of the Swedish archipelago fleet, probably one of the most effective amphibious fighting forces in its day. When it comes to the 18th-century wars of Sweden, no modern study is available on the disastrous war against Russia in 1741–1743. Åselius 2012 gives an overview of Sweden’s participation in the Seven Years War, and Artéus 1992 and Karppinen 1993 provide studies of the war against Russia in 1788–1790. The war against Russia in 1808–1809 receives recent treatment in Hårdstedt 2006, while the contributions in Engström and Ericson Wolke 2000 discuss various aspects of Sweden’s armed forces during the Napoleonic Wars.
  355. Artéus, Gunnar, ed. Gustav III: s ryska krig. Stockholm: Probus, 1992.
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  357. This anthology contains articles by leading Swedish specialists on the decision to go to war, Sweden’s army and navy before the conflict, and operations on land and sea as well as an evaluation of King Gustavus III as a military leader. A fine modern example of “official history” produced by the Division of Military History at what was, at the time, the Joint Staff College in Stockholm.
  358. Find this resource:
  359. Åselius, Gunnar. “Sweden and the Pomeranian War.” In The Seven Years’ War: Global Views. Edited by Mark H. Danley and Patrick J. Speelman, 135–164. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2012.
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  361. A modern overview of Sweden’s participation in the Seven Years War, relying heavily for details on what to this day remains the major study on the subject: Teofron Säfve, Sveriges deltagande i sjuåriga kriget åren, 1757–1762 (Stockholm: Beijer, 1915).
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  363. Engström, Johan, and Lars Ericson Wolke, eds. Between the Imperial Eagles: Sweden’s Armed Forces during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1780–1820. Stockholm: Armémuseum, 2000.
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  365. This volume, published in the year-book series of the Army Museum, contains several interesting articles on various aspects of the Swedish (as well as the Danish-Norwegian) armed forces during the Napoleonic period; published in English for the benefit of the international scholarly community but surprisingly little known outside Scandinavia.
  366. Find this resource:
  367. Glete, Jan. “Bridge and Bulwark: The Swedish Navy and the Baltic, 1500–1809.” In In Quest of Trade and Security. Vol. 1, 1500–1890. Edited by Göran Rystad, Klaus-R. Böhme, and Wilhelm M. Carlgren, 9–59. Stockholm: Probus, 1994.
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  369. Glete’s article provides not only an overview back to the 16th century in emphasizing the amphibious character of warfare in the Baltic Sea through the ages, but also calls attention to the rivalry between the fleet of the line based in Karlskrona and the archipelago fleet based in Sveaborg outside Helsinki and to the complicated networks that, in late-18th-century Sweden, shaped naval politics.
  370. Find this resource:
  371. Hårdstedt, Martin. Om krigets förutsättningar: Den militära underhållsproblematiken och det civila samhället i norra Sverige och Finland under Finska kriget, 1808–1809. Umeå, Sweden: Umeå Inst. för Historiska Studier, 2002.
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  373. The author compares Russian and Swedish army logistics during the campaign of 1808–1809 and convincingly demonstrates the superiority of the decentralized Russian system.
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  375. Hårdstedt, Martin. Finska kriget, 1808–1809. Stockholm: Prisma, 2006.
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  377. A modern survey of the most disastrous war in Swedish history, which led to the loss of Sweden’s Finnish provinces (a third of the territory, a fourth of the population).
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  379. Karppinen, Eira, ed. The War of King Gustavus III and Naval Battles of Ruotsinsalmi: VIII International Baltic Seminar, 5–7 July 1990. Kotka, Finland: Provincial Museum of Kymenlaakso, 1993.
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  381. A publication resulting from the bicentenary conference held to commemorate the decisive battle of Gustavus’ III’s Russian war—the victory of the Swedish archipelago fleet over the Russian galley fleet at Svensksund (Ruotinsalmi in Finnish) in 1790, with contributions from Estonian, Finnish, Russian, and Swedish specialists.
  382. Find this resource:
  383. Norman, Hans, ed. Skärgårdsflottan: Uppbyggnad, militär användning och förankring i det svenska samhället, 1700–1824. Lund, Sweden: Historiska Media, 2000.
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  385. Since Finnish historian Oscar Nikula’s classic study Svenska skärgårdsflottan, 1756–1790 (Helsinki: K. F. Puromies, 1933), little had been done in this field until the present anthology, which covers traditional subjects, such as ship construction, tactics, combat performance, and personnel, as well as more modern themes, such as the role of naval officers in the 18th-century salons.
  386. Find this resource:
  387. Personnel
  388. In recent years the role of the officer corps in Swedish society during the period, whether it can be distinguished from the aristocracy in general as an independent interest group, has been a main topic of debate. Artéus 1982 describes Sweden in the Age of Liberty as a “militarized society,” but that view is criticized in Metcalf 1985 for an anachronistic use of modern social theory in a historical context. This also constitutes the period when formalized training of officers began in Sweden, which is covered in Sjöstrand 1941. Wirilander 1964 is a piece of classic social history, focused on officers serving in the Finnish provinces. Thisner 2007 attempts to measure the economic significance of the positions of officers and to compare Sweden with Denmark in this respect. Hemström 2005 takes a look at the only successful military coup in Swedish history—the dethronement of King Gustavus IV in 1809. Magnusson 1987 studies enlisted personnel in the early half of the period, and Thisner 2009 examines the humble beginnings of conscription in Sweden.
  389. Artéus, Gunnar. Krigsmakt och samhälle i frihetstidens Sverige. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1982.
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  391. The author examines the position of the 18th-century officer corps from various aspects and contends that, contrary to the common view, Sweden in the Age of Liberty and the Enlightenment period was, in reality, a heavily militarized society comparable to some 20th-century Third World countries; a work that argues a controversial thesis but is rich in interesting data.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Hemström, Mats. Marschen mot makten: Västra arméns revolt och väg till Stockholm 1809. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala Universitet, 2005.
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  395. A fresh look at the revolution of 1809, which, in the early 20th century remained a controversial issue among Swedish historians and political scientists; Hemström analyzes the mutiny of the Swedish Western Army as a modern social movement, an operation that succeeded in swiftly redeploying forces from the Norwegian border to the capital through detailed knowledge of the military logistical system.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Magnusson, Thomas. Proletär i uniform: Studier kring den värvade armén, arbetsmarknadens kommersialisering och urbaniseringen i frihetstidens västsvenska samhälle. Gothenburg, Sweden: Historiska Institutionen, 1987.
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  399. One of the few studies of the professional, urban soldiery in a period during which the rural, indelta militia-type army has attracted the most attention from historians, and which situates the military labor market against the backdrop of contemporary socioeconomic developments.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Metcalf, Michael F. “Den militariserade frihetstiden?” Historisk tidskrift 105.1 (1985): 73–82.
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  403. A critical review of Artéus 1982, which sparked off an interesting discussion. See Gunnar Artéus, “Om det frihetstida samhällets karaktär,” Historisk tidskrift 105.3 (1985): 365–372; and Michael F. Metcalf, “Mera om det frihetstida samhällets karaktär,” Historisk tidskrift 105.4 (1985): 491–492.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Sjöstrand, Wilhelm. Grunddragen av den militära undervisningens uppkomst- och utvecklingshistoria i Sverige till år 1792. Uppsala, Sweden: Lundequistska Bokhandeln, 1941.
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  407. The author of this work that stems from a doctoral dissertation would later become a leading name in Sweden within the field of educational history; this remains the basic study on the subject and follows developments until the inauguration of the Karlberg Military Academy in 1792.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Thisner, Fredrik. Militärstatens arvegods: Officerstjänstens socialreproduktiva funktion i Sverige och Danmark, ca. 1720–1800. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala Universitet, 2007.
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  411. Shows how the price of an officer’s position increased in Sweden during the second half of the century, with ever-greater private wealth needed to pursue a military career. Rather than describing military service as a profession when discussing the social logic that came to characterize the officer corps, the author uses the metaphor of a neighborhood gentlemen’s club.
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  413. Thisner, Fredrik. “Manning the Armed Forces: The Swedish Solution.” In Conscription in the Napoleonic Era: A Revolution in Military Affairs? Edited by Donald Stoker, Frederick C. Schneid, and Harold D. Blanton, 162–174. London: Routledge, 2009.
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  415. This work is a contribution to an international anthology on the origins of modern conscription, which discusses the Swedish experience of the levée en masse and the final establishment of a conscript auxiliary force in 1812.
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  417. Wirilander, Kaarlo. Officerskåren i Finland under 1700-talet: En socialhistorisk avhandling om den finska arméns officerare. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1964.
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  419. Old school social history that contains a large mass of biographical data on officers serving in the regiments of the Finnish provinces and, at the same time, provides a close image of life and career prospects among these officers.
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  421. The Swedish-Norwegian Union, 1814–1905
  422. Factors that included the growing imbalance between small and great actors in the European system, which had been demonstrated by the Napoleonic Wars, the geopolitical stability created by the loose Swedish-Norwegian union, and the strategic irrelevance of Baltic trade following the disappearance of sailing ships contributed to peace and prosperity on the Scandinavian Peninsula during the 19th century. Gradually, a doctrine of nonalignment came to characterize Swedish-Norwegian foreign policy. Militarily, the Swedish indelta militia army, founded two centuries earlier, became increasingly obsolete in the age of railways and rifles, steel and steam. Although conscription had been introduced during the Napoleonic Wars, service time remained symbolic until 1901, when the indelta army was finally abolished and a five-month period of service was introduced. At this time, substantial investments were also made in modern warships and fortifications in line with the country’s emerging identity as a developed industrial nation. The alleged threat from Russia helped to mobilize support. Although Norway’s exit from the union in 1905 generated some military tension, this political bond had been increasingly felt as a burden. Central issues of this period that have drawn the attention of historians and political scientists include the rise of the Swedish policy of neutrality during the 19th century and the transition to a conscript army, which was completed by 1901. During the Cold War, Swedish politicians and diplomats often declared that the policy of neutrality was a predestined choice for Sweden and they described the historical evolution of Swedish neutrality almost in teleological terms. Among historians, however, a general consensus has emerged today that the policy of neutrality evolved gradually from the middle of the 19th century and that it had a clear, ad hoc character. Conscription was introduced in Sweden in 1812, but the time of service was limited to twelve days, which was gradually prolonged to ninety days in 1892. The conscripts were to serve as a reserve force behind the front, while the indelta army was to remain the core of the army. Although Swedish urban liberals ardently sought to replace the indelta army with conscription, they met overwhelming resistance. To the agrarians of the Farmers’ Party, which dominated the lower house of the Swedish parliament after the parliamentary reform of 1865, the memories of mass death among conscripts during the Finnish War of 1808–1809 (when a temporary levée en masse had been tested) loomed large. The fact that the indelta army was linked to the system of land taxation, however, proved more important. To accept an extension of conscription, the farmers demanded the introduction of a completely new tax system that would shift the tax burden more evenly between town and countryside. This, in turn, met resistance from the urban, bureaucratic, and capitalist elites who dominated the upper house of parliament. The issue of conscription, which divided the officer corps as well, thus became a central political conflict in Sweden during the period of industrialization.
  423. Defense Policy and Strategy
  424. Central research themes regarding this period include the evolution of a Swedish small-power identity and how the union with Norway and the decreasing role of the monarch as ruler and supreme military commander influenced this process. Elgström 2000 offers one of the few modern overviews in English of the establishment of Sweden’s policy of neutrality, although it is a work produced within the discipline of international relations. Hellstenius 2000 treats the attitudes toward war of the officer corps while Jansson 1935 presents a fundamental overview of defense policy during the first decades of the 19th century. Arstad 2007 is the most substantial volume yet on Swedish-Norwegian military relations during the union, while Thullberg 1986 addresses the gradual erosion of the monarch as the operative supreme commander, and Cronenberg 1969 examines the military involvement in the campaigns for general conscription and defense reform in the 1880s and 1890s and how internal disputes in the officer corps were handled.
  425. Arstad, Peter Lyche. Militære perspektiver på unionen mellom Norge og Sverige, 1814–1905. Oslo: Forsvarsmuseet, 2007.
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  427. An anthology prepared by the Norwegian Defense Museum to commemorate the centenary of the peaceful dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union and the most comprehensive history yet of Swedish-Norwegian military relations from 1814 to 1905; seventeen contributions by Norwegian and Swedish historians, covering everything from political and constitutional aspects of the union to military planning and preparations in connection with the crisis in 1905.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Cronenberg, Arvid. “Gustaf Björlin och allmänna försvarsföreningen.” Aktuellt och Historiskt (1969): 53–94.
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  431. Describes military agitation activities before the 1892 defense reform, which entailed the last prolongation of service time before the final conscript reform in 1901; reveals the political cleverness shown by Swedish general staff officers when it came to patching up internal divisions in the officer corps over conscription.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Elgström, Ole. Images and Strategies for Autonomy: Explaining Swedish Security Policy Strategies in the 19th Century. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2000.
  434. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-1826-4Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. An attempt by a specialist in international relations to analyze Sweden’s gradual orientation toward neutrality in the period 1814 to 1885, with theoretical inspiration from Alexander George and a focus on concepts such as “stable peace regimes” and “weak-state power.”
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  437. Hellstenius, Mats. Krigen som inte blev av: Sveriges fredliga officerskår vid 1800-talets mitt. Lund, Sweden: Lunds Universitet, 2000.
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  439. A study on the reluctance of the Swedish military elite to go to war in connection with the First and Second Schleswig Wars and the Crimean War. The theoretical models are borrowed from international relations and peace studies and may be of limited value in this context, but the insights offered into the beliefs and values of Swedish officers at the time are interesting.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Jansson, Allan. Försvarsfrågan i svensk politik från 1809 till Krimkriget. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala Universitet, 1935.
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  443. An older work that remains indispensable when considering this period as it provides an excellent overview of government policy, parliamentary debates, and public discussion of defense issues in the press, military journals, and the professional literature.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Thullberg, Per. Krigsmaktens högsta ledning, 1895–1920: Från konungslig makt till parlamentarisk kontroll och professionell ledning. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1986.
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  447. A study of the Swedish monarch’s transition from royal war lord to supreme commander in name only, a position that he finally lost in the 1975 constitution; emphasizes the silent support of the general staff for this transition.
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  449. Doctrine and Operations
  450. Sweden’s active war-fighting days were over by 1814, and the subsequent period saw their replacement with the introduction of continuous operational planning and doctrinal debate within the military, not least because of the revolution occasioned by the use of steam in land and sea transport. Lappalainen 1984, which discusses the plans for Swedish intervention during the Crimean War, deals with an exceptional case of operational planning, while Rosell 1982 and Glete 1985, which are concerned with army and naval doctrinal thinking, respectively, illustrate how certain patterns of military thinking were now established, patterns that remained in effect until the end of the 20th century.
  451. Glete, Jan. Kustförsvar och teknisk omvandling: Teknik, doktriner och organisation inom svenskt kustförsvar, 1850–1880. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1985.
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  453. Glete shows how the coastal defense doctrine, which the Swedish naval forces would retain until the end of the 20th century, took shape in the mid-19th century through a constructive conjunction of technological, organizational, and strategic developments.
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  455. Lappalainen, Jussi T. “Oskar I: s planer, 1854–1856.” Militärhistorisk tidskrift (1984): 5–18.
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  457. On the basis of previously unknown documents, this Finnish historian was able to demonstrate the extent of Swedish preparations for intervention in the Crimean War while showing, at the same time, that the plans for a joint Swedish-Anglo-French landing in southern Finland were clearly unrealistic.
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  459. Rosell, Lennart. “Sveriges lantförsvar, 1873–1905: En studie rörande strategiska principer.” In Till krigsarkivarien Alf Åberg från medarbetare och vänner den 30 juni 1982. Vol. 9 of Meddelanden från Krigsarkivet. Edited by Alf Åberg, 7–137. Stockholm: Krigsarkivet, 1982.
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  461. The fundamental study on Swedish army war planning during the latter half of the 19th century, when a general staff and railways had come into existence; includes a detailed account of Swedish military preparations in connection with a potential conflict with Norway in 1905.
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  463. Personnel
  464. Much research concerning military personnel during the 19th century has dealt with the rise of the military profession. Bernström 1988 can serve as a reference work with regard to the officer corps; Larsson 2005 investigates the changing role of the Karlberg Military Academy, while Guillemot 1987 studies the final decades of the rank and file under the indelta system.
  465. Bernström, Åke. Officerskår i förvandling: Den svenska arméofficerskårens rekrytering, utbildning och tjänstgöringsförhållanden från 1860-talet fram till 1920. Stockholm: Historiska Institutionen, 1988.
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  467. Bernström is like other historians who have tried to make the military profession fit with established sociological models in that he encounters some problems; still, this is a rich compilation of valuable data and contains some interesting comparisons between the Swedish officer corps and the Prussian officer corps.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Guillemot, Agneta. Rask, Resolut, Trogen: De indelta soldaterna i det svenska agrarsamhället: Västerbotten, 1860–1901. Umeå, Sweden: Universitet i Umeå, 1987.
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  471. A well-organized and highly accessible study on the social conditions of the last generations of indelta soldiers, with a focus on northern Sweden.
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  473. Larsson, Esbjörn. Från adlig uppfostran till borgerlig utbildning: Kungl. krigsakademien mellan åren 1792 och 1866. Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala Universitet, 2005.
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  475. Larsson’s work illustrates the transformation of the Karlberg War Academy from a state-run boarding school for young men from the aristocracy in the 1790s to an institution for serious professional training in the 1860s, using theories of Pierre Bourdieu on symbolic capital as well as theoretical perspectives on masculinity.
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  477. Sweden as a Neutral Small Power, 1905–2000
  478. During the 20th century, Sweden remained neutral during two world wars, not least as the country’s dependence on trade with both Germany and Britain made any other course impossible. During the Cold War, Sweden continued to pursue a (discreetly pro-Western) policy of nonalignment. Extensive military preparations backed up Sweden’s neutrality during the world wars, and the post-1945 period saw an impressive military buildup. Sweden’s relative weight as a military power in northern Europe decreased from the 1970s onward, but the strong armed forces of the Cold War have acquired an almost mythical status in contemporary Sweden, similar to that of the Swedish welfare state during the same period. Whereas the debate on Swedish neutrality during the Cold War has centered on the honesty of the political and military elites, discussions on Swedish neutrality during the Second World War have taken on a more ethical dimension, focusing on the fact that Sweden did little to defend Western civilization in its darkest hour. Most of the latter debate falls outside the scope of the present research overview, which focuses on the activities of the armed forces and the attitudes of the officer corps during the Second World War. It was only during the Cold War that neutrality was charged with a deeper ideological meaning and became an integral part of Swedish national identity based on the assumption that Swedish society after 1945 constituted a happy “middle way” between socialism and capitalism. Therefore, the more lively discussions among historians on the meaning of neutrality as such have been related to Swedish Cold War history. Following the revelation of Sweden’s secret cooperation with NATO during the Cold War in the 1990s, two investigative commissions on neutrality policy were convened Whereas both commissions concluded that Swedish contacts with NATO took place within the bounds of the neutrality policy, a significant number of historians hold dissenting opinions, claiming that successive Swedish governments exposed the country to unnecessary risks or that Sweden, in fact, had two parallel security policies—one declaratory, based on nonalignment, and one secret, based on close cooperation with NATO. In this context, it is worth pointing out that, whereas neutrality is a legal term defined as nonparticipation in an armed conflict, it is often confused with nonalignment and taken to mean an attitude of “permanent impartiality” in international relations. Whereas neutrality is regulated in international law, nonalignment is merely a political strategy to ensure that a state’s neutrality will appear more trustworthy in the event of war. Although Sweden has tried, like other European small states, to stay out of armed conflicts since the 19th century, Swedish security elites have always been prepared to seek support from friendly great powers should the country be attacked. For a century at least, Swedish governments, therefore, struggled with the challenge of finding a balance between nonaligned, impartial behavior to facilitate future neutrality and the need to maintain contacts with potential allies in the event military support would be needed should neutrality would prove not to be an option.
  479. Defense Policy and Strategy
  480. Sweden’s ability to stay out of two world wars during the 20th century constitutes a central theme in the existing literature. Agrell 2000 is probably the best overview to date of Swedish security policy since the First World War, but it is only available in Swedish. The Swedish Commission on Military History (Commission suédoise d’histoire militaire 1984) offers a useful introduction to the earlier history, as do Zetterberg 1988 and Åselius 1994 (pre-1914). The literature on Sweden during the Second World War is quite extensive. Many of the works dealing with Sweden’s diplomatic and military relations with Nazi Germany are reviewed in Åselius 2003, including articles dealing with the armed forces within the so-called SUAV (Sverige under Andra världskriget) project, the first major research project among Swedish historians that was initiated in the late 1960s and dedicated to studying various aspects of Swedish society during the Second World War. The literature on the Cold War, when Sweden interacted more actively with surrounding great powers, is becoming quite extensive. Bjereld, et al. 2008 offers an introduction. Neutralitetspolitikkommissionen 1994 and Säkerhetspolitiska utredningen 2004 are the abridged English versions of the final reports that were presented by the two public inquiry commissions that studied Sweden’s security policy and secret military contacts with the West during the periods 1949–1969 and 1969–1989, respectively.
  481. Agrell, Wilhelm. Fred och fruktan: Sveriges säkerhetspolitiska historia, 1918–2000. Lund, Sweden: Historiska Media, 2000.
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  483. An excellent work by one of the leading experts in the field covering diplomacy and defense with equal expertise and challenging many sacrosanct beliefs by pointing out that Sweden’s happy journey through the 20th century was, only to a very limited extent, due to the Swedes themselves.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Åselius, Gunnar. The “Russian Menace” to Sweden: The Belief System of a Small Power Security Élite in the Age of Imperialism. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1994.
  486. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. A study of the image of Russia and the belief system among Swedish military and diplomatic elites before the First World War, which emphasizes the connection between national self-image and threat perception and traces a major reorientation in both respects after 1905.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Åselius, Gunnar. “Sweden and Nazi Germany.” In Sweden’s Relations with Nazism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust: A Survey of Research. Edited by Stig Ekman and Klas Åmark, 31–106. Stockholm: Swedish Research Council, 2003.
  490. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  491. The latest major survey of literature on Swedish diplomatic and military relations with Nazi Germany (and the only one published in English); ordered by the Swedish Research Council in the early 2000s.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Bjereld, Ulf, Alf W. Johansson, and Karl Molin. Sveriges säkerhet och världens fred: Svensk utrikespolitik under kalla kriget. Stockholm: Santérus, 2008.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. Having led a research project on Swedish foreign policy during the Cold War with both historians and political scientists participating, the authors summarize some of the major findings on the precarious balancing between the need for democratic legitimacy and the necessities of national security.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Commission suédoise d’histoire militaire. Neutrality and Defence: The Swedish Experience. Revue internationale d’histoire militaire 57. Stockholm: Wallin & Dalholm, 1984.
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  499. This anthology, which was produced by the Swedish National Commission of Military History with the participation of leading experts to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first Swedish declaration of neutrality (1834), covers several aspects of Swedish security policy in the 20th century and is still useful.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Neutralitetspolitikkommissionen. Had There Been a War: Preparations for the Reception of Military Assistance, 1949–1969: Report of the Commission on Neutrality Policy. Stockholm: Fritze, 1994.
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  503. The report of the first neutrality commission appointed in 1992 that was drawn up largely by scholars; the latter found the actions of the Swedish government to have been consistent with the official policy of neutrality on all accounts but two (revelations of secret information to the British by the minister of defense in 1951 and a false statement by the prime minister in parliament in 1959).
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Säkerhetspolitiska utredningen. Peace and Security: Swedish Security Policy, 1969–89: Abridged Version and Translation of SOU 2002:108: Report from the Inquiry on Security Policy. Stockholm: Fritzes Offentliga Publikationer, 2004.
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  507. The report of the second neutrality commission, which amounted to more or less a one man inquiry by Ambassador Rolf Ekéus. The commission refuted all charges that the neutrality policy was inconsistent, and the report contains statements that cast doubt on the reported submarine incursions in the 1980s; shows that already by the early 1970s, the US military attaché in Stockholm was quite skeptical of Sweden’s defense capabilities.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Zetterberg, Kent. Militärer och politiker: En studie i militär professionalisering, innovationsspridning och internationellt inflytande på de svenska försvarsberedningarna, 1911–1914. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1988.
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  511. An interesting study on the first purely parliamentary defense committees in Sweden, in which the professional soldiers were expected to play the role of impartial experts serving the politicians; shows the surprising ease with which they accepted their new function.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Doctrine and Operations
  514. Cronenberg 1984 covers the pre-1945 period, and Wangel 1982 treats the Second World War. Wallerfelt 1999 is the standard work on operational planning during the Cold War era, and it is complemented by works in the series Zetterberg, et al. 2004–. Holmström 2011 studies secret military contacts with NATO, Ubåtskommissionen 1995 reviews the alleged submarine incursions in Swedish waters during the 1980s and early 1990s, while Tunander 2004 launches a highly controversial, widely discussed explanation of these events; Ericson Wolke 1995 covers peacekeeping missions up until those in the Balkans in the 1990s.
  515. Cronenberg, Arvid. “The Armed Forces as Instruments of Security Policy: Some Guidelines in Modern Swedish War Planning before 1945 against the Background of Contemporary Security Policy Thinking.” In Neutrality and Defence: The Swedish Experience. By Commission suédoise d’histoire militaire, 135–186. Revue internationale d’histoire militaire 57. Stockholm: Wallin & Dalholm, 1984.
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  517. This is the basic work on Swedish defense planning and civil-military relations in the early 20th century; it covers the period from the dissolution of the union with Norway until the end of the Second World War.
  518. Find this resource:
  519. Ericson Wolke, Lars, ed. Solidarity and Defence: Sweden’s Armed Forces in International Peace-Keeping Operations during the 19th and 20th Centuries. Stockholm: Svenska Militärhistoriska Kommissionen, 1995.
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  521. This anthology is another publication from the Swedish Commission of Military History and covers the Swedish peacekeeping experience until Bosnia; since this volume appeared, the scope and focus of Swedish peacekeeping has changed profoundly but this work still provides a decent introduction to those earlier missions.
  522. Find this resource:
  523. Holmström, Mikael. Den dolda alliansen: Sveriges hemliga NATO-förbindelser. 3d ed. Stockholm: Atlantis, 2011.
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  525. A study of Swedish planning for receiving military aid from NATO and organizing “stay behind” forces during the Cold War, based mainly on interviews with those who participated in the preparations; a book highly critical of the conclusions of the official commissions on neutrality policy.
  526. Find this resource:
  527. Tunander, Ola. The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980s. London: Frank Cass, 2004.
  528. DOI: 10.4324/9780203498842Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  529. Tunander claims that the submarines in Swedish waters actually came from the United States and Britain, which were invited by the Swedish naval command to test Swedish coastal defenses, mobilize public opinion against the Soviet Union, and undermine the reelected Social Democratic government of Olof Palme; based largely on anonymous interviews that are hard to check; highly controversial but also highly influential.
  530. Find this resource:
  531. Ubåtskommissionen. Ubåtsfrågan, 1981–1994: Rapport från Ubåtskommissionen. Stockholm: Fritze, 1995.
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  533. A report on the submarine incursions in Swedish waters during the 1980s and early 1990s by a government commission appointed after the armed forces had reported that their sensor equipment along the coast may have been reacting to swimming minks; provides a detailed review of incident reports and reduces the number of established incursions from several hundreds to around ten.
  534. Find this resource:
  535. Wallerfelt, Bengt. Si vis pacem, para bellum: Svensk säkerhetspolitik och krigsplanering, 1945–1975. Stockholm: Probus, 1999.
  536. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  537. So far the most extensive overview of Swedish military planning during the Cold War, showing that the strategic evaluations made at the end of the Second World War had a major impact on military planning during the rest of the Cold War.
  538. Find this resource:
  539. Wangel, Carl-Axel, ed. Sveriges militära beredskap, 1939–1945. Militärhistoriska avdelningen vid Militärhögskolan. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1982.
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  541. This is the official history on Sweden’s military preparations during the Second World War, a work for which preparations began in 1941. It does not offer a real synthesis or comprehensive interpretation; rather, it contains a number of short, informative chapters on most aspects of the subject and remains a valuable reference work.
  542. Find this resource:
  543. Zetterberg, Kent, Gyldén Nils, Fältström Herman, et al. Försvaret och det kalla kriget. Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, 2004–.
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  545. This research project, formerly based at the National Defense College but nowadays at Stockholm University, has published no less than thirty-seven volumes on various aspects of Swedish defense preparations during the Cold War, including several studies on the strong Swedish air force and documentation from oral history seminars with former senior military leaders. A list of titles is available online.
  546. Find this resource:
  547. Personnel
  548. Ericson Wolke 1999 provides the only general history to date of conscription in Sweden, which from 1901 constituted the basic system for recruitment of military personnel. Andolf 1984 draws a sociological profile of the officer corps during the 20th century, while Borell 1989 examines the interaction between conscripts and officers during the 20th century. In Sweden, unlike many other countries, military personnel have the right to organize into unions, and Ericsson 1978 covers the formation of the trade union of lower NCOs in the early 20th century. Åselius 2005 deals with the mentality of the officer corps in the post–Second World War era; Artéus 1996 provides useful biographies of leading military profiles during the 20th century; Sörensen 1997 is a work on the enlisted men of the crown prince’s Hussar Regiment, and it constitutes a pioneer study on military masculinity, while Sundevall 2011 examines the opening of military careers to women in the 1980s.
  549. Andolf, Göran. “The Social Origins of the Swedish Officer Corps during the Twentieth Century.” In Neutrality and Defence: The Swedish Experience. By Commission suédoise d’histoire militaire, 187–214. Revue internationale d’histoire militaire 57. Stockholm: Wallin & Dalholm, 1984.
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  551. A sociological profile of the officer corps, based on a representative selection of units, during a century when the percentage of noblemen in the profession shrank from 34 to 2–3 percent.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Artéus, Gunnar, ed. Svenska officersprofiler under 1900-talet. Stockholm: Militärhögskolan & Axel Abrahamssons Bokförlag, 1996.
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  555. An anthology with short biographies of twenty-one leading military figures in Sweden from the first years of the 20th century to the 1960s, published by the Division of Military History at what was then the Joint Staff College; apart from biographical information on specific individuals it offers interesting insights on military culture, career conditions, and civil-military relations during the period.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. Åselius, Gunnar. “Swedish Strategic Culture after 1945.” Cooperation and Conflict 40.1 (2005): 25–44.
  558. DOI: 10.1177/0010836705049732Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  559. A study of tensions within the Swedish officer corps, whose identity since the Second World War has vacillated between ideals of high-tech versus people’s defense in trying to adjust to contemporary images of modernity in Swedish society.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. Borell, Klas. Disciplinära strategier: En historiesociologisk studie av det professionella militärdisciplinära tänkesättet. Uppsala, Sweden: Academia Upsaliensis, 1989.
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  563. A very interesting sociological study of the disciplinary culture in the Swedish armed forces during the conscription era, which evolved from paternal benevolence in the early 20th century to mechanical discipline in the interwar period to a trust in low-level decentralization and group dynamics from the late 1960s; apart from regulations and manuals, military memoirs constitute an important category of sources.
  564. Find this resource:
  565. Ericson Wolke, Lars. Medborgare i vapen: Värnplikten i Sverige under två sekel. Lund, Sweden: Historiska Media, 1999.
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  567. A history of conscription in Sweden, which started during the Napoleonic era and served as the basic system of personnel recruitment to the armed forces between 1901 and 2010; an ambitious work that includes most aspects of the subject except the sudden abolishment of the system.
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Ericsson, Tom. I fosterlandets tjänst: En studie i den svenska arméunderbefälskårens fackliga strävanden, 1901–1922. Umeå: Umeå Universitet, 1978.
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  571. One of the few studies of Swedish military unionism, focusing on the two trade unions for lower NCOs (corporals and sergeants) formed in 1908 and 1918, and their attempts to win acceptance among officers and politicians.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Sörensen, Thomas. Det Blänkande Eländet: En bok om Kronprinsens husarer i sekelskiftets Malmö. Malmö: Thomas Sörensen, 1997.
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  575. An early study of masculinity and male bonding among hussars in the city of Malmö in southern Sweden around 1900, which shows how traditional working-class concepts of manliness became further “radicalized” in the barracks; a beautiful, richly illustrated volume.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Sundevall, Fia. Det sista manliga yrkesmonopolet: Genus och militärt arbete i Sverige, 1865–1989. Stockholm: Makadam, 2011.
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  579. A study of continuity and change in women’s military work from 1865, when the first voluntary defense organization for women was established, to 1989, when the last combat positions in the armed forces were opened to female personnel.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Sweden in the Age of Globalization, 2000–
  582. Major studies dealing with the last decade are limited. The dramatic collapse of large-scale national defense after the Cold War is best summarized in Agrell 2010 and Eriksson 2013, while Hugemark 2012, an anthology, contains a critical appraisal of the attempted reorientation of Swedish security policy from 2009 onward. Agrell 2013 focuses on the Swedish experience in Afghanistan. Bolin 2008 offers an interesting perspective on the changes in the training of Swedish officers that has taken place during the 21st century. Kaijser 2012 takes a special look at the naval officer corps in the new millennium, and Krosell 2012 explores post-national defense and its gender implications.
  583. Agrell, Wilhem. Fredens illusioner: Det svenska nationella försvarets nedgång och fall, 1988–2009. Stockholm: Atlantis, 2010.
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  585. To date the most comprehensive study of how the defense transition in Sweden resulted in the dissolution of large elements of the national defense establishment and the abolishment of conscription, how a military organization that, at the end of the Cold War, had been able to mobilize some 850 000 people suddenly consisted of a handful of lightly armed battalions, and how it was possible to carry out these changes at surprisingly low political cost.
  586. Find this resource:
  587. Agrell, Wilhelm. Ett krig här och nu: Sveriges väg till väpnad konflikt i Afghanistan. Stockholm: Atlantis, 2013.
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  589. Agrell provides a critical assessment of Sweden’s participation in the NATO-led ISAF force in Afghanistan, examining military as well as diplomatic and parliamentary aspects; the author is a respected authority on Swedish security policy.
  590. Find this resource:
  591. Bolin, Anna. The Military Profession in Change: The Case of Sweden. Lund, Sweden: Department of Political Science, Lund University, 2008.
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  593. In this work in political science, Bolin studies the professional ideals of Swedish officers in the post-national era through in-depth interviews; she indicates that a gradual transition toward “a constabulary identity” was taking place among students at the Swedish Defense College at the time of the study.
  594. Find this resource:
  595. Eriksson, Fredrik, ed. Förnyelse eller förfall? Svenska försvaret efter kalla krigets slut. Huddinge: Samtidshistoriska institutet, Södertörns högskola, 2013.
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  597. This volume presents transcripts from an oral history seminar at Södertörn University College in January 2012 with some of the generals and politicians involved in the chaotic transition of the Swedish armed forces after the end of the Cold War.
  598. Find this resource:
  599. Hugemark, Bo, ed. Friends in Need: Towards a Swedish Strategy of Solidarity with Her Neighbours. Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences, 2012.
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  601. An anthology prepared by the Royal Academy of War Sciences in which several authors evaluate the Swedish “declaration of solidarity” from June 2009 and conclude that, in reality, Sweden is unable to defend itself effectively, let alone support its neighbors militarily in a crisis as promised in the declaration.
  602. Find this resource:
  603. Kaijser, Ingrid. Sjöofficer i ett nytt millennium. Gothenburg, Sweden: A-Script Förlag, 2012.
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  605. An interesting book, based on interviews with eighteen male and six female naval officers born between 1954 and 1985. Queries include: How do they perceive the changed nature of their profession in the post–Cold War era? What are their views on gender and family issues and on the future of the navy? The author is a former employee of the Naval Museum in Karlskrona.
  606. Find this resource:
  607. Kronsell, Annica. Gender, Sex, and the Postnational Defense: Militarism and Peacekeeping. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  608. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199846061.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  609. In this study by a political scientist on how gender aspects and UN Security Council Resolution 1325 have affected post-national defense and peacekeeping activities, the Swedish armed forces are used as a case study to underpin the argument that increasing gender parity in the military is a more achievable task than increasing women’s participation.
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