The Wealth of the Richest Inequality and the Nobility in Sweden, 1750–1900 Bengtsson, Erik; Missiaia, Anna; Olsson, Mats; Svensson, Patrick 2017 Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Bengtsson, E., Missiaia, A., Olsson, M., & Svensson, P. (2017). The Wealth of the Richest: Inequality and the Nobility in Sweden, 1750–1900. (Lund Papers in Economic History: General Issues; No. 161). Department of Economic History, Lund University. 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LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Lund Papers in Economic History No. 161, 2017 General Issues The Wealth of the Richest: Inequality and the Nobility in Sweden, 1750–1900 Erik Bengtsson, Anna Missiaia, Mats Olsson & Patrick Svensson DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC HISTORY, LUND UNIVERSITY Lund Papers in Economic History ISRN LUSADG-SAEH-P--17/161--SE+28 © The author(s), 2017 Orders of printed single back issues (no. 1-65) Department of Economic History, Lund University Postal address: P.O. Box 7083, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden Telephone: +46 46 2227475 Telefax: +46 46 131585 Full-text electronic issues (no. 58, 60, 61, 66--) www.ekh.lu.se Lund Papers in Economic History are published by the Department of Economic History, Lund University, Sweden. This series replaces the former series under the title Meddelande från ekonomisk-historiska institutionen, Lunds universitet. The change of name reflects the orientation of the series towards an international readership. 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The Wealth of the Richest: Inequality and the Nobility in Sweden, 1750–19001 Erik Bengtsson, [email protected] Anna Missiaia, [email protected] Mats Olsson, [email protected] Patrick Svensson, [email protected] Department of Economic History, Lund University Abstract The role of the European nobility and their ability to retain their political and economic power are part of the debate on the modernization of the European economy. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the wealth of the Swedish nobility as Sweden evolved from an agrarian to an industrial economy. We use a sample of 200+ probate inventories of nobles for each of the benchmark years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. Medieval and early modern Sweden often has been described as not fully feudal. In line with this, and the (perceived) comparative strength of the peasantry, the nobility is assumed to have been comparatively unimportant and less economically dominant than elsewhere in Europe. We show that the nobility, less than 0.5 per cent of the population, was very dominant in 1750: the average noble was 60 times richer than the average person, and the nobles held 29 per cent of private wealth while 90 per cent of the nobles were richer than the average person. In 1900 the nobles’ advantage had decreased but the stratification within the nobility had increased dramatically. There was a group of super-rich nobles, often large land owners from the high nobility, who possessed the biggest fortunes in Sweden. But there was also a large minority who were not richer than the average Swede. The overall wealth advantage of the nobles, however, hints at that while not all nobles were economically upper class in 1900, most of the upper class were nobles. Keywords: inequality, wealth, Sweden, nobility, economic stratification, social groups 1 This paper has been written within the projects ‘Growth and inequality before the industrial revolution, Scania 1650 to 1850’, financed by the Swedish Research Council, and ‘Wages, economic performance and inequality. Scandinavia in the “Little Divergence” in Europe’, financed by Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser. The paper has been presented at workshops and seminars at the University of Southern Denmark, London School of Economics, University of Gothenburg, Uppsala University, Università di Siena, and the 41st Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association, Chicago, 17-20 November 2016. The authors are grateful to all participants and discussants for comments and criticisms. 1 In Eric Hobsbawm’s (1978, p. 16) analysis, the dual revolutions – the French and the Industrial – of the second half of the eighteenth century led step by step to a “triumph of the new bourgeois society”. In this triumph, the industrial bourgeoisie took over the role as the leading and dominating social group in society from the nobility, which had dominated European societies throughout the early modern period. According to Hobsbawm, the nobles were increasingly challenged by commoners in wealth accumulation as well as in the field of politics and control of the state. Hobsbawm’s view of a decisive bourgeoisie take-over has been contested, not the least by Arno Mayer (1981) who argued that up to the First World War, Western European societies were still of the ancient regime, dominated by the aristocracy in terms of politics as well as wealth and cultural prestige. The debate on the “persistence of the old regime” and the alleged dominance of the aristocracy into the early 20th century has been lively ever since.2 One important aspect is the wealth of the nobility. We know that this group had a very strong economic position in the European societies of the eighteenth century and held a very large share of total wealth (i.e. Dewald, 1996). The question then is if political changes such as the French revolution reduced the economic position of the nobility, and to what degree the nobles succeeded in managing their wealth and putting it into productive use in the new economic context of industrialization. This paper studies the case of Sweden from 1750 to 1900, building on 200+ probate inventories of Swedish nobles for each of the benchmark years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. The probate inventories provide detailed information about every piece of property owned, from estates to utensils and clothes, and their value. We thus calculate not only the total wealth of the nobles. but also the composition of their wealth. This allows us to make an in-depth analysis of the economics of the Swedish nobility in the crucial period from 1750 to 1900: not only how much they owned, but also what they owned. Since wealth is a source of social prestige, cultural standing and political power (Rubinstein 1980), our empirical focus on wealth will yield new insights on the nobility’s status during a period of rapid and extensive political and economic societal changes. 2 All later overviews of the nobility in Europe have had to relate to Mayer’s analysis in some way. Scott and Storrs (1995, p. 52) and Dewald (1996, pp. xiv–xv, 4) support it, while Lieven (1992, p. 243) finds it unconvincing. 2 Status and privileges In Sweden, the nobility was established relatively late, as compared to continental Europe and England. Its position was confirmed in the Alsnö Ordinance (Alsnö stadga) of 1280, which stipulated that those who supplied the Crown with heavily armed horsemen would be exempt of tax. The basic feudal economic structures, with subordinate peasants paying land rents to their lords, had evolved in the century before (Lindkvist 1990). Noble status was tax-exemption, and was at this point not hereditary, but it became so during the late Middle Ages (cf. Upton 1995, p. 16). In 1626 the nobility was formalized when the House of Nobility (Riddarhuset) was created. Riddarhuset lists all noble families in Sweden, so since 1626 there is a straightforward definition of who is noble and who is not (unlike Britain, cf. Lieven 1992, p. xii). The nobility was always a small fraction of Swedish society, never above one per cent of the population. This was a lot less than Poland and Spain with shares of 6–8 and 12–13 percent, as well as Britain and France where 1–1.5 per cent of the population were nobles (Bush 1988, pp. 7ff). In 1600 there were only around 50 noble families in the country, but extensive ennobling took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often related to military service. Ennobling slowed down after the 1790s and the last ennoblement occurred in 1907. In 1750, when our study begins, the nobility consisted of 9000 persons, which translates into a little less than 0.5 of the then population of 2 million (without Finland).