Ask me about early modern Swedish constitutional law!!! (I love exam time)

[rockymountaindem]

If you have any questions about Sweden's slide into royal absolutism, ask them here. God knows I've been studying it enough. I'd hate to see it all go to waste in some file cabinet once the exam is over on Tuesday. Well, it won't go to waste if I get a good grade, but that's another story.

On the other hand, if you're not interested in that, then you can use this thread to complain about your own exams. Aren't they fun?

[Nevernose]

1. What monstrous class are you taking

Where you have to know anything about Swedish consitutional law?

[rockymountaindem]

3. Sweden's Baltic Empire: 1500-1750

I got into it because I really needed a class to fill in for something I dropped first semester. At the time I signed up it only said "Topics in history: subject matter to be determined by professor".

Oddly enough it's turned out to be my favorite class. The professor was awesome, sadly he's going on to bigger and better things, becoming a fellow at the University of Chicago. Well, sad for me, good for him.

As he noted, when one is dealing with the law of the land, it's a good idea to know what's actually in the law. As it turns out the Swedes of this period had a pretty tenuous grasp of what their own laws actually were.

[Nevernose]

6. That's the 30 Years War period, right?

With Gustaf Adolf who damn near conquered Europe? That's about all I remember of Swedish history from that "Western Civ" course, though I also remember thinking that it was an amazingly complicated and fascinating period. Sorry about the professor; I hate it when the good ones leave.

[rockymountaindem]

9. Yes

Although it also encompasses the collapse of the Swedish empire some decades later. If you ask me I say the whole empire was more of an historical accident that couldn't be maintained over the long term by a country with such scant resources. Add to that the fact that some of Gustav Adolf's decendants made lots of bad decisions and the whole thing was doomed to a turbulent and rapid decline.

[short bus president]

2. Swedish fish?

:shrug:

[rockymountaindem]

4. They don't sell those in Canada, but they do sell "Swedish berries"

I brought two bags to the last day of class.

[KittyWampus]

5. Who Were Sweden's Allies & Rivals During This Period?

[rockymountaindem]

8. Well, that shifted very frequently.

By the time of the great Reduktion of 1680, Sweden was nominally allied with France, although that was a rocky relationship that did Sweden more harm than good. Everybody else was pretty much out to get Sweden. Thus, their current monarch Karl XI decided to pursue a policy of armed neutrality, although he did repel a Danish invasion winning himself considerable fame. For most of his reign, Sweden was a peace.

To enforce the peace, however, he had to rebuild the Swedish army which had been crushed by the Elector of Brandenburg in 1672. This required a lot of cash which wasn't on hand. Thus, Karl decided to pursue the Reduktion, or a repossession of formerly Crown land which had been granted to the nobility in lieu of cash payment during the 30 Years' War. He did this under a provision of Magnus Eriksson's "Land Law" of 1355, which stated that the crown could both grant and revoke fiefdoms on its patronage land. Much to the displeasure of the noble magnates, the lower estates agreed. The land was reposessed, and the high nobility suffered greatly, thus weakening the only remaining obstacle to absolute rule by the King (the lower estates of the peasantry, merchants and clergy favored royal absolutism).

[mmmbeer]

7. How the hell can any legislature need three houses?

:)

[rockymountaindem]

10. There were actually four or five.

The Riksdag, or diet, consisted of the four estates. The peasants, clergy, burghers (merchants and town mayors) and the nobility (which was further subdivided into high, middle and low ranking nobles). Each house had equal weight in the deliberations, and the consent of the majority was needed during much of the period prior to 1680 to approve new taxes or declarations of war. The so-called "fifth estate" was that of the King's privy council, which functioned somewhat independently of the noble estate, although it could not vote seperately.