ABSTRACT
Along with many countries, Sweden embarked in the eighteenth century on an agricultural revolution involving improved technology, commercialisation and upheaval of rural social relations and settlement structures. Both per capita production and the rate of population growth rose. Since the 1970s, the dominant interpretation of this development has focused on the freeholding peasantry. Rent-extracting feudal landowners have been viewed as obstacles to progress. Production increase and population growth was stronger where freeholders rather than feudal tenants dominated. Peasant representatives in the Diet (parliament) managed to keep rents and taxes down on crown and freehold land and the real value of these burdens fell. Thus peasants retained more of the marketable surplus and gained the motives and resources to invest in further production increases. 1
