ABSTRACT
What possibilities did Danish peasants have for acting politically within the social structure of the eighteenth century? Denmark was an absolute monarchy with a local squirearchy, in which the estate owners owned most of the land tilled by the tenant farmers, and in addition exercised a number of functions pertaining to public law relative to their tenants. The tenants had no formal possibilities of acting as a political entity. Nevertheless, they were au fait with what concerned their own situations, both centrally and locally. The question may therefore be reformulated and ask what possibilities Danish tenant farmers had for influencing their own situation in the eighteenth century. The following survey will not be made from the standpoint of the central power but will focus on how the farmers themselves saw their opportunities and how they acted. Or put another way: How did the peasants make use of political culture, in a central, a regional and a local context?1
