ABSTRACT
Stockholm was the political centre of the Swedish realm in the Age of Liberty (1719-72). It was not only the regular meeting place of the Diet every three years and the centre of the state bureaucracy – it was also a city intimately involved in politics. Meetings of the four estates generally brought around 1,000 representatives to the capital and many others as well: their entourages and families, supplicants, foreign diplomats and people from the provinces checking up on their representatives. This great influx into a city of approximately 65,000 inhabitants largely had to do with the wealth of political information available in the city. As Sweden lacked a political press of any import before the Freedom of the Press Act in 1766 (see Chapter 2.4), it was vital to be actually present in the city in order to gain accurate and up-to-date information, and to influence decision-making in the capital. Stockholm was therefore, during the Diet sessions, a political hotbed, and it remained so until the re-emergence of royal absolutism in 1772 – whether there was a free press or not. When the members of the Diet, their entourages, the foreign ambassadors and the curious returned home, Stockholm resumed its role as a small European capital dominated by its Magistrate and the Crown.
