I've already written quite a bit about the peasants in general - their prescribed way of dress, the torpare, the backstugusittare, their daily life, etc. But I want to discuss in a little more detail one way in which they were perceived within 18th and 19th century society. And I want to do it in a way which might allow us, their American descendants, to develop a more complete and empathetic level of understanding of how the systems in which they lived were designed to keep them powerless and repressed. As their American descendants, I'm hopeful we might even learn a little something about ourselves in the process.
Please indulge me as I outline a reductive, over-simplification of America's short 200+ year history.
Our country, as we know it today, was founded predominantly by White European colonizers and populated by displaced, impoverished White Europeans seeking land, religious freedom, and opportunity. Although American land was already occupied by Brown-skinned natives, and had been for centuries, White Europeans obtained ownership of the land by slaughtering and/or displacing the Brown native inhabitants. After obtaining freedom from Great Britain and formulating a constitution for a new democracy,
White Americans purchased imported Black African slaves to do much of their heavy lifting. Perceived stereotypes at the time which made White-skinned people inherently superior to people of color helped to make this possible.
Although we generally think of slave labor as enriching the pocketbooks of Southern plantation owners, direct slave labor and/or money obtained from the slave market was instrumental in the construction of many early iconic American structures including:
1. The White House in Washington D. C.
2. The US Capitol Building in Washington D. C.
3. The Statue of Freedom (ironically) atop the Capitol Building
4. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C.
5. Wall Street in New York City
6. Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan
7. Faneuil Hall ("cradle of liberty") in Boston
8. Fort Sumter in South Carolina
9. Harvard Law School in Massachusetts
10. Georgetown University in Washington D. C.
11. Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson
12. Montpellier, home of President James Madison
13. Mount Vernon, home of President George Washington
14. Fraunces Tavern, one of the oldest buildings in Manhattan
15. Castillo de San Marcos fort in Florida, the oldest masonry fort in the US
And, yes, for those of us who are still stuck in black-and-white thinking, the White immigrants worked hard, too. White people can work hard AND take advantage of their privilege by exploiting the dark-skinned people around them.
In all forms of modern media as well as in traditional American history books, Native Americans have been depicted as blood-thirsty, war-mongering savages wielding tomahawks and scalping knives.
This was the story the White European colonizers chose to tell themselves in order to justify their actions toward the natives they encountered upon landing on American soil, despite the fact that Native Americans had been intelligent and cooperative enough to have built elaborate societies, cities, and cultures. And just like the White Europeans, Native Americans had long-standing traditions and spiritual beliefs. They were husbands and wives who loved their children, and they valued their family relationships. Did some of the various native American tribes battle each other? Yes, but no more so than powerful European leaders who declared war on their bordering neighbors to acquire more land, resources, and power.
Throughout subsequent US history, Euro-Americans committed countless acts of violence against the Native people including extermination, genocide, theft of Indian lands and resources, captivity and enslavement, and mandatory schooling of their children aimed at eliminating and destroying Native cultures. And as long as the White colonizers could continue to believe they were socially and intellectually superior to the dark-skinned natives, they felt completely justified in the actions and policies which maintained their white superiority. The physical displacement and cultural oppression experienced by Native Americans, along with the perpetuation of negative stereotypes, continues to plague the population today as each new generation of Native Americans feels the weight of racial bias and prejudice. Children who inherit a system of racially based oppression are developmentally disadvantaged and feel the judgments even more harshly by a White society which fails to acknowledge itself as the oppressor.
The enslavement of Black people, which had begun in America as early as the mid 1500s, not only had biblical justification, but later the scientific community endorsed the practice as well. According to one highly influential 19th century American physician, Negroes had smaller blood vessels and brains which resulted in a tendency toward indolence and barbarism. The only way to control them was to keep them in a constant state of submission, as God himself ordained. This way of thinking spread and perpetuated long into the 20th century (and some people still buy into it today).
Black-skinned people were thought to be more like animals than humans - monkeys and apes specifically - and as uncontrollable as indolent children. They were in every way inferior to Whites: intellectually, socially, mentally, emotionally, etc. This was the story White people told themselves about Black people to justify the abuses perpetrated against them. And just like Native Americans, the stereotypes and systems which were intentionally created to marginalize and discriminate against Black Americans still exists in many governmental policies, social systems, and in the minds of many White Americans today.
Of course, what scientists know now that they didn't know then is that skin color is but a tiny portion of the human genome. There is virtually no such thing as "race" as all humans share about 99.9% of their DNA with each other. Hair texture and skin color have absolutely no bearing on intellect, temperament, or ability. The concept of race is a man-made construct intended to prioritize the wants and needs of one group of people over that of another.
If any stereotypes or characteristics which were assigned to a particular group of people with a similar skin color appeared to be true, it was not by virtue of the color of their skin. Rather, it often became true as those who were marginalized and abused fulfilled the role which society forced upon them.
In many ways, like the Brown-skinned and Black-skinned people of America, so were the rural peasantry of Sweden.
Just as White Americans invented stories to justify the abuse and exploitation of Black and Brown Americans, Swedish nobility told their own stories in reference to the Swedish peasant for similar self-serving reasons. (I'm quick to point out and acknowledge that although it's believed that much of Swedish peasantry evolved from Viking-owned slaves, 17th and 18th century Swedish peasants, from whom I descend and which are referenced below, were not enslaved, murdered, nor displaced/exterminated.)
As described by the upper crust, the rural peasants were believed to be simple-minded, ignorant, and incapable of rational thought. They were best suited to farming, and attempting to engage in anything other than farming would be a gross misuse of their time and resources. While the peasants lacked sufficient education, this did not mean that they should educate themselves outside of a little reading and writing, as they would be fighting against their own inherent nature. Peasants were expected to be politically constrained and not have any influence in political matters about which they could not sufficiently comprehend. They were often perceived as being honest and virtuous; however, they were simply not capable of ever developing or possessing the dignity required of the higher classes.
Peasants were expected to plow the land and stay out in the countryside since those mundane, although important, civic duties matched their level of intellect. Not only that, but the nobility spoke of agriculture as being the peasants' duty to God, to obtain their livelihood and fulfillment from the ancient soils which they inherited from their forefathers. The peasants would become "depraved scoundrels" and "miserable covenant-breakers" should they fail in fulfilling their divine destiny - tilling the earth and plowing the fields. They were, from birth, bound to the soil upon which they lived. By continuing to farm, they would be fulfilling a sacred covenant drafted not by the nobility but by God himself. Breaking that covenant was not only an offence to their fellow brethren and to every other Swedish subject, it was a crime against their own nature, a nature created and designed by God.
Consequently, due to structures, systems, perceptions, and stereotypes, through generation after generation after generation, the Swedish peasant farmers continued to fulfill the role which society (and God) assigned them. They continued to work the land, often from sun up to sun down, until their bodies were worn out and broken. They hoped for favorable weather which would yield them a prosperous harvest, but interspersed between good years there were bad years, and even devastatingly bag years. They continued in their daily struggles to put enough food on the table to keep their families alive. Those who owned no land continued to deal with unreasonable demands from overbearing masters while trying to make their own farms moderately productive and worthwhile. And they continued to pass down a life of poverty, uncertainty, and destitution to their children and their children's children. It was, after all, their divine destiny and sacred duty to God.
Of course, today we can easily recognize all of this as very flawed thinking and gross manipulation. (And some, rightly so, would call it bullshit.) But it very effectively served its purpose - it kept food in the bellies of the privileged while their wealth, status, and egos remained intact.
As American land, freedom, and opportunity enticed Swedish peasants to abandon their ancestral homes, the divine destiny previously assigned to them proved to be untrue. Within my own Swedish ancestral line, descended from those so-called feeble minded peasants who re-defined themselves as privileged White Americans came scholars, educators, entrepreneurs, artisans, engineers, litigators, researchers, health-care workers, scientists, writers, etc. And as the mass exodus of the peasant class throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries forced Sweden's laws to become inclusive and equitable to all of its remaining citizens, their long-held class system crumbled and fell, opening the door of equal opportunity to Sweden's former poor.
There is probably also a lesson here for those of us who are White Americans still holding on to debunked, unsubstantiated beliefs concerning people of color. Perhaps we should ask ourselves if we are assigning roles and judgments to a group of people, or groups of people, in the exact same way as what our peasant ancestors were forced to endure. And if we are, maybe it's time we work to readjust our own way of thinking.
Sources and more information can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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