Class conflicts between masters and married farms servants ("statare") in Stockholm County ca 1890–1919

This thesis explores the pre-union struggle and everyday resistance of statare (married farm servants) in relation to their masters from the 1890s to the end of the First World War in Stockholm County. In so doing, the thesis involves writing history from both a bottom-up and a top-down perspective. The emphasis is on the action criterion, that is, how statare themselves acted to change their working and living conditions and how the counterpart responded to their various resistance strategies. Theoretically, the analysis of this process is based primarily on Jean-Paul Sartre's notions of seriality, group in fusion and organization. Seriality symbolizes how individuals with similar economic and social positions in society act independently of each other to solve everyday problems, while a group in fusion denotes how these individuals can come together to change their material circumstances by forming a common organization. In comparison to previous research on statare and agrarian capitalist relations, the thesis places a variety of individual life stories in a broader context. This approach has been of fundamental importance to get close to the history of the statare and present new knowledge about their everyday working environment and legal ties to their masters. For example, by using legal records in a geographically limited area near Stockholm, it has been possible to empirically observe statare as group more closely than what would have been the case if drawing on other contemporary source material. The class struggle among statare in the agricultural labor market during the period 1890–1919 included a wide range of options, from outright strikes to everyday and individual conflicts with the masters on large farms. For example, the agricultural workers' strikes of 1890–1891 were an extensive and coherent protest movement in relation to earlier forms of class conflict in the nineteenth century agricultural labor market in Sweden. In the first instance, sowing and harvesting strikes during the summer months enabled statare and other groups of agricultural workers to exert pressure on their masters. In addition to strikes, statare could act individually and independently of each other by illegally leaving their employment. These actions could be due to several reasons and lead to severe fines. Many statare clearly wanted to escape exploitation and oppression by abandoning their employment, even though this entailed serious risks. To support the agricultural class struggle, the labour movement in Sweden tried to organize statare and other groups of workers. The response by masters and the county police, who could resort to harsh methods by invoking the Servant Act (Legostadgan) with the threat of legal punishment, to this class struggle was generally hostile. Agitational campaigns by the labor movement met with a fierce and often successful backlash from the state and the rural upper classes. Consequently, what characterized the pre-union struggle among statare was an oscillation between seriality and group in fusion, from the 1890s to the end of the First World War.