Colonialism and Swedish History: Unthinkable Connections?

Abstract

Historian Nils Ahnlund stirred a debate in 1937 by suggesting that Sweden was a weak and deficient coloniser. This outraged his listeners, who viewed seventeenth-century Sweden as a powerful nation. Such fault lines continue to suffuse characterisations of Sweden’s participation in global expansion. Suggesting that Sweden in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a colonising power is controversial, but less so today than previously. Recently renewed interest in Sweden’s colonial past and present raises questions of scope and meaning. How have historians interpreted Swedish expansion, what is included, and what is the meaning of the re-evaluation occurring in contemporary scholarship? While often relating Sweden to a Nordic or European context, it remains common to insist on Swedish exceptionalism in terms of colonial experiences and elect not to discuss expansion into the north of the Scandinavian Peninsula or in the Baltic region in terms of colonialism. In general, postcolonial influences have tended to move the discussion from “no colonialism” to “post-colonialism” without ever stopping at a discussion of early modern Swedish involvement in colonial expansion and its consequences. This chapter investigates how Swedish colonial expansion has been dealt with in historical scholarship, but also discusses what historical and contemporary debates reveal about Sweden’s relationship to European modernity.