From Local Risk-Aversion into Secured
Designed Space in Early Modern Provincial
Estonia by fil. lic. Magnus Berencreutz
The issue of political and ontological attitude to planning in European society gives rise to a
question on the logic of the very thinking in the Western world. To return to the former
problem there seems to arise a division between a model based on policy-planning and
another form of design-planning. The latter has clearly been tainted by grave crimes on
humanity. Policy-making tends to include plenty of interests.1 On the other hand it has been
tempting to rely on designed planning. The reason to this dichotomy I argue is differing
cultural patterns governing those models. Taken to together an institutional milieu can be
described as different strata of development in time, as well as the processes involved have
been different in weight.2
The attitude differs in dealing with territories as well as those abstract elements governing
those defined as domains. The latter is a matter of space insofar that it is a theoretical notion
and not context-bound to a certain territorial state, if not tested as such.3 In this paper the
concept domain is treated as a matter of unique actors and political culture. It is in that way
domains influence issues of security, mobility and space. For example in a modern
perspective, the notion of exporting conflicts with military products and troops has been well
known.4 To use metaphors i.a. from Beck, Hannam, Sheller, Tesfahuney and Urry on
escape/migration and destruction the high-tech efficiency of conflicts in the 21th century tend
to create vast risk-areas of immobility and demolition.5
The aim of this paper is to explore the transition of demesne lordship management in regard
to early modern institutional milieu with its relative importance of policy planning and design
planning and its influence on security, space and mobility within domains in a context of an
empirical political landscape.6 Secondly, the conclusions are concentrated in a hypothetical
model of the demesne lordship process with the aim to formulate hypotheses for future
analysis. Still, a lot source material, for example correspondence, has not yet been used in
research. The empiri is described in my licentiate dissertation on demesne lordship in Estonia
during Swedish rule between 1561—1710.7 It will be demonstrated that in the Swedish case
1
J. Metzger, “Placing the stakes: the enactment of territorial stakeholders in planning processes”, “Environment
and Planning” (2013), vol. 45, pp. 782—783.
2
M. Berencreutz, ”Om politisk kultur i det tidigmoderna politiska landskapet”, ”Geografiska Notiser”, 2 (2014),
p. 52.
3
R. Ek, ”Den kritiska geopolitiken. Makt, geografi och politik”, ”Rapporter och notiser”, 151 (1998), p. 8.
4
S. Graham, “When Life Itself is War. On the Urbanization of Military and Security Doctrine”, “International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research” (2012), vol. 36, p. 145.
5
U. Beck, World Risk Society (1999), pp. 61—62; K. Hannam, M. Sheller & J. Urry, ”Editorial: Mobilities,
Immobilities and Moorings”, ”Mobilities”, vol. 1; (2006), pp. 15—16; M. Tesfahuney, “Mobility, racism and
geopolitics”, “Political Geography” (1998), vol. 17, p. 503.
6
Demesne lordship is defined as the european early modern mode of productionsystem with immobilized tenants
on estates owned by squires trading in grain from their properties. The demesne was the agricultural unit of the
squire on his estate.
7
M. Berencreutz, ”Gods och landbönder i västra Estland. Herravälde, resursutnyttjande och böndernas
1
of design-government any good intentions were inadequate. The feudal agrarian production
system seemed to provide for security, but it was brittle in its shear design of controlling and
containing policy-making and action with an attitude to continue what was rational.
This paper also problematizes the concept institutional milieu in this defined context. The
concept is not often applied in historical geography. But its relevance in my ongoing analysis
has become crucial. To begin with, there is an insight in agrarian historical research of the
importance of local decision-making regarding policy-making. Theoretically, there is a
difference between paradigmatic geographic research on the matter, dependent on the notion
of evolution, and the cultural analytical contextual view of the author.8 Epistemologically, the
historical-geographical research on demesnes and related problems to power is underrepresented, just like in agrarian history. Generally, squires are regarded rational and any
propositions of flawed systems are explicitly denied.9 Decision-making by unique actors as
strategic in formation of landscapes are overlooked as well as traumatizing factors such as
war-stress. Early modern times is a starting point for analyses in retrospect by most historicalgeographers, where discussions of government plays a role in regard to conditions for
establishment of landed estates as rational to the ambitious monarchy in the 1100s and in prehistory.10 The function of state is also debated in relation to the matter of the agrarian
revolution in the late 1700s and onwards, both as reformer and legislator.11 The role of early
modern demesnes is private and positive and the role of government neglected, just like in
agrarian history.12 This is also the case with the major part of “non-dualists” a variant of a
post-modern ontology in 2010s agrarian history on demesne lordship.13
My standpoint is different, the trait of the early modern Baltic Sea area´s rural and political
landscape is that this space must be regarded as integrated in political regions produced by
fierce intrusions (foremost by the military) on civil and economic life by sectors of the
military state governmental system.14 My ambition is to use a variety of analytical tools to
treat this field of research such as domain-scape, management, actors, organizations,
segments, sectors, interests, intents such as of costs and incomes, viewed dependently on
institutional milieu. The method represents an explorative, qualitative and triangulatory mode
arbetsbörda under den svenska stormaktstiden”, ”Kulturgeografiskt seminarium”, 5 (1997); M. Berencreutz,
”Om politisk kultur”.
8
M. Berencreutz, ”Om politisk kultur”.
9
J. Berg, Gods och landskap. Jordägande, bebyggelse och samhälle i Östergötland 1000—1562 (2003); S.
Helmfrid, Europeiska agrarlandskap. En forskningsöversikt (2000); T. Germundsson, “Adelns geografi. Gods
och landskap genom tid och rum”, ”Skånska godsmiljöer”, ”Skånes hembygdsförbunds årsbok” (2001).
10
J. Berg, Gods och landskap; C. Tollin, Rågångar, gränshallar och ägoområden. Rekonstruktion av
fastighetsstruktur och bebyggelseutveckling i mellersta Småland under äldre medeltid (1999). 11
S. Helmfrid, Europeiska agrarlandskap; J. Möller, Godsen och den agrara revolutionen.
Arbetsorganisation, domänstruktur och kulturlandskap på skånska gods under 1800-talet (1989); Norborg, K;
Nordström, O; Sporrong, U; Östman, P, Svensk landsbygd. Kulturgeografiska studier av markanvändning,
bebyggelse och miljö (1973); A. Vestbö-Franzén, Råg och rön: Om mat, människor och
landskapsförändringar i norra Småland, ca.1550—1700 (2005). 12
S. Helmfrid, ”Gutsbildung und Agrarlandschaft in Schweden im 16.—17. Jahrhundert”, ”Die
Bauerngesellschaft im Ostseeraum und im Norden um 1600.”, ”Acta Visbyensia” II (1966); D. Torbrand,
Johannishus fideikommiss, intill 1735 (1963).
13
M. Berencreutz, “Demesne lordship and economy in the Baltic Sea Area” (2015) forthcoming.
14
M. Berencreutz, “the Baltic Sea Area”; M. Berencreutz, “Om politisk kultur”; J. Lindegren, “The Swedish”
Military State”, “Scandinavian Journal of History” vol. 10 (1985). With military state is meant a state
dependent on taxing with the purpose to finance its most important military sector.
2
of analysis. Thus, the concepts of space, security and mobility are treated as effects of
decision-making, dependent on systematic sets of values amongst actors. Those might be both
rational and irrational. Thus, it is not purely a matter of politics. Politics is analyzed as unique
to context-bound decisions made by unique actors in time and space. Opposed to non-dualists
in agrarian history and historical geographers, the period 1600—1650 is regarded critical to
the swift changes in security, space and mobility as well to the representation of demesne
lordship and military state in the Baltic Sea area.15 It is well documented how shares of the
international grain-market that the war-stressed eastern Baltic region had lost was pressed
back even more in bulk beginning from the 1620s, which made way to the late early modern
private demesne lordship.16 The argument in this paper is that an ongoing conversion pressure,
with the institutions of military state and market-economy integrated, was set in the Baltic Sea
area. That explains why the transformation towards demesne lordship in agrarian landscapes
was more retarded in Poland in the mid-1600s, the very core-region of cash-cropping of grain,
compared to the war-stressed eastern Baltic region. Though, the explanation is far from clearcut in all its dimensions.17 Hopefully, a better understanding is provided of why the institution
of military state was fiercest in transforming conditions on the ground in this period, at least
in some regions along the coast.
Institutional Milieu and Regions in Early Modern
Political Landscape One can discern an insight of a growing importance of central power´s intent on local affairs
in geographical research, to an institutional check of services and transactions of support, but
also militant control.18 How shall one understand and define institutional milieu in a geographical context?
Understanding culture as element in an institutional
milieu
The analysis of decision-making made by North concerning an understanding of outputs of
economic development is unique from a cultural analytical view, because that is one of the
few where the notion of culture is integrated in the analysis. That is, in the sense that the
definition of culture in cultural-analytical works, as attitudes and world-views, coincides with
North´s view of those as fundamental in the political process in economic development.19
One crucial feedback, suggested by North, is that from laws and rights to fundamental norms
of decision making, but also towards the very conditions for establishments of corporations
and production systems.20 However, economical decisions have been made through long
periods of time without legislation and in situations where the property right has been
15
M. Berencreutz, ”the Baltic Sea Area”.
A. Soom, Der Herrenhof in Estland im 17. Jahrhundert (1954).
17
M. Berencreutz, ”the Baltic Sea Area”.
18
M. Berencreutz, ”Om politisk kultur”.
19
M. Berencreutz, “Om politisk kultur”.
20
D.C. North, Understanding the Process of Economic Change (2003), pp. 20—21.
16
3
informal. The role and character of informal rules, norms and conventions is harder to discern
from a historical point of view.21 My view is that conventions may be political, economic and
social, which is the very core of my analysis of demesne lordship in the Swedish realm.22
Right of possession is in this regard both an economic and social convention, if ownership is
motivated by that return will be used for bartering of things increasing the possessor´s social
status. Taken together with North´s view on economic decisions, this provides for a key to the
understanding of the entire scope of both what types of decisions are made and in which kind
of organizations; institutional milieu provides for different ends regarding institutions and
organizations.
This is a spatial definition and can include any decision and organization, but it is argumented
here that early modern institutional milieu must be understood as unique in time and space. In
this project decisions regarding economy in a provincial low-technology early modern
agrarian society as well as actors´ positionings in social networks are taken into consideration.23 Further decisions made by governments in regard to taxes, benefits, career and
duties in relation to landowners, merchants and peasants.
In economic geography there has been a trend to take institutions that shape economic
landscape into consideration, following traditions from institutional political economy such as
North´s.24 The main argument is that economic action is socially dependent and in such
embedded in cultural systems, processes and beliefs, primarly on a regional scale.25
Institutions are seen as results of an evolution with an inertia and self-reproducing continual
durability. Institutions may mean functions of firms and markets in a region.26 I have tried
demonstrating that early modern institutions structured themselves accordingly in relation to
the early modern military state, the most important institution in early modern times with its
own segments and sectors of authority. The next institution in importance was the market,
which government protected as a part of its accountability and consent with the citizens. In
this sphere belonged law-keeping and sectors of the state. On the level of the domain of the
landed estate, as well as on all other levels in the hierarchy, there were institutions of kin,
property-rights, production systems, political corporations or parts and ethnical groups.
Within the domain of the estate there were institutions of hamlets, demesnes, kin, labour
processes and production systems.27
The argument is that the early modern military in the Baltic Sea area was twofold and
hierarchical. There was an older form that was segmented and divided in autonomous fields of
authority. Initially an agrarian and theocratic hierarchical segmental world-view prevailed.
State ideally deterred any intrusion on accountability and citizens´ rights to policy,
agreements and life in return for consent. Any resources were invested in military.28 The
younger form was administrative and divided in centralized sectors, such as administration,
education, control, taxing, justice, economy and military.29 My hypothesis is that this division
in two forms of military state -institutions coincided with the twofold shifts of forms of landed
estate management that has been identified in the Swedish province of Estonia.30
21
M. Berencreutz, ”Om politisk kultur”.
M. Berencreutz, “Estland”.
23
M. Berencreutz, “Estland”.
24
R. Martin, “Institutional Approaches in Economic Geography”, A Companion to Economic Geography,
E. Sheppard & T.J. Barnes (eds.) (2000), p. 77.
25
R. Martin, “Institutional”, pp. 81, 85.
26
R. Martin, “Institutional”, pp. 78—81.
27
M. Berencreutz, ”Om politisk kultur”.
28
M. Berencreutz, ”Om politisk kultur”; M. Berencreutz, ”the Baltic Sea Area”.
29
M. Berencreutz, ”the Baltic Sea Area”.
30
M. Berencreutz, “Estland”.
22
4
There has been a geographical debate on central power since the 1960s with focus on the
local.31 Increase in centralized intent is reflected in geographical research in the notion of local
authorities, boards and policies in modern cities.32 Local conflicts and interests of intent has
been crucial in geographical studies.33
During the 1880s political geographers studied state by drawing on the organic analogy and
related in the natural sciences. The state was conceived as an organism in need of territory to
expand and grow. Geopolitics was reduced to competition and conflict between states – an
evolutionary stride between organisms.34 In the 1970s, Rokkan contributed to this view with
using a system-analytical approach to account for the channeling and standardizing access to
wealth between elites.35
Wallerstein proposed an neo-Marxian view, where the formation of states is treated as being
integrated in the context of a modern world system in a prevailing market economy and class
struggle within and between nations.36 Some scholars explicitly ignore the resurrection of
imperium in early modern times, such as conglomerate states, and regard the early modern
period a competition between nation states with elaborate functions of control. Foucault
applies the term Polizenstaat.37 Foucault like other historians, such as Perry Anderson, dealt
with the problem of sovereignty and the re-workings of power and the transition of the state
of absolutism. To the former this state aimed at controlling all circulation of products and
citizens within the nation in order to compete with other nation states. Foucault means that
when the Roman imperium of Christ became obsolete all governments turned authoritarian.38
This became embedded in the notion of a ruler´s status as sovereign about 1600, who turned
into a dictator.39 The cause for government was shear competition.
This process was in for example Scandinavia and England other states quite complicated.
Thus, the early modern state´s unique outcomes and meanings in a cultural-analytical
perspective are diversified. Perry Anderson´s concept Absolute state is irrelevant analytically
in this paper. For example, to compare Sweden as a Polizenstaat overlooks the meaning of
Church´s new capacities of civil and moral control etc. But it is clear that the tendency was
directed at an expansion of governmental powers and ambitions which led to severe conflicts
and civil wars. There is an overall picture evident that spaces of local self-management were
being marginalized with the appearance of government´s new capacities, ambitions and
appointed clerks.
Joseph Schumpeter argues that the extended powers of early modern government came to
being due to the conflicts with the Ottoman expansion from 1453 onwards and the reformation in 1518. The agrarian upper classes, by tradition with military capacities, adjusted or
opposed such interests of central power.40 In this paper the basic logical foundation of a
31
I. Altman, The environment and social behaviour (1975); R.D. Sack, Human territoriality. Its theory and
history (1986), pp. 52—56.
32
S.S. Duncan & M. Goodwin, “The local state: functionalism, autonomy and Class relations in Cockburn and
Saunders”, “Political Geography”, 1 (1982).
33
K.R. Cox, Conflict, power and politics in the city: a geographic view (1973).
34
R. Kjellén, Staten som livsform (1916); R. Kjellén, Grundriss zu einem system der politik (1920); H.J. Mack
Inder, “The geographical pivot of history”, “The Geographical Journal”, vol. 23 (1904); F. Ratzel, Politische
Geographie (1897); F. Ratzel, ”Der Lebensraum. Eine biogeographische Studie”, ”Festgaben für Albert
Schäffle zur siebenzigsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstag am 24 Februar 1901”, K.. Bücher et. al. (eds.)
(1901).
35
S. Rokkan, “Dimensions of state formation and nation building: a possible paradigm for research on variations
within Europe”, The foundation of nationstates in Western Europe, C. Tilly (ed.) (1975).
36
I. Wallerstein, The politics of the world-economy (1984).
37
M. Foucault, Säkerhet, territorium och befolkning (2010), pp. 233, 323.
38
P. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (1980), p. 17; M. Foucault, Säkerhet, p. 234.
39
M. Foucault, Säkerhet, p. 247.
40
L. Stone, Social change and revolution in England 1540—1640 (1965), pp. 12, 257.
5
political landscape is understood as the domain-scape an institution in control by a decisionmaking local entrepreneur, at disposal of property, rights, duties, labour and revenues, as well
as natural resources in unique places and time.41 Its context was an expanding government
involved in fierce conflicts with demands on resources to the military. The main point is that
the most vibrant and vital part of its system put together was the domain of landed estates.42 It
was the military state that was determining the system. Indeed, the early military state was
restrictively elaborated, but it resembles for example the Prussian military state according to
Perry Anderson´s definitions as late as the beginning of the 1800s, just because of the
characteristics of domain-scapes mentioned.43 The authoritarian regimes in modern era was
determined by other factors as reforms of dissolving the importance of estate-structures had
been set in, instead urbanization, free press and industrialization made way to technically
advanced military.44 Even if the motives for those modern states were akin with militaryindustrial complexes etc, if not identical, with their early modern predecessors.45
The situation in early modern Sweden was that the monarch had agreed into a formalized
constitutionalism and turned the nobility (together with farmers, urban settlers and the
Church) from a landed armoured hird into a tax-duty and entrepreneur corporation with seats
in the mandatory riksdag in 1611. The early modern agrarian entrepreneur and protectionist
mercantilism of Sweden, aimed at mobilization and was safety-political rather than economic.
When conditions improved in war-stressed province of Estonia regarding cultivated land,
domain-scapes had turned outright autocratic.46 Thus, it was not post-political, but an element
in a design of neglecting and locking out way of doing provincial politics. Provincial confrontations were avoided and politics was focused on tax-reforms with government´s legitimate parts. The purpose was among other traits to reform all processing of metal for
example the traditional assets of copper (Falun) and silver (Sala). The mining sector contributed with about a half of the total budget in 1629—1632, taxes on the agrarian sector with a
third and customs with 5—10%. The interim revenues of taxes from the war in Germany with
the same magnitude.47 The result was a dualistic political cultural rift between the realm´s
heartlands of Sweden and Finland towards the continental, wholly agrarian Baltic provinces.48
Domain-Scapes
One fundamental entity of the early modern agrarian domain-scape, regarding landed estates,
was the interaction on different levels between central power, squire and tenants. There were
other actors as well, all making the entire political landscape complete. Such a domain-scape
was an institution describing functions of rights and duties between squire and contracted and
to central power.49
There is often a proposition that tradition determined agreements and then in late historical
times by law, thanks to higher degree of governmental power. This tendency provided for a
41
M. Berencreutz, ”Om politisk kultur”.
M. Berencreutz, “Om politisk kultur”; M. Berencreutz, “The Baltic Sea Area”.
43
P. Anderson, Lineages, pp. 245, 263; M. Berencreutz, “The Baltic Sea Area”.
44
D. Dillard, Västeuropas och Förenta staternas ekonomiska historia (1999), pp. 306—307.
45
M. Berencreutz, “the Baltic Sea Area”.
46
M. Berencreutz, ”the Baltic Sea Area”.
47
J. Manckell, Arkiv till upplysning om svenska krigens och krigsinrättningarnas historia, Tredje bandet
(1861), pp. 137—165.
48
M. Berencreutz, ”the Baltic Sea Area”.
49
J. Berg, Gods och landskap, p. 24;
R. Brenner, “Agrarian class structure and economic development in preindustrial Europe”, T.H. Aston
& C.H.E. Philpin (eds.) The Brenner debate. Agrarian class structure and economic development in preindustrial Europe (1976), pp. 36, 53–59.
42
6
shift in contracts in the 1500s that a family was unnecessary to an agreement. A contract was
constituted between two juridical persons.50 Some advocates a simultaneous process of
socializing disciplin.51 That might lead to a conclusion that legislation was protective. And
that justice based on tradition autocratic.52
The school of property-rights explains local rights and duties as part of strives by central
powers of ensuring members of society, a sustainable long term well-being for survival.53
Its functionality depends on the efficiency of identifying and agreeing on the most relevant
utilities.54 Central power demands a resource-catch. Either the community adjusts or protests.55
If legislation is exclusive, any other group´s demand on property is deteriorated. Lacking
channels of interaction and uneven exchanges of rights and duties, pushes minor interests into
disadvantage. Without formal protection, freedoms of action becomes restricted. At the
extreme options left are violence, adjustment or flight.56 Pettersson has integrated Foucault´s
logic on including and excluding mechanisms of security, as he defined property-rights a
mechanism, where intents on certain ways of production systems, either were declined or
sanctioned in local processes of decisions.57
The demesne is this respect defined within the demesne lordship tradition of research and
debate, for example following Markus Cerman: a production-unit included in a commercial
demesne economy on properties owned by squires dependent on labour rent for management.
In Cerman´s definition any kind of sales is a necessary prerequisite for a demesne economy.58
Rather than the older tradition descending from Antiquity and Early Medieval circumstances
(dominus), where the demesne is regarded a unit meant for the landlord´s dwelling with a
manor house and a mixture of buildings, gardens, horticulture, grazing and fields.59
The demesne is here understood as an institution with a generalizing status as hegemonic in
the domain of an estate. However, to be managed according to decisions deemed rational to
the owner. Therefore, sales are no necessity in this process-oriented definition. The labour
process from the turn 1600 initially transferred landed plots, often the best and to the place of
the manor house, then succeeding grazing areas, meadows, forest, plough-teams, oxen and
horses and laborers.60 My point is that there occurred a varied outcome of demesne-forms and
this in turn is vital to the Central-European agrarian history. There were two major types of
50
T. Iversen, ”Framveksten av det norske leilendingsvesendet i middelalderen – en forklaringsskisse”,
”Heimen”, vol. 32 (1995); T. Iversen, ”Jordeie och jordleie – Eiedomsbegrepet i norske middelalderlover”,
”Collegium medievale”, vol. 14 (2001).
51
A. Jarrick & J. Söderberg, ”Människovärdet och civiliseringsprocessen i Stockholm 1600—1850”, A. Jarrick
& J. Söderberg (ed.) (1994), pp. 11, 14.
52
M. Berencreutz, ”Estland”; R. Brenner, ”Agrarian class structure”; T. Iversen, ”Jordeie och jordleie”, p. 178.
53
R. Pettersson, Laga skifte i Hallands län 1827—1876: förändring mellan regeltvång och handlingsfrihet
(1983), pp. 14, 23.
54
R. Pettersson, Laga skifte.
55
N.E. Villstrand, Anpassning eller protest: lokalsamhället inför utskrivningarna av fotfolk till den svenska
krigsmakten 1620—1679 (1992), pp. 35–36; E. Österberg, Kolonisation och kriser: bebyggelse,
skattetryck, odling och agrarstruktur i västra Värmland ca 1300—1600 (1977), p. 228.
56
P. Frohnert, Kronans skatter och bondens bröd: den lokala förvaltningen och bönderna i Sverige 1719—
1775 (1993), pp. 19–20; A.O. Hirschman, Sorti eller protest: en fråga om lojaliteter (1972), p. 27; K. Polanyi,
”Primitive, archaic and modern economies — essays of Karl Polanyi”, G. Dalton (ed.) (1968), pp. 87–88.
57
M. Foucault, Säkerhet, pp. 26—27; R. Pettersson, Laga skifte i Hallands
län 1827—1876: förändring mellan regeltvång och handlingsfrihet (1983), p. 46.
58
M. Cerman, “Demesne lordship and rural society in early modern east Central and eastern Europe:
comparative perspectives”, AgHR (2011), p. 242.
59
M. Bloch, French rural history (1966), pp. 65—66; M. Bloch, Feudal Society I. The Growth of Ties of
dependence (1993), p. 241; M. Bloch, Feudal Society II. Social Classes and Political Organization (1995), p.
300.
60
M. Berencreutz, ”Estland”.
7
demesnes and in the end demesne lordship, one older segmental and small-scale and one
younger large-scale and administrative.61
Channels of interaction such as authorities, systems of clientage, local and other political
institutions and in the end democratic rights should have offered more liberties of action, as
well as influence.62
When this problem-matter comes to decision-making it turns into a geographical problemmatter. Allan Pred views entrepreneurs as actors within contexts of territories and domains.
Such organization is bound to change in time and space as well as to specific regulations, both
formal and conventional.63
Pred´s theoretical context is a network of actors governed by typical patterns of behaviour.
The relevant information is the atypical with regard to the model.64 In this respect my method
is cultural-analytical and dependent on context, rather than neutral.65 As decisions are based
on norms, beliefs, interests and intents; those provide for a wide range of outputs. Any lack of
formal checks on decisions should make those private more valid as to traditions, and on the
extreme only those private. Let us return to the region of the Swedish royal fort Hapsal in
western Estonia. The narrative is made by the model of the process of demesne lordship and
its context of a unique institutional milieu in the province of Estonia, with special reference to
the meanings of security, space and mobility. With this approach a chronology becomes
artificial in meaning. In principal the demonstrated model may be compromised by a natural
time span. Therefore, the beginning and the end of the now presented model must be
understood as open.
Stages of Institutional Milieu that influenced
Demesne Lordship in the Swedish Baltic Provinces
It is confirmed that estates were small-scale when investigating all alienation in fort Hapsal
district. Alienation compromised of estates far below 100 hectares on average. Properties
were extremely small-scale in fort Hapsal´s Swedish district, on average half the size than in
the Estonian. Shares of demesnes were far lower if established. This difference is showed by
that most properties compromised one or a share of a hamlet much longer. The size of
demesnes repeated the overall pattern. A striking break to the expected, was the aggressive
early expansion of demesne acreage in the Estonian district.66
Squires clearly managed their estates in respect to inputs generated and valid in far wider
scales than the local. The result was a conversion pressure never seen before. In discussing the
notion herravälde (dominus agricola) where conditions were expected to vary in space and
time between squire and tenants, pushing management in differing forms, it seems obvious
that this was the case with the domain-scape as well.67 This should be analyzed in an attempt
to formulate a model of the elements constituting an early modern institutional milieu in the
61
M. Berencreutz, ”Estland”.
P. Frohnert, Kronans skatter, pp. 16–18; A.O. Hirschman, Sorti, pp. 39, 83; E. Österberg, ”Bönder och
centralmakt i det tidigmoderna Sverige. Konflikt — kompromiss – politisk kultur”, ”Scandia”, vol. 55
(1989), p. 81.
63
M. Berencreutz, “Estland”; T. Carlstein, Time resources, society and ecology: on the capacity for human
interaction in space and time. Part I: preindustrial societies (1980); D. Sack, Human territoriality.
64
A. Pred, Behavior and location. Foundations for a geographic and dynamic location theory. Part I. (1967),
pp. 115—118; A. Pred, Behavior and location. Foundations for a geographic and dynamic location theory.
Part II. (1969), pp. 10—17, 78—81.
65
M. Berencreutz, “Estland”.
66
M. Berencreutz, ”Om politisk kultur”, pp. 57—58.
67
M. Berencreutz, ”Estland”.
62
8
Baltic Sea area. The elements integrated are identified as institutions, actors and organizations. The process is departed into five stages with a sample of categories to be described
and integrated in each one; thus the model is open, several more categories may be described:
institutions (military state, production system and the demesne), actors (governor, squire and
tenant) and organizations (cultivation systems, estate-structuring and cattleherd-profile).
The Early Modern State of Fortresses
Security
The military state ´s object was to own as much land as possible, due to its function to
protecting itself and account for protection. The public land sustained the state´s troops for
provincial control and protection. The institution of market was easily stressed when
destroyed or traumatized as the production systems were solely agrarian. The private and
public domain-scapes of landed estates were the foundation of the political culture´s
institutional milieu. Those private were attached to the autonomous privileges of the regional
allodial knightlyhood, which in the aftermath of a Medieaval rebellion and ongoing civil
resistance had constituted conventions of nominal autocracy. The older early modern military
state form of government relied on costly mercenary troops, which explains why the public
land began functioning as means for a market of loans and reductions on salary-payments in
state of war and occupation in the older early modern state´s integrated set of functions.
Space
Properties were extensive in order to keep great herds of cattle and sheep on their vast grazing
areas. Any demesne was a unit to be managed according to a rentier-mode. Therefore,
production-flows were dependent on rent in products and cash. Though, there were hot-spots
of landed estates specialized on export of grain. Demesnes functioned in a collective and coordinated way of management with mixed plots amongst those of tenants in open-fields.
Tenants were families who by tradition put most value in cattle. The organization of
production pronounced the collective and co-ordinated function of local justice, cattlebreeding and keeping grazing- as well as fodder areas. The systems of cultivation were
organized to keep those areas needed for cattle-breeding. On those greater estates fields of
acres were extended as those were divided in three parts, where two were cultivated and one
lay in fallow.
Mobility
As estates were structured on the basis of tenant-holdings on whose all revenues depended, it
left the major share of all energy consumed for moves to the tenants´ themselves. The
demesne´s share of cultivated land was minor with conservative demands on labour. Just a
few of them had been parcelled out from open-fields and been concentrated to the hamlets
with most land. The cattle-herds were breeded in order to produce dairies. Tradesmen from
the province´s transit port merchandized on a grand scale with tenants on the countryside,
which underlines the quite free patterns of movements at least regarding household folks. One
controlled sector was probably those of hired tenant hands.
9
The Early Modern Feudal War state
Security
The military state was indulged in constant war, which explains why alienation escalated and
the market for securities grew as did the segment of squires. As war was long-term mercenary
troops became dysfunctional. More numerous enrolled troops from the heartlands became
rational in the functioning of the military state. Support became bulky. That explains the need
for improved sustainable standards in the agrarian sector and other reforms of government
such as measures for resettlement of war-stressed areas. By definition ware-markets turned
dysfunctional as did the rickety and stressed agrarian sector, both in people and resources.
The more fronts were pushed away, the more the production systems recovered. This explains
why the military state was equipped with new functions of taxing landowners, trade and
measures of embargos.
Space
Production-flows were volatile and dependent on the landowning squire´s dispositions and
decisions. The urge for risk-minimization of losses in assets and lives was instantly addressed
by a focus on the rent from the demesne, even for shear self-substinence. Processing of rawstuff at the manor house was common. The effect of the alienation-process was enclosure,
where former extensive grazing areas and woodlands were contained into properties isolated
from each other. The ideal motive for management was social. Therefore, the more temporary
conditions of possession, the harder the exploitation functioned. Decisions diverged, but put
together they converged into demesne economy on a broad scale, even if a grain-producing
monoculture was far from the commonest within enclosed demesne lands.
The demesne was a unit that became hegemonic on any estate, around which labour-processes
gravitated. This explains that conventions of local policy-making could be exchanged for
shares of living in the largest hamlet on the estate, together with the demesne´s plots, in turn
the transports of draft-teams and hands were adjusted to a minimum. On many estates cattleherds shifted to mostly draft-animals and the demesne began using the major share of tenants´
labour-force. The vast waste-lands not yeat recultivated constituted an asset for more
elasticity to be grazed as commons for those remaining. The outputs were varied, a range of
mostly small-scale estate-structures and managements prevailed. But the general tendency
was pointed at permanent conditions of ownership, enclosures, extensions, parcelling outs
from mixed open-fields, triple fields in cultivation and single demesne units with total
evictions of tenant-holdings.
Mobility
Tenants were torn off any policy-making capacities, devalued into a rent-duty client in
autocracy, any obligations and rights were related to the squire only, contained and enclosed
just like the hamlets and the smaller estate themselves. Higher demand on labour rent made
mobility a critical point in rural time-budgets both in the squires´ and tenants´ planning.
Tools, drought-animals and laborers were at risk being exhausted. But wide areas of wasteland created areas for relief and policy-making. In general household heads kept the privileges
of moving.
10
The State of Night Watchmen
Security
The early modern military state functioned in a state of much lessened military threat and
sectorial stress. Therefore, the functions of the military state relied on taxing, purchasing and
mercantilistic measures of improving conditions for public revenues. For example, searching
for flaws in the vital agrarian production systems. Accordingly, ware-markets were
completely restored, now with an outright specialization on private grain-export and
merchants´ cash-flows grew as did lendings. The social sphere of political culture meant
demanding and costly dowries. The military state integrated a function of acknowledging the
private strive for this ideal by alienating enormous baronies and counties. Thus, the demesne
was both the greatest and the hegemonic production-unit on any estate, but upon that there
was an attached expectation on rent, provisioning the owner´s cash-flow to fulfill demands
determined within the institutional milieu.
Space
The diversity of the former production system was rubbed out and shifted into a grainproducing monoculture of demesne lordship in a resettled and recultivated agrarian sector,
though the proportions between contracted rent and demesne-rent was balancing on the even.
Some estates were still rentier-based. The motive for management glided from risk-aversion
to ambitions linked to the social status and a hegemonic idea about career within the
conglomerate state. The functional importance of the demesne unit within the domain-scape
was enforced when an ideal of a shift to a hierarchical, administrative and large-scale
production became reality. All functions within the domain of the estate radiated from the
demesne unit. All systems of cultivation in general use were reorganized to three field acres to
meet expectations on grain-rent. All mixed production in open-fields with the demesne was
parcelled out. The hegemonic demesne land that was directly enclosed to the attached place of
the manor-house was put under the plough, because it was deemed the most rational way of
management. Therefore, estate-structure was small-scale, but the processes towards
concentration advanced on a broad scale. The ideal of living were centres of administration
and trade both in the province and the heartlands. Investments in real estate were preferably
made in city-homes.
Mobility
In this period tendencies from the earlier stage of institutional milieu and demesne lordship
sharpened. But the household folks kept their privileged mobile positions thanks to a
cumulative increase in tilled land and number of citizens, though the labour rent-catches grew
in fast pace.
11
The Early Prohibitive Military State
and the Late Private Demesne Lordship
Security
The military state extended her sector for supervision and accountability in her functions of
even flaws in the mercantilistic mobilization of resources to the military in a state with few
external threats. Government started observing autonomous judicial systems with lawyers and
governors with capacities of veto. There were high expectations in the functions of military
state on landowners´ ambitions for career as well among those themselves.
Space
The younger form of management´s urge for grain-rent stimulated the erection of annexes of
demesnes. The landed properties grew in size in general to multi-properties in order to
increase rent. Both as larger estates and several estates in different parts of the conglomerate
state. Rentier-estates were vanishing completely, but hamlets with tenants still occupied the
major share of the typical estate´s land. On greater properties the motive for production
tended to be support of the owners´ seats in the heartlands of the conglomerate state. In some
cases export was broken and the flow directed at domestic transports only. These motives for
high exploitation explains that there was a constant pressure upon tenants. Holdings were
diminishing in size as encroachments were made continually on resources from demesnes.
The organizational changes were stamped in the landscape with intruded hamlets regarding
meadows, grazing and woodlands. There were decreasing numbers of any tenant-resource.
Mobility
There were signs of over-exhausted tenant-households, where labour-force, tools and
equipment were being worn out. At peaking seasons labour rent began consuming household
folks as well. Thus, movements were being encroached as holdings and access to resources
dwindled. Given that the production system´s outer limits were constant, for example familybased agrarian low-technology, the continual enforcement of resources and labour was fierce.
There were trails of laborers from one district to another, organizations of cottagers clustering
close to demesnes and even paid agricultural workers combined or alone with tenants´
workforce.
The Absolute and Prohibitive Mercantilistic Military
State
Security
The military state extended her functions both in the heartlands in the provinces with
systematic concentrated sectors for supervision and accountability. The risk for military
aggression was deemed minor. The function of government was defensive in providing for a
generalizing capacity of recruiting and sustaining mass-enrolled troops in any region within
the conglomerate state, but was interventionist on domestic private interests. The military
12
state deemed the late private estate structures ideal for management and therefore contracted
those with conditions on interventional and controlling conditions. A reform of revocation of
all alienated land was a tool in this ambition. The system of justice was integrated in the
profession of the generalgovernor and the higher court in the capital of the conglomerate state.
The system of justice functioned as an administrative court aiming at averting any flaws in the
system and was valid to all citizens. As a result autocracy was prohibited on public land. The
generalgovernor took a strategic position in government´s absolutist and mercantilist supervising provincial political culture and military was ordered to pacify unrest on local estates.
The pure mercantilistic view of improving public revenues to sustain the military state´s
military capacity made government regulate in favor of an as important domestic market.
Space
Thanks to regulations all structures of late private demesne lordship estates were frozen, as
well as the production systems on contracted estates. With regulations tenants were expected
to and did act in private business apart from hegemonic interests of demesnes. In effect heavy
enforcements on tenant labour continued in combination with other sources of labour
organizations.
Mobility
Tenants´ capacities of citizenship improved as sectors for supervision of the military state
extended. That meant that formal restrictions on movement were lifted and further
encroachments on movements formally frozen.
Conclusion
Initially all tenants by tradition had depended on cattle and extensive grazing. This provided
for a nominal free movement. With alienation this organization was dissolved and cooperation
cut-off. In the early phases enclosure was a mean for policy-making as well, in order to
distribute land, rights and duties. One important element in the process was the keeping of
herds, fodder and grazing. That this process was to be painful and confrontational when
policy-making was denied and mobility encroached was expressed in a plenty of contemporary documents on refugees astray in the province.68 Data from fort Hapsal indicates that the
process of demesne lordship management may have been completed as early as from the turn
1600 describing a wave from the west to the east in the stage of the early modern feudal war
state. The major exporting harbor at Revel may have been a point of similar influence within
its hinterlands. The model demonstrates several shifts of functions in the military state and in
turn of the entire institutional milieu. It was strong and pro-acting during the long earliest
volatile periods of warfare. The cause was as many rational measures as possible to fulfill the
need for mass-recruited enrolled troops. The model also supposes that the strong social
ambitions of landowners and the hegemonic demesne were deeply embedded within the
attitudes and functions of the early military state. The trend of functions describe a shift from
accumulation of public land as wealth and providing this asset to become a market, into
taxing as well as administrative regulations in order to increase and sustain revenue on private
ware-markets. The hegemonic demesnes were the cornerstones in this institutional milieu all
since the Polish War (1600—1629) enacting all designs of planning of landowners.
68
M. Berencreutz, ”Estland”.
13
The drawbacks with a large-scale and administrative mode of management was never retorted
neither with innovations nor reforms. The province had even in the latest stage of public
interventionist institutional milieu little capacity to break any negative effects of landowners´
ongoing avalanche of designs of planning. The Absolute state was one facet in this
development. Having in mind that the field of research on the early modern military state in
its initial forms is under-represented there are two major hypotheses to be formulated. Both
hitherto atypical to the debate. A) the early modern feudal war state enacted demands on
purchases to the military that squeezed private trade. This in turn transformed and spread the
production system of demesne lordships to many properties. B) the great famine in the 1690s
was a result of a production system of the late private demesne lordship that was collapsing
due to heavily enforced encroachments on tenants´ resources, labour and movement.
In this light there is reason for further questions on chocks in different aspects on productive
resources given a constant labour-intense agrarian technology. First, there is a problem
regarding herds of cattle in relation to sheep and goats, as well the proportions between draft
animals and cattle for dairies. For example a higher number of draft animals could be compensated for by more sheep on holdings. But in that case there is an obstacle in the balance
between the number of labour and the volumes of manure. Thanks to a higher provision of
manure and labour on demesnes, those were regularly more productive. However, if holdings
were restricted to keep sheep and goats, manure fell and yields put at risk, nourishing any
workforce.
Second, the model demonstrates that transports most plausibly are an under-estimated element
in the labour processes. Wear on laborers and tools becomes critical when cultivated land is
pressed up to more than 50 hectares in areas of monocultural early modern grain-producing
landscapes. Transports increased both to the demesne and seen as movements on its cultivated
fields. Demands on transporting higher volumes of grain increased to the transit-harbor of
Revel, which owned governmental monopoly both on export and domestic shipping. The
Söber-system of Revel´s tradinghouses was in that sense rational, if contracts were long-term
and expected to be fulfilled during the season. That made wagon-traffic and the demands on
navigable roads during summer another vital element of the labour processes. There are no
signs of greater trails of trade in cattle, the grain production was the most important in the
inland as well. This could motivate a standing working staff at manors, but this seems farfetched in the source material. In that sense a long-term reckoning system would make it
rational with a sort of feeding logistics either to own multi-properties or warehouses of
companions. Another unknown critical infrastructure was the mobilization of resources to the
Swedish army and the routines of purchases.
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