The Wealth of the Richest:
Inequality and the Nobility in Sweden, 1750-19001
Erik Bengtsson, [email protected]
Anna Missiaia, [email protected]
Mats Olsson, [email protected]
Patrick Svensson, [email protected]
Department of Economic History, Lund University
PRELIMINARY VERSION - not for citation without permission
Abstract
In Mediaeval and Early Modern Europe, the nobility was the dominant class. However,
whether their position was upheld during economic modernization and industrialization of the
19th century is a more controversial matter. Historians such as Hobsbawm (1978) have
claimed that the nobility was surpassed by the bourgeoisie in the period between the French
Revolution and the First World War, while Mayer (1981) has claimed a “persistence of the
old regime”. We use 800+ probate inventories for Swedish nobles from 1750, 1800, 1850 and
1900 and 3000+ probate inventories for commoners to track the wealth patterns of the nobility
during this transformative period in the Swedish economy. We find that the share of total
wealth held by the nobility, which was about 0.5 per cent of the population, is 29 per cent at
the beginning of the period, but drops dramatically to 11 per cent in 1800 and 8 per cent in
1900. On the other hand, nobles are still significantly wealthier than commoners of all social
classes: in 1900 the average noble person has about twice the wealth of the average capitalist
or merchant. Interestingly, inequality within the nobility increases significantly. Using our
dataset we are able to distinguish between the rural real estate, the traditional source of wealth
for the nobility, and the more “capitalist” source represented by investments. We find that (1)
the gap in average wealth between high and low nobility increases in the period and (2) the
highest ranked nobles increase their share of rural real estate in the total wealth and decrease
investments while the low rank nobles show an opposite pattern. Our results suggest the rise
of an elite within the top class, a group of “super-rich” nobles who maintain their economic
power through land ownership while the rest of the nobility takes part to the industrialcapitalist expansion.
Keywords: inequality, wealth, Sweden, nobility
This paper was written within the projects ‘Growth and inequality before the industrial revolution, Scania 1650
to 1850’ financed by the Swedish Research Council, and ‘Wages, economic performance and inequality.
Scandinavia in the “Little Divergence” in Europe’, financed by Jan Wallanders, Tom Hedelius Stiftelse and Tore
Browaldhs Stiftelse.
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1. Introduction
The 19th century is often seen as “the bourgeois century” (Kocka, 1988). Eric Hobsbawm
(1977) in his book The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848 discusses the “dual revolution”
of the period: in the field of politics, the French Revolution of 1789, and in the field of
economics, the British Industrial Revolution. Hobsbawm (1977: 16) talks of a “triumph of the
new bourgeois society” during the first half of the 19th century and how the new class, the
industrial bourgeoisie take over the role as the leading and dominating social group in society
from the nobility, which had dominated European societies throughout the early modern
period. This field change in dominance was supposedly in economic activity and wealth
accumulation as well as in the field of politics and control of the state. But was the shift from
nobility to bourgeoisie as the dominant class really so swift and decisive? Arno Mayer (1981)
made a vigorous counter-argument in his tellingly titled The Persistence of the Old Regime in
which he argues that up to the First World War, Western European societies were still of the
ancient regime, dominated by the aristocracy in terms of politics as well as wealth and
cultural prestige. The debate on the “persistence of the old regime” and the alleged dominance
of the aristocracy into the early 20th century has been lively ever since, and has several
economic history ingredients. One important aspect is the assumption one makes about the
economic rationality of the nobility. We know that this group had a very strong economic
position in the European societies of the 18th century and held a very large share of total
wealth (i.e. Dewald, 1996). The question then is not only if political changes such as the
French revolution reduced the economic position of the nobility, but also to what degree this
group succeeded in managing its wealth and putting it into productive use in the new
economic context of early industrialization. Historians such as Hobsbawm tend to see the
nobility as less economically rational capitalists than the bourgeoisie and therefore losing
ground in the 19th century, but this assumption has been questioned.
We might ask, then: what did happen to the nobility during the transformation from
agrarian early modern society to modern industrial society? How did the nobles participate in
industrialization? Did they keep their advantage compared to “bourgeois upstarts”? This paper
uses 800+ probate inventories of Swedish nobles from 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900 to analyse
wealth formation and wealth distribution from 1750 to 1900. The aim is to study the evolution
of the nobility’s wealth. The detailed information that we have about total wealth of the
nobles and other groups for comparison (such as bourgeois townspeople, or peasant farmers),
2
as well as the composition of the wealth, allows us to make an in-depth analysis of the
evolution of the economics of the Swedish nobility in the crucial period from 1750 to 1900.
Our results suggest the rise of an elite within the top class, a group of “super-rich” nobles who
maintain their economic power through land ownership while the rest of the nobility takes
part to the industrial-capitalist expansion through investments.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives an overview on the European nobility
in the 18th and 19th centuries and of the Swedish one in particular. Section 3 presents the data
in detail and the methodology used to analyse it. Section 4 presents the empirical results.
Section 5 concludes.
2. The European nobility: from the “Old Regime” to the “Bourgeois
Century”
In old order Europe, the population was divided into different social estates. Although
the exact definition and substance of them could differ between countries and regions a
societally upheld division of social groups existed where the exclusiveness of the highest
estates was most important (Wrightson, 1982: 27-30).
Boundaries between social groups and the extent of social stratification can be based on
a number of criteria. In the old regime, inherited status was definitively one such criterion and
particularly for the nobility since this stratum was to a great extent closed for those not born
into it. Status can be said to have been proposed, particularly by the nobility itself, to indicate
an “intangible, hereditary quality” (Doyle, 1996: 319). In a way, status also relates to the
concept of being in a certain social group; the idea of being a nobleman implied possibilities.
Even if it can be debated whether this social regime is consistent with a division into
economic classes, and in conjunction with this how much economic resources mattered for
social position, most would argue that wealth mattered (Clark, 1984). It did so since it enabled
power but it was also a necessary prerequisite to uphold the status of the nobility. A third
characteristic separating social groups, although perhaps a much looser concept, might be
political position and power. Having certain positions in the power hierarchy would
potentially affect both status and economic power. This would also be a marker of social
grouping, above all if these positions were closed for outsiders.
The economic wealth, the political power and the status interacted and were to some
extent interdependent. They were also related to certain privileges, defined by law and
customs, and changes in these and in one of the sources of power could have an effect also on
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the others. To be able to consider the development in the economic situation of the nobility
we therefore need to bring changes in the other dimensions into the explanatory framework as
well.
One country where political changes is said to have affected the wealth of the nobility is
the Southern Low Countries, or Belgium. The effect of the French revolution and its spread
into Belgium, together with the French conquest, have implicated that the nobility lost
ground, both politically and economically (Clark, 1984). However, a study of the Belgian
nobility and of the emerging bourgeois class from the 18th to the 20th century shows that
although the nobility lost most of their privileges within the political sphere they remained
very wealthy (Clark, 1984). This was partly due to industrialization causing increased demand
for agricultural products and as great landowners the nobility benefitted from this and from a
fast increase in the value of land. However, the nobility eventually lost out economically
relative to other groups, i.e. to the new emerging economic elite, when landed property went
from 60 per cent of national wealth in 1846 to only 20 per cent in 1913. One factor affecting
an upheld status and not too severe decline in political position but a declining economic one
is that most of the ennobled were persons who served the state rather than originated from the
new economic elite of businessmen. In sum, according to Clark (1984), the Belgian nobility
did not decline as much and as rapid as have been the case in other European countries.
For nearby Holland, de Vries (1974: 36) estimates that the nobility in the 16th century
held only about 10 per cent of the land. Soltow and van Zanden (1998) agree with de Vries’
analysis of a country with weak nobility and a strong burgher class.
This contrasts very much with the relative position of the nobility of Britain. The
emphasis in previous literature on the nobility states that the British nobility was the richest in
Europe in the early modern period but that its share of total wealth declined over time
(Dewald, 1996). In this view it was assumed that the “crisis of the 17th century” and the
“Glorious Revolution” of 1689 had weakened the aristocracy for good (Dewald, 1996: 4). The
1689 revolution definitively had an impact on the political and economic power of the nobles
but also on their status (Hoppit, 2000: 365-8). However, later research in social history has
shown that as late as the late 19th century the wealthiest men in England were noble
landowners, a group who also dominated politics and the state (Cannadine 1990).
As regards wealth, Lindert (1986) analyses average personal estate in Britain from 1670
to 1875 by social group. His group closest to the nobility is “Titled (gentlemen and up)”. In
1670 the average person in this group held almost two times as much wealth than the average
person in the second highest social category, represented by merchants. In 1810, the
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difference was even larger, over three times, but this situation abruptly changed up to 1858, so
that in 1858 and 1875 the average merchant was more wealthy than the average titled person
(factors being 1.9 and 1.2 respectively). However, wealth here is measured without real estate
and without taking debts into account. Lindert claims regarding real estate that land was very
unequally owned in Britain, which makes sense in light of “The diminishing importance of
land and of the titled-landed class” (Lindert, 1986: 1147) had egalitarian effects as more
equally distributed asset classes became a larger part of total wealth.
The European examples are brief but open up at least two major questions for our
Swedish study from a comparative perspective. The first is whether Sweden was in 1750 more
like Holland, with an economically rather weak nobility, or more like England and Belgium,
with a dominant nobility? The second is when, if at all, did the relative wealth of the nobility
compared to other social groups cease to stand out? Lindert finds for Britain that titled
persons were surpassed by merchants already in 1858; given Sweden’s later economic
development, it would be reasonable to expect this shift to come later to Sweden, given that
there was no Dutch situation of weak nobility to begin with.
2.1.
The Swedish nobility in European perspective
In 1751 there were about 9 000 nobles in Sweden, corresponding to some 0.5 per cent of the
total population of two million (without Finland). The history of the nobility in Sweden goes
back to 1280 when the Alsnö stadga, a King’s ordinance, stipulated that those who supplied
the Crown with heavily armed horsemen would be exempt of tax; in Swedish this tax
exemption was frälse, that is “freed”, which was the only word for the nobility at this point.
Noble status was at this point not hereditary but it was transformed in this direction during the
14th and 15th centuries. In the 16th century the term “adel” starts to be used for the nobles. In
1626 the formal guild of noble families, Riddarhuset (House of Nobility) was formed, and
during the period of Four Estates Parliament, from 1668 to 1865 Riddarhuset was one of the
four estates.
The nobility grew especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1600 there were only
around 50 noble families in the country. From 1604 to 1692, another 1415 families were
added, often related to military service in the numerous wars fought by the Swedish “great
power”. In the next hundred years from 1692 to 1792 the nobility continued to grow rapidly:
another 1214 families were added. After this the tempo of ennobling slowed down and from
1792 to 1907 when the last ennobling took place in Sweden, another 326 families or, after
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1809, main lines were ennobled. The nobility in Sweden never exceeded one per cent of the
population.
The special rights for the nobles at the beginning of our period were several. They still
partly were tax exempt; the so-called “free mile” of their demesne plus their tenants’ land up
to one mile (ten kilometres) from the estate was tax exempt. Furthermore, the 120 highest
occupations in public service were only open to nobles. The Noble Rights Act of 1723 also
confirmed the customary right of nobles to appoint the minister of their parish, when under
Jus Patronus, and also the right to collect and use the church and crown tithes in many
parishes in the south. There was very little of feudal private justice in Sweden (Upton, 1995),
but the nobility several times tried to get the right to private local justice and to sentence their
subjects to corporeal punishment; especially in 1719 (Winberg, 1985: 165).
The position of the nobility as an independent stratum in the society changed gradually
from the 17th century. One strand of the literature claims that these changes turned the nobility
into a state-serving estate (Englund 1989: 12; Magnusson, 1997: 204).2 The Carolingian
absolutism introduced several changes, thereby strengthening the state on the expense of the
nobility: the Reduction of 1680-81 when land previously donated to noblemen was retransferred into state ownership was one feature in this. The ways for the nobility to enlarge
their land possessions through acquiring Crown land thus became more restricted and new
strategies had to be adopted; now a more intensive use of the labour force through tying them
to the land, i.e. the establishments of crofts, and heavier burdens on the tenants replaced
earlier more extensive strategies. Moreover, large parts of the newly ennobled noblemen
lacked possibilities of accessing land (Englund, 1989: 14).
Other changes affected the position of the nobility relative to other social groups. For
officers, who were exclusively nobles, the new military organization introduced in the late
17th century meant that their income rested on rents and taxes from the peasant-farmers,
thereby associating them to this group and to agriculture. Moreover, the income from the
peasant-farmers was not negotiable on individual level but set by the King and the Parliament
requiring an extensive political process involving all estates, including the peasants, to be
changed (Magnusson, 1997:205). The tax reform of 1713, introducing taxes by wealth, is
another feature of attempts from the state to treat all different estates equally, although the
reform was temporary (Karlsson, 1994). It has also been suggested that the state policy of
2
But this analysis is partial and probably much more relevant for the low nobility than for the titled nobility who
were more likely to have large holdings of land.
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focusing on town and mercantile growth strengthened the bourgeoisie on the expense of the
landholding nobility (Magnusson 1997: 178).
The dismantling of the noble rights continued during the 18th and 19th centuries. The
feudal doctrine of tax-exempted land exclusively being owned by the nobility was challenged.
Laws passed in 1789 and in 1809 made it possible for peasant-farmers and the bourgeoisie to
buy this land but it also increased the opportunities for the nobility to use the land in a more
efficient way, selling it or re-organising cultivation on this land in ways previously prevented
by the feudal arrangements (Winberg, 1985: 200). Furthermore, with the Constitution of
1809, nobles lost their monopoly on the highest public posts and with the abolishing of the
four estates parliament in 1865–66, the nobles lost their special place in Parliament.
In all, this affected both the political power of the nobility and their exclusive access to
certain economic resources. It also affected their status as exclusive and the dominant estate,
both through the ennoblements but also through the equal treatment as other estates in many
respects from the side of the state. There are thus a number of indications that the nobility lost
ground in as well political position as in status which could have affected their economic
position. Finally, the emerging industrialization, where other assets than land became
important, might have had further effects on the economic status of the nobility.
A counterargument, which would mean that the nobility could maintain their economic
status, is the development of land ownership rights. After the reduction in 1680, the nobility
retained a large part of Sweden’s farmland. Almost a third of the peasants were subject
tenants under the nobility. In the Noble Rights Act of 1723 the state confirmed that it should
never interfere with what nobility did with their land or their tenants (Olsson, 2014: 75). A
land holding of origin in medieval feudal arrangements had turned into perfect private
property.
2.2.
The wealth of the nobility in Sweden
We know that the nobility was quite dominant in 17th century Sweden and still at the
beginning of the 18th century; this society can be described as dyadic, with power divided
between the Crown and the nobility, with swinging balance of power between them
(Lindkvist and Sjöberg, 2003). However, the nobility was gradually transformed into one of
several important social groups in terms of both political and economic power. Previous
research on the Swedish nobility in the 18th and 19th century has explicitly dealt with the
capacity – or lack of capacity – of the nobility to cope with this transformation and how well
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they defended their dominant position in society (Carlsson, 1973; Elmroth, 2001; Norrby,
2005).
Carlsson and Elmroth present two different versions of the “decline of the nobility”
argument proposed internationally for example by Hobsbawm (1979). Carlsson (1973)
focuses on the struggle of commoners to dethrone the nobles, and sees the removal of noble
privileges to public positions and land tax exemptions in 1789 and 1809 as indicators of a new
era. Carlsson claims that the sales of tax exempt land from the nobility to commoners are an
indicator of how the nobles lost out, and even that they were “pauperized”. However, as
Winberg (1985: 164) have pointed out, the right to sell tax exempt land to non-nobles might
as well be seen as a strengthening of the nobility’s position, as it made it possible for them to
restructure their land holdings, consolidating previously scattered holdings, and that it raised
the value of their land by increasing demand. Indeed, quite a few noble representatives in
Parliament in 1789 and 1809 supported these land reforms (Winberg 1985: ch. 7).
Furthermore, Carlsson’s economic analysis is not built on systematic use of wealth data and
his handling of statistics and the use of anecdotal evidence have been criticized (Norrby 2005:
23, 48).
Elmroth’s (2001) version of the nobility decline argument is less political and more
demographic in focus. The key claims of Elmroth concerns social mobility and demography
and to study this he uses a database with 9,000 nobles born between 1770 and 1939,
containing information about marital status, number of children, profession (or rather, title)
and year of ennobling. On social mobility, he claims that after the first generation of an
ennobled man, the family often failed to move further up in the social hierarchy and that a
recurrent social downward mobility in occupations is at hand within the estate as a whole
(Elmroth, 2001: 67) On demographics, Elmroth points to that newly ennobled families often
failed to reproduce themselves. One half of newly ennobled families lasted less than sixty
years, and four fifths were extinct by the fourth generation (Elmroth, 2001: 70) He explicitly
relates low nativity to “low” economic standards, and shows correlations such as that titled
nobility (counts and barons) reproduced to a higher degree than lower nobility, and the
equivalent for nobles with higher professional status compared to lower status. In other words
the economic and demographic of decline are related: family extinction is the “the final
consequence of the downward social mobility” (Elmroth, 2001: 90–91, our translation).
There are several problems with Elmroth’s argument. Firstly, he underestimates the role
of war and war-related mortality (Sweden was at war for much of the time from 1600 to 1814)
in explaining the demographic problems of the nobility. Secondly, since he does not control
8
for age at death when calculating social mobility the result is that all sons who die young
mechanically seem like they were socially mobile downward, while they may in fact have
been on a strong career trajectory before it was cut short. The same statistical problem afflicts
the latter generations in his study, those born in the late 19th century: since his last measure of
social status is in 1919, naturally those born in the 1890s who were only in their twenties in
1919 had still not reached their social peak, and so comparing their measured social status
with that of their parental generation gives a possibly spurious appearance of downward social
mobility. Thirdly, much like Carlsson he does not have any hard evidence on incomes or
wealth of the nobility, but rather infers the economic status of the nobles from their –
notoriously ambiguous – titles.
Norrby’s (2005) study of the adaptation strategy of the nobility during the “bourgeois”
19th century is to a high degree framed as a correction against the declinist interpretations of
Carlsson and Elmroth. He explicitly refers to Mayer’s (1981) “persistence of the old regime”
interpretation. Contra Carlsson’s idea about “pauperization”, Norrby (2005: 74–75) refers to
the 1845 wealth survey which shows that in that year, 13 of the 14 largest landowners in
Sweden were noble. He makes his own descriptive quantitative study of nobles, this time only
high nobility (counts and barons). Here the share who were “propertied” (besuttna) is high
and persistently so: for those born from the 1770s to 1860s around 50-60 per cent, those born
1860-1900 about 35 per cent, and those born 1900-20 about 20 per cent (Norrby, 2005: 86–
88). Norrby criticizes Carlsson and Elmroth for judging the social status of the nobility on
criteria fixed with the 17th century in mind: they look at job titles in the army and civil
administration and when the nobility’s positions in the higher echelons of these two sectors
decline, they interpret it as social degradation. However, as Norrby points out, the pathways
to and criteria of social and economic power changed from the 17th century to the 19th
century. After Sweden entered its long period of peace in 1814 and the productivity in
agriculture increased rapidly, at the same time as the exporting manufacturing sector grew
rapidly, career officer became a less important career and the payoff to owning land and
capital instead increased. (Norrby, 2005: 215) This means that Carlsson and especially
Elmroth who do not systematically look at ownership miss an important part of the economic
standing of the nobles.
However, Norrby’s study still contains two elements of a declinist view. Firstly, he
maintains that the mentality of the nobility was distinct from that of the bourgeoisie: the
nobles generally conformed less to the Weberian ideal type of the capitalist, profitmaximizing entrepreneur. For example, he refers to a study comparing the noble family
9
Gripenstedt’s estate Nynäs with the estate Bjärke-Säby of the arch bourgeois Oscar Ekman, a
wealthy merchant. Here he claims that the Gripenstedt’s management of their estate was oldfashioned and inefficient, so that eventually they had to sell it (Norrby 2005: 179). Obviously
this anecdotal method runs the risk of ending up with the same problem as Norrby points out
regarding Carlsson’s use of the count and school teacher Rudenschiöld as an illustrative
example: that the supposedly telling example is wholly unrepresentative. Secondly, Norrby
with his method of “collective biography” often reproduces statements from his sources –
letters, diaries, memoirs of nobles – claiming that the economic situation was tough, even
dire. For example, to explain why rather many in the high nobility didn’t marry, Norrby’s
preferred explanation for the men is the lack of money to uphold an aristocratic lifestyle. His
example is the count Arvid Wachtmeister (born in 1889) who married in 1919 and lived with
his wife, two children and two maids at one of the most “posh” addresses in Stockholm,
Karlavägen. Wachtmeister had a low post at that bastion of the nobility, the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs; his post was abolished in the 1920s and after this he had two work two jobs
(both in prestigious public institutions) to uphold his lifestyle. Norrby (2005: 119) presents
Wachtmeister’s case as an example of the tough economic situation of the nobility, but on the
other hand, one might equally see it as an example of the economic strength of the nobles: the
count held jobs in two prestigious institutions, lived at one of the finest addresses in the
country, and employed two maids. This is certainly no extravagance by aristocratic standards,
but compared to the average Swede of the period, the count must be seen as very privileged.
Norrby continuously fails in his source criticism when reproducing noble memoirists’
assertions of tough times; as Dewald (1996: 7–8) points out, saying that times are tougher
than ever for the nobility and that their power and wealth is in decline has been a cliché of
discourses on nobility since at least the 18th century, even in times when in fact their wealth
and power have increased greatly.
And precisely the issue of relevant comparisons is key here. Carlsson and Elmroth
completely, and Norrby partly, use earlier generations of nobility as the standard of
comparison for current generations.3 What is lacking is a comparison with concurrent
commoners: count Wachtmeister may not have had the living standards of some of his
ancients, who lived in castles with scores of servants and maids, but like Carlsson and
This methodological point on how to measure the development of the nobles’ social positions (and in particular
on the use 17th century standards vs. 20th century standards to compare over time) has been made also by Schijf
et al. (2002).
3
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Elmroth, Norrby does not see the count in the context of his contemporaries and does not
compare him to their standards.
The approach of the Scottish-American economic historian Gregory Clark who recently
presented a study of the nobility and social mobility in Sweden is very different. Unlike
Carlsson and Elmroth, who used 16th–17th century standards to define being elite (military and
civil service titles), Clark (2012) very consciously uses contemporary standards to compare
the current status of the Swedish nobility to that of common people.4 Clark uses surnames to
identify nobles and compare their prevalence in elite positions – attorneys, physicians, and
students at the prestigious Uppsala and Lund universities – to the prevalence of Swedes with
typical 18th century bourgeois Latinised surnames and typical working class surnames. He
shows that nobles are much more likely than Swedes of commoner descent to hold elite
positions in 1901, 1930, 1960 and today, and to have high incomes. Clark’s conclusion is that
social mobility in Sweden has been overrated and that the advantage of being of noble descent
is still sizeable. In other words, Clark’s analysis is quite the contrary to those of Carlsson,
Elmroth and, to some degree, Norrby. The same pattern is found by Sundell (2013) who looks
at nepotism in Swedish bureaucracy from 1790 to 1925. Despite the removal in 1809 of the
monopoly of the nobles for the highest offices they still kept their position well into the 20th
century. Göran Ulväng (2013) on a smaller scale also presents a revisionist view of the wealth
of the nobility during the 19th century. Ulväng notes that previous literature – especially
Carlsson – has pointed to declining share of tax-exempted noble land but shows with a study
of Uppland that during the same period the nobility’s ownership of non-noble land increased,
so that their manors’ overall size kept up.5
Given this contradictory state of the literature, one might ask: how well did the nobility
adapt to liberalization and industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries? Were they
“pauperized”, as Carlsson would have it, socially degraded to the point of extinction, as in
Elmroth, or are they still at the helm of society’s centres of power, as in Clark’s analysis? This
paper will add a key piece to the puzzle: precise and encompassing estimates of wealth of
nobles from the early 18th century to 1900, systematically measured and compared to other
social groups. As stated above, the studies of Carlsson, Elmroth and Norrby are flawed in
4
Dronkers (2003) has used a surname approach on the Dutch nobility and found that they had a strong socioeconomic position in the late 20th century, despite having been legally weakened as a class in the 19 th century.
Dronkers claims that the Dutch nobility around 1900 went through a successful transfer into high bourgeoisie
and modernized its social and cultural capital. Korom and Dronkers (2009), using a surname approach, show that
in Austria in 2009, nobles were six times more likely than non-nobles to sit on company boards.
5
Malatesta (2004) on the other hand seems to defend the method to focus on just land owning to measure the
position of the nobles; this, however, seems unnecessarily reductionist.
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their discussion of the economic position of nobles by the fact that they have only
professional titles, not real economic information on incomes or wealth, of the nobles. Norrby
(2005: 78) explicitly complains about the lack of data to judge the real wealth position of the
nobility. We collect and analyse probate inventories of 800+ noble persons who died in 1750,
1800, 1850 and 1900. This enables us to describe and study the real economic position of the
nobility throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the period of major transformation pointed at
by much of the nobility research. We discuss issues such as the relative economic position
and wealth of the nobility compared to other social groups, their economic activity (were they
lousy entrepreneurs as Norrby implicitly claims?), and the diversity within this class, much
debated in the previous literature.
3. Data and methodology
3.1.
Probate inventories
We use probate inventories as our source of the wealth of the nobles. The nobility’s
probate inventories were archived separately, since the nobility had its own courts (Göta
hovrätt, Svea hovrätt). We have collected all noble probate inventories for four benchmark
years: 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. In 1750, we have 209 inventories, in 1800 215, in 1850
229 and in 1900, 227. Table 1 shows our sample of the adult noble population by age class.6
Table 1 - Nobility by age class, 1750-1900 (unadjusted sample).
.
1750
Age
20–29
30–39
40–49
50–59
60–64
65–69
70+
Total
No.
8
25
23
44
31
30
48
209
1800
Share
3.83
11.96
11
21.05
14.83
14.35
22.97
100
No.
8
19
21
31
16
18
102
215
1850
Share
3.72
8.84
9.77
14.42
7.44
8.37
47.44
100
No.
12
23
29
40
21
28
76
229
1900
Share
5.24
10.04
12.66
17.47
9.17
12.23
33.19
100
No.
7
7
12
27
24
33
117
227
Share
3.08
3.08
5.29
11.89
10.57
14.54
51.54
100
In order to compare the performance of the nobility with that of the rest of the
population, we use information from the probate inventories on the wealth of the other social
6
The part of the sample below the age of 20 was dropped for two main reasons. A methodological reason is that
we only had a few data point for children who were rarely recorded in probate inventories. A theoretical reason
is that children in general were rarely entitled to own wealth and would have little relevance in the analysis.
12
groups of Sweden. These, along with the nobility probate inventories, form a dataset covering
eleven social groups in Sweden that reflect the entire social structure of the country.7 As for
the rest of the population, we know age at death, sex, the provenience from a urban or rural
context, the marital status and the region.
Types of wealth
It is worth noting that Swedish probate inventories, which were mandatory by law from
1723 onwards, are very detailed and rich in an international perspective. For example, there is
no problem with lacking real estate as in the British counterparts (Lindert, 1981). For our
calculations of overall wealth distribution, we use the total net worth of each person as the
starting point. However, it is not only total worth that is interesting for our purposes. To
investigate the economic activity of the Swedish nobility, it is relevant to see also in which
form they held their wealth from 1750 to 1900. Fortunately, our sources allow us to
discriminate between different types of wealth. We have four types: rural real estate, urban
real estate, and claims and investments. These three make up gross worth (equation 1). To
calculate net worth we subtract debts from gross worth (equation 2).
(1) Rural real estate + Urban real estate + Movables + Claims and investments =
Gross value
(2) Gross value – Debts = Net value
Historians such as Mayer (1981) and Cannadine (1990) have stressed the importance of
the landed aristocracy in the European economies not only in the 18th century but in the 19th
century and into the beginning of the 20th. We can capture this type of wealth as rural real
estate, which encompasses buildings as well as land. Furthermore, it is highly interesting, as
investigated by Norrby (2005), to which degree nobles went into other lines of business. We
capture this by the wealth level in terms of claims and investments. The share of the
individual’s total gross worth held in (a) rural real estate and (b) claims and investments are
then used as proxies for the “traditional” and “modern” economic attachments of the
individual nobles.8
7
The entire dataset is used in Bengtsson et al. (2015) to assess the evolution of overall wealth inequality in
Sweden in the same period we are considering here.
8
The degree of indebtedness can also be interesting in itself. It has been claimed that the nobles became
increasingly indebted during the 19th century, possibly because of the investments required by the “agrarian
revolution” (Norrby 2005: 76).
13
Old and new nobility, high and low nobility
There are two important distinctions within the Swedish nobility: that between high or
titled nobility (barons and counts) and low or untitled nobility, and that based on the time
when the family was ennobled. So Elmroth (2001: 25) claims that “old nobility” and “new
nobility” fared very differently after 1800 and placed the threshold point between old and new
at being nobles before or after 1600, while Norrby (2005) stresses the very different economic
behaviour of the high nobility, which tended to be landed, and the low nobility. For these
reasons, we include information about provenance and class of nobility.
For provenance, for each person we have coded the year that their family was ennobled
and introduced at Riddarhuset.9 We define old nobility as those families who were noble at
the start of the House of Nobility (Riddarhuset) in 1626, and consequently new nobility as any
family ennobled after that.
Since 1563 when the titles baron and count were introduced (Upton, 1995: 15) Swedish
nobility has three classes, noble (adlig), barons (friherrlig) and counts (grevlig).10 The former
is low nobility and the other two taken together are high nobility. 11 The high nobility is the
group who dominated politics and the King’s Council in the 16th, 17th and to some degree 18th
centuries and who are in the literature associated with large holdings of land, not the least
because of the donations from the Crown in the 16th and 17th centuries. The low nobility is
more often associated with smaller land holdings and a larger dependence upon state service
in the military and the bureaucracy. We might therefore expect quite different wealth patterns
for these two groups (Norrby, 2005).
The
genealogical
information
is
fetched
from
the
genealogy
site
http://www.adelsvapen.com/genealogi which digitalizes the information from Elgenstierna’s
(1925–36) seven volumes on noble families and other similar genealogical publications on
9
A few technical notes. In some cases, there are some years between ennoblement and introduction at
Riddarhuset. Then we have coded the year of ennoblement, not introduction. In a few cases we have persons of
ancient noble stock from abroad, whose families were introduced at Riddarhuset in Sweden at some point. In
these cases, we have coded their year of introduction. When the family is described as “urgammal”/ancient but it
was not introduced until later, possibly it should be coded as 1625. This might only be an issue with the Trolle
family which was only introduced in 1689 despite having noble lineage back to the 14 th century.
10
A problematic case is the noble families who never were introduced at Riddarhuset. They are still considered
nobility in Sweden, although unintroduced. We have coded them as low nobility, but obviously they lack year of
ennobling. For this reason, the n is a bit lower when we use old/new nobility as the separating factor than when
we use low/high nobility.
11
We have coded the family status and if it is a family which was first ennobled in the “adlig” class and later
promoted to “friherrlig” or “grevlig”, we have coded not only the first year of ennobling, which is the most
important variable for our purposes, but also the year of promotion. However, in the current state of the paper we
do not use this information.
14
Swedish nobility. The Elgenstierna database provides excellent mini-biographies of more or
less all Swedish noble persons from the early modern period up to the 1920s. 12
The probate inventories can be uninformative in assigning job titles to the deceased. A
particular problem is the issue of military titles. Serving in the military was a part of noble
culture in the period investigated here, even after the end of Sweden’s era as a great power in
1720. After this, there weren’t as many full time positions available in the military anymore,
but typically young noble men still service in the military for a couple of years, and could
very quickly advance to fairly high officers’ titles, or at least the title of captain. Often they
left the military around the age of 30 to pursue other careers, but because of the prestige in
military service and other cultural reasons, quite often in their probate inventories the title
assigned could still be their military rank.13 For this reason we have completed job title
information, when needed, with the information at the Adelsvapen.
12
Previous research, especially Elmroth, have put some emphasis on the alleged demographic weakness of the
nobility, that they did not manage to reproduce so new ennobling was constantly needed to uphold a sizeable
nobility. For this reason we code the year that the family died out, if it has done so. Nobility is only inherited on
the male side, so family extinction is when the last male member of the family dies. Our information on
extinction was gathered by Elgenstierna in the 1920s and 1930s so we do not know whether families died out
after that. However, given that the “youngest” persons in our sample died in 1900, this should not matter. In the
current state of the paper this information is not used.
13
A recurring phrase in the mini-biographies is “levde utan tjänst”, or “lived without service/without
employment”. This means that the person lived off the incomes of his estates. So for example Samuel
Ehrencrona (1786–1851) is called baron and the lowly job title “extra ordinarie kanslist” in his probate
inventory, but in reality he lived on the estate he inherited, and was very, very wealthy. Similarily, Malte Ramel
(d. 1752) is only referred to as “herr” (“mister”) in the provate inventory, but he owned several estates and was
“immensely rich”, to quite Elgenstierna. A further example is Lorens von Nackreij (d. 1798) who is called
“captain” in his probate inventory, but in reality he was a factory owner, which he had been since he left the
army at the age of 32. This lack of precision in the use of titles in the 18 th and 19th centuries is a methodological
problem in the literature, and especially mars Elmroth’s (1981, 2001) vastly overblown conclusion of downward
social mobility for the nobility: when the men are referred to as “captains” even though they typically left the
army at the age of 30 to instead live of vast holdings of estates, factories, and so on, then of course a job title
based study will overestimate the rate of downward social mobility.
15
Table 2 – Nobility by rank and seniority, 1750-1900 (unadjusted sample).
Commoners (married to nobles)
Unintroduced nobility
Low nobility
High nobility
Total
of which introduced nobles
Old nobility (<1625)
New nobility (>1625)
New nobility among low
New nobility among high
Old nobility among low
Old nobility among high
No.
25
3
137
44
209
181
31
150
120
30
17
14
Commoners (married to nobles)
Unintroduced nobility
Low nobility
High nobility
Total
of which introduced nobles
Old nobility (<1625)
New nobility (>1625)
New nobility among low
New nobility among high
Old nobility among low
Old nobility among high
No.
34
1
146
48
229
194
36
158
126
32
20
16
3.2.
1750
Share
11.96
1.44
65.55
21.05
100.00
86.60
17.13
82.87
87.59
68.18
12.41
31.82
1850
Share
14.85
0.44
63.76
20.96
100.00
84.72
18.56
81.44
86.30
66.67
13.70
33.33
No.
18
5
152
40
215
192
26
166
136
30
16
10
No.
52
113
62
227
175
27
148
101
47
12
15
1800
Share
8.37
2.33
70.70
18.60
100.00
89.30
13.54
86.46
89.47
75.00
10.53
25.00
1900
Share
22.91
49.78
27.31
100.00
77.09
15.43
84.57
89.38
75.81
10.62
24.19
Empirical methodology
In order to use probate inventories to describe the wealth structure of the living
population two major adjustments are needed. One is for the age of the population due to the
underrepresentation of the young among those who die in a given year. The other is for social
groups, which might be represented to a different extent in the inventories. Therefore, we
modify our sample in the following way. We identify the most over represented group in each
of the two dimensions (always the nobility for social classes14 and the 70+ for age). Keeping
the number of individuals from the over represented class fixed, we replicate the individuals
14
The nobility is overrepresented both because of the higher chance of a noble to be recorded due to his or her
higher change of owning large amounts of wealth. We also decided to collect proportionally more probate
inventories for the nobility due to our prior that it would present higher variation in wealth compared to other
groups that we wanted to capture in full.
16
in each group n number of times, with n such that the class after the expansion is correctly
represented. The procedure is carried on for age first and then for social structure. We
therefore end up with an age and social class balanced sample.
Once the sample is adjusted, we show both the average wealth of each social group and
the share of the total wealth that each group holds at each point in time. Thereafter, we show
three inequality measures for both the nobility and the general population: the gini
coefficients, the share of wealth owned by the top 1% and the share owned by the top 10%.
The next step is to show the composition of wealth for the entire nobility sample in search for
significant changes over the period.
The second part of the descriptive analysis implies the breakdown of the sample in low
and high nobility. We show the average income for the different types of nobility and look for
differences in their wealth composition that can account for different performances through
time. Finally, we propose a simple OLS regression analysis to account for the determinants of
the wealth of the nobility. The estimating equation that we propose is the following:
𝐿𝑜𝑔 𝑛𝑒𝑡 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑡ℎ𝑖 = 𝛼 𝐴𝑔𝑒𝑖 + 𝛽 𝑆𝑒𝑥𝑖 + 𝜗 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑖 + 𝛿 𝑅𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑖 + 𝜃 𝑅𝑎𝑛𝑘𝑖
+ 𝛾 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠𝑖 + 𝜋 𝑌𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑒𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖
(3)
+𝜌 𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑖 + 𝜏 𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑏𝑡𝑠𝑖 + 𝜀𝑖
The dependent variable corresponds to the net wealth of the individual i, defined as the
sum of all assets minus the debts. The explanatory variables on the right-hand side are age at
death, sex, context (urban or rural), region (we use the three regions corresponding to north,
centre and south: Norrland, Svealand and Götaland), rank of the person i (high or low),
marital status (single, married, widow/widower and divorced), year of ennoblement and the
share of debts and rural real estate in gross wealth. For our purposes, we are in particular
interested in testing whether the rank of the person, the year of ennoblement and the share of
rural land in wealth are strong predictors of wealth patterns.
17
4. Results
This section presents the empirical analysis on the age-adjusted dataset. Table 3
presents the dataset by age class and compares the share of each class to the shares of the true
population. We can notice that although the numbers do not completely overlap, they are very
close, leading to a new sample that has a comparable age structure to that of the general
population.15
Table 3 - Age adjusted nobility, 1750-1900.
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Total
No.
94
81
48
67
40
43
48
421
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Total
No.
222
250
184
145
62
48
76
987
1750
Share
22.33
19.24
11.4
15.91
9.5
10.21
11.4
100
1850
Share
22.49
25.33
18.64
14.69
6.28
4.86
7.7
100
TRUE
28.99
22.76
17.8
13.73
5.99
4.66
6.07
100
No.
266
186
130
125
48
36
102
893
TRUE
31.16
23.7
17.26
14.43
5.06
3.68
4.71
100
No.
185
92
93
152
77
71
117
787
1800
Share
29.79
20.83
14.56
14
5.38
4.03
11.42
100
1900
Share
23.51
11.69
11.82
19.31
9.78
9.02
14.87
100
TRUE
26.69
23.32
20.33
14.72
5.3
4.24
5.4
100
TRUE
26.16
20.51
18.09
14.73
6.11
5.45
8.95
100
Table 4 shows the same information of Table 2 for the adjusted sample.16 Similarly to
the original sample, the adjusted one has a higher share of low nobility compared to the high
nobility.17 Here too, the new nobility is roughly twice the old nobility. Finally, the last four
columns show the overlap between the ranks and the seniority in the nobility.
15
The difference between the two is due to the adjustment that is performed in a second stage on the social class
distribution, among which the nobility is highly overrepresented. This second adjustment on the population is
necessary to be able to compare our results on the nobility with those on the other social classes but might
slightly affect the age adjustment.
16
In this table and from now on commoners are recorded as their partner’s rank and unintroduced nobles as low
nobles. This is done for making the descriptive analysis more clear to the reader.
17
It should be noted that 1800 is the year that causes more concerns as it presents an unusually low number of
high nobility. This result could be due to the overrepresentation of the low nobles among the younger age classes
in the starting sample. This glitch can affect the shares of the total wealth of the nobility, making the results for
18
Table 4 - Age adjusted nobility by rank, 1750-1900.
Low nobility
High nobility
Total
Old nobility (<1625)
New nobility (>1625)
New nobility among low
New nobility among high
Old nobility among low
Old nobility among high
4.1.
No.
312
108
420
141
279
215
64
97
44
1750
Share
74.3
25.7
100
33.6
66.4
68.9
59.3
31.1
40.7
No.
762
131
893
255
638
554
84
208
47
1800
Share
85.33
14.67
100
28.56
71.44
72.7
64.1
27.3
35.9
No.
726
261
987
382
605
456
149
270
112
1850
Share
73.56
26.44
100
38.7
61.3
62.8
57.1
37.2
42.9
No.
609
178
787
235
552
406
146
203
32
1900
Share
77.38
22.62
100
29.86
70.14
66.7
82.0
33.3
18.0
Descriptive statistics and inequality measures
Table 5 shows a comparison between the average wealth of the nobility and that of the
other social classes. Setting the average equal to 1, in 1750 a noble person was expected to
own on average 60 times more. The same figure drops to 19 times at the end of the period.
The share of wealth detained by the nobility in 1750 was roughly 29 per cent while it was
only 8 per cent of the national wealth in 1900. This result suggests that the nobility as a whole
has considerably reduced its relative share of wealth over the 150 years that we consider. If
we look at the other social classes, the ones that seem to have replaced the nobles in 1900 are
the capitalists and merchants (37 per cent) and the bourgeoisie (10 per cent).
1800 not reliable. Although this is not ideal, we decided not to adjust for nobility rank at this stage and focus our
analysis on the average wealth and the shares of different sources of wealth within groups, leaving the share of
total wealth out of the analysis.
19
Table 5- Average wealth by social group, 1750–1900 (average=1).
1750
Nobility
Capitalists and merchants
Persons of rank
Bourgeoisie
Farmers
Rural artisans
Crofters
Non-bourgeoisie townspeople
Soldiers
Rural workers and servants
Workers in factories and foundries
Total
Average
60.9
8.6
3.4
1.1
0.7
0.3
0.3
0.2
1.0
0.2
0.2
1
Share total
29%
8%
9%
3%
34%
1%
3%
2%
8%
3%
0%
100%
1850
Nobility
Capitalists and merchants
Persons of rank
Bourgeoisie
Farmers
Rural artisans
Crofters
Non-bourgeoisie townspeople
Soldiers
Rural workers and servants
Workers in factories and foundries
Total
Average
31.0
7.7
4.2
2.3
1.3
0.2
0.2
0.0
0.2
0.2
0.2
1
Share total
11%
8%
10%
10%
51%
0%
4%
0%
1%
5%
1%
100%
1800
Share total
7%
10%
14%
3%
57%
1%
2%
1%
1%
3%
0%
100%
1900
Average
Share total
19.0
8%
10.1
37%
2.3
8%
1.1
10%
1.0
37%
0.3
1%
0.1
1%
0.2
0%
0.0
0%
0.1
5%
0.2
5%
1
100%
Average
19.9
9.4
4.0
1.2
1.3
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.2
0.2
0.1
1
The decline of the gap between the nobility and the other social groups would at first
suggest that the entire noble class becomes relatively less rich during the industrialization
period. The results of Table 6 on wealth inequality suggest that this might not be the case. If
we look at the gini coefficient within the nobility, we observe that the starting value is 0.75,
almost equal to the one in the general population (0.76). But after an initial drop in 1800, the
gini coefficient in 1850 and 1900 rises to 0.88 and 0.87, suggesting a major transformation in
the wealth ownership among the noble class. This increase mirrors the one observed in the
general population and supports the need for further analysis. Table 6 also shows the top 1%
and 1% shares of wealth within the nobility, suggesting again rising inequality.
20
Table 6 – Inequality measures, 1750-1900 (average=1).
1750
0.75
0.76
1750
23%
65%
42%
67%
Gini nobility
Gini total
Top 1% nobility
Top 10% nobility
Top 1% total
Top 10% total
1800
0.70
0.82
1800
19%
52%
44%
73%
1850
0.88
0.84
1850
31%
79%
38%
74%
1900
0.87
0.9
1900
33%
78%
57%
84%
Before moving to a breakdown of the nobility, we show the composition of wealth for the
entire sample. Figure 1 shows the shares of the four main sources of wealth: claims and
investments, rural real estate, urban real estate and movables. As we see in the table, the
shares are relatively stable in time, with the main source represented by the rural real estates
followed by similar shares of movables and investments and last in size the urban real estates.
Figure 1 – The composition of wealth of the nobility, 1750-1900 (average=100).
60
50
Share
40
30
20
10
0
Claims and investments
Rural real estate
Urban real estate
Movables
1750
22
44
5
29
1800
27
56
1
15
1850
29
46
3
22
1900
31
51
4
13
Table 7 moves on in the analysis and breaks down the average wealth of the nobility
into average wealth of the low and high and of the old and new. The averages are normalized
to 1. We see that in 1750 the high nobility was about three times richer than the low nobility.
There is no large difference between the old and the new nobles. In 1900 the gap between the
low and the high nobility increases, with the latter owning about five times more. The new
nobility also forges ahead owning a little more than double compared to the old nobility,
although this difference is only observed in 1900.
21
Table 7 - Average wealth by rank and seniority, 1750-1900 (average=1).
Low nobility
High nobility
Total
Old nobility
New nobility
Total
1750
0.64
2.04
1
1750
0.94
1.03
1
1800
0.82
2.04
1
1800
0.86
1.06
1
1850
0.33
2.86
1
1850
0.94
1.04
1
1900
0.54
2.59
1
1900
0.50
1.21
1
Table 8 shows the average wealth of the low and high nobility by source of wealth. As
expected, the high rank nobles are richer than the low rank nobles in all years and for all
sources of wealth. It should be noted that the average wealth from rural real estate is the one
that diverges the most, with a gap of 79-159 in 1750 and of 34-326 in 1900.
Table 8 - Averages of different type of wealth by nobility rank, 1750-1900 (average=100).
1750
Low nobility
High nobility
Total
73
179
100
Low nobility
High nobility
Total
79
159
100
Low nobility
High nobility
Total
43
264
100
Low nobility
High nobility
Total
56
227
100
1800
1850
Claims and investments
89
43
166
257
100
100
Rural real estate
82
32
206
290
100
100
Urban real estate
88
95
169
114
100
100
Movables
78
47
227
248
100
100
1900
98
108
100
34
326
100
83
159
100
48
278
100
To sum up, Figure 1 suggests that the wealth composition for the entire nobility is not
changing dramatically in the period while Tables 7 and 8 suggest that there is a group,
corresponding to the high rank nobles, that is richer on average at the beginning of the period
compared to the low rank and becomes increasingly richer up until 1900, with a
22
disproportionate advantage in the rural real estate ownership. The relative strengthening of the
minority of high rank nobles could be caused by a general increase in their wealth, regardless
of the source or conversely be linked to the increase of one particular source. Figures 2 and 3
show the composition of wealth within the two groups. The low nobility in Figure 2 shows a
relative increase from 23 to 53 per cent of claims and investments. Rural real estate goes from
50 to 30 per cent while the rather small share represented by urban real estate doubles from 3
to 6. Movables decrease by half. Figure 3 shows a very different pattern for the high nobility,
suggesting that claims and investments had a decrease by one third while rural real estate
went from 37 to 69 per cent, dominating the wealth structure at the end of the period. Urban
real estate had the reversed pattern compared to the low nobility while movables decreased by
half.
Figure 2 – The composition of wealth of the low nobility, 1750-1900.
60
50
Share
40
30
20
10
0
Claims and investments
Rural real estate
Urban real estate
Movables
1750
23
50
3
24
1800
29
55
1
14
1850
31
36
6
26
1900
53
30
6
11
The picture that arises from these two figures points to a divergent pattern between the
two groups. It appears as the low nobility transitioned from being fairly strong land owning
class, mostly based in the country side and with a relatively small share of investment in their
portfolio to a much more active and urbanized class. On the contrary, the high nobility has
consolidated its share of rural real estate and has gained less and less from claims and
investments.
23
Figure 3 – The composition of wealth of the high nobility, 1750-1900.
80
70
60
Share
50
40
30
20
10
0
Claims and investments
Rural real estate
Urban real estate
Movables
1750
21
37
6
36
1800
23
58
1
17
1850
28
50
1
21
1900
14
69
3
15
One question to address is where this big increase in the share of rural real estate could
originate from. In Table 9 we have estimated the development of land prices in our sample
and we compare their increase with that of the consumer price index (CPI) by Edvinsson and
Söderberg (2011) from 1800 onwards.
Table 9 - Estimated land prices (riksdaler per mantal) and CPI, 1750 – 1900.
Mean
Median CPI1914=100
Land
CPI
(mean)
change
change
1800
2 039
1 333
23,368
1850
9 721
7 332
63,946
377%
146%
1900
39 188
33 675
78,086
303%
29%
Source: see text.
Table 9 suggests that the increase in land prices from 1800 to 1850 was more than twice
in percentage terms compared to that of the CPI and even ten times larger from 1850 to 1900.
The increase in land prices is therefore a strong candidate in explaining the divergence
between low and high nobility in the period we are considering.
In terms of comparison with previous literature, there are very few estimations done for
land prices for this period. Svensson (2001: Appendix 7) has estimated the price of a farm in
southern Sweden 1800 to 1870 and for the period 1800-1850 finds a price increase of 321 per
cent, slightly lower than our estimate but still showing the same trend of more than tripled
24
prices during this period. Following the same series in Svensson (2001) the increase in land
prices 1850 to 1870 is estimated around 168 per cent. Owning a landed estate was generally
good economic business, and increasingly so during the 1800s. Big estates seem to have been
more profitable than smaller ones. The overall return on investment in manorial estates was
two to three percent higher than the interest rate (Olsson 2002: 323–337).
Gårdlund (1947: 157) suggested that the major landowners in Sweden, although they
belonged to the top income group, were quite insignificant when it came to financing the
industrial investments in the period 1830–1913. Gårdlund’s argument was that the nobles
instead used their capital to invest in their own business - agriculture. Our results confirm this
interpretation if referred to the top group among the nobles but not to the majority of nobles.
The low nobility was indeed involved in investments, probably because they were not given
the option to buy the large (and more profitable) estates owned by the high nobility.
4.2.
Regression analysis
We now turn to estimating equation (3) and compare the results from the descriptive
statistics proposed in Section 4.1 are somehow confirmed. Table 10 shows the regression
repeated for each benchmark year on the unadjusted sample. The reason for using the
unadjusted sample is to avoid running a model on a sample of replicated individuals that do
not bring additional information on the relationship between the variables but would introduce
a disturbance.
In all years, the age variable is not significant. This is easily explained by the type of
information provided by probate inventories: the younger part of the population that is the one
that potentially did not yet accumulate wealth is heavily underrepresented. On the other hand,
the sex of the deceased is significant and the coefficients are high in magnitude. In particular,
being a man leads to almost 50% more net wealth in 1750 and more than twice in 1900. The
urban context, defined as urban or rural is also highly significant, showing that the nobles
based in urban areas (which for a large part of them will correspond to Stockholm) were
almost twice as rich. The regional dimension appears to be important in the earlier years, with
a negative effect for being based in the north and a positive one for being based in the centre
when the baseline is the south. The rank of the noble is also significant in explaining the level
of net wealth, as expected. Belonging to the high nobility increases net wealth by almost twice
in all years except 1900 when the effect is around 56%. Being married also has a positive and
significant effect due to the accumulation of wealth between spouses. The year of the
ennoblement does not have a significant effect, suggesting that being a new or old noble was
25
not clearly associated with higher or lower levels of wealth. Moreover, on the shares of
wealth, debts are of course associated with lower levels and in all years except the first while
one additional share point of rural real estate had a positive effect on the net wealth of about
2.3% in 1800, 2.8% in 1850 and 3.4% in 1900. This result confirms the role of rural real
estate in widening the gap between low and high nobles. Finally, the R2 of the regressions
increases over time, suggesting that the variables proposed gain in relevance over the period.
Table 10 – The determinants of wealth, 1750-1900 (unadjusted sample).
Dep. var.: Log net wealth
Age at death
Male
Urban context
Svealand
Norrland
High nobility
Married
Widow/widower
Divorced
Year of ennoblement
Share rural real estate
Share debts
Constant
Observations
R
2
(1)
1750
(2)
1800
(3)
1850
(4)
1900
0.00509
(0.00783)
0.476*
(0.251)
0.144
(0.291)
0.486*
(0.255)
-1.646***
(0.214)
0.948***
(0.253)
0.723**
(0.329)
0.449
(0.432)
-0.356
(0.483)
-6.65e-05
(0.000207)
0.000970
(0.00175)
-0.00876*
(0.00451)
6.658***
(0.616)
-0.00873
(0.00709)
0.338
(0.285)
0.859***
(0.288)
0.461*
(0.250)
-0.423
(0.410)
0.944***
(0.300)
0.642*
(0.353)
0.522
(0.372)
0.409
(0.866)
-0.000126
(0.000278)
0.0231***
(0.00375)
-0.0259***
(0.00633)
7.940***
(0.775)
0.00369
(0.0103)
0.778*
(0.425)
0.931***
(0.317)
0.0555
(0.332)
0.345
(0.523)
1.220***
(0.382)
0.745
(0.492)
0.682
(0.501)
0.000425
(0.000309)
0.0278***
(0.00571)
-0.00820
(0.00598)
6.825***
(1.046)
0.00107
(0.00759)
1.008***
(0.320)
0.936***
(0.310)
0.00596
(0.302)
-0.453
(1.158)
0.559**
(0.276)
1.833***
(0.352)
1.458***
(0.372)
0.0759
(0.371)
0.000390
(0.000239)
0.0345***
(0.00419)
-0.0368***
(0.00688)
7.944***
(0.854)
176
0.305
200
0.514
194
195
0.207
0.357
Robust standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
Summing up, both the descriptive statistics and the regression analysis confirm the
following picture for the patterns of wealth of the Swedish nobility in the period 1750-1900.
26
First of all, the Swedish nobility as a whole experienced in the period a decline in their share
of total wealth as well as a reduction of the gap between their average wealth and that of the
other social groups. In spite of this reduction, they still remained in 1900 the group with the
highest average wealth. Within the nobility, the increase in inequality measured both through
gini coefficients and top shares suggests that the reduction in average wealth did not take
place uniformly in the group. By considering high and low nobility separately we were able to
identify the widening gap between them in terms of average income. We were also able to
differentiate four components of wealth and observe that although there is no appreciable
change in the shares for the nobility as a whole, low and high nobility move towards very
different distributions of wealth. The increased share of investment for the low nobility and
rural real estate for the high nobility implies that rapidly increasing land prices led to this
divergence. Regression analysis confirms the positive effect on wealth of being a high rank
noble and of having a higher share of rural real estate as component of wealth.
5. Concluding remarks
This paper aims to contributing to the debate on the role of the nobility during the first
Swedish industrialization by producing, for the first time, precise and encompassing estimates
of the nobles’ wealth. Our estimates offer a national coverage and allow for comparison with
other social groups. The information gathered was used to test different hypotheses on what
characteristics determined the wealth of the nobility in the period 1750-1900 and how it was
divided by source. Our interpretation of the results points to a polarization within the nobility,
with the high rank nobles becoming relatively richer than the low rank nobles. The former
started holding more and more wealth in land while the latter moved towards investment. This
finding suggests that the low nobles were having a more active role in the process of
industrialization while the high ones kept a more traditional wealth profile.
Our results speak to the previous literature on the European and Swedish nobility. In
terms of the European context, Sweden provides picture in which the nobility is still the
dominant class in average wealth although its share in the total wealth is greatly reduced.
Given the advantage in the relative average wealth, it is hard to claim that a “pauperization”
of the class was taking place. On Sweden, the declinist view by Carlsson (1979) and Elmroth
(2001) are rejected in light of the persistence of the gap between the nobility and the rest of
the society. The view by Norrby (2005) on a nobility with a different mentality from that of
27
the bourgeoisie is confirmed for the high nobility. However, the duality of the nobility is a
novelty that the previous literature has not discussed based on quantitative evidence so far.
Turning to the social mobility dimension, our results show that at the very top the
prediction of low mobility by Clark (2012) seems confirmed. Although we do not have data
for present times, we know that in the early 21st century 31 of the 50 biggest possessors of
arable land in Sweden still belonged to the old nobility.18 The present distribution of wealth
seems very much the consequence of the polarization observed during the industrialization of
the country.
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