Royal Police Ordinances in Early Modern Sweden

Toomas Kotkas’ book is a valuable contribution to the study of early modern society. Focusing on a large body of written law—Swedish statute law from the period 1523 to 1718—Kotkas discusses the role of law in a period characterised by commercialisation and state formation. The study is based on 1,236 royal ordinances (including 1,429 different ‘matters’) published in the eighteenth century in four well-known source collections. All matters have been grouped into five discrete categories according to a template established by a Germany-based research project on politie legislation. Comparing the period 1523–1611 with the period 1612–1718, the author finds that the relative size of the five categories remained practically unaltered over time: around 65 per cent of all matters consistently fell into the category ‘Economic system and professions’, with ‘Public safety and order’ as the second-largest category (around 15 per cent). On the basis of this material, the author makes two general claims of interest to a broad constituency of historians. Firstly, Kotkas argues that this body of law has incorrectly been seen as an expression of top-down control of people. Against this view, associated with Gerhard Oestreich’s concept ‘Sozial Disziplinierung’, Kotkas maintains that ‘the thrust for issuing an ordinance often came from the subjects themselves’ (p. 215). Secondly, Kotkas argues that, from 1630, the royal ordinances bear witness to a voluntaristic understanding of law—that is, law was now increasingly perceived as a tool to be used proactively by monarchs to govern and change society. The first claim is interesting and plausible, but I am not fully convinced by the evidence produced by the author. The second claim is more persuasive, but it, too, would have benefited from better evidence

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