Sabbatical Fellow, SCAS;
Professor of History, esp. Women's and Gender History, Stockholm University

Hybrid event.
Zoom Webinar: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/65802739142 External link.

ABSTRACT:
In the traditional account of how Sweden became a democracy, the so-called Borggård Crisis is a pivotal event. After receiving a demonstration consisting of 30,000 farmers who had traveled from across the country, the king delivered a speech in the palace courtyard, in which he promised the demonstrators that he would meet their demands for a stronger defense. However, the king’s promise to the demonstrators represented a departure from the policy that the king and the incumbent center-left government had agreed upon—namely, a comprehensive reform of the defense sector and a reallocation of resources from defense to social issues. The king’s speech led to the government’s resignation, a special election was called, and the Conservatives regained power. The Courtyard Crisis itself has been well researched, but the demonstration that led to the crisis has, for the most part, not been the subject of research. One reason for this may be that there are essentially no archives from the organization behind the demonstration. To attempt to answer this question, I have therefore used a model based on other researchers’ studies of the American civil rights movement, as well as on my own observations.