Hopes and Fears for the Future in Early Modern Sweden, 1500-1800, edited by Petri Karonen (Suomalaisen kirjallisauden Seura, Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki, 2009) 370pp., softback, £26.50, ISBN 978 952222 142 1

Some fifteen scholars working in Sweden and Finland have contributed to this book under the editorship of Petri Karonen, Professor of Finnish History at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.  Late modern society has experienced high levels of stress and anger.  Researchers in Finnish history at Jyväskylä decided to study how people in early modern societies faced everyday challenges and coped with setbacks.  They found that they (like us) had issues of job advancement, social obligations, local power struggles, poverty, unpopularity, and violence.  The topics of fear, hope and self interest in the vast Swedish empire of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries have never been studied in depth.  The articles in this book look at these issues from different empirical perspectives.  In a particularly interesting chapter Barje Harnesk of Mid-Sweden University, draws attention to the existence of everyday resistance (albeit spontaneous and local) was as important and effective as outright rebellion or parliamentary negotiation in seventeenth century Sweden.

The book is fully documented and indexed.  There is also a map of the Swedish realm from the sixteenth to early nineteenth century.  It constitutes a useful addition to cultural history. 

G.R. Batho