Slavery is an enormous part of human history. While much of the public knowledge surrounding slavery might relate to Rome or the Americas, it's prevalence is sadly far more wide spread than that. What are some other places, such as Sweden, which have a lesser discussed history of slavery? Join us on Patreon: bit.ly/TGS_010_PI Don't write if you can't read (the rules): community.timeghost.tv/t/rules-of-conduct/4518
Theories on the etymology of the world "slave" vary, but a popular one is that it's derived from the word "Slav". Y'know, Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, etc.? It's believed that Slavs were sold across the Black Sea by Moors, and that's where we got the name... Also, while the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution declared all forms of slavery (including serfdom, which was still present at the time in places like Russian Alaska) unconstitutional, there's one exception to this: prisoners. Technically speaking, slavery is still very much legal in America, but only in our prisons...
@@fb97e4ad "Fun" fact: the Trail of Tears resulted not only in the deaths of: 6,000 Choctaw 4,000 Cherokee 3,500 Chickasaw 3,000 Seminole 200 Ponca And several Muscogee and Ho-Chunk ...but also their black slaves they took with them. All these tribes owned slaves. You'd think the natives would set their slaves free and they'd fight together against their removal and ethnic cleansing, but nope! Goes to show no one color of man is without immense cruelty... And that's not even considering the deaths afterwards caused by hostile Pacific Northwest tribes attempting to violently reverse the mass migration into their territory!
My grandfather was a statare as a kid and young man. I am born in 1995, he died two years earlier at the age of 85. How I would have loved to talk to him about it. But my mother and her much older siblings have told me plenty. I appreciate this short, thanks guys!
Similar to sharecropping, a system common in rural areas of the United States until the 1940s. It ended only when large farm machinery made it more profitable for the landowners to get rid of the sharecroppers and work the land themselves with the expensive machines.
Also, the payment-in-kind and loans on credit system discussed in the video are similiar to a practice in the US of companies paying their employees in company scrip that was redeemable only in company-owned stores in the company-owned town which sold at deliberately inflated prices, perpetuating a cycle of debt bondage like in Sweden. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 broke this practice by outlawing payment in company scrip.
@@jliller You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store
@@jliller I'm reading a biography, called "The Lost Soldier", of a family's grandfather who was a US soldier, killed in WW2. He lived in a company textile mill town, lived in a company shack with his family and got only a grammar school education as company towns were not required to offer high school and if he had gone to HS in another town, his parents would have had to pay for it. He was drafted at age 33 and his he was underweight and his teeth so poor, he had to have all of the removed and placed with dentures. He and his wife grew up like this and had no idea how they were being ripped off. They were just happy to have a job during the Great Depression in the South.
Always love the appreciation and down right enthusiasm that Indy, Sparty and the rest of the crew have for history. Makes these videos in particular where they can "nerd out" so absolutely lovely to watch. Keep up the amazing work!
@@morganlang6973 statare var inte slavar på samma sätt som trälar var under vikingatiden, deras tillstånd liknade mer livegna bönder i Ryssland, statarna hade inte många rättigheter och de ägde inte marken de arbetade och brukade
I feel like there was an important omission here, the Swedish colony of St. Barthélemy on the Caribbean, where chattel slavery was practiced until the late 1840s. Swedish investors were big players in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade for decades, with figures such as king Gustav III raking in huge profits from the slave trade that passed via St. Barthélemy. The idea that Sweden abolished slavery for good in the middle ages is just patently false and relies on self-induced amnesia about nastier aspects of the nation's past.
From my understanding it was abolished in the main land in the 14th century but continued during the colonial era due to it being hard for the government to enforce the law overseas. Read some anekdot about Gustav III (or IV) being sad that slavery existed in the colonies
@@TheSimon253 Sadly it wasn't just because it was difficult to enforce. St. Barthélemy was a small, barren island and the only way the Swedes could make a profit off the island was to provide a free port for slave ships. Slavery in the colonies was also completely legal and it's abolition was only passed in the Riksdag after a very heated debate, where many, for instance amongst the peasantry, opposed it bitterly on account of it being expensive (the Swedes went with the British model where the slave owners had to be monetarily compensated for loss of property). I haven't heard the anecdote about Gustav III, but he may have said something like that to placate abolitionists at home. However, sincew he was a major investor in the Swedish West India Company, which primarily traded in slaves, he was also one of the biggest slave traders in Swedish history.
@@Oxtocoatl13 Sounds like that might be the case. I sadly can't remember were I read that about the king. It might have been Gustav IV as well. Its not my part of history. It does hurt my Swedish heart that we had slavery in our colonies. But history doesn't care about my feelings.
@@TheSimon253 If it makes you feel any better the Danes were far worse with more islands and many more slaves. I'm Finnish so this part of Swedish history is my history too. But honestly I think we should focus our efforts on understanding that the global economy revolved around the slave trade for centuries and that no one benefiting from international trade is completely non-complicit. Swedish tar and timber were used on slave ships, and Swedish copper was directly traded for people in chains in West Africa. Similarly every ounce of sugar that anyone anywhere on earth put into their coffee or tea was made with slave labor. Much like our modern economies depend on exploiting dirt cheap labor in poorer countries. It should be less about finding guilty individuals and more about recognizing global systems that make some groups of people prosperous and comfortable while depending on cruelty and violence towards others.
The good nature of your friendly and educated fun stands as a shining beacon of light in the darkness of the topics you so often cover. Thank you for always providing this alluring mix of fun and true histories that need to be shared.
I wonder what effect that system had on immigration because my state (Minnesota) has a crazy amount of Swedes. As a person of Norwegian heritage I gotta say Boo Sweden boo Sweden boo
Sweden was very, very poor towards the end of the 19th century, and there were a couple of harsh summers where there were not much/no farming season with much starvation (1867-1868?) which forced people to move from frozen ground...
Part of Swedens proud history. Well presented. I'm Swedish and not mad at all. We do have have quite some dirty laundry in our historical closets. We need to be reminded of that. Vår självgodhet mår bra av det.
As a someone from Finland I do feel it would be very rude for Swedes to forget their history. 600 years of occupation, forced conversion and considered as a "lesser race" with "lesser" language... Yeah, there's some dirty laundry in there. One thing the swedes did accept us for was our young men as soldiers and the tax revenue.
Sweden was a seperate kingdom well before 1523. You could argue that the modern kingdom of Sweden has its origin with independence from the Kalmar union, but claiming that that was the earliest form of Sweden as a country is inaccurate
Saint-Barthélemy which used to be a swedish coloni in the caribian used to be a hub for slave ships to stop by it was bought from the French by Gustav III in 1784 but got sold back to France in 1878. There are places on the Island that still have Swedish name, like the residental capital of Gustavia.
I really like the more relaxed feel this videos have Y'all are always great at not being "stuffy" or boring but seeing you tow being buds is just so cute
You should've mentioned that the political shift in the late 18- early 1900 came from the worker movment and the founding of the first modern political party in Sweden, as opposed to from within the ruling classes.
Haha.. Kul Sparty! Litet uppfriskande och faktiskt en smula lärorikt. Finns absolut ingen anledning för en Svensk att bli upprörd över detta. Ju mer man grottar i Sveriges historia desto mer inser man att det kanske inte finns så stor anledning att som Svensk känna sig särskilt präktig. Era UA-camavsnitt är alltid välkomna. Du och Indy är bäst! Ge indy en klapp på axeln från mig!
In early 1900s France, in my grandfather village in Champagne, the shepherds only income was that they were allowed to let the unique cow they owned graze in the farmer's field together with the farmer's cattle they were in charge to care. The farmers gave them food and shelter in the barn in exchange of their cow's milk. No money involved at all.
Even in 1926, my grandmother said that they were starving in southern Sweden. That's why she moved to the US(which was booming at the time). The system sounds the same as US factory and mine workers endured up until WWII. You guys are very good together. Good Luck, Rick
NIce episode. In tracking my Swedish ancestors, it is a big hassle to follow them in the records from farm to farm and church parish to parish each year or so. Nice to hear this context. Not only was a large portion of the population serfs, but the government controlled the church and appointed church ministers as civil servants! I'm very happy my great grandparents moved to America. The book "The World of Cajsa Andersdotter" by Bengt Hallgren gives a lot of the historical context.
I'm a Swede living in Sweden. I'm glad my ancestors stayed. As for serfs, you are using the term wrong since statare simply were not serfs. And, aside from that, the statare-institution was partly created to keep people from the brink of starvation. I don't know why these guys are portraying this issue in such a simplistic matter when it was not. Would it have been better if people died?
The Swedish side of my family came to Indiana in 1863, I'll have to ask my parents if it was because of this. One funny thing I remember hearing was that on the boat they decided to change their name from Johanson to Chellberg, since they heard "Johnson" was a really common name in America. Now their farmhouse is a part of The Dunes National Park.
@@freyjulundr Yep! We did the DNA tests and they showed we had more Swedish/Norwegian than we thought (about 33% for us kids). We know they left on a boat from Göteborg, but beyond that it's been hard tracking down our hometown.
It is a true delight to be able to enjoy the work of this team and all the channels you are apart of! This is a happy swede giving you all the greatest of ovations!
I'm not sure you can equivalance any form of debt bondage to slavery. Slavery takes the premise that a man or woman is no different to live stock. Even in debt bondage you are not property, your offspring don't automatically become property of your "owner" etc.
Normally serfs are not counted as slaves, although their situation was often deplorable. Since there are no clear rules for what counts as slavery, it is very difficult to determine when slavery was abolished by law. Or how many slaves there are today. Those who have power and opportunity are constantly finding new ways to enslave people, even if it happens in secret or is hidden in the legislation under other names. But clearly the term slavery was used in this video to get attention. With their criteria for slavery, it still exists. Companies have a legal right to defraud people of debts with conditions that can not be met. After which you are stuck in debt and the state helps to collect the debts and makes sure that you can not avoid them. In addition, it is common for companies to buy and sell such debts to each other.
0:14 Jokes aside, slavery in Russia was abolished in the 1860s, and the USSR specifically had articles on their constitution prohibiting slavery. They were *ssholes on many things (purges, not abolishing several restrictions established in the Imperial era, deportations and so on), but didn't have slavery. In Spain it was abolished in 1870 with the "Glorious" revolution of 1868 that sent Isabella II into exile and led Spain onto five years of complete chaos. The 1870 constitution banned slavery in Spain, and the ban has been kept in the Spanish laws ever since. Even when we had a fascist dictatorship under Francisco Franco (who was another *sshole), he didn't reinstitute it.
That depends on your definition. The Romans had labour in mines, rather dangerous labour, normally by those convicted of crimes, and historians normally refer to them as slaves. The Soviets, especially before Khrushchev´s rise to power, had gulags with dangerous forced labour, even if technically you had to be convicted of a crime to be sent there, and lots of people do consider that a kind of slavery. Perhaps there is use in distinguishing whether the government in general is the beneficiary of the labour or if normally private individuals apart from the state benefit primarily from the labour, which can be useful to some degree in even explaining some decisions in history like when some slave owners wanted to manumit a slave, perhaps it would free them from economic losses associated with slavery like if a slave was getting old and unproductive but the owner had debts, but a government rule prevented it for fear of a mass slave revolt. I guess in a system based on Stalin´s communist ideals, slaves would be owned by the people just like everything else not by an aristocracy.
@@robertjarman3703 but that implies that the American government enjoys benefits of slave labour 😱 Also, didn't Tsarist Russia have serfdom in the start of the 20th century?
@@robertjarman3703 Throughout the first few thousand years of its existence, mining was exclusively slaves' job. No free man would have voluntarily ventured down those shafts for all the jewels in the world, it was a death sentence, at best a year or two of stay. The reason why civilization advanced was, paradoxically, because some people were given no choice but to go down there and dig.
@@michielwerring5846 The 13th amendment specifically has an exception permitting forced labor as a punishment for a crime. "Also, didn't Tsarist Russia have serfdom in the start of the 20th century?" No, the serfs in Russia were emancipated in 1861 (and those living on state land in 1866).
So the slavery effectively ended in Sweden in late XIX century. Meanwhile in southern Poland a form of slavery (serfdom) was still a thing up until 1931. It was called żelarka, and it started in regions of Poland controlled by Austria after abolishing of serfdom in 1848. Many peasants had not enough land to live from so they had to "sell themselves" to get access to land owned by landlords (few rich noble families, and Polish Catholic Church).
Polish serfdom and the general attitude of the elites towards the common folk is a topic that's just almost never discussed in Poland and everyone acts as if they hailed from the nobility, even if when I was growing up in the '90s pretty much all of my classmates (and myself of course) seemed to have a grandma somewhere in the countryside. If the topic of past antisemitism had to be addressed for no other reason than US pressure, then seemingly nobody else has any interest in the fate of the peasantry in what tended to be described as "peasant hell". It's only as I did my own research did I fully understand the scale of the contempt and malpractice that was performed by the nobility. The 1846 Galicia massacre is always dismissed as Austrian-orchestrated provocation, in history textbooks (and now our education system has turned so crazily nationalistic, I'd be scared to check what the current books have to say on the topic) completely bypassing the very tangible reason why the land owners were so detested. The seeds for the Volhynia massacre were laid this way, too.
@@yarpen26 The real shame is there were no proper compensations for serfdom and the gentry kept its influence throughout interwar period. Organisation of Landlords Union ("Związek Ziemian") was dissolved not as a natural turn of events in a democratic society, but by Soviet Union after WW2. It came together with nationalisation of the land which turned all these rich f**ks into victims. A tourist town Szczawnica over 100 years ago was owned by Adam Stadnicki. It remained a tourist attraction after the war with many of the hotels and spa being a state property. In 2005 Supreme Administrative Court gave it all back to heirs of Stadnicki. Many descendants of peasants working for Count Stadnicki immediately lost their job only to later get an opportunity to work for his heirs on worse conditions and usually even without permanent employment contract. In case of Szczawnica neoliberal "heaven" which was Poland of the 90-ties turned into some deranged form of neofeudalism.
Ha, a good continuation for a brief comment in a video I found bizarre on here or ww2 about swedish slavery - I'm glad you guys cleared up what you meant by it! Keep up the good work! :)
Sweden was not founded in 1523. It finally broke away from the Kalmar Union in 1523, but the Kingdom of Sweden was founded before the Kalmar Union, and remained a clearly defined entity throughout the entire union period.
Hopefully that one won't be day by day, week by week (approx. 40 years!)... And once they're done with that, they can cover the War on Terror (another longrunner), and if they catch up before it comes to an official end, they'll be able to cover it as it's ongoing! Yay...
Well researched but there is one error: The statare system meant payment _mainly_ in kind, not wholly. They did get some money as well, though certainly not much. Maybe this differed from one place to another.
I was told years ago that the Swedish government decided that there were too many Bergs and renamed a bunch of them Larson (or Larsen) (or maybe it was the other way around). This made it easier when handling mandatory military conscription. Have you guys ever heard of this? Google is unhelpful. My grandfather left Sweden at the end of the 19th century, citing poverty and dislike of state religion (I never got to talk to him about this, he died when I was 2). The podcast Radiolab did a stunning episode about a far-northern Swedish town and what its church records uncovered about the famine cycle and its effect on life expectancy (You Are What Your Grandpa Eats").
More likely the Larsson (Svensson, Johansson, Eriksson and Karlsson too) to something-berg etc, as the tradition was father's name+s+son, however haven't checked that one. What was common too was soldiers getting names like Trogen, Tapper and Modig (Faithful/trusty, Valiant, Brave) and what not supposedly based off of merit...
I don't know about Berg, but I know that plenty of names like Svensk, Svärd, Granath, etc. were given to people because there were to many Karlssons, Larssons, and so on. My great great grandfather, many generations removed, his sons, grandsons, and so on, just switched names between the generations; i.e. Mats Larsson's son became Lars Matsson, and his son became Mats Larsson again.
The Swedish surnames that doesn't end in -son/-sson are often indicative of nobility or soldier or industrial worker ancestry. The latter because it was unwieldy for officers and factory managers of the 16th to 19th century to have half a dozen Sven Karlsson or Per-Anders Jönsson in the same line company or production line so they simply renamed their personell to something related to their physical or psychological traits or their work.
@@KitagumaIgen Yes, that's what I heard too. Back in the day, surnames like Svensson literally meant "Sven's son". So people would know that you are Sven's kid. But this only makes sense if you live in the same place for generations, so that people around you know who this Sven guy is. Today those names live on as normal surnames, but they are static, they don't change with each generation. But on Iceland, they still use this older system, where Hjalmar Gudmundsson's kids get the surname Hjalmarsson, or Hjalmarsdottir if it's a girl (dottir meaning daughter). Not Gudmundsson.
@@martijn9568 Qatar is technically free labour, if by free you mean people who sign dubious contracts in languages they don´t understand, were of low class to begin with in their native countries, have minimal working protections like decent OSHA inspectors and workplace safety, minimal pay that is often withheld, have charges against what pay they have, and have their passports held by employers.
Almost all of the Muslim world banned slavery solely under crushing Western pressure. I think only Turks genuinely wanted to Europeanize themselves, whereas all the rest continue to see no flaw at all in bondage. Slavery continues to be practiced de facto throughout the whole region. I don't believe there has ever been a single imam who decried slavery as barbarous. That's a concept totally alien to Islam.
As a swede I love this episode and format! And to ad some more history Sweden was involved in the cross-antlantic slavetrade and did have some slaves both abroad and in sweden itself. Slavery was then successivly abolished untill the last slaves where freed by purchase (friköptes in swedish in case I translate it wrong) in 1847
I'm curious as to why your landowners relied on debt slavery then. For instance, colonial America made up for their labor shortage by importing African slaves. Why didn't wealthy Swedish landowners do the same thing?
@@michaelvanderwal7390 cheaper for the smallscale landowners. Few landareas in sweden are suitible for largescale farming of cashcrops before industry came along. Too much of sweden consists of rocky terrain crushed to sand during the ice age, makes for good pineforest but poor farming. But to the import of slavery it was simply cheaper to relly on a workforce already here that you dont have to feed or care for even when its not producing. Plus the landowners who did use the torparsystem were not near as rich as the southern cotton farmers so the thought dis not occur to them.
My great grandfather owned 320 acres (~120 hectares) in Jönköping county. which had been in the family for hundreds of years. He owed labor to a local lord and worked for the manor as a carpenter 1 day a week, while himself working his own land . Upon his brother moving to The USA (Boone Iowa) sent back information that land was far cheaper in the USA and farm prices were significantly higher. As each of his sons reached 17 he sent them to the USA to avoid the Swedish army (which he also hated when he was in it). He sold his land and emigrated in 1903. He bought 3 farms of the same size he had in Sweden. He not only paid cash for each of the farms ( two of which went to his sons) buy also built a local church, because the Lutheran church in Boone was inconveniently far away.
I remember a few small torpar houses a few km away. They are quite small as i said and they are really cool with moss stuffed between the beams and planks. They have a big oven and a loft above to make the most of the space.
I study swedish history and I feel there's some intellectual dishonesty in how these issues are being portrayed. The founding of Sweden is not even as a simple a question as you mention it to be. Vita Anskarii mentions a swedish kingdom in the 800s, and Tacitus mentions the same region having kings during the roman era. And "frihetsvisan" from the middle ages makes it pretty dead obvious that a larger area than the area around Mälaren was considered very much swedish, with swedes in it. Now true, the modern state might be founded then (1521-1523), but by that measure, modern France is a creation post ww2, and the US post civil war, is it not? A national image was already pretty clearly imprinted, and the people itself was already around. As for statareverket. No, it was not slavery, and no, it was not serfdom. You can downplay the fact that Sweden was a poor country on the verge of starvation at pretty much all times as much as you like, but (many of my ancestors being statare themselves) for some it was that or starvation. Now, statare might in some cases live close to the situation of serfs due to their social situation, but if you are that open about the definition of serfs (for example, statare were not prohibited from owning things, nor were they in any way stricken from being a fully fledged human being in the sense of the law (as compared to, for example, Jim Crow-laws)) then how is one to say that poor people in the UK, France, Sweden, or the US today who are in a situation of close to bondage due to financial difficulties or are tied down to a place or situation due to social issues are not, by the loose definition, then serfs? And if you take such liberties in using terms as you see fit, then clearly many countries today with troubles of payment traps should fall into the category of serfdom as you describe it, no? So, using terms soft and loose kind of makes them mean nothing in the end. In the end you are talking about a system which, although clearly unfair, clearly drawing close to serfdom, which existed in part to counter people just.. Dying.
I heard a story about a young woman from a bankcrupt family in Thailand who was bonded (with a genuine contract) to a wealthy guy to pay her mother's debt (which was an usual custom in the ancient Siam). She was working in the rich guy's company office for free and got luxury clothes, but she could not go anywhere without the guy consent. The real aim of the guy was to convince her that she should marry him to erase her mom's debt. This was in the 1990s.
It is wrong to say that Sweden didn't exist until 1523, the correct statement is that Sweden has been independent since 1523, For a little more than 100 years at the time, they had been a separate kingdom within the Kalmar union, and before that, independent since around 1000 AD It would be like saying France didn't exist until 1944 because they were occupied by Nazi Germany
50% Swede and you enlightened me about why more than likely my both my dad's father and his grandfather on his mother's side came here, as teens to early 20's. I will be 53 this year and my dad kept the whole corporal punishment alive and well, I have some stories. What would be considered just discipline back in the 70's would have gotten him years in prison without a doubt these days.
That's the problem with corporal punishment when used against kids: most of the time, it is used as a vent for the parent's own frustration. I remember one time when my father found out I messed something up (didn't brush my teeth before bed or something, I don't know)-at that moment, I could swear he was almost happy to know he was just about to beat my ass senseless. I'm sure it made him feel powerful. Part of me is happy I don't have kids of my own so I don't need to worry about recreating that behavior.
Thanks for the mighty video lads, no language sounds better to my ears than Swedish. Love the matching waistcoats as well. I'd say you'd have a lot of fun looking into the Irish situation during WW2; especially our POW situation. There was only one POW Camp in Kildare, with one thin fence dividing the Axis and Allied POWs. There were day passes and stern warnings against running away. It sounds like Dad's Army but I'd say you'll find it interesting, if not funny 😄 Stay safe lads anyways!
Saying that Sweden was founded in 1523 because it left the personal union with Denmark and Norway is just silly, if it's the case then Denmark did not exist until 1814 when Denmark-Norway split.
Every 6 of June Sweden celebrates National Day of Sweden which commemorates exactly that: the election of King Gustav I after the Swedish War of Secession, thus marking the foundation of modern Sweden.
@@BigNews2021 No the Nation of Sweden was formed in the 1800s like all other nations states as the idea of nationhood we use today was formed back then, who is arguing nonsense now? Sweden as a country existed before 1523 and it sure as hell did not gain it's indipendence back then as we clearly know witout a dout it's history before that. Read some history before talking bullshit next time
In small villages in austria, (the remote parts) they also practice payment in kind.. even up until the mid 50's, my grandmother always told me about this. She is from Lungau near Salzburg. In 1972 they build a tunnel to create easier acces to the region. It is the first time the region kind of got connected to the outside world. There used to be not enough jobs, barely any schools. If you needed a pair of shoes the only thing you could do is work for it. It was normal to start working at a farm when you where 11, 12 years old to earn some food if you were lucky
Why would I be angry over this just because I am a Swede? If anything, I think it's important to highlight just how bad thing used to be. I will admit also that being a part of the movement that try to stop this sort of exploitive practices likely make me more receptive to highlighting this dark past of Sweden's history. And while I have not had to deal with the startar system or other issues of that. Other exploitive practices do come up, and we must keep on fighting.
Indeed, today, the corresponding problems can be found in the Rot & Rut subsidized service sectors as well as the transportation, construction and disability service sectors that was deregulated and privatized by the right wing block even before the main nazi party successfully duped large parts of the people with newspeak and maskirovka...
@@SonsOfLorgar Not to mention how there was an effort not long ago to sidestep collective barning agreements by importing labour from the EU or the use of staffing companies to similar sidestep protections. This may not be on the same level of chattel slavery. But push it far enough and it might very well become. Therefore, one always need to be on the guard. To discuss what we find acceptable or not.
@@SonsOfLorgar not just that, but any type of slavery kinda destroys capitalistic systems. When people are forced to work and not compensated it can devastate an entire market from the ground up. technically no upward mobility. forcing people into object poverty with no way to make a living of their own free will destabilizes economies on mass.
@@poli_zgaming3616 that's not a bug, that's an intentional feature. Capitalism will always trend into feudalism and kleptocracy as the drive for ever increasing profits in a resource limited reality will always create artificial shortages and systemic enslavement of workers.
@@SonsOfLorgar and communism is a big monopoly over everything but only within same party structure. And thus you need policies to counter act the cons but you also can't dictate and force people what they can and or cannot do. You also don't seem to understand supply routs and other things that need to get specifics stuff you like and want to your table and store. No entity will fill your stores without a price. I mean we could conquer and take stuff to satisfy your wants and desires or we can do trade with money and prices based on a formal contract.
Some people have argued that the UK only outlawed Slavery in 1997 but technically that it only because a number of laws were consolidated with also modern laws on new forms of exploitation.
I pursue an education in History at Katedralskolan in Lund (Sweden) and when we went over this topic in class our teachers were werry clear in NOT defining this system as "Slavery" so i can say that there deffinitley is some institutionalized bias regarding this in Sweden. Since both of you have strong ties to Sweden i wonder if you also have noticed this in the broader Swedish History comunnity. Anyway i hope indy (or annyone else) doesn't get stuck/was stuck again and i wish you all the best in the new year!
I always knew my great-grandfather had to buy my great-grandmother in order to marry her and bring her to the United States. She said she was a slave. As hard as life was on a farm in Utah it was preferable to a slave in Sweden. I always wanted to understand how slavery in Sweden worked, but I couldn't find anything on it. Thank you. I'm sharing this with the rest of my family.
@@TimeGhost Caroline never learned to speak English so information is sparse. My mother remembers shucking peas with her and leaning her head on grandma's arm, but not being able to talk with her. This is from an exert from a book about Caroline and Andrew Anderson. Born June 26, 1856. Her father died when she was 15 years old. She was hired out to a bondar or landlord. … It was difficult to get up at 4:00 AM and she worked until late at night. … milking cows, cutting grass and grain with a scythe, threshing grain with a flair, herding goats and also milking them, cleaning fish, a job she detested. … Her cheeks burned as she thought of the times she would have to go out and beg for something to eat. As she went to one house they put her in a corner and laughed and made fun of her. But she would take anything they would give her in way of clothes and food. … She would rather clean fish than go out and beg. Apparently, they met at school. He had to pay the landlord before he could marry her. We don’t know how much. Andrew choose to immigrate to the United States as a Mormon convert where he became a successful farmer. Carolina did not convert for 14 years. There is more in this book that you might be interested in from a historical perspective. It is mostly family history
@@wkartchner I suggest you send a letter/email to 'The Townsends' channel to see if they would be interested in using parts of that book in their living history episodes. Though they primarily focus on the 18th century colonies, they do also do episodes on later settings.
Great episode. Maybe an episode on the Arab slave trade who traded in African slaves a 1000 years before Europeans and slavery was not abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1962.
Sweden has a fate worse than slavery now... working at Ikea!!! I've actually never talked to someone who works at Ikea in Sweden so tell me if it's actually a pretty nice job contrary to my expectations it's a dead end retail job.
Awaiting resumption of Pandemic History series. I personally believe that is your most important series considering Vaccine Hesitancy, protests against renewed lockdowns, and the threat of Omicron. That series showed how ignorance can be as destructive as hate like WWII series demonstrates for the latter.
Interesting that Modern history never mentions that Britain fought both Sweden and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth amongst many others during Britains Wars against Slavery.
Nonsense. Erik was a (a) ruler of parts of what is today Sweden who has been attributed “King of Sweden” as part of mythological national historiography. We know very little about him, but we know that he existed. The territory he ruled is disputed. It was at least Uppland and parts of Götaland, maybe all of Öster- and Västergötland. By some sources he briefly held the throne in Denmark. In essence we have no clarity whatsoever. In any case, Sweden didn’t exist even as a concept at the time and it’s ahistorical to call him King of Sweden. You could possibly get away with saying that he was a king _in_ Sweden, but even that is pretty much BS.
@@spartacus-olsson That would be kinda like calling a Sumerian king from 3000 bc an early king of Iraq because his kingdom/empire lay in what's now Iraq Right?
@@spartacus-olsson Nonsense. The Vita Anskarii says there is a kingdom of Sweden in the 800s. And sure, Erik Segersäll did not found sweden, but going so far as to saying there was no such concept, meeeh. Nah. And no, it was clearly not founded in 1523. If we go by such a definition, then Denmark must have been founded also after the union was broken up. And the US can hardly be said to have been created before at least the civil war, seeing as it actually broke up?
@@Akillesursinne just because things have similar names does not make them the same. Let your national emotions overflow with pride that 1523 makes you one of the oldest continuous territorially defined political entities in the world. No need to venture into fairytale land and embellish it even more.
You should do s video on Goteborg ,Sweden a city and a seaport on the west coast of Sweden connected to Stockholm by a canal. This was where my father's family came from before my great-grandfather and his brother came to America in 1880 to settle in Cleveland, Ohio.
Slavery is an enormous part of human history. While much of the public knowledge surrounding slavery might relate to Rome or the Americas, it's prevalence is sadly far more wide spread than that. What are some other places, such as Sweden, which have a lesser discussed history of slavery?
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Didn't they continue with eugenics into the 1950s
On YT Thomas Sowell addresses slavery in depth. Look into Saudi Arabia's on going history of enslaving people to this day.
Theories on the etymology of the world "slave" vary, but a popular one is that it's derived from the word "Slav". Y'know, Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, etc.? It's believed that Slavs were sold across the Black Sea by Moors, and that's where we got the name...
Also, while the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution declared all forms of slavery (including serfdom, which was still present at the time in places like Russian Alaska) unconstitutional, there's one exception to this: prisoners. Technically speaking, slavery is still very much legal in America, but only in our prisons...
Native Americans, including far-north Inuit and others.
@@fb97e4ad "Fun" fact: the Trail of Tears resulted not only in the deaths of:
6,000 Choctaw
4,000 Cherokee
3,500 Chickasaw
3,000 Seminole
200 Ponca
And several Muscogee and Ho-Chunk
...but also their black slaves they took with them. All these tribes owned slaves. You'd think the natives would set their slaves free and they'd fight together against their removal and ethnic cleansing, but nope! Goes to show no one color of man is without immense cruelty...
And that's not even considering the deaths afterwards caused by hostile Pacific Northwest tribes attempting to violently reverse the mass migration into their territory!
My grandfather was a statare as a kid and young man. I am born in 1995, he died two years earlier at the age of 85. How I would have loved to talk to him about it. But my mother and her much older siblings have told me plenty. I appreciate this short, thanks guys!
Min mormor med
Born same year as me, I had my birthday yesterday aswell.
We thank you!
You guys have entirely too much fun. I love it. Keep it coming.
Clay thank you, we're alwaysd glad to hear our audience has fun with us. Thanks for your support and please stay tuned for more!
Similar to sharecropping, a system common in rural areas of the United States until the 1940s. It ended only when large farm machinery made it more profitable for the landowners to get rid of the sharecroppers and work the land themselves with the expensive machines.
Also, the payment-in-kind and loans on credit system discussed in the video are similiar to a practice in the US of companies paying their employees in company scrip that was redeemable only in company-owned stores in the company-owned town which sold at deliberately inflated prices, perpetuating a cycle of debt bondage like in Sweden. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 broke this practice by outlawing payment in company scrip.
@@jliller You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
That much is true.
@@jliller A very famous policy of the United Fruit Company in Central America.
@@jliller
I'm reading a biography, called "The Lost Soldier", of a family's grandfather who was a US soldier, killed in WW2. He lived in a company textile mill town, lived in a company shack with his family and got only a grammar school education as company towns were not required to offer high school and if he had gone to HS in another town, his parents would have had to pay for it. He was drafted at age 33 and his he was underweight and his teeth so poor, he had to have all of the removed and placed with dentures. He and his wife grew up like this and had no idea how they were being ripped off. They were just happy to have a job during the Great Depression in the South.
Always love the appreciation and down right enthusiasm that Indy, Sparty and the rest of the crew have for history. Makes these videos in particular where they can "nerd out" so absolutely lovely to watch.
Keep up the amazing work!
Thank you!
As a Swede; I wholly appreciate this episode.
Sanningen är att Statare var slavar tråkigt men så var det!
Thank you so much, you are too kind!
@@morganlang6973 statare var inte slavar på samma sätt som trälar var under vikingatiden, deras tillstånd liknade mer livegna bönder i Ryssland, statarna hade inte många rättigheter och de ägde inte marken de arbetade och brukade
Hej David ! Helt rätt ! Enda skillnaden var att Statare inte hadde fysiska Kedjor 😊
I love those history shorts, this is so different from the WWII series - a very welcome difference.
Excelsior!
LOL his Swedish, "kommentärerna"
In America we called this Sharecropping. And the Company store system in Factory towns.
I remember how the DnD podcast DiceFunk used this in their 4th Season, Valentine. "You don't get gold after this quest, you get Company Scrip."
Sharecropper is equivalent of a Torpare. They were one step up from a Statare
Intressant ämne 🙂.
Please continue with your great work TimeGhost History.
Greetings from Sweden 🇸🇪
Never knew this. Thanks for highlighting this Indy and Sparty! :)
I feel like there was an important omission here, the Swedish colony of St. Barthélemy on the Caribbean, where chattel slavery was practiced until the late 1840s. Swedish investors were big players in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade for decades, with figures such as king Gustav III raking in huge profits from the slave trade that passed via St. Barthélemy.
The idea that Sweden abolished slavery for good in the middle ages is just patently false and relies on self-induced amnesia about nastier aspects of the nation's past.
The real slavery off Sweden the one you mention.
From my understanding it was abolished in the main land in the 14th century but continued during the colonial era due to it being hard for the government to enforce the law overseas.
Read some anekdot about Gustav III (or IV) being sad that slavery existed in the colonies
@@TheSimon253 Sadly it wasn't just because it was difficult to enforce. St. Barthélemy was a small, barren island and the only way the Swedes could make a profit off the island was to provide a free port for slave ships. Slavery in the colonies was also completely legal and it's abolition was only passed in the Riksdag after a very heated debate, where many, for instance amongst the peasantry, opposed it bitterly on account of it being expensive (the Swedes went with the British model where the slave owners had to be monetarily compensated for loss of property).
I haven't heard the anecdote about Gustav III, but he may have said something like that to placate abolitionists at home. However, sincew he was a major investor in the Swedish West India Company, which primarily traded in slaves, he was also one of the biggest slave traders in Swedish history.
@@Oxtocoatl13 Sounds like that might be the case. I sadly can't remember were I read that about the king. It might have been Gustav IV as well. Its not my part of history.
It does hurt my Swedish heart that we had slavery in our colonies. But history doesn't care about my feelings.
@@TheSimon253 If it makes you feel any better the Danes were far worse with more islands and many more slaves. I'm Finnish so this part of Swedish history is my history too. But honestly I think we should focus our efforts on understanding that the global economy revolved around the slave trade for centuries and that no one benefiting from international trade is completely non-complicit. Swedish tar and timber were used on slave ships, and Swedish copper was directly traded for people in chains in West Africa. Similarly every ounce of sugar that anyone anywhere on earth put into their coffee or tea was made with slave labor. Much like our modern economies depend on exploiting dirt cheap labor in poorer countries.
It should be less about finding guilty individuals and more about recognizing global systems that make some groups of people prosperous and comfortable while depending on cruelty and violence towards others.
The UK only officially made owning a slave illegal on April 6th 2010. It was illegal to buy or sell a slave, but not the owning of a slave.
The good nature of your friendly and educated fun stands as a shining beacon of light in the darkness of the topics you so often cover. Thank you for always providing this alluring mix of fun and true histories that need to be shared.
Thank you for your kind words! We are really glad to see our content is so appreciated!
I wonder what effect that system had on immigration because my state (Minnesota) has a crazy amount of Swedes. As a person of Norwegian heritage I gotta say Boo Sweden boo Sweden boo
Yeah, it was just as bad as your indentured servant system that's still in effect in the US as a for profit prisons variant.
Something like a quarter of the Swedish population emigrated to the US in the 1800's and early 1900's, in part because of stuff like this.
Sweden was very, very poor towards the end of the 19th century, and there were a couple of harsh summers where there were not much/no farming season with much starvation (1867-1868?) which forced people to move from frozen ground...
@@KitagumaIgen
Did Sweden face the same issue as other European nations where the eldest son inherited everything and the siblings got nothing?
Boo scandinavia lmao.
Part of Swedens proud history. Well presented. I'm Swedish and not mad at all. We do have have quite some dirty laundry in our historical closets. We need to be reminded of that. Vår självgodhet mår bra av det.
As a someone from Finland I do feel it would be very rude for Swedes to forget their history. 600 years of occupation, forced conversion and considered as a "lesser race" with "lesser" language... Yeah, there's some dirty laundry in there. One thing the swedes did accept us for was our young men as soldiers and the tax revenue.
Don't forget collaborating with Nazi Germany in WW2 while pretending to be neutral.
What is the translation of your Swedish please? I’m nosy,ha ha. Have a good one!
@@wolfeinhorn4661 The best I can do is: "It's good for our complacency (to be reminded)."
Hope that helps. Have a good one you too.
Sweden was a seperate kingdom well before 1523. You could argue that the modern kingdom of Sweden has its origin with independence from the Kalmar union, but claiming that that was the earliest form of Sweden as a country is inaccurate
Indy speaking Swedish in the introduction just made my day 😂😂
Love the dual episodes, keep em coming
Thank you for watching! Lots more to come!
Does anyone know where they covered the Italian invasion of Monaco 1942? I can't find it in the regular episode. ☹️
Saint-Barthélemy which used to be a swedish coloni in the caribian used to be a hub for slave ships to stop by it was bought from the French by Gustav III in 1784 but got sold back to France in 1878. There are places on the Island that still have Swedish name, like the residental capital of Gustavia.
I really like the more relaxed feel this videos have Y'all are always great at not being "stuffy" or boring but seeing you tow being buds is just so cute
You should've mentioned that the political shift in the late 18- early 1900 came from the worker movment and the founding of the first modern political party in Sweden, as opposed to from within the ruling classes.
Hearing indie getting better and better at speaking Swedish is actually really fun
You ain't seen nothing yet!
You guys crack me up. Thanks, I needed that.
I like how Swedish is such a small language that I could instantly tell Spartacus was Swedish by how he said jajamensan
Gotta love Indy and Spartacus when they get together, the chemistry is awesome!
@Syd Viscus Thanks for watching and I love your name 😂
@@TimeGhost hahaha I seem to get that a lot xD I will be watching everything you put out, the army has another patreon sub coming soon! :)
@Syd THANK YOU and welcome aboard! Y'all in the TimeGhost Army are seriously the best audience on UA-cam
Hi Indy and sparty
Very interesting episode.
Also your humor is great to watch..
Waiting for more..
Thanks..
Glad you enjoyed it!
This is great stuff!!
EXCELSIOR!!
Haha.. Kul Sparty!
Litet uppfriskande och faktiskt en smula lärorikt.
Finns absolut ingen anledning för en Svensk att bli upprörd över detta.
Ju mer man grottar i Sveriges historia desto mer inser man att det kanske inte finns så stor anledning att som Svensk känna sig särskilt präktig.
Era UA-camavsnitt är alltid välkomna.
Du och Indy är bäst! Ge indy en klapp på axeln från mig!
Man tackar och bugar.
Lovely stuff and keep 'em coming!
Thank you Yorick! Stay tuned, there is much more to come!
In early 1900s France, in my grandfather village in Champagne, the shepherds only income was that they were allowed to let the unique cow they owned graze in the farmer's field together with the farmer's cattle they were in charge to care. The farmers gave them food and shelter in the barn in exchange of their cow's milk. No money involved at all.
Very interesting, thank you for sharing.
Even in 1926, my grandmother said that they were starving in southern Sweden. That's why she moved to the US(which was booming at the time). The system sounds the same as US factory and mine workers endured up until WWII. You guys are very good together. Good Luck, Rick
NIce episode. In tracking my Swedish ancestors, it is a big hassle to follow them in the records from farm to farm and church parish to parish each year or so. Nice to hear this context. Not only was a large portion of the population serfs, but the government controlled the church and appointed church ministers as civil servants! I'm very happy my great grandparents moved to America. The book "The World of Cajsa Andersdotter" by Bengt Hallgren gives a lot of the historical context.
What are some of the things that it says?
I'm a Swede living in Sweden. I'm glad my ancestors stayed.
As for serfs, you are using the term wrong since statare simply were not serfs. And, aside from that, the statare-institution was partly created to keep people from the brink of starvation. I don't know why these guys are portraying this issue in such a simplistic matter when it was not. Would it have been better if people died?
Im a swede and today america is nothing but dirt in comparison to sweden.
@@arvidgreat swedistan my brother 👳🏾♂️
@@GlizzyGoblin757 swedistan - land of the swedes. The english word "Sweden" already means land of the swedes..
The Swedish side of my family came to Indiana in 1863, I'll have to ask my parents if it was because of this. One funny thing I remember hearing was that on the boat they decided to change their name from Johanson to Chellberg, since they heard "Johnson" was a really common name in America. Now their farmhouse is a part of The Dunes National Park.
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing about your family.
Kjällberg
wich means you have some viking blood in you wich means we vikings bros !
@@MittiMaten You're right! That's how they would have spelled it, but like many immigrants they anglicized it over time to assimilate better.
@@freyjulundr Yep! We did the DNA tests and they showed we had more Swedish/Norwegian than we thought (about 33% for us kids). We know they left on a boat from Göteborg, but beyond that it's been hard tracking down our hometown.
We had this in the Jim Crow South in the U.S.. It was called sharecropping and company towns.
Ok, I'll concede this. I used to think that Sweden abolished slavery in the 14th century but... yeah. You have a point.
"... in our condensed debunking of the Vikings". Gotta love that writing.
It is a true delight to be able to enjoy the work of this team and all the channels you are apart of! This is a happy swede giving you all the greatest of ovations!
Thank you! We are glad to hear that.
I'm not sure you can equivalance any form of debt bondage to slavery. Slavery takes the premise that a man or woman is no different to live stock. Even in debt bondage you are not property, your offspring don't automatically become property of your "owner" etc.
Slavery is not always chattel slavery.
Normally serfs are not counted as slaves, although their situation was often deplorable. Since there are no clear rules for what counts as slavery, it is very difficult to determine when slavery was abolished by law. Or how many slaves there are today. Those who have power and opportunity are constantly finding new ways to enslave people, even if it happens in secret or is hidden in the legislation under other names.
But clearly the term slavery was used in this video to get attention. With their criteria for slavery, it still exists. Companies have a legal right to defraud people of debts with conditions that can not be met. After which you are stuck in debt and the state helps to collect the debts and makes sure that you can not avoid them. In addition, it is common for companies to buy and sell such debts to each other.
0:14 Jokes aside, slavery in Russia was abolished in the 1860s, and the USSR specifically had articles on their constitution prohibiting slavery. They were *ssholes on many things (purges, not abolishing several restrictions established in the Imperial era, deportations and so on), but didn't have slavery.
In Spain it was abolished in 1870 with the "Glorious" revolution of 1868 that sent Isabella II into exile and led Spain onto five years of complete chaos. The 1870 constitution banned slavery in Spain, and the ban has been kept in the Spanish laws ever since. Even when we had a fascist dictatorship under Francisco Franco (who was another *sshole), he didn't reinstitute it.
That depends on your definition. The Romans had labour in mines, rather dangerous labour, normally by those convicted of crimes, and historians normally refer to them as slaves. The Soviets, especially before Khrushchev´s rise to power, had gulags with dangerous forced labour, even if technically you had to be convicted of a crime to be sent there, and lots of people do consider that a kind of slavery.
Perhaps there is use in distinguishing whether the government in general is the beneficiary of the labour or if normally private individuals apart from the state benefit primarily from the labour, which can be useful to some degree in even explaining some decisions in history like when some slave owners wanted to manumit a slave, perhaps it would free them from economic losses associated with slavery like if a slave was getting old and unproductive but the owner had debts, but a government rule prevented it for fear of a mass slave revolt. I guess in a system based on Stalin´s communist ideals, slaves would be owned by the people just like everything else not by an aristocracy.
@@robertjarman3703 but that implies that the American government enjoys benefits of slave labour 😱
Also, didn't Tsarist Russia have serfdom in the start of the 20th century?
@@michielwerring5846 Ended in 1860, after the Crimean War. Although not that Russia became a democracy at that point.
@@robertjarman3703 Throughout the first few thousand years of its existence, mining was exclusively slaves' job. No free man would have voluntarily ventured down those shafts for all the jewels in the world, it was a death sentence, at best a year or two of stay. The reason why civilization advanced was, paradoxically, because some people were given no choice but to go down there and dig.
@@michielwerring5846 The 13th amendment specifically has an exception permitting forced labor as a punishment for a crime.
"Also, didn't Tsarist Russia have serfdom in the start of the 20th century?"
No, the serfs in Russia were emancipated in 1861 (and those living on state land in 1866).
So the slavery effectively ended in Sweden in late XIX century. Meanwhile in southern Poland a form of slavery (serfdom) was still a thing up until 1931. It was called żelarka, and it started in regions of Poland controlled by Austria after abolishing of serfdom in 1848. Many peasants had not enough land to live from so they had to "sell themselves" to get access to land owned by landlords (few rich noble families, and Polish Catholic Church).
Polish serfdom and the general attitude of the elites towards the common folk is a topic that's just almost never discussed in Poland and everyone acts as if they hailed from the nobility, even if when I was growing up in the '90s pretty much all of my classmates (and myself of course) seemed to have a grandma somewhere in the countryside. If the topic of past antisemitism had to be addressed for no other reason than US pressure, then seemingly nobody else has any interest in the fate of the peasantry in what tended to be described as "peasant hell". It's only as I did my own research did I fully understand the scale of the contempt and malpractice that was performed by the nobility. The 1846 Galicia massacre is always dismissed as Austrian-orchestrated provocation, in history textbooks (and now our education system has turned so crazily nationalistic, I'd be scared to check what the current books have to say on the topic) completely bypassing the very tangible reason why the land owners were so detested. The seeds for the Volhynia massacre were laid this way, too.
@@yarpen26 The real shame is there were no proper compensations for serfdom and the gentry kept its influence throughout interwar period. Organisation of Landlords Union ("Związek Ziemian") was dissolved not as a natural turn of events in a democratic society, but by Soviet Union after WW2. It came together with nationalisation of the land which turned all these rich f**ks into victims. A tourist town Szczawnica over 100 years ago was owned by Adam Stadnicki. It remained a tourist attraction after the war with many of the hotels and spa being a state property. In 2005 Supreme Administrative Court gave it all back to heirs of Stadnicki. Many descendants of peasants working for Count Stadnicki immediately lost their job only to later get an opportunity to work for his heirs on worse conditions and usually even without permanent employment contract. In case of Szczawnica neoliberal "heaven" which was Poland of the 90-ties turned into some deranged form of neofeudalism.
Fascinating history! Thank you both for sharing.
Ha, a good continuation for a brief comment in a video I found bizarre on here or ww2 about swedish slavery - I'm glad you guys cleared up what you meant by it! Keep up the good work! :)
Sweden was not founded in 1523. It finally broke away from the Kalmar Union in 1523, but the Kingdom of Sweden was founded before the Kalmar Union, and remained a clearly defined entity throughout the entire union period.
Thanks Lads! Crucial work is being done here, and done well.
nice to see Spartacus having a bit of fun .
I can't wait for the two of you to host a series on the Cold War!
That's a great idea. In the meantime I think I'll watch the Cuban Missile Crises videos again. Cheers!
Hopefully that one won't be day by day, week by week (approx. 40 years!)...
And once they're done with that, they can cover the War on Terror (another longrunner), and if they catch up before it comes to an official end, they'll be able to cover it as it's ongoing!
Yay...
You taught me something new
Well researched but there is one error: The statare system meant payment _mainly_ in kind, not wholly. They did get some money as well, though certainly not much. Maybe this differed from one place to another.
I was told years ago that the Swedish government decided that there were too many Bergs and renamed a bunch of them Larson (or Larsen) (or maybe it was the other way around). This made it easier when handling mandatory military conscription. Have you guys ever heard of this? Google is unhelpful.
My grandfather left Sweden at the end of the 19th century, citing poverty and dislike of state religion (I never got to talk to him about this, he died when I was 2).
The podcast Radiolab did a stunning episode about a far-northern Swedish town and what its church records uncovered about the famine cycle and its effect on life expectancy (You Are What Your Grandpa Eats").
More likely the Larsson (Svensson, Johansson, Eriksson and Karlsson too) to something-berg etc, as the tradition was father's name+s+son, however haven't checked that one. What was common too was soldiers getting names like Trogen, Tapper and Modig (Faithful/trusty, Valiant, Brave) and what not supposedly based off of merit...
I don't know about Berg, but I know that plenty of names like Svensk, Svärd, Granath, etc. were given to people because there were to many Karlssons, Larssons, and so on.
My great great grandfather, many generations removed, his sons, grandsons, and so on, just switched names between the generations; i.e. Mats Larsson's son became Lars Matsson, and his son became Mats Larsson again.
The Swedish surnames that doesn't end in -son/-sson are often indicative of nobility or soldier or industrial worker ancestry. The latter because it was unwieldy for officers and factory managers of the 16th to 19th century to have half a dozen Sven Karlsson or Per-Anders Jönsson in the same line company or production line so they simply renamed their personell to something related to their physical or psychological traits or their work.
@@KitagumaIgen Yes, that's what I heard too. Back in the day, surnames like Svensson literally meant "Sven's son". So people would know that you are Sven's kid. But this only makes sense if you live in the same place for generations, so that people around you know who this Sven guy is. Today those names live on as normal surnames, but they are static, they don't change with each generation. But on Iceland, they still use this older system, where Hjalmar Gudmundsson's kids get the surname Hjalmarsson, or Hjalmarsdottir if it's a girl (dottir meaning daughter). Not Gudmundsson.
@@Niinsa62 to be fair Iceland is rather underpopulated. It has less people than many midsize cities.
Fun fact: My ancestor was a king of Sweden in 1400's. Carl VIII Knutsson Bonde.
Your Majesty 🇸🇪
Looking outside Europe : the last country to abolish slavery is Mauritania(1981), it was criminalized in 2007.
*Looks at Qatar*
@@martijn9568 Qatar is technically free labour, if by free you mean people who sign dubious contracts in languages they don´t understand, were of low class to begin with in their native countries, have minimal working protections like decent OSHA inspectors and workplace safety, minimal pay that is often withheld, have charges against what pay they have, and have their passports held by employers.
Almost all of the Muslim world banned slavery solely under crushing Western pressure. I think only Turks genuinely wanted to Europeanize themselves, whereas all the rest continue to see no flaw at all in bondage. Slavery continues to be practiced de facto throughout the whole region. I don't believe there has ever been a single imam who decried slavery as barbarous. That's a concept totally alien to Islam.
Riktigt roligt! Älskar WW2 serien också. Tycker ni får göra serien på svenska också ;)
As a swede I love this episode and format!
And to ad some more history Sweden was involved in the cross-antlantic slavetrade and did have some slaves both abroad and in sweden itself. Slavery was then successivly abolished untill the last slaves where freed by purchase (friköptes in swedish in case I translate it wrong) in 1847
I'm curious as to why your landowners relied on debt slavery then. For instance, colonial America made up for their labor shortage by importing African slaves. Why didn't wealthy Swedish landowners do the same thing?
@@michaelvanderwal7390 cheaper for the smallscale landowners. Few landareas in sweden are suitible for largescale farming of cashcrops before industry came along. Too much of sweden consists of rocky terrain crushed to sand during the ice age, makes for good pineforest but poor farming.
But to the import of slavery it was simply cheaper to relly on a workforce already here that you dont have to feed or care for even when its not producing. Plus the landowners who did use the torparsystem were not near as rich as the southern cotton farmers so the thought dis not occur to them.
My great grandfather owned 320 acres (~120 hectares) in Jönköping county. which had been in the family for hundreds of years. He owed labor to a local lord and worked for the manor as a carpenter 1 day a week, while himself working his own land . Upon his brother moving to The USA (Boone Iowa) sent back information that land was far cheaper in the USA and farm prices were significantly higher. As each of his sons reached 17 he sent them to the USA to avoid the Swedish army (which he also hated when he was in it). He sold his land and emigrated in 1903. He bought 3 farms of the same size he had in Sweden. He not only paid cash for each of the farms ( two of which went to his sons) buy also built a local church, because the Lutheran church in Boone was inconveniently far away.
I remember a few small torpar houses a few km away. They are quite small as i said and they are really cool with moss stuffed between the beams and planks. They have a big oven and a loft above to make the most of the space.
I study swedish history and I feel there's some intellectual dishonesty in how these issues are being portrayed. The founding of Sweden is not even as a simple a question as you mention it to be. Vita Anskarii mentions a swedish kingdom in the 800s, and Tacitus mentions the same region having kings during the roman era. And "frihetsvisan" from the middle ages makes it pretty dead obvious that a larger area than the area around Mälaren was considered very much swedish, with swedes in it. Now true, the modern state might be founded then (1521-1523), but by that measure, modern France is a creation post ww2, and the US post civil war, is it not? A national image was already pretty clearly imprinted, and the people itself was already around.
As for statareverket. No, it was not slavery, and no, it was not serfdom. You can downplay the fact that Sweden was a poor country on the verge of starvation at pretty much all times as much as you like, but (many of my ancestors being statare themselves) for some it was that or starvation. Now, statare might in some cases live close to the situation of serfs due to their social situation, but if you are that open about the definition of serfs (for example, statare were not prohibited from owning things, nor were they in any way stricken from being a fully fledged human being in the sense of the law (as compared to, for example, Jim Crow-laws)) then how is one to say that poor people in the UK, France, Sweden, or the US today who are in a situation of close to bondage due to financial difficulties or are tied down to a place or situation due to social issues are not, by the loose definition, then serfs?
And if you take such liberties in using terms as you see fit, then clearly many countries today with troubles of payment traps should fall into the category of serfdom as you describe it, no? So, using terms soft and loose kind of makes them mean nothing in the end. In the end you are talking about a system which, although clearly unfair, clearly drawing close to serfdom, which existed in part to counter people just.. Dying.
The two of you are my favorite stand-up philosophical duo. Even though you were both sitting. Love, Gents.
A search of the internet finds Mauritania was the world’s last country to abolish slavery in 2007.
That's slightly inaccurate. They officially abolished slavery in 1981. In 2007 enslaving people was made a criminal offence.
I heard a story about a young woman from a bankcrupt family in Thailand who was bonded (with a genuine contract) to a wealthy guy to pay her mother's debt (which was an usual custom in the ancient Siam). She was working in the rich guy's company office for free and got luxury clothes, but she could not go anywhere without the guy consent. The real aim of the guy was to convince her that she should marry him to erase her mom's debt. This was in the 1990s.
Love you lads. Please keep on raining down knowledge over my head.
Stay tuned for much more!
after the traditional form of slavery was abolished, new forms of it can still appear.
A law abolishing slavery in Britten was passed in 1968. Two hundred years since banning it everywhere else.
Good Stuff!
As someone from Sweden I appreciate this episode. I also love your enthusiasm. Keep up the great work.
🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪 Thank you @Karl!
It is wrong to say that Sweden didn't exist until 1523, the correct statement is that Sweden has been independent since 1523,
For a little more than 100 years at the time, they had been a separate kingdom within the Kalmar union, and before that, independent since around 1000 AD
It would be like saying France didn't exist until 1944 because they were occupied by Nazi Germany
With all those War Against Humanity episodes, it is really nice to watch something where Sparty smiles and laughs.
Yeah, Sparty smiling and laughing is always nice, but we need to remember those crimes.
50% Swede and you enlightened me about why more than likely my both my dad's father and his grandfather on his mother's side came here, as teens to early 20's. I will be 53 this year and my dad kept the whole corporal punishment alive and well, I have some stories. What would be considered just discipline back in the 70's would have gotten him years in prison without a doubt these days.
That's the problem with corporal punishment when used against kids: most of the time, it is used as a vent for the parent's own frustration. I remember one time when my father found out I messed something up (didn't brush my teeth before bed or something, I don't know)-at that moment, I could swear he was almost happy to know he was just about to beat my ass senseless. I'm sure it made him feel powerful. Part of me is happy I don't have kids of my own so I don't need to worry about recreating that behavior.
There was also the intercontinental slave trade, but at least that ended earlier. (Even if we had to be convinced by English abolitionists.)
The Swedes did have for a time African slaves in their island colonies of Guadeloupe and St-Bartholomew.
Wow! Swedish Indy is pretty cool too. Love the range darlings.
Thanks for the mighty video lads, no language sounds better to my ears than Swedish. Love the matching waistcoats as well.
I'd say you'd have a lot of fun looking into the Irish situation during WW2; especially our POW situation. There was only one POW Camp in Kildare, with one thin fence dividing the Axis and Allied POWs. There were day passes and stern warnings against running away. It sounds like Dad's Army but I'd say you'll find it interesting, if not funny 😄 Stay safe lads anyways!
Thanks for the background info, that's very interesting. Stay tuned for more!
Saying that Sweden was founded in 1523 because it left the personal union with Denmark and Norway is just silly, if it's the case then Denmark did not exist until 1814 when Denmark-Norway split.
Every 6 of June Sweden celebrates National Day of Sweden which commemorates exactly that: the election of King Gustav I after the Swedish War of Secession, thus marking the foundation of modern Sweden.
@@bolle9810 The modern nation of Sweden was founded in 1523. And that's that. You are arguing nonsense.
@@BigNews2021 No the Nation of Sweden was formed in the 1800s like all other nations states as the idea of nationhood we use today was formed back then, who is arguing nonsense now? Sweden as a country existed before 1523 and it sure as hell did not gain it's indipendence back then as we clearly know witout a dout it's history before that. Read some history before talking bullshit next time
@@BigNews2021 Define modern, what was the difference between Sweden before joining the Kalmar Union and after?
As a Kaiserreich player I knew that before, because I came across this focus tree
In small villages in austria, (the remote parts) they also practice payment in kind.. even up until the mid 50's, my grandmother always told me about this. She is from Lungau near Salzburg. In 1972 they build a tunnel to create easier acces to the region. It is the first time the region kind of got connected to the outside world. There used to be not enough jobs, barely any schools. If you needed a pair of shoes the only thing you could do is work for it. It was normal to start working at a farm when you where 11, 12 years old to earn some food if you were lucky
Why would I be angry over this just because I am a Swede? If anything, I think it's important to highlight just how bad thing used to be. I will admit also that being a part of the movement that try to stop this sort of exploitive practices likely make me more receptive to highlighting this dark past of Sweden's history. And while I have not had to deal with the startar system or other issues of that. Other exploitive practices do come up, and we must keep on fighting.
Indeed, today, the corresponding problems can be found in the Rot & Rut subsidized service sectors as well as the transportation, construction and disability service sectors that was deregulated and privatized by the right wing block even before the main nazi party successfully duped large parts of the people with newspeak and maskirovka...
@@SonsOfLorgar Not to mention how there was an effort not long ago to sidestep collective barning agreements by importing labour from the EU or the use of
staffing companies to similar sidestep protections.
This may not be on the same level of chattel slavery. But push it far enough and it might very well become. Therefore, one always need to be on the guard. To discuss what we find acceptable or not.
@@SonsOfLorgar not just that, but any type of slavery kinda destroys capitalistic systems. When people are forced to work and not compensated it can devastate an entire market from the ground up. technically no upward mobility. forcing people into object poverty with no way to make a living of their own free will destabilizes economies on mass.
@@poli_zgaming3616 that's not a bug, that's an intentional feature.
Capitalism will always trend into feudalism and kleptocracy as the drive for ever increasing profits in a resource limited reality will always create artificial shortages and systemic enslavement of workers.
@@SonsOfLorgar and communism is a big monopoly over everything but only within same party structure. And thus you need policies to counter act the cons but you also can't dictate and force people what they can and or cannot do. You also don't seem to understand supply routs and other things that need to get specifics stuff you like and want to your table and store. No entity will fill your stores without a price. I mean we could conquer and take stuff to satisfy your wants and desires or we can do trade with money and prices based on a formal contract.
Some people have argued that the UK only outlawed Slavery in 1997 but technically that it only because a number of laws were consolidated with also modern laws on new forms of exploitation.
Stellar as always, friends! Do you have any good book recommendations on statare? Cheers from a fellow swede!
I pursue an education in History at Katedralskolan in Lund (Sweden) and when we went over this topic in class our teachers were werry clear in NOT defining this system as "Slavery" so i can say that there deffinitley is some institutionalized bias regarding this in Sweden. Since both of you have strong ties to Sweden i wonder if you also have noticed this in the broader Swedish History comunnity. Anyway i hope indy (or annyone else) doesn't get stuck/was stuck again and i wish you all the best in the new year!
I love this channel.
We love you
Seeing Olsson laugh was quite surprising, considering I never saw him out of the War Against Humanity episodes... quite unsettling😅
I always knew my great-grandfather had to buy my great-grandmother in order to marry her and bring her to the United States. She said she was a slave. As hard as life was on a farm in Utah it was preferable to a slave in Sweden.
I always wanted to understand how slavery in Sweden worked, but I couldn't find anything on it. Thank you. I'm sharing this with the rest of my family.
That's really interesting, do you know when that was or how large the payment they had to make was? Glad the video contributed to some family history
@@TimeGhost
Caroline never learned to speak English so information is sparse. My mother remembers shucking peas with her and leaning her head on grandma's arm, but not being able to talk with her. This is from an exert from a book about Caroline and Andrew Anderson.
Born June 26, 1856. Her father died when she was 15 years old. She was hired out to a bondar or landlord. … It was difficult to get up at 4:00 AM and she worked until late at night. … milking cows, cutting grass and grain with a scythe, threshing grain with a flair, herding goats and also milking them, cleaning fish, a job she detested.
… Her cheeks burned as she thought of the times she would have to go out and beg for something to eat. As she went to one house they put her in a corner and laughed and made fun of her. But she would take anything they would give her in way of clothes and food. … She would rather clean fish than go out and beg.
Apparently, they met at school. He had to pay the landlord before he could marry her. We don’t know how much. Andrew choose to immigrate to the United States as a Mormon convert where he became a successful farmer. Carolina did not convert for 14 years.
There is more in this book that you might be interested in from a historical perspective. It is mostly family history
@@wkartchner I suggest you send a letter/email to 'The Townsends' channel to see if they would be interested in using parts of that book in their living history episodes.
Though they primarily focus on the 18th century colonies, they do also do episodes on later settings.
Why didn't you guys talk about Swedish St.Barths where slavery was alive and well
This reminds me that I have a rutabega in the vegetables' drawer in my fridge that still looks just as good as when I got it two months ago.
well it is pretty swedish, abolish slavery early, than falling back on a system that is slavery in all but name.
like its not slavery, but it is.
Great episode. Maybe an episode on the Arab slave trade who traded in African slaves a 1000 years before Europeans and slavery was not abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1962.
Excelsior guys..👌
@Marlon Excelsior!
Sweden has a fate worse than slavery now... working at Ikea!!!
I've actually never talked to someone who works at Ikea in Sweden so tell me if it's actually a pretty nice job contrary to my expectations it's a dead end retail job.
Awaiting resumption of Pandemic History series. I personally believe that is your most important series considering Vaccine Hesitancy, protests against renewed lockdowns, and the threat of Omicron. That series showed how ignorance can be as destructive as hate like WWII series demonstrates for the latter.
Food is good too have! Thank you guys!
Interesting that Modern history never mentions that Britain fought both Sweden and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth amongst many others during Britains Wars against Slavery.
Shhhhhhhh. In 2022 you are not allowed to talk good about former colonial masters.
How else would they get people to stay there
Åh fan, detta blir intressant.
Is between two wars on break and any idea when it will return?
I didint know indy was a swede
Love from Sweden 🇸🇪
Never seen Indy derailed before, and howled at the 2021 remark!
The kingdom of Sweden was founded around 1000 ad by Erik Segersäll. 1523 was the year Sweden broke out of the Kalmar Union.
Nonsense. Erik was a (a) ruler of parts of what is today Sweden who has been attributed “King of Sweden” as part of mythological national historiography. We know very little about him, but we know that he existed. The territory he ruled is disputed. It was at least Uppland and parts of Götaland, maybe all of Öster- and Västergötland. By some sources he briefly held the throne in Denmark. In essence we have no clarity whatsoever. In any case, Sweden didn’t exist even as a concept at the time and it’s ahistorical to call him King of Sweden. You could possibly get away with saying that he was a king _in_ Sweden, but even that is pretty much BS.
@@spartacus-olsson That would be kinda like calling a Sumerian king from 3000 bc an early king of Iraq because his kingdom/empire lay in what's now Iraq Right?
@@martijn9568 exactly
@@spartacus-olsson Nonsense. The Vita Anskarii says there is a kingdom of Sweden in the 800s. And sure, Erik Segersäll did not found sweden, but going so far as to saying there was no such concept, meeeh. Nah.
And no, it was clearly not founded in 1523. If we go by such a definition, then Denmark must have been founded also after the union was broken up. And the US can hardly be said to have been created before at least the civil war, seeing as it actually broke up?
@@Akillesursinne just because things have similar names does not make them the same. Let your national emotions overflow with pride that 1523 makes you one of the oldest continuous territorially defined political entities in the world. No need to venture into fairytale land and embellish it even more.
return of the test pattern!
I still suggest having one of the cast in the indian-head pose since that test card existed at the time
Are the privatised prisons in the US not a form of forced labour and slavery?
Thanks
You should do s video on Goteborg ,Sweden a city and a seaport on the west coast of Sweden connected to Stockholm by a canal. This was where my father's family came from before my great-grandfather and his brother came to America in 1880 to settle in Cleveland, Ohio.