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Iron ore mining in the Norrbotten region of Sweden began in the early years of the twentieth century as a commercially uncertain and even dangerous proposition. But even before it began to generate profits, public debate began over the appropriate role of the state and of private capital (including foreign investors). This included whether iron ore should be exported for profit or retained for future processing in Sweden—even though the technology and infrastructure for such domestic industry did not exist. Tracing the evolution of this debate in the Swedish news media through to the First World War, this paper argues that the revenue generated by exports became more attractive than the promise of future domestic industry because that revenue could underwrite pressing political objectives. Although domestic iron ore processing remained linked to visions of future industrial prosperity, uncertain visions of future prosperity lost appeal as the capacity for export revenues to generate prosperity in the present became more potent.

Syftet med denna text är att problematisera riksdagens roll i svensk politisk historia, ca 1600–1900, och dess bidrag till utvecklingen mot demokrati och allmän rösträtt. För det första stärkte riksdagsrepresentanterna monarkin på riksdagens bekostnad vid flera tillfällen och bytte långsiktigt institutionellt inflytande mot vinster i enskilda sakfrågor. Vid andra tillfällen var de märkbart passiva och oförmögna att förhindra monarkin. Riksdagen utgjorde en tveksam och svag bastion för folkrepresentation och man kan hävda att riksdagen mellan 1611 och 1809 hade en svag ställning gentemot kungen i 94 år, nästan hälften av perioden. Detta förändrades dock mellan 1809 och 1866, trots att det fanns flera likheter i det politiska ramverket, samt politiska förutsättningar för ytterligare ett skifte till en stark monarki och en svag eller upplöst riksdag. Ståndsriksdagens sista 50 år utgör således en nyckelperiod om vi vill förstå varför riksdagen slutligen intog en stark ställning i den svenska politiska kulturen. Denna fråga berör inte bara historiker, utan också människor som är intresserade av hur och varför representativa församlingar blir lika eller mer legitima än auktoritära alternativ. Eftersom vi lever i en period där demokratiska institutioner och värderingar ifrågasätts är det viktigt att förstå hur de kom att omfamnas i första hand.

Waste management has been developing in response to needs. The need to get rid of unwanted materials has always been a motivation but using the resource value of waste has also been a driver from the stone age and forwards. In affluent times not so much. Sanitation became a motivation with the discovery of pathogenic microorganisms in the mid-19th century, and after World War 2 (WW2) a strong focus on environmental protection developed, and in recent times, the resource aspect has received an interest despite material affluence. Legislation has been one of the drivers for recent developments, in the case of Sweden, the environmental protection legislation came in the late 1960s, and a few years later, the municipalities got the exclusive right to collect and manage household waste. Many local and regional waste management companies were established, owned by the municipalities. These organizations became agents of development, due to the increased scope and capacity. Adding to the environmental protection agenda, a renewed interest in waste as a resource was initiated by the oil crises of the 1970s, resulting in new waste incineration plants, with energy recovery, connected to already existing district heating networks. Mistakes, failures and alarms in the 1970s and the 1980s resulted in treatment method improvements and the establishment of source separation as an integral part of waste management. The waste management community stands strong today and is taking a more proactive role than before, which includes a stronger focus on communication with other stakeholders.

An understudied area with respect to research in women’s professional lives in Norway is how individual characteristics could influence occupational choices. This is also true for research on socially influenced occupational opportunities and opportunities for social advancement and degradation (i.e., social mobility). This article first discusses a methodology that allows for an analysis of women’s occupational opportunities and social mobility where social background is taken into consideration. The article then presents findings related to these areas for unmarried women between the ages of 15 and 30 living in the Norwegian town of Hamar in 1891 and 1910. A particular focus concerns the developmental trends between 1891 and 1910, which are situated with respect to the growth of the market economy as well as changes in women’s rights. Using the methodology, and despite the methodological challenges, the findings are clear: Women with different social backgrounds had different occupational opportunities. There was a great deal of social replication and some social degradation, but only limited social advancement, both in 1891 and 1910. Far from all women immediately benefited from the expansion of their rights within education and business. More women could avoid degradation by 1910, in large part because of the expansion of the clerical professions.

School in the shadow: Private education in Stockholm 1735. During the early eighteenth century, private education was a more significant sector of the educational market than was public education, regarding the number of students and teachers, the presence of female students and teachers, the social background of the students, and the introduction of a more diverse and modern curriculum. Hitherto, little has been known of the actual scope or general conditions of private education, which has been over-shadowed by studies of public education. The article maps private education through the Stockholm Church Consistory’s (Stockholms stads konsistorium) thorough inventory of private teachers in the capital of Sweden during 1734–36, providing information of both suppliers and consumers within the private sector of the educational market, as well as of the practice and functions of private education in early modern time.

This article examines the complex and non-linear process of democratization in Sweden after the introduction of so-called universal suffrage in 1921. The research questions address the excluded groups post-1921, the reasons for their exclusion, and the historical processes that led to further expansions of suffrage rights. The study shows that the expansion of suffrage rights in Sweden after 1921 was not guided primarily by a desire to broaden voter inclusion and/or rectify the limitations of the 1921 legislation. Instead, the motivations were embedded in a more intricate and multifaceted tapestry of political aims and alliances as well as situational factors that included various social, economic, and cultural shifts. The article concludes that the history of suffrage in Sweden after 1921 has been one of continuous negotiations, transformations, and adaptations, and that this provides valuable insights for addressing challenges of political inclusion and representation in the present and future.

QC 20211207

AbstractWith the largest genomic dataset to date of Bantu-speaking populations, including newly generated data of modern-day and ancient DNA from previously unsampled regions in Africa, we shed fresh light on the expansion of peoples speaking Bantu languages that started ∼4000 years ago in western Africa. We have genotyped 1,740 participants, including 1,487 Bantu speakers from 143 populations across 14 African countries, and generated whole-genome sequences from 12 Late Iron Age individuals. Our results show that Bantu speakers received significant gene-flow from local groups in regions they expanded into. We show for the first time that genetic diversity amongst Bantu-speaking populations declines with distance from western Africa, with current-day Zambia and the DRC as possible crossroads of interaction. Using spatially explicit methods and correlating genetic, linguistic and geographical data, we provide cross-disciplinary support for a serial founder migration model. Finally, we discuss the utility of our dataset as an exhaustive modern-day African comparative dataset for ancient DNA studies. These new findings and data will be important to a wide range of disciplines from science and humanities as well as to the medical sector studying human genetic variation and health in African and African-descendant populations.One-sentence summaryA comprehensive genetic analysis of the expansion of people speaking Bantu languages reveals a complex history of serial founder events, variable levels of contact with local groups, and spread-over-spread events.