Finntorparna i Mången - jord, människor och rättsuppfattning i förproletär bergslagsmiljö

Doktorsavhandling i historia.

The focus of this doctoral dissertation is the phenomenon of the so-called original accumulation. The presentation is integrated in a study of a local material: The farm Mången and the Finnish family, who lived there between about 1650 and 1800. Through detailed investigations of demographic, fiscal, and court materials, the families are reconstructed as well as their production and value systems. In 1686 Mången and the other Finn-farms in the Hällefors-district were granted by the crown as a fiefdom to the Hällefors silverwork. The idea of a private proprietary right, a reception from the Roman law and confirmed by law in Sweden 1789, answered to the endeavours to accumulate ground properties. The driving force behind this process was the aspiration of the feudal lords to seize the whole surplus product. As relatively independent agrarian producers the Finn-peasants in Mången could save

part of their surplus product for themselves.

Key words: Migration, burn-beating, charcoal-burning, inventories, Mosaic law, catechetical register