The Fateful Year of 1809. How Swedish history could have been different

The project is a contrafactual analysis of what happened in Sweden the years 1808-1809. It has three subprojects:

1. The Finish War 1808-1809
2. The Deposition of the King Gustav IV Adolf
3. The Constitution of 1809

For a long time, contrafactual analysis was considered unscientific. The main concern for the historians was to fight speculation and carefully investigate what happened, nothing else. Political science has another background. Our main mission is to question determinism. History is not fated. Something else could very well have happened. Primarily I try to show how Sweden at the time was caught in an iron grip of defaitisme and how this could have been overcome.

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Principal Investigator: Leif Lewin, Department of Government

Research period: 2020–2021