Borderlands and Empires. Rethinking Peripheral Spaces through Historical Borderlands Perspectives

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K Nordic Colonialism

Borderlands and Empires. Rethinking Peripheral Spaces through Historical Borderlands Perspectives

Event Details

Date

VII. Friday, 12th September, 14:30-16:30
Location
K1073
Theme
K Nordic Colonialism

Convenor

Patrick van der Geest (Lund University)

Chair

Patrick van der Geest (Lund University)
Lisa Hellman (Lund University)

Panelists

Kasper Kepsu (Åbo Akademi University)
Anna Knutsson (Uppsala University)
Gunnel Cederlöf (Linnaeus University)
Emil Gunnlaugsson (Lund University)

Papers

Kasper Kepsu

Mobility and state control in Sweden's eastern borderlands in the 17th century

Mobility and state control in Sweden's eastern borderlands in the 17th century

The population in the eastern border regions of the Swedish realm was characterised by great mobility in the 17th century. Both the province of Ingria (Ingermanland) and Kexholm County or Karelia were turbulent regions with great ethnic and cultural diversity. Ingria and Karelia were transitional regions, situated at the crossroads of the Finnish-Swedish, Karelian, Russian and Baltic (Livonian), cultural spheres. Migration was extensive, and consisted of both voluntary, semi-forced and forced migration. In a quite complex way, migration, deportation and escape were mixed up with colonisation. It has been highlighted in earlier research that Lutheran Finns moved illegally to Ingria in an attempt to avoid for example taxes, conscription or local conflicts of some kind. In addition, some individuals were actually deported. Consequently, Ingria and Kexholm County have been regarded as a kind of “wild east” of the Swedish Kingdom. At the same time, this point of view has developed to a kind of myth. Whatever the case, the mobility of the peasants was quite problematic for the Crown and for the nobility who possessed manors in Ingria. Efforts to control the mobility were made, but proved quite ineffective. In this paper, I will present migration patterns in Ingria and Karelia and discuss how the state tried to control mobility in Sweden’s eastern borderlands.
Anna Knutsson

Seasons, agency and autonomy: illegal trade in North Atlantic peripheries during the American War of Independence

Seasons, agency and autonomy: illegal trade in North Atlantic peripheries during the American War of Independence

This paper explores how winter affected European efforts to control border areas in the High North Atlantic and how local populations in Greenland and the Northern Isles of Great Britain navigated the global trade that developed on their door step in the eighteenth century. This trade involved both ‘traditional’ global wares such as tobacco, tea, and rum, as well as natural resources in the shape of whale blubber and seal skins. By focusing on illegal trade, we are both able to shed light on what the state thought desirable, and the limits of their actual control. In both northern Scotland and in Greenland, although very different in many ways, seasonality played an important role in conditioning imperial control as well as in unleashing the agency of the local population. The focus will be on the years around the American War of Independence, although the global reach of this conflict has long been recognized, the effect on these two areas has previously not been awarded much attention. However, the conflict proved pivotal for local trade, gave rise to an intensive illegal trade and altered the power balance in the areas.
Gunnel Cederlöf

Armed and Bureaucratic Violence in the Formation of British Governance in Southeast Asian Borderlands

Armed and Bureaucratic Violence in the Formation of British Governance in Southeast Asian Borderlands

This study focuses on the British annexation of the Dai territories in the border zone of Qing China and Burmain the late nineteenth century. It investigates the coercive force used by the British to secure control of territory and people, claimed on the basis of having been under tributary relations with the earlier kingdom of Burma.1I argue that in this case, the use of violence as a means is better understood when separated into the mutually reinforcing forms of armed and bureaucratic violence. It shaped a practice –a mode of operation –that facilitated and secured British governance in the large territories separating the Chinese Qing state from British Burma. The study is part of a larger investigation, which connects British operations on the Empire’s northeastern frontier from the Brahmaputra eastwards, at two periods of its expansion, in the early and late nineteenth century. At the turn of the nineteenth century, operations were under a mercantile corporation and the frontier had no eastern boundary. Half a century later, now under direct rule and the corporation long gone, British forces on the easternmost frontier encroached on Chin, Jinghpaw (Kachin), Karen, Dai and other polities to bring them under British rule and secure British access to China’s markets. This paper paves the way for asking questions of histories of modes of operation, which can only be understood by focusing on events on the ground rather than on imperial policies and politics.
Emil Gunnlaugsson

Trading on the margins: A borderlands perspective on Finnmark and Danish North Atlantic commercial empire, ca 1760-1770

Trading on the margins: A borderlands perspective on Finnmark and Danish North Atlantic commercial empire, ca 1760-1770

This paper examines economic processes in the borderlands of empire, exploring how they were shaped and emerged through negotiation, local contexts, and external influences. Focusing on Finnmark in the late 18th century as a case study, it primarily examines the period c. 1760-1770s, during which a Danish chartered company held a monopoly on trade in the region and interacted with various local groups. Finnmark, as a borderland, was a fluid space where multiple ethnicities and external powers intersected, often complicating the company's efforts to control the circulation of commodities and populations. This case illustrates how marginal imperial powers, such as the Oldenburg monarchy, could assert –or were constrained in asserting –broader imperial and economic control in their borderlands, with local processes shaping and limiting their practices. Additionally, Finnmark will be situated within a broader North Atlantic framework to better understand its position within the imperial dynamics of the Oldenburg monarchy.

Abstract

The concept of “periphery” often defines areas on the margins of empires, but it is time to reassess these spaces by engaging with state-of-the-art borderlands scholarship in Scandinavia. This panel will explore how various regions—including Northern Scandinavia and mainland Southeast Asia—interacted with and responded to imperial and state influences from the early modern period through the nineteenth century. Rather than viewing these regions solely as passive recipients of external power, this panel emphasizes the active role of borderlands as sites of negotiation, autonomy, and cultural exchange. Borderlands are seen here as dynamic, multifaceted spaces where diverse groups intersect, often at the edges of state and imperial influence. While conventional scholarship has focused on their eventual absorption into larger state or imperial frameworks, this panel foregrounds the varied and sometimes resistant responses to these pressures. Attempts to exert control—whether through governance, economic strategies, or religious conversion—were frequently constrained by distinctive local contexts and conditions. These challenges of governance reveal much about the complex social structures in these regions, where plural legal regimes, migration patterns, and economic systems fostered unique configurations of power and identity. This panel seeks to reframe discussions of borderlands beyond a simple peripheral status, situating them instead as crucial spaces that fostered diverse forms of interaction and resistance. By incorporating case studies across different geographies and time periods, we will explore how a borderlands perspective continues to offer new insights into the ways these regions facilitated processes of inclusion and exclusion, integration and differentiation. Ultimately, by examining the comparative histories of Scandinavian and other peripheral regions, the panel illuminates the enduring impact of initial and long-term interactions and forms of resistance on the political, social, and cultural landscapes into the modern era.