Sartorial Practices and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century Sweden: Fashioning Difference 2021004759, 2021004760, 9781032044194, 9781032044545, 9781003193258

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Sartorial Practices and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century Sweden

The interplay between clothes and social order in early modern societies is well known. Differences in dress and hierarchies of appearances coincided with and structured social hierarchies and notions of difference. However, clothes did not merely reproduce set social patterns. They were agents of change, actively used by individuals and groups to make claims and transgress formal boundaries. This was not least the case for the revolutionary decades of the late eighteenth century, the period in focus of this book. Unlike previous studies on sumptuary laws and other legal actions taken by governments and formal power holders, this book offers a broader and more everyday perspective on late eighteenthcentury sartorial discourse. In 1773, there was a publicly announced prize competition on the advantages and disadvantages of a national dress in Sweden. Departing from the submitted replies, the study opens a window onto the sartorial world. Several fields of cultural history are brought together: social culture in terms of order, hierarchies, and notions of difference; sartorial culture with contemporary views on dress and moral aspects of sartorial practices; and visual culture in terms of sartorial means of making a difference and the emphasis on the necessity of a legible social order. Mikael Alm is a senior lecturer in history at Uppsala University.

Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-­Century Cultures and Societies Series Editors: Elaine Chalus and Deborah Simonton

The long eighteenth century sits as a pivotal point between the early-­ modern and modern worlds. By actively encouraging an international focus for the series over all, both in terms of wide-­ranging geographical topics and authorial locations, the series aims to feature cutting-­ edge research from established and recent scholars, and capitalize on the breadth of themes and topics that new approaches to research in the period reveal. This series provides a forum for recent and established historians to present new research and explore fresh approaches to culture and society in the long eighteenth century. As a crucial period of transition, the period saw developments that shaped perceptions of the place of the individual and the collective in the construction of the modern world. Eighteenth-­Century Cultures and Societies is a series that is globally ambitious in scope and broad in its desire to publish cutting-­ edge research that takes an innovative, multi-­ vocal and increasingly holistic approach to the period. The series will be particularly sensitive to questions of gender and class, but aims to embrace and explore a variety of fresh approaches and methodologies. Protest in the Long Eighteenth Century Edited by Yvonne Fuentes and Mark R. Malin Political Economy and Imperial Governance in Eighteenth-­Century Britain Heather Welland Sartorial Practices and Social Order in Eighteenth-­Century Sweden Fashioning Difference Mikael Alm Daily Lives and Daily Routines in the Long Eighteenth Century Edited by Gudrun Andersson and Jon Stobart For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge. com/Routledge-­Studies-­in-­Eighteenth-­Century-­Cultures-­and-­Societies/ book-­series/RSECCS

Sartorial Practices and Social Order in Eighteenth-­Century Sweden Fashioning Difference Mikael Alm

First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Taylor & Francis The right of Mikael Alm to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Alm, Mikael, author. Title: Sartorial practices and social order in eighteenth-century Sweden : fashioning difference / Mikael Alm. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge studies in eighteenth-century cultures and societies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: LCSH: Clothing and dress—Social aspects—Sweden— History. | Social structure—Sweden—History—18th century. | Social classes—Sweden—History—18th century. | Sweden— Social life and customs. Classification: LCC GT1176 .A56 2021 (print) | LCC GT1176 (ebook) | DDC 391.009485—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004759 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004760 ISBN: 978-1-032-04419-4 ­ ­ ­ ­ (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-04454-5 ­ ­ ­ ­ (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-19325-8 ­ ­ ­ ­ (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figuresvi List of Tablesvii Acknowledgementsviii 1 A Question Posed: Entering the Sartorial World

1

2 The Nature of Order

17

3 Disorder in the Sartorial World

64

4 The Ordering of Difference

111

5 Fashioning Difference: Conclusions

152

Bibliography161 Index174

Figures

1.1 Unknown artist, The Four Estates, Political Allegory, c. 1790. 2 1.2 First page of essay No. 1 (1773). 7 1.3 First page of printed essay No. 48 (1774). 8 1.4 Pehr Hilleström, Reading at Drottningholm Palace, 1779. 12 2.1 The Table of Ranks (1714). 42 3.1 Pehr Hilleström, People from Mora in Dalecarlia, 1782–1810.76 4.1 Pehr Hilleström, Testing Eggs: Interior of a Kitchen, c. 1770. 123 4.2 Pehr Hilleström, The Morning Toilette: Boudoir Scene, c. 1770. 124 4.3 Pehr Hilleström, A Lady Sitting and Reading, the Chambermaid Bringing Tea, 1775. 131 4.4 Pehr Hilleström, Hay-­Making Celebration at Svartsjö, c. 1780. 134 4.5 Pehr Hilleström, Gustavian Style Interior with Cardplayers, 1779. 135 4.6 Pehr Hilleström, A Maid Taking Soup From a Pot, 1770s.136 4.7 Pehr Hilleström, The Milliner, c. 1785. 137 5.1 National dress, worn by Gustav III (1778). 152

Tables

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 4.1

Order of Corporate Bodies in Essay No. 29. Orders of Corporate Bodies in Essays Nos. 32 and A2. Order of Ranks in Essay No. 59. Order of Ranks in Essay No. 60. The Overlapping Intervals of Fabrics.

33 35 45 49 129

Acknowledgements

Every book is a journey, and like all journeys, there are stations and people along the way that helped making it what it became. Uppsala University and the History Department are my academic Heimat. The daily interactions there have given me wind in the sails and called me to harbour to think again when needed. Among all those dear to me, some should be mentioned by name: Henrik Ågren, Alexander Engström, Peter Ericsson, Tobias Larsson, Jonas Lindström, and my favourite colleague and much-­ loved companion in life Gudrun Andersson. There have been many stations and people along the way. In an early stage of the project, Dagmar Freist invited me to Oldenburg University (Germany) and the conference ‘Praktiken der Selbst-­Bildung im Spannungsfeld von ständischer Ordnung und gesellschaftlicher Dynamik’. The research seminar of the School of History at Queen Mary, University of London (UK), has been a recurrent station, with invitations by Miri Rubin and Amanda Vickery. Similarly, Ewald Frie and Daniel Menning at Tübingen University (Germany) opened the doors for me to interact and discuss the project with senior and junior historians there. Jari Eiola at Jyväskylä University (Finland) invited me as a keynote speaker at the 14th Gustav Wasa Conference (‘Between Body and Mind’), which resulted in new colleagues and valuable input to the project. That was also the case at Newcastle University (UK), and the generous arrangements made for me by Helen Berry. Durham University (UK), where I spent the autumn of 2018 as a Matariki Fellow, made its mark on this book as well as my heart. Among all friends and colleagues there, I want to name Andy Beresford, Claudia Nitschke, Lindsay Macnaughton, Dario Tessicini, Lucy Turzynski and Liz Waller. I offer my collective thanks to all organizers and participants at the ESSHC ‘Social Inequality’ network: its panels and sessions have been a recurrent forum for me to present and discuss the project, in Vienna 2014, Valencia 2016, and Belfast 2018. A final thanks to everyone involved at Routledge, not least the series editors Elaine Chalus and Deborah Simonton, for their valuable comments and critique at the very last station of the journey. This work was supported by Riksbankens jubileumsfond (The Swedish foundation for humanities and social sciences) [grant number RFP12– 0385:1] and the Department of History, Uppsala University.

1 A Question Posed Entering the Sartorial World

Would a national dress, adapted to the Swedish climate, and different from those of other nations, help rectify changes in fashion and illicit trade? What inconveniences could such a reform entail? And could, perchance, such inconveniences, presenting themselves at the time of the reform, be outweighed by advantages won in the longer run?

Thus ran the question posed by the Royal Patriotic Society in Stockholm in late October 1773. The public was invited to submit their written responses, with a set prize of a gold medal of 30 ducats’ weight for the winning entry, which was to be named by the Society. The call was published in one of Stockholm’s leading newspapers—Dagligt Allehanda—and a few days later in the Government organ Inrikes Tidningar (The London Gazette’s opposite number in Sweden), making it public throughout the kingdom.1 It is a seemingly dull question, dwelling on all-­too familiar economic and sumptuary concerns on the need to stem public consumption and to direct it away from foreign goods and on to domestic produce. However, the result was spectacular from the historian’s point of view. By the deadline of 24th January, around 70 essays had been submitted, ranging from briefs of two pages to downright tracts of 78 pages.2 Far from dull, the essays provide source material of a rare kind. As the authors presented their thoughts on a national dress, and—specifically—when they discussed its purpose and suggested its design and realization, they came to reflect on deeper issues of the social order, its constituent parts, and how these parts were to be properly visualized sartorially. Departing from these essays, this book addresses three key aspects of late eighteenth-­century social practices in and through dress. Firstly, social culture. As the authors proposed designs for a national dress and specified how it was supposed to be worn by different social groups, they effectively projected how they imagined contemporary society and its social order. How did late ancien régime commentators, on the very verge of the collapse of that social order, perceive the society in which they lived? Secondly, sartorial culture. As the authors elaborated on the need

2  A Question Posed for national dress reform, they commented on the state of contemporary sartorial practices. What was wrong in the sartorial world and how should those faults be corrected? Thirdly, visual culture. As the authors presented their proposals for a rectified manner of dress, and the design of a new national dress, they employed a well-­established repertoire of sartorial signs and codes for a legible social order. How was social difference to be properly visualized in dress? This introductory chapter serves two purposes: it anchors the essays in the larger context of early modern European sartorial discourse and the delicate correspondence between dress and social order; and, on a more empirical level, it lays out the context of the 1773 competition and the origin of the essays.

The Sartorial and the Social The formal social order of early modern Sweden—the order of estates— is poignantly illustrated in an anonymous oil painting, most likely dating from the last decades of the eighteenth century (see Figure  1.1). It depicts four men, grouped around a cow. Each man represents an estate. The nobleman, elegantly dressed in a cocked and plumed hat, boots with

Figure 1.1  Unknown artist, The Four Estates, Political Allegory, c. 1790. Source: Photograph © Kulturen i Lund (Lars Westrup), Lund.

A Question Posed 3 spurs, and a cape over his shoulders, sits on the cow’s back with a riding whip in his hand, as if it were a horse. The priest, corpulent and all clad in black except for his shining white Geneva band, is found by the cow’s side, sitting on a stone, reaching in and milking its teats. The burgher, soberly dressed in a plain grey suit, stands in front of the cow, trying to pull it forward by a rope tied to its horns. Finally, the peasant, dressed in coarser clothes, with a simple red cap on his head, stands behind the cow, holding on with a firm grip at its tail. The differentiation between the urban and rural commoners, making for four estates rather than three, may form a peculiarity in the Swedish version of the system of estates, but the order as such is an equally familiar and prominent feature in European medieval and early modern societies. The painting was clearly composed as a mocking satire on the politics of its day. However, it is equally illustrative of the intimate relationship between dress and social standing in early modern modes of thought. The four estates are—still today, in the eyes of a modern beholder—identifiable by their sartorial appearances, whether by forms of dress, as in the case of the priest, or by the quality of dress, as in the cases of the nobleman and the peasant. In early modern societies, differences in dress were intimately intertwined with differences in social standing, and the hierarchies of appearances equally coincided with and structured social hierarchies.3 It is worth noting that the question posed by the Royal Patriotic Society did not explicitly invite reflections on social order or visual aspects of differentiation. Its focus was on the problems caused by changing fashions and illicit trade. The fact that the authors, with few exceptions, nonetheless came to reflect on those very issues of social order serves to illustrate the intimate relationship between dress and social status in the early modern mind. In short, and according to the ideal correspondence between appearances and standing that is illustrated in the painting, a nobleman should be dressed as (and thereby be readily recognized as) a nobleman; a clergyman should be dressed as a clergyman; a burgher should be dressed as a burgher; and a peasant should be dressed as a peasant. However, and fundamental for this study, the correspondence between the social and the sartorial was neither clear-­cut nor fixed. By contrast, it was a highly complex and contested correlation. Imposed borders were transgressed, and far from merely reproducing and confirming set social hierarchies, clothes were in themselves powerful agents of change, actively used by individuals and groups to make claims on standing and distinction. The correspondence between the social and the sartorial had its ‘zones of turbulence’ in a Braudelian sense; much like the early modern market economy that French Annaliste Fernand Braudel studied, the social order and its visualizations were a ‘restrictive order’, and as such it ‘created an opposition, counter-­forces, both above and below itself’.4 Things were not always what they seemed: ‘the selection and manipulation of external items of dress’, writes English historian Penelope

4  A Question Posed Corfield, could ‘be used to express a myriad of meanings, from display to disguise; from deference to dissent’. Social confusion lurked everywhere. The master might be a journeyman dressed above his station and the housewife could be a maid dressed up in borrowed fineries.5 Consequently, early modern preoccupation with order was just as much a preoccupation with disorder, vividly reflected in the many sumptuary laws of the period, with repeated attempts to regulate manners of dress and formally establish who was allowed to wear what.6 This state of contestation was particularly the case during the revolutionary decades of late eighteenth-­century Europe. Social processes of change with the emergence of new and increasingly strong groups, combined with economic processes of commercialization and the increased availability of material goods, resulted in a destabilized social landscape. French historian Daniel Roche has famously described the period as a historical shift between two competing discourses on dress and social standing. On the one hand, there was a traditional discourse of the Old Regime, according to which everyone had an assigned place in society and in which the clothing of an individual clearly reflected his or her status. On the other hand, a modern discourse was in the process of being formed in which clothes reflected an individual’s acquired or even desired status. In this destabilized situation betwixt and between, ‘Clothes became weapons in the battle of appearances’.7 Clothing became a charged symbol of an emerging conflict of social hierarchies. There was, as aptly phrased by American literary historian Amy Wyngaard, elaborating on Roche’s model, a ‘gradual effacement of the apparent distinctions between classes’.8 As material goods—clothing, but also a wide range of objects—that once had been luxury goods, which only aristocrats could afford, became increasingly available for ever-­broader social strata, down to domestic servants, the social practices that involved and engaged with these material objects shifted, as well. Such was the context of the 1773 essays. The old order was crumbling, a new one was forming. In the borderlands of change, social categories and established boundaries were shifting rapidly. This was consequently reflected and enacted in the world of sartorial practices, where the threats of blurred ranks, social confusion, and an illegible social order were ever present. This ambiguity in the codes of the sartorial world, and the consequent scope for contestation, formed the very mould from which sprang the question posed by the Royal Patriotic Society and the subsequent replies submitted by the authors.

The 1773 Essays The Patriotic Society was founded in 1766, probably by a core group in the secret society Pro Patria, which had been founded that same year, but it claimed to be the continuation of the mythical order of Lantgillet (roughly

A Question Posed 5 ‘The Country Guild’), allegedly dating back to the mid-­fifteenth century. The common theme for all three societies (real and fictional) was patriotic zeal for the progress of the fatherland and, specifically, its agriculture and industries. The full name of the Patriotic Society is illustrative: ‘The Patriotic Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and Crafts and the Industries of the Realm’. Its first members were predominantly civil servants specifically from the Collegium of Commerce alongside manufactures and industrialists. In line with the general patriotic drive and reform policies surrounding his accession to the throne in 1771, King Gustav III placed the Society under royal patronage in 1772, thus making it independent from Pro Patria and elevating it to the Royal Patriotic Society.9 The Society was a child of its age. The currents of utilitarianism, progressiveness, and patriotism that ran strong in European Enlightenment materialized in the founding of similar academies and societies for the promotion of knowledge and progress all over the continent. Ireland was early with the ‘Dublin Society for Improving Husbandry, Manufactures and Other Useful Arts’, founded in 1731. An English counterpart, ‘The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce’ (The Society of Arts), was founded in 1754. France got its first ‘Societé d’Agriculture, du Commerce et des Arts’ in 1757, and so it continued in the 1760s with societies in Denmark, Switzerland, throughout the German lands—Karlsruhe, Celle, Hamburg, Leipzig—in Austria, and on to Russia, by either royal or private initiatives.10 Alongside publications to promote innovations in agriculture and industry (the Society published its proceedings annually and in 1776, it started a monthly journal on husbandry), and public awards to call attention to commendable individuals (medals, silver beakers, silver spoons, silver chains, silver hatbands, etc.), the competitions were key to the Society’s activities.11 Starting in 1767, competitions were announced annually. The topics were patriotic in nature, aiming at improvements in agriculture, trade, and industry. As in 1773, the public was invited to submit their responses, and the winning entry was selected by the Society, and it was usually published in its proceedings. In 1767, the question asked for ‘the best written and most reliable history of Swedish trade’. In 1768, the question inquired about ‘general truths on state economy’. In 1769, one of a set of similar questions ran: ‘What would best serve to encourage peasants to cultivate land, regardless of the nature of that land?’ In 1770, two questions were announced: one on how to best encourage the peasantry in flat areas to establish forests, and one on ‘the true causes of the decline of our industry, and the best remedy for it’. Continuing to 1771, the question was: ‘Are meadows necessary in Sweden or would it be more advantageous to feed livestock with corn?’ In 1772, the focus remained on agriculture: was the peasantry’s duty to provide fresh horses for travellers (skjutsplikt) ‘advantageous or ruinous to the countryman?’12

6  A Question Posed The alignment with the 1773 question is clear. Focusing on industry and trade, it too was aimed at that all-­pervading promotion of Swedish economy and domestic produce. Alongside uncultivated land, deforested flat lands, and meadows, fashion was singled out as detrimental to economic prosperity. Fashion was ephemeral in nature, with continuous and expensive changes, and the Society called for reflections on the establishment of a national dress a possible remedy. Evidently, the question attracted the public’s attention. In terms of a number of entries—again, some 70 in total—it stands out. Previous competitions had come nowhere near that number. In 1767, there was 1 entry, in 1768 there were 7, in 1770 there were in total 11 entries on two questions, in 1771 there seem to have been none, and in 1772, there were 4. Nor did any of the subsequent competitions cause such a stir; the number of entries rarely exceeded ten.13 Signatures such as ‘Torneå’ and ‘Stora Tuna’ (a town in the Northernmost Sweden and a parish in mid-­Sweden), ‘Tavasthuus’ and ‘St. Michel’ (both towns in the Finish part of the realm), and ‘A Countryman’ (Landtman) indicate that the call reached outside the capital as well.14 Furthermore, the competition attracted attention beyond the Swedish borders. Of the preserved 65 essays, nine were written in German, and two were written in French.15 This in itself is not conclusive evidence of foreign authors. Both languages were used in Sweden, by Swedes. However, the case is further strengthened by stated place names. One of the German essays refers to an announcement of the competition in a Frankfurt newspaper (another, although written in Swedish, refers to a similar announcement in an Altona newspaper). Two of the German essays are dated in St. Petersburg, Russia, another in Meran, in Austrian South Tyrol (Merano, in present-­day northern Italy), and one of the French essays is dated in Lausanne, Switzerland.16 The vast majority of the essays were submitted in manuscript (see Figure 1.2). However, of the preserved essays, there are in all 13 that were submitted as printed pamphlets, in the typical quarto format, sometimes with a decorative frontispiece on the title page (see Figure 1.3). These 13 were printed and published by well-­known Stockholm printers before (or simultaneously with) submission to the Royal Patriotic Society, explicitly making clear to the reader the pamphlet’s status as an entry in the competition.17 Thus, while the 1773 essays were mainly preserved for the assessing eyes of the Royal Patriotic Society, they were in part also engaging in contemporary public discourse. This engagement is further reflected in the fact that these printed essays were referred to and refuted by other authors, in the printed essays as well as in the manuscript ones. For instance, the author of the printed essay No. 47 explicitly engaged with the author of the equally printed essay No. 45 as indicated in the essay title, which, in the characteristically winding prose, ran: ‘Letter From a Countryman in another province, To the Countryman, whose Letter to a Friend in Stockholm, Regarding The National Dress, Recently

A Question Posed 7

Figure 1.2  First page of essay No. 1 (1773). Source: Photograph Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

8  A Question Posed

Figure 1.3  First page of printed essay No. 48 (1774). Source: Photograph Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

appeared in print’. The essay begins with the address ‘My Dear Sir’, and then continues in close and critical dialogue with the said essay and its claims.18 In addition, and confirming the attention that the competition attracted at the time, the published essays caused quite a backlash in public discourse, as they were reviewed and debated in the contemporary press and magazines.19 As the essays were registered by the Society, they

A Question Posed 9 received an individual number: ‘No. 1’, ‘No. 2’, ‘No. 3’, and so forth. This allows for an easy way of referencing. For unknown reasons, most likely due to an oversight (or that they were numbered in a way that is lost today), five essays in the collection lack the individual number. In these five cases, I  have opted to refer to them as essays Nos. A1–A5, according to the order of their appearance in the volume.20 Turning to the authors, the collection, by the very way in which it came about, presents certain complications for historians. In line with established and common practices at the time, the essays were submitted anonymously, including the printed ones. A sealed envelope with the author’s name was attached, and the authors marked their essays with chosen mottos (often ancient Latin verses or maxims). As the winning entry was named, the envelope was opened, and the author’s identity was revealed. The other envelopes were destroyed, and those authors who wished to do so could reclaim their essays by stating their chosen motto. Again, these measures were common practice at the time; they were meant to ensure that the quality of the argument, not the quality of the author, was assessed and rewarded. For the historian, sadly, it means that the identities of the authors remain largely unknown. However, from what is known, the contours of the social composition of the authors can be sketched. They include the chaplain to the court, Erik Waller, who was declared winner and awarded the gold medal; the state servant and Secretary of the Royal Patriotic Society, Adolf Modéer, and another chaplain to the court, Paul Juringius, both of whom were awarded silver medals for their efforts; a certain ‘Secretaire’, J. B. Méan, from Brussels, whose essay was published by the Society as a reward; a state servant and prominent philologist, Abraham Sahlstedt, who made himself known; and—finally—a Henry de Combes from Lausanne, and a Johan Andres Gottlieb Hafner von Puechenegg und Peintern, an Austrian nobleman from South Tyrol, who were both seemingly unaware of procedure and actually signed their essays.21 In addition, and as was often the case in the shrouds of secrecy, rumours were put about regarding the identity of the authors of the published essays. One such rumour pointed to no one less than the influential Count Anders von Höpken as the author behind the signature ‘A Patriot’ in essay No. 48.22 Apart from the confirmed presence of foreign authors, the social composition of the authors seems to correspond with the expected public of educated and well-­situated persons of middling and higher standing: an urban elite of civil servants, officers, and academics, paired with a rural gentry of landowners, manufacturers, and local clerics.23 These contours are further confirmed by pointers given by the authors, in signatures such as ‘A Countryman’ and ‘A Simple-­Minded Priest’.24 They are also indicated by references to memberships on boards of political committees on commerce and manufactories, to previous publications and political activities, in seemingly personal experiences of military uniforms, and in

10  A Question Posed an apparent familiarity with theological matters and Biblical references.25 At least one author presented himself by signature as a ‘peasant’, which may well have been true, but it is more likely to have been a rhetorical strategy.26 A final indication of the social composition of the authors is the social composition of the members of the Royal Patriotic Society itself. It is an indirect and inconclusive indication, but it can be assumed that those who took an interest in the Society’s work and activities shared certain socio-­economic qualities with the members of the Society. In at least one instance—Adolf Modéer—they coincided. At the time of the announcement, there were 44 elected members in the Society. Of these, 23 were nobles and 21 were commoners. Looking at the nobles, 12 were titled, that is aristocrats, with titles of count or baron, while 11 were untitled. Of the latter, eight had been raised to the nobility themselves (prior to 1773). Thus, behind a distinctly noble character, there was social mobility in an early modern style, with upcoming groups and individuals rising through the ranks, reaching noble status. The presence of nobles, titled or untitled, is to be expected among the 1773 authors. Turning to corporate belonging, in all 27 of the 44 members (61 per cent) were civil servants. This confirms the centrality of that corpus in late eighteenth-­century societies, and—as will be discussed—there are reasons to assume its presence among the authors. Five members were merchants or manufacturers (11 per cent), another five were academics (11 per cent), the clergy and the military had three each (7 per cent), and one member served as a courtier at the royal court (2 per cent). Again, these figures are mere indications, based on the assumption of a shared social profile of the members of the Society and the participating authors.27 In terms of context, the 1773 essays and their authors belong in and reflect back on the European age of revolutions. They open a window onto a world where an old order and its traditional values were increasingly contested, and where new social realities, paired with shifting social practices, laboriously emerged. More specifically, they linked with two historical trends of their age: sumptuary legislation and larger European sartorial trends. Both trends were instrumental for the mind-­set of the authors, as they approached the proposed question of a national dress. Firstly, sumptuary legislation: the question posed by the Royal Patriotic Society, and the general idea behind the introduction of a national dress, was intimately connected with sumptuary discourse. The Swedish state was no different from its European counterparts in its long and, on the whole failed, attempts to curb conspicuous consumption and import of foreign goods. The first sumptuary laws on dress were passed in the mid-­fifteenth century, and during the eighteenth century alone— between 1720 and 1770—a suite of ten sumptuary laws were passed with repeated bans and regulations on manners of dress.28 Here, Sweden stands out in a European context. England and the Netherlands had

A Question Posed 11 abandoned sumptuary laws by the early seventeenth century, Scotland issued its last sumptuary law in 1681, and across Europe, sumptuary laws became less frequent over time in the eighteenth century.29 The idea of a national dress was conceived as an alternative route to coercive, and clearly inoperative, laws. The concept of an unchangeable and constant dress is found throughout the succession of Swedish sumptuary laws. In 1731, official models for a male and female dress were decreed, based on the current fashion, and to be worn henceforth without any changes. The models were kept at the Collegium of Commerce in Stockholm, and instructions were sent out to the County Governors to be passed on in the provinces to each parish and town.30 But rather than freezing the fashionable dress as it looked there and then, as the legislation indicated, the notion of a national dress—fed by the Enlightenment and by emerging national sentiments—proposed the introduction of a new and, for Sweden, unique dress, to be worn by each and all, not by coercion, but by free will and patriotic fervour. This was also how the national dress reform introduced by Gustav III in 1778 was presented and organized: rather than coercion, the Swedes were to rise as one, and dress as one, for the welfare of the fatherland. In fact, the king was highly involved in the 1773 competition; it was to a large degree a well-­directed prelude to the royal dress reform. The king had long harboured designs on a national dress reform, and the Royal Patriotic Society and the competition provided an excellent opportunity for him to favourably introduce the idea, and to see how the land lay in public opinion. The call was composed from royal dictation by the king’s confidant and member of the Society, Count Carl Fredrik Scheffer, and it was certainly not a coincidence that the deadline for submissions was set on 24th January—the king’s birthday. Swedish painter Pehr Hilleström was soon commissioned to portray the royal creation, in a court scene from Drottningholm palace, just outside Stockholm, with the king studying architectural projects to the left, while the assembled court enjoys the reading by the courtier in the centre (see Figure 1.4).31 Secondly, the Swedish discussions were part and parcel of larger European sartorial trends. The question of a state-­regulated manner of dress, as proposed by the Royal Patriotic Society in 1773 and realized by Gustav III in 1778, aligned well with the increasing trends towards sartorial uniformity at courts and in state bureaucracy in eighteenth-­century Europe. Researchers, such as English historian Philip Mansel, have observed the general popularity of military uniforms at the time, but there were also new models. One example is the contemporaneous British Windsor uniform introduced by George III in 1777, worn both at and away from Windsor Castle. Another example is the civil uniform adopted at the Bourbon court in Spain a decade or so later, and—as the century drew to an end—the various designs for official and civic costumes in revolutionary and Napoleonic France.32

12  A Question Posed

Figure 1.4 Pehr Hilleström, Reading at Drottningholm Palace, 1779, Nationalmuseum (Photo: Bodil Beckman/Nationalmuseum), public domain.

More specifically, the idea of a national dress was current in European public discourse. The 1778 reform, with its Enlightenment and nationalist components, had its opposite numbers. German historian Enrico Wagner and New Zealand historian Alexander Maxwell have both retraced the wave of late eighteenth-­century debates.33 In 1772, a government official in the prince-­bishopric in Osnabrück proposed an ‘allgemeinen Landesuniform’ to be worn by people of higher estate, presented as an enlightened alternative to ineffective sumptuary laws. In 1774, with reference to the Swedish competition, the advantages of a national dress were addressed and discussed in the Polish journal Monitor. In Germany, the Swedish competition and later the actual reform continued to attract public interest in the 1770s and 1780s, with a series of debates and contributions in press. In 1786, ignited by an anonymous pamphlet on a German national dress, the discussions took more concrete shape in a debate in the fashion magazine Journal des Luxus und der Moden. Meanwhile, in Denmark in 1791, following years of public debate, the Danish Academy of Science followed the Swedish example and announced a competition on the advantages and disadvantages of a Danish national dress. A few years before that, and serving as a final example, a national dress for women was proposed in Spain, as an alternative to the futility of sumptuary laws regarding the sartorial expense of female fashions.34

A Question Posed 13 These were the voices from the midst of an age of revolutions, with profound social, economic, and political shifts; these were the voices from a well-­established sumptuary discourse; these were the voices from a time of Enlightenment movements, with notions on progress and the nation and on increased uniformity in civil society. This larger European—in particular, Northern European—context enables the study of early modern sartorial practices to move beyond that London–Paris axis to which it has too often been confined: to move away from the atypical and extreme, and towards the typical and general. Certainly, what happened in the material world of Paris and London made a difference for Europeans in general, but the 1773 essays tell the story of just how it made difference.35

Outline: Order, Disorder, Ordering Reflecting on the introduction of a national dress, the 1773 authors followed a shared line of thought. They sought order and a legible sartorial system, but looking around, they found disorder and a faulty system, so they tried to reorder by proposing clarified, sharpened, or somehow rectified systems. These steps align with the three key aspects of social practices in and through dress presented previously: social culture, sartorial culture, and visual culture. This three-­step sequence structures the shape of this book and its three analytical chapters. The first chapter focuses on order and social culture, with social imaginaries as they appear in the essays. What was the social order? Which were the composite parts of that order? Why was order important? The second chapter focuses on disorder and sartorial culture, with the faults in contemporary sartorial practices as they were discerned in the essays. What was the problem? What were the dangers of sartorial abuse? Which values were under threat? The third chapter then turns to (re-­)ordering and visual culture, with the suggested designs for a national dress presented by the authors. Who should wear what? How should proper difference be made? Which were the visual logics at work in the sartorial world?

Notes 1. Eva Bergman, Nationella dräkten: En studie kring Gustaf III:s dräktreform 1778 (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1938), 15; Staffan Högberg, Kungl. Patriotiska Sällskapets historia: Med särskild hänsyn till den gustavianska tidens agrara reformsträvanden (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1961), 114. 2. Högberg, Kungl. Patriotiska Sällskapets historia, 254–5, states that 63 essays were submitted, while Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 42, states that ‘around 70’ were submitted. In all, 65 essays are preserved in the archive of the Royal Patriotic Society. As the entries were submitted, they were given an ordinal number. These numbers run to 73. Swedish National Archive (Riksarkivet),

14  A Question Posed The Patriotic Society’s Archive, supplement to Proceedings 1774 (from now on referred to as PS, Proceedings). 3. On the communicative aspects of dress, see, for example Penelope J. Corfield, ‘Dress for Deference and Dissent: Hats and the Decline of Hat Honour’, Costume 23:1 (1989), 66; Daniel Roche, A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 193–4; Susan Vincent, Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 5–6, 79–91; John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-­Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 181–2; Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 16; Amanda Vickery, ‘Mutton Dressed as Lamb? Fashioning Age in Georgian England’, Journal of British Studies 52:4 (2013), 869–70; Eva I. Andersson, ‘Foreign Seductions: Sumptuary Laws, Consumption and National Identity in Early Modern Sweden’, in Fashionable Encounters: Perspectives and Trends in Textile and Dress in the Early Modern Nordic World, eds. Tove Engelhardt Mathiassen et al. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 15–16; Elizabeth Currie, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 1–13, 75–8; Astrid Pajur, Dress Matters: Clothes and Social Order in Tallinn, 1600–1700 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2020), 15–19, 23–5. Beyond social standing, dress was instrumental in communicating a spectrum of identities and qualities, such as political allegiances, religious faiths, and national identities (but also age, sexuality, occupation, and so forth). On political allegiances, see, e.g. Jennifer Harris, ‘The Red Cap of Liberty: A Study of Dress Worn by French Revolutionary Partisans 1789–1794’, Eighteenth-­ Century Studies 14:3 (1981); Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearances. Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford: Berg, 2002); Katrina Navickas, ‘ “That Sash Will Hang You”: Political Clothing and Adornment in England, 1780–1840’, Journal of British Studies 49:3 (2010), 540–65. On religious faith, see, e.g. Leigh Eric Schmidt, ‘ “A Church-­Going People Are a Dress-­Loving People”: Clothes, Communication, and Religious Culture in Early America’, Church History 58:1 (1989); Rublack, Dressing Up, ch. 3. On national identity and nationalism, see, e.g. Roze Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions of a National Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Rublack, Dressing Up, ch. 4; Alexander Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion: Clothing and Nationalism in Europe’s Age of Revolutions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 4. Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 24. 5. Corfield, ‘Dress for Deference and Dissent’, 66. See also Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2–5. 6. For an overview of European sumptuary laws, see Giorgio Riello and Ulinka Rublack, eds., The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Laws in a Global Perspective, c. 1200–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 7. Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancient Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 4–7, 55–7. 8. Amy Wyngaard, ‘Switching Codes: Class, Clothing, and Cultural Change in the Works of Marivaux and Watteau’, Eighteenth-­Century Studies 33:4 (2000), 523–6. See also Leif Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången: Anspråk, flyktighet, förställning i debatten om konsumtion i Sverige, 1730–1830 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2015), 44–5; Dagmar Freist, ‘Belief’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion 4: In the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Peter McNeil (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 87–9.

A Question Posed 15 9. Högberg, Kungl. Patriotiska Sällskapets historia, 21–47; Staffan Högberg, Matrikel över ledamöter av Kungl. Patriotiska Sällskapet 1766–1815 (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt  & Söner, 1961), 11–12; Jani Marjanen, ‘Pro Patria orden och medborgerlig aktivering från frihetstid till gustaviansk tid’, in För det allmänna bästa. Ett kungligt sällskap mellan stat och marknad under 250 år: Kungl. sällskapet Pro Patria 1766–2016, ed. Erik Amnå (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2016), 33–4. 10. Högberg, Kungl. Patriotiska Sällskapets historia, 14–18. 11. Ibid., 98–136, 171–7. 12. Ibid., 252–4. 13. Ibid., 252–69. 14. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 45, 48, 49, 56, 61, A1, A5. 15. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 7, 11, 16, 20, 51, 55, 57, 63, A4 (German); Nos. 13, 52 (French). 16. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 11 (Frankfurt), 8 (Altona), 16, 57 (St. Petersburg), 20 (Meran), 52 (Lausanne). 17. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 29 (submitted in manuscript and print), 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 54, 64, 67, 68, 73, A3. 18. PS, Proceedings, No. 47. 19. See Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 42; Högberg, Kungl. Patriotiska Sällskapets historia, 114. 20. The opening lines of each essay will facilitate the identification of them in the volume. Essay No. A1 opens with ‘När man betragtar närvarande tids ombytelighet i moder . . .’; essay No. A2 opens with ‘Jumera fåfänga, högmod och Yppighet . . .’; essay No. A3 (printed) opens with ‘Länge nog har man förundradt sig öfwer at Swenska pennor . . .’; essay No. A4 (in German) opens with ‘In mehr wahren Patrioten . . .’; and essay No. A5 opens with ‘Det är wäl icke för min oöfwade penna, att utom sin Sphére . . .’. 21. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 40–2. Regarding Johan Andres Gottlieb Hafner von Puechenegg und Peintern, not mentioned by Bergman, see PS, Proceedings, No. 20 (signature on final page). 22. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 42. 23. On the social composition of the actors in eighteenth-­ century Swedish public sphere, see, e.g. Margareta Björkman, Läsarnas nöje: Kommersiella lånbibliotek i Stockholm 1783–1809 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1992), 405–86; Anders Simonsson, Bland hederligt folk: Organiserat sällskapsliv och borgerlig formering i Göteborg 1755–1820 (Göteborg: Gothenburg University, 2001), 71–95. 24. See, e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 34, 45, 61. 25. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 9, 18, 29, 34, 45, 47, 49, 60. 26. PS, Proceedings, No. 56. 27. These calculations are based on the register, found in Högberg, Matrikel över ledamöter av Kungl. Patriotiska Sällskapet, 11–14. 28. See Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 34–7. 29. Marjo Kaartinen, Anne Montenach and Deborah Simonton, ‘Luxury, Gender and the Urban Experience’, in Luxury and Gender in European Towns, 1700–1914, eds. Deborah Simonton, Marjo Kaartinen and Anne Montenach (London: Routledge, 2018), 5; Ulinka Rublack and Giorgio Riello, ‘Introduction’, in The Right to Dress, eds. Riello and Rublack, 32. 30. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 34–5. 31. Ibid., 11–33; Högberg, Kungl. Patriotiska Sällskapets historia, 110–16; Lena Rangström, ‘A Dress Reform in the Spirit of Its Age’, in Catherine the Great & Gustav III, ed. Magnus Olausson (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 1999), 262.

16  A Question Posed 32. Philip Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac 1760–1830’, Past and Present 96 (1982), 103–32; Philip Mansel, Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 43–6, 50–4. See also Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 216–57; Sasha Llewllyn, ‘George III and the Windsor Uniform’, The Court Historian 1:2 (1996); Wrigley, The Politics of Appearances, 59–87; Gunner Lind, ‘Uniform and Distinction: Symbolic Aspects of Officer Dress in the Eighteenth-­Century Danish State’, Textile History and the Military 41:1 (2010), 49–65. 33. Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, esp. 80–95; Enrico Wagner, Die Nationaltrachtdebatte im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Motivation und Durchsetzung einer nationalen Kleidertracht in Schweden, Deutschland und Dänemark (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2018), esp. 31–53. 34. See Peter Albrecht, ‘Die schwedische Nationaltracht Gustav des III. in der deutschsprachigen Publizistik’, Jahrbuch für Volkskunde (1992), 177–206; Lena Rangström, Kläder för tid och evighet: Gustaf III sedd genom sina dräkter (Stockholm: Livrustkammaren, 1997), 166, 168; Daniel L. Purdy, The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 180–94; Tine Damsholt, Fædrelandskærlighed og borgererdyd: Patriotisk diskurs og militære reformer i Danmark i sidste del af 1700-­tallet (København: Museum Tusculanums forlag, 2000), 142–4; Karin A. Wurst, ‘Fashioning a Nation: Fashion and National Costume in Bertuch’s “Journal des Luxus und der Moden” (1786–1827)’, German Studies Review 28:2 (2005), 367–86. 35. See Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, 4–6. See also Amanda Vickery, ‘From Baroque to Bling: How France Became King of High Style’, The Guardian, 4 December  2015; Peter McNeil, ‘Introduction’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, ed. McNeil, 16–17.

2 The Nature of Order

‘Inequality’, the author of essay No. 67 explained, ‘is a just and natural institution in Society, which it is nigh on impossible to avoid or to remove’. This was so, the argument went, because ‘Society divides itself into many smaller Societies, consisting in turn of many different Members’, separated by their varying degrees of ‘genius, reason, virtue, strength, and health, as well as many other hereditary and acquirable advantages’ bestowed upon them by the ‘Majestic Law-­Maker of the world Himself’.1 This was, in many ways, a typically early modern assertion of difference and hierarchy as, if not directly benign and desirable, a natural and integral part of human societies. In a similar vein, and with an even stronger emphasis on the fixed nature of the social order, another author referred to its divine origin, and that every form of disorder was ‘a violation against the sacred word of God’—‘for God Almighty, who is a God of Order, has Himself, from the beginning of times, imposed difference between the high and the low, the commanding and the Obeying, and between man and woman’.2 The official social order in eighteenth-­ century Sweden, the formal arrangements of inequality, was that of the four estates. There were nobles, priests, burghers, and peasants. This notion of a society of estates has dominated historiography. The estates are generally understood and analysed as the governing categories of early modern social order, effectively structuring society and its members politically, socially, economically, and culturally.3 But again, realities were more complex. Rather than a clear-­cut social order of separate estates, early modern societies are better understood as fundamentally unequal and thoroughly hierarchical, with intersecting webs of co-­existing hierarchies and notions of difference, formal as well as informal in nature, where the belonging and standing of a specific individual or group varied and changed depending on the context.4 This larger palette of social descriptions, and the understanding of hierarchy as an object of ongoing contestation, is the focal point of this chapter. In short: how was the social order construed and described by the people who we today tend to understand and define as members of a society of estates?

18  The Nature of Order

Order Social order can be understood on a number of levels and approached from different perspectives. Historian Sarah Maza offers a concise outline. In its most concrete and tangible sense, social order can be understood in terms of the material realities—‘those raw elements of social position’, as Maza phrases them—that throughout history have made difference between people.5 Distribution of economic wealth and political power are two such variables, structuring relationships of domination and subordination. The elevated position of Swedish nobility, or any European nobility, derived from numerous foundations, but their social superiority was firmly anchored in tangible material realities. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Swedish nobility never numbered more than 0.5–1 per cent of the population, but they were in possession of between 30 and, in extreme times, 60 per cent of the agricultural land. The peasantry, at the other end of the social scale, made up some 90 per cent of the population, but were rarely in possession of more than 30 per cent of the land.6 These were hard and pressing realities, and the historian’s interest when studying them lies in setting their account in communities of the past. Sten Carlsson, the doyen of Swedish early modern social history, is an obvious representative of this field. By surveying the distribution of land and state offices between key social groups over time, he unveils and pursues the emergence and rise of the middling category of non-­noble persons of estate (ofrälse ståndspersoner) within the traditional setting of early modern order, not least alongside and at the expense of the old noble elites.7 In a similar manner, but with a distinctly local focus, Henry French and Richard Hoyle study the arrangements of land, landholding, and agriculture in the Essex village of Earls Colne, in order to trace the changing character of an early modern English rural community.8 The social practices that governed and structured social order in day-­ to-­day interactions make for a second approach. Again citing Maza, these practices could encompass such things as ‘tilling a field, playing the piano, or joining the army’ or ‘religious beliefs, schooling, and recreation’.9 In short: different social groups did different things—or did things differently—and thus claimed and reproduced their exclusivity and superiority (or inferiority) relative to other social groups. Sartorial matters were key here. But early modern societies were permeated by differentiating practices. Gudrun Andersson finds them in the order of seating in the pews of the town church in Arboga; Hannah Greig finds them in the strictly segregating spatial ordering of seemingly fluid public spaces such as the Georgian pleasure garden; Alexander Engström finds them in aristocratic funeral practices in seventeenth-­century Sweden; and Adam Fox finds them in the hierarchy of what people of different social standing ate and drank in early modern England: wheat bread or barley bread, sea fish or coastal seafood, wine or beer, and so forth.10

The Nature of Order 19 An additional level—not part of Maza’s overview, but linking to her approach—is provided by the normative, codified, and officially acknowledged social doctrines of early modern societies. The order of estates was one such doctrine. Estate affiliation formally decided and defined an individual’s social status in terms of dignity and worth, economic rights of property and available means of making a living, and political influence in local and national contexts.11 Another ordering doctrine was the Lutheran Haustafel (the Table of Duties), with its scheme of hierarchical relationships of authority and responsibilities within the three social spheres: between teacher/priest and congregation in the religious sphere, between ruler and subject in the political sphere, and between master/ parent and servant/child in the household sphere.12 A third doctrine was the official tables of ranks that ordered the offices of state at European courts, civil administrations and the armed forces, and effectively decided the rank and precedence of each individual state servant.13 Alongside these codified orders, there were additional, less formalized, but not less normative and ordering, doctrines at work. For instance, notions of gender, and the differentiation between men and women, effectively decided the rights and scope for action for individuals.14 Departing from these familiar and much-­studied perspectives on social order, Maza posits yet another approach—less studied, but equally important to our understanding of early modern societies. She refers to her object of study as ‘social imaginaries’. Granted those raw material realities, and those structuring practices and normative doctrines, how did people actually view and construct their social worlds? In line with the strongly linguistic character of cultural history, her emphasis here is on language and how order was conceptualized by contemporaries in socially reflective source materials: from political discourse in pamphlets and assemblies, and academic commentaries in learned treatises, to fictional works on stage and in novels. Beyond mere and superficial opinions, the language of order, with its common features and contested realms, had performative qualities; by conceptualizing their social worlds, contemporaries actively helped to shape them.15 This shift in the field of social history is recognized by Michael Braddick and John Walter. Historians are increasingly approaching social order as ‘imaginative constructions’ and not just ‘simply material realities’, paying attention to ‘normative vocabularies, ritual expressions of power, and the role of text, performance and ideology in constructing social worlds’.16 Instead of viewing language as a mere ‘reflection of social reality’, Peter Burke states to the same effect, historians are increasingly stressing the role of language as ‘constituting the social order they purport to describe’.17 Irrespective of causality in formation and change, social imaginaries must be recognized as integral parts of social order as an object of historical analysis. How people experienced and perceived their social

20  The Nature of Order worlds—in terms of superiority, status, and roles—certainly affected, even decided, how they chose to act and behave in and against those social worlds. Here is where the 1773 essays come in. As discussed in the introduction, they provide a source material of a rare kind, with contemporaries actively reflecting on social order and its relevant categories and hierarchical relationships. As such, the essays represent the same kind of reflecting and commenting observations that Sarah Maza herself uses for her studies of French social imaginaries before, during, and after the Revolution.18 Maza holds forth two works of particular importance. Firstly, Dror Wahrman’s study on ‘imagining’ the middle class in Britain during that same tumultuous period, using the same kind of social commentaries as found in ‘newspapers, quarterly, monthly and weekly periodicals, reports of parliamentary debates, extra-­parliamentary speeches, sermons . . . historical works, and . . . treatises, tracts and pamphlets’. Secondly, Robert Darnton’s study on the anonymous description of social order in Montpellier, southern France. Written in 1768, its author (a ‘solidly middle-­ class citizen’) neatly described and ordered every guild and assembly, ‘every chapel, every wig maker, every stray dog’, in hierarchical order, partly as the passing sections of a civic procession with rows of municipal and clerical dignitaries, and partly as a depiction of the three ‘ordres’ of French estate society.19 A  third and equally influential study can be added: the seminal work (first published in 1978) by French historian and Annaliste Georges Duby on the medieval formation of the doctrine of three estates—that tripartite schema of oratores, bellatores, and laboratores, which provided the blueprint for social order—and how that in turn reflects on how feudal society, and the economic, political, and religious interests active in it, perceived and construed itself.20 Maza’s and Darnton’s works are particularly central here. Their studies refer to that same European order of estates which was in force in Sweden, and their French social commentators—whether the myriad of voices assembled by Maza, or that lone Montpellier voice in Darnton’s study—were largely contemporary with the 1773 authors. The complexities of early modern order stand out. Both Darnton and Maza depart from the historiographical debate on the validity of the Marxist claim on the rise of the bourgeoisie and a middle class in pre-­revolutionary France, a claim they both see reasons to problematize and, Maza more than Darnton, play down. But they also give ample insights into the unruly and intricate social imaginaries of the time. Darnton’s Montpelliérain may have employed key social components such as ‘dignités’ and ‘qualités’, and key social categories such as ‘corps’ and ‘états’, but the order he described included some decidedly unorthodox features. He simply left out the first estate (the clergy), and different social segments were described and ordered according to different, at times contradicting, lines of division.21 Maza’s commentators yield the same complexity. There was

The Nature of Order 21 a host of variations and adaptions—with models of four, five, or even six social estates—mixed with traditional assumptions on social difference and the functions of the three estates.22 Georges Duby serves as a sound reminder that those voiced contradictions and adjustments of normative doctrines were not unique for late eighteenth-­century contexts. They were there from the very start, in medieval social discourse, in terms of the proposed number of estates as well as their composition and structuring logics.23 Similarly, Wahrman’s study makes clear that these issues were not exclusive to orders of estates and continental Europe; the complexities and transformative qualities deriving from social imaginaries were equally present in eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Britain, with its differently constituted social order.24 Whether uttered in the 1773 essays, the British House of Commons, or in a description of the people of Montpellier, the very terminology employed by social commentators provides a first layer of social imaginaries. Words and phrases constitute the building stones of social imaginaries. They resemble those series of singular utterances that Wahrman likens to the plucking of a violin string, which in combinations become music in resonance with ‘the underlying cultural sound box’.25 When people identified difference between people, in what terms did they do it? What was the social vocabulary at play? Approaching the social vocabulary employed in the 1773 essays, the authors provide catalogues of the titles, trades, and positions of early modern societies: from counts and chamberlains, via housewives and magistrates, to apprentices and dairy maids. These denominations all carried hierarchical connotations and references to unequal social relations, immediately legible to and recognized by contemporaries.26 A count or a county governor was intuitively recognized as socially superior to a baker or a mayor, who in turn was recognized as socially superior to the dairy maid or the journeyman. But how were they conceptualized as superior and inferior? What made the count superior to the baker? What made the mayor superior to the dairy maid? These differences were phrased by sets of beliefs and differentiating binaries. Variables such as ‘worth’, ‘dignity’, ‘wealth’, ‘freedoms’, and ‘honour’ were cited. They all drew on the material realities—those ‘raw elements’—that structured social order. These realities were readily at work in references to belonging to an ‘estate’ and being of varying ‘worth’ and ‘honour’: they all referred to notions of lineage, standing, and status. The economic realities were at work in terms of ‘crafts’, ‘freedoms’, and ‘fortunes’, invoking notions of productive functions and wealth. The political realities were echoed in assertions of ‘offices’ and ‘rank’, reflecting notions of authority and power. These were the structuring assumptions of social dignity, economic wealth, and political authority which, in different constellations, made the count stand out as superior to the baker, and the baker to stand out as superior to the dairy maid.

22  The Nature of Order Binaries served as the most actively differentiating mode of social vocabulary. As the authors differentiated between people, they used conceptual pairs, connected through a dialectical relationship of opposition and describing two poles, effectively making difference between the superior and the inferior.27 The analytical value of such binary models has, rightfully, been criticized as resting on an overly simplified and static understanding of early modern societies.28 Here, however, they appear not as analytical categories, but as historical categories, used by contemporaries to construct difference. Simplistic or not (or perhaps, for that very reason), binaries were instrumental to commentators as they described and ordered their social worlds. Furthermore, alongside a polarizing use, binaries were as often utilized to make further differentiation within social categories, by making use of the sliding degrees between the extreme poles, and in effect add complexity to hierarchies and order. Consequently, there were ‘the most distinguished State servants’ as opposed to ‘lower State Servants’; there were ‘Burghers of lesser fortune’ as opposed to ‘wealthy Merchants’; there were ‘Ladies of the highest rank’ as opposed to ‘lowlier Wives, Madames and Maids’; there was ‘the richer Nobility’ as opposed to ‘poor nobles’; and there were ‘the better people’ and ‘the honest people’ as opposed to ‘the lowliest people’ and the ‘the common and less knowledgeable mass’.29 Gender proved a particularly complex category as the 1773 authors set their minds on ordering their social worlds. Women, and how they differed from men, were key in the essays. Hardly any essay lacks a discussion on women. As will be apparent, women were an essential category to contemporary understandings of sartorial disorder, and they were equally prominent in the various solutions and ways of re-­ordering that the authors presented. However, in terms of order and the composition of that order, the focal point of this chapter, women were conspicuously absent. The described social orders were decidedly male in nature. When mentioned in terms of order, women, along with children, were explicitly or implicitly defined and ordered by male relatives: the father for the unmarried, and the husband for the married. These appearing patterns illustrate what historian Susan Dwyer Amussen refers to as the ‘two separate systems of social hierarchy’ in the early modern societies. There was a hierarchy of ‘class and rank’ on the one hand, and a hierarchy of ‘gender’ on the other. Whereas sartorial practices and social morals were gendered in terms of male and female, hierarchies of class and rank were markedly male.30 From the linguistic sounds of those plucked strings, it is time to step into the larger and discursive melodies that they were part of, in the 1773 social imaginaries. Four ordering categories—rarely clear-­ cut, generally overlapping—stand out: estates, corporate bodies, ranks, and classes.

The Nature of Order 23

An Order of Estates Unsurprisingly, the estates and the ordering principles of estates are decidedly present in the essays. There are authors who provided elaborate descriptions, naming each of the four estates and outlining the hierarchical relationships among them. Others, in a more common sense manner, addressed one, two, three, or all four in passing, when called for. The author of essay No. A5 exemplifies the former. ‘The 4 Estates of the Realm’ were carefully named in succession: ‘the Peasant-­Estate’, ‘the Burgher Estate’, ‘the Clergy Estate’, and the nobility, phrased in the formal manner as ‘the Knights and Nobles’ (Ridderskapet och Adeln).31 The less elaborate modes of descriptions appear in more or less passing references to one or more estate—‘the Clergy Estate’ here, ‘the Peasant Estate’ and ‘the Burghers’ there—but also in a more indirect way in estate-­related phrases such as ‘people of every Estate’, ‘for every Estate’, ‘those who are of a higher Estate’, ‘all others of whatever Estate they may be’, ‘some estates’, the ‘Estates of the Realm’, ‘the other Estates’, and ‘the better Estates’.32 In these descriptions, the estates were far from abstract entities. They were portrayed as concrete entities of society. The noble estate was populated by real-­life characters such as ‘Counts, Barons, and Knightly Men’, and by ‘Generals and Armourers’;33 the clergy was populated by ‘Deans and priests’, and by ‘Bishops and Peasant Chaplains’;34 the burgher estate was populated by ‘Wholesale dealers, Manufacturers, Retail dealers and Artisans’, and by ‘Merchants, Magistrates and Mayors’;35 and the peasant estate was populated by ‘peasants and croppers’, and by ‘Farmers’ and ‘Leaseholders’.36 In line with the male nature of social order, women were consistently referred to as the ‘wives’ and ‘daughters’ of the nobleman, the clergyman, the burgher man, or the peasant man37—occasionally more specifically as the ‘soldier’s wife’, the ‘officer’s wife’, the ‘merchant’s wife’, the ‘artisan’s daughter’, or the ‘scribe’s wife’.38 Intermixed with these descriptions are the structuring logics of estate society. Each estate had its specific social function in the body politics: warring, praying, and producing (with the Swedish separation between urban and rural producers). The hierarchical relationships in terms of superiority and inferiority were decided by the dignity attached by society to those functions.39 The author of essay No. 29 offered a textbook wording of these logics. Each and all, the argument ran, must ‘seek honour in such characteristics and deeds, which makes him useful in his Estate and for the Public good’. The dignity (or lack of it) of the cultivating peasant estate rested on their ‘poverty’ in life; the dignity of the goods-­producing burgher estate rested on the ‘honesty and accuracy’ of its merchants and the ‘industriousness and skills’ of its artisans in their daily businesses and  trades; the dignity of the praying clergy rested on their humility (phrased negatively as the lack of ‘bullying manners’) in their services and

24  The Nature of Order pastoral care; and the dignity of the fighting and ruling nobility rested on their ‘impartiality and diligence’ in office, and their courage (again phrased negatively as the lack of ‘faint-­heartedness’) on the battle field.40 Along these same lines, the estates were recurrently referred to in terms of their respective characteristics and functions. The essays addressed nobles in terms of their ‘contributions to the defence of the State’ and their prominent position in ‘the highest ranks of State offices’;41 the clergy was addressed in their soul-­curing capacities as ‘serious-­minded’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘humble’;42 the burghers were addressed by their ‘Illustrious Commerce’;43 and the peasants were addressed by their nourishing work, ‘cultivating’ the soil and ‘refining’ its produce.44 The authors invoked the equally structuring institutional framework of the estates, with the privileges and regulations enforced by state authority and mirroring the social function and accompanying dignity of each estate. As in contemporary Europe at large, these privileges ranged from the monopoly of the warring and ruling nobles on higher military and civil offices, through the exclusive right to hold divine service by the praying clergy, and the exclusive right of urban trade and artisanship by the producing burghers, to the regulated forms of land ownership and tenures of the cultivating peasantry.45 While illustrating the validity of these structures in contemporary social discourse, these references to privileges and legal arrangements were rarely elaborated on or specified. They were usually used in a common-­sense manner, as references to an established and present social phenomenon. In line with contemporary terminology, ‘privilege’ (Sw. privilegium) and ‘right’ (Sw. rättighet) were used interchangeably. One author addressed the potential risk that a national dress could cause ‘disorder in Ranks and the specific rights of Estates’. Another author, while discussing the instrumentality of social differentiation, referred to the ‘distinction of Nobility’ as already provided by ‘existing Privileges’, and later, while discussing household luxury, the same author pointed out that the employment of servants was ‘to a degree restricted by Privileges’. A third author, while assessing the dangers posed by sumptuousness and luxury on domestic industry and trade, addressed the protection of that industry and trade through ‘Public statutes and Privileges’.46 So far, the familiar characteristics of the order of estates—its categories, logics, and conceptual framework—have taken centre stage. However, things were far from clear-­cut. Upon closer examination, the complexities of contemporary social imaginaries immediately appear. There was not one estate society as described by the 1773 authors, but several, and where there were uniformity and adherence to official norms at first glance, there were also tensions and contradictory realities. Starting with the concept itself—estates—it was not used unambiguously. The economic, social, and political categories of the social order in terms of functions in the body politic, in terms of hierarchical

The Nature of Order 25 relationships according to dignity, and in terms of the constitutive parts of the political assembly, was the most commonly used meaning. But there were at least two other meanings.47 Firstly, estate was used as a designation for social standing. This reflects back to the etymology of the word (Sw. stånd), which it shares with the French état and the German Stand. It derives from the Latin word for social standing, status.48 People above a certain degree of social standing were referred to as being ‘of estate’ (Sw. av stånd), which, in a way similar to the English word ‘genteel’ or ‘of gentility’, unequivocally distinguished them from inferior social segments.49 To label someone as a ‘person of estate’ (ståndsperson, from the German Standesperson) was to define that person as an individual of social rank, usually above the rank of the average commoner, but not necessarily of noble birth.50 Used in this way ‘estate’ became another signifier of social differentiation in the language of order, alongside those of worth, dignity, esteem, and so forth. Phrases such as ‘those of a higher estate’, ‘the better estate of certain people’, and those of ‘average estate’ exemplify the often relative qualities of the concept as a measurement of social standing.51 There are also instances where the word was used in a more absolute sense, as referring to a social quality that an individual either had or did not have. Thus, the author of essay No. 61 bluntly divided the social world into those ‘of estate’ and, inescapably inferior, the ‘peasantry of the Realm’. The latter might constitute an estate (the peasant estate), but, in this coexisting sense of the word, they were not distinguished enough to be of estate.52 Secondly, estate was used to refer to a corporate body or social group, which was either delineated by exclusive privileges and rights, or otherwise defined by service or social function.53 Again, the four estates themselves were examples of this usage. The nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants all had their specific privileges and social functions in the body politic. But there are also references to ‘the Civil Estate’ and ‘the Military Estate’, with those serving in the civil departments and the military forces respectively, and to the rather specifically Swedish denotation ‘bergsman Estate’, delineating peasant communities in the mining areas.54 In line with this usage, contemporary social discourse made references to categories such as the baron estate, the princely estate, the learned estate, the estate–owner estate, the widow estate, the senator estate, and so forth.55 Moving on to the more systematic descriptions of estate societies, the complexity of contemporary social imaginary continues to unfold. In the midst of familiar accounts of the four estates, there are more unorthodox accounts. The author of essay No. 36 was the only voice seemingly to suggest a reduced number of estates, with the call for a sartorial differentiation between ‘three main estates in the realm, which are the noble, the burgher and the peasant’, thus omitting the clergy from the order.56 However, a reduction of the number of estates is an unlikely interpretation of the somewhat ambiguous phrasing. Rather than excluding the

26  The Nature of Order clergy, the author was more likely claiming that the three cited estates were the ones in need of sartorial differentiation, while implicitly stating the rather common view in the essays that the clergy, with their black gowns, already had their specific and readily identifiable dress.57 Instead, the expressed adaptations of the order of estates mostly took the shape of increased inclusion and a broadening of the four estates to include additional social categories beyond the traditional ones. There were two main trends at play. The first trend concerned the burgher estate. While the rural producers of the peasant estate seem fairly uncomplicated and were rarely problematized beyond a bundled-­up collective, the composition of the urban producers in the burgher estate was the recurrent object of specifications and lengthy elaborations. These specifications and elaborations often resulted in an expansion to categories beyond the traditional burgher, that is, the urban and guild-­organized artisan and merchant. The author of essay No. 68 provides an illustrative example of these extended compositions. Everything else seemingly unchanged, the author called for a differentiation within the burgher estate, dividing it into ‘specific Classes’, each further to be subdivided into ‘ten to twelve Societies’.58 The author of essay No. 34 provided a more detailed account of the composition of a broadened burgher estate. At first glance, it is a straight-­forward account of the order of estates. The author referred to ‘the Four Estates of the Realm’ and addressed each accordingly: ‘the Peasant Estate’, ‘the Burghers’, ‘the Priests’, and ‘the Knights and Nobles’. But arriving at the burgher estate and the appropriate dress to be worn by its members, the author elaborated on the social categories concerned. It is a rather curious composition, wandering well beyond the traditional burgher and out into that middling segment between noble birth and clerical calling on the one hand, and the rural commoner on the other. Already at the first mention of the estate, it was expanded beyond its traditional definition. Alongside the burghers, the author—using that exact word: ‘alongside’—referred to ‘lowlier Persons of Estate’. The expansion continued as the description moved on, addressing the ‘lowlier Burghers’, and the ‘better ones such as Merchants, Magistrates, and others’, and, finally, ‘Mayors and other Civil Servants from the higher to the lower’.59 The traditional categories of the burgher estate generally fit into these descriptions. But—and here is the twist—those traditional categories do not exhaust the addressed social segments. There were additional categories, roaming outside the guilds and beyond their merchant and artisan trades. Categories such as lowlier persons of estate and civil servants from the higher to the lower did not necessarily, not even likely, coincide with the traditional concept of the burgher. Set boundaries were blurred, and traditional categories were watered down. These expanding descriptions are typical for the burgher estate. The estate was described as ‘all those that fall under the name of burghers, merchants as well as others of

The Nature of Order 27 more or less wealth and esteem’; as ‘The Burgher estate and lower Civil corps’; ‘ironwork proprietors and their equals, merchants, artisans, and the lowlier burghers’; and—concisely phrased, but none the less socially expanding—as ‘Burghers and their equals’.60 The second trend concerned the nobility. The noble estate was repeatedly associated with a specific category, namely state servants. This association was so strong that the estate was sometimes equated with, and referred to in terms of, the civil and military corps. Essay No. 29 illustrates the point. The author provided a peculiar take on the order of estates. It is one of a few examples of an expansion of the number of estates, adding the fine arts alongside the theoretical learning of the second estate. There are reasons to return to its categories and governing principles later. For now, the first and hierarchically superior estate is of the main concern. It was referred to as ‘the Civil corps’ and was divided into four hierarchically ordered subgroups. The first two contained the highest state servants, referred to by their honorary titles: ‘Trusted men’ and ‘Trusted servants’ (Tromän and Tro-­tjenare) referring to their being privy to the king.61 The other two contained the lower ranks of state servants, with permanent staff (ordinarie) and non-­permanent staff (extra-­ordinarie).62 Again, the traditional archetype of a nobleman fits, and it fits quite well. In fact, at the time, the two higher subgroups could be considered close to synonymous with noble rank, as most higher state offices were preserved for nobles as dictated by their charter of privileges.63 The middling and lower ranks of state service were equally populated by nobles, either in the early stages of their career advancement or of lower social rank as untitled noblemen. But—and again, the twist—it opened up to additional groups, outside the nobility. The defining term ‘noble’ was left out altogether, and the described corps was lent a noble character only indirectly by way of the estate’s monopoly on higher offices, while the inclusion of the lower positions left it wide open for non-­noble office-­ holders, as well. In a similar fashion, in the essays, ‘the civil corps’, the ‘Royal Courts of Appeal and each of the Royal Colleges’ were associated with the nobility just as magistrates and merchants were associated with the burghers. The ‘Colleges’ and ‘the military’, and not the noble estate, were stated as set categories in an otherwise familiar succession of the clerical estate, the burgher estate, and the peasant estate. As a final example, the proposed modes of dress of the ‘Royal Court, the Courts of Appeal, Colleges, and Regional Government’ were ascribed to ‘those of the Knights and Nobles who do not hold an office or a commission’ (implying that the specified civil branches were composed of nobles who did).64 It should be emphasized that the military corps were sometimes left out; the authors often refer to the civil corps in general or, as in the examples mentioned previously, specified branches of it. Rather than an omission of the military from the social order, and as a facet of nobility, this

28  The Nature of Order may serve as a reminder of the specific context of the essays. They were not written in response to a question on social order; they were written in response to a question on sartorial matters. Their formal uniforms already sartorially distinguished the military (army as well as navy), a fact several authors addressed. Regarding the nature of nobility, the fact that the social imaginaries were so focused on the state servants is more intriguing as it omitted a highly relevant aspect of the Swedish nobility: landowners. Alongside state offices, land was the second pillar of noble status, with noble estates making up as much as 30 per cent of Swedish agricultural land.65 By stressing state servants, military, or civil, this landowning component of the nobility was left out from the social order, at least from the sartorial representation of it. These trends relate to the social realities of late eighteenth-­century Europe. As the authors described the order of estates, they also described the symptoms of well-­known social processes at work at the time. The preoccupation with the composition of the burgher estate, and the tendencies to broaden it beyond its traditional form, reflects back on the rise of the middling sort. The addressed social types chime well with that dynamic socio-­economic category of ‘shopkeepers, manufacturers, better-­off independent artisans, civil servants, professionals, lesser merchants, and the like’ that Margaret Hunt delineates in those middling segments beneath the gentry and above the labouring commoners in early modern England.66 In the Swedish context, these middling groups constituted that social category called the ‘non-­noble persons of estate’ (ofrälse ståndspersoner), which, following Sten Carlsson’s seminal work on the subject, has been identified as a dynamic and advancing group, cutting through the old estate boundaries, representing new communities of interest, and ultimately portending the rise of a middle class.67 In the essays, the presence of conceptual constructions such as ‘the middle Estate’ and the ‘average estate’ (medelstånd and medelmåttigt stånd) fits well into this larger story.68 Fuelled by the spread of commerce, increase in wealth, and an expanding government bureaucracy, these groups were growing in number and importance. They were making themselves known in contemporary political life, and, as is apparent in the essays, becoming an acknowledged category to be reckoned with in the social order.69 Their frequent association with the burghers was probably due to a rule of proximity; like the burghers, they were not noble by birth or clerical by calling, but they were decidedly above the average commoner in standing. They were often associated with commercial activities and urban settings, although not exclusively, as rural proprietors of land and iron works formed an important component of this middling group. The association of the nobility with civil and military staff reflects back on the same processes. With continued state formation, the medieval knight and royal counsellor had evolved into the eighteenth-­century

The Nature of Order 29 officer and civil servant, defined by rank in the king’s service rather than by ancestry and lineage. From this point of view, the changes in terminology reflect the realities behind the rise of uniforms at the courts of contemporary Europe. The fact that the governing elites increasingly dressed as officers and civil servants reflected the fact that they were increasingly viewed and defined as such—a caste of state servants—rather than by social variables such as noble pedigree.70 Furthermore, the social terminology reflected actual changes within the state ranks during the eighteenth century. In 1773, the higher ranks of state service preserved their noble character, but the corps of state servants as such—the very flesh and bones of the warriors and rulers— were increasingly populated by non-­noble groups. Already in 1723, the nobility’s monopoly on state offices had been curtailed, as only the highest offices remained preserved for them, while the lower ones (below the rank of colonel) were opened for non-­nobles.71 As the century progressed, the number of non-­nobles in the civil ranks (and, but not as much, the military ranks) increased steadily. Sten Carlsson refers to the period between 1730 and 1760 as ‘the advance of the non-­noble civil servants’, and characterizes it as a general weakening of the correlation between civil service and noble birth.72 Thus, the changing terminology reflected social processes that were an integral part of the rise of the Swedish middling sort. The social elite of officers and civil servants, the superior ranks of the estate society, was indeed populated by nobles, but not exclusively so. So, what do these findings say about the order of estates in late eighteenth-­century Sweden? How are we to understand them? This raises the question of the character of the social imaginaries as they appear in the essays. Were they descriptions of the social order, reflecting how the authors actually perceived it? Or, should they rather be understood as claims, reflecting the more politicized and partisan social ideals of contemporary social discourse? It is a well-­known fact that the order of estates was increasingly contested as the eighteenth century drew to an end. On the one hand, there were material challenges in terms of changing social patterns of ownership, levels of education, and distribution of wealth which left the order more and more obsolete and ill-­fitting; on the other hand, there were discursive challenges in terms of contentious words, critical sentiments, and voiced demands for reform which left it perceived as less and less legitimate and just. Where on this scale do the imaginaries in the 1773 essays belong? Were they descriptions of actual changes as perceived, acknowledged, and internalized by contemporary observers? Or were they claims for change within the social order as assessed, criticized, and found deficient? While there are no conclusive answers, these questions must be addressed. There are only three examples of authors providing explicitly argued assessments of the order of estates: one author stepped up to defend it, and two to criticize it.

30  The Nature of Order Starting with the defence, the author of essay No. 3 presented in total ten arguments in support of the social elevation of the nobility, specifically their right to distinguish themselves through a ‘Glorious Being in Dress, as well as in everything else’. The defence was phrased in a well-­ established rhetorical trope. Rather than acknowledging the existence of conflicting views and countering them, the author presented the case as a self-­evident truth, which no one with a ‘righteous, subservient, reverential Affection for Our Gracious Powers’ could ever, ‘with a clear Conscience’, disagree. The ten arguments all drew on the structuring principles of the order of estates, and the superior esteem, honour, and dignity attached to the social functions of the nobility. The role of the warrior echoed in assertions of the nobility as ‘An Estate whose Ancestors sacrificed Life and blood for the Realm’, and ‘An Estate which carries the main load of Defending the Realm’. The role of the ruler was similarly claimed in assertions of them as ‘An Estate from whose Ancestors our Gracious Royal House descends’, ‘An Estate whose Ancestors ruled the Land’, ‘An Estate whose Ancestors did the Realm much good’, ‘An Estate from which are selected the Individuals who surround the Royal Throne and maturely and wisely advice a Gracious King’, and ‘An Estate from which the most distinguished State Servants are produced’. The remaining three arguments all referred to the historical distinction of the nobility: they were ‘the honour and adornment of the Realm’, the ones who ‘the Foreigner chooses to visit’, and the ones who ‘alone have the Favour of Frequenting our Gracious and elevated Royal House’.73 Turning to the first critical text, the author of essay No. 64 addressed the issue of ‘particular Estate Uniforms’, aiming at the ‘differentiation between Estates’ and seeking to ‘distinguish better people from lowlier people’. According to the author, this idea should be abandoned, and the two arguments posed were both based on a critical assessment of the workings of the order of estates. The first argument was indirectly phrased. Estate uniforms were impracticable since ‘Within every Estate’, there were ‘so many gradations between people that there would be no end to the [sartorial] differences’. Four different uniforms, one for each estate, would simply be insufficient. This view of the formal order of estates as an insufficient representation of society chimes well with the various adaptations of the traditional estates in order to make room for additional groups.74 The second argument was more explicitly phrased. In a surprisingly candid way, it drew on the same structuring principles that were employed in defence of nobility—with the superior esteem, honour, and dignity attached to their social functions—but they were turned against that very logic of ordering. Estate uniforms, the argument ran, would visualize an unjust and incorrect understanding of social hierarchy. ‘In these Classifications’, the author argued, ‘the Nourishing estates would most likely, as they already have been heretofore, be assigned to the lowest positions’. This was wrong: ‘On Industry alone

The Nature of Order 31 rests our coming into being’; and ‘How manifold times more valuable is one such useful Citizen, compared to hundreds of such fops, who are good for nothing beyond priding themselves on borrowed precedencies’ (i.e. the nobles).75 In content and scope, such calls for merits and societal utility before aristocratic pedigree and dignity echoed the claims for change that were being voiced in contemporary debates at Diets and in print, not least in regard to the appointments of those public offices in civil and military service that, again, were so salient in the essays.76 Turning to the second critical example, a similar, albeit less heatedly phrased, argument for the validity of merits before pedigree was put forward by the author of essay No. 29, the same author who provided the textbook wording of the social functions of the estates. In the design of a national dress, the argument ran, ‘sartorial distinctions should not be based on such advantages that one person may have over another solely due to a more fortunate birth, but only on such conditions which depend on each and everyone’s freedom to choose his vita genus and there make his endeavours’. In short, ‘the Noble Estate, as far as dress is concerned, should have no distinctions’.77 The relative lack of explicit and politicized claims is hardly surprising considering the format of the 1773 competition. The organizing body was a royal society. To openly criticize contemporary affairs would most likely fall into poor soil as far as a prize was concerned. True, essay No. 29, written by none less than Erik Waller, chaplain to the King himself, was named the winner of the contest.78 But then, he, unlike the author of essay No. 64, made sure to dress his argument in a suitably servile attire, declaring that a sufficient ‘distinction’ of the nobility was already at hand (rather than denying the validity of it). He also carefully averred his willingness to ‘change opinions on the matter’ if convinced that the righteous standing of the nobility should indeed be furthered by distinctions in dress.79 The contemporary political climate was far from liberal. The repressive machinery of Gustavian absolutism was still in its infancy, but authors and printers had good reasons to think twice before writing or publishing anything against the regime or the affairs of state.80 In this context, the very presence of the kind of contentious language found in essay No. 64, delivering such a fundamental critique against the current order, addressed to a royal society, is quite remarkable. The question remains. Were the social imaginaries descriptions or claims? The nature of the adaptations invites an understanding of them as claims in the ongoing social processes of the time, where the question of a national dress became a symbolic stake—an opportunity and a means— to address larger questions of order, hierarchy, and social belonging. The authors’ outlined social contours clearly indicate its middling nature: with clergy, civil servants, academics, untitled noblemen, and so forth. The author of essay No. 29, Chaplain Erik Waller, explicitly declared himself to be a ‘Non-­Noble’ (ofrälse).81 These are the very groups that

32  The Nature of Order were added, included, and emphasized in the broadened scope of the burghers, as well as in the redefinition of the nobility as an estate of state servants. The authors had vested interests in the adaptations they presented; they were adding, including, and emphasizing themselves in the social order. They were, as Michael J. Braddick and John Walters would phrase it, ‘locating’ themselves on the ‘early modern power grid’.82 Furthermore, as this analysis implies, the dichotomy between descriptions and claims is largely a simplification. The difference between describing something as it is perceived and making a claim of how it ought to be can be quite thin. To describe something is in effect to claim the validity of that description. The fact that the estates were so prominently presented as the object for sartorial differentiation in the 1773 essays reflects a claim that the estates were perceived as founding categories of social order. By invoking those categories, whether in entirety or in parts, whether in its traditional form or adapted, the authors insisted on their validity. Whether this was done in perceived harmony and concord with other people’s views, or whether it was a claim mobilized against perceived social views contrary to their own, we will never know. In conclusion, the essays illustrate the overall presence of the order of estates, with its inner logics and its basic categories in contemporary social thought. But they also make clear the richness of and the dynamics at work within this social system. This structuring social narrative allowed scope for adaptations and even straight-­out contestation, as its categories were increasingly under pressure and their capacity to describe and explain the social order in a meaningful and convincing way was tried and negotiated in social discourse.

An Order of Corporate Bodies When the king’s chaplain, Erik Waller, penned his winning entry, he not only provided an illustration of the ambiguities and dynamics at work within the order of estates but also created an account that allows for a further analysis of the complexity of early modern societies. He discerned five ‘Corps’ to be sartorially distinguished (see Table 2.1). Each corps was in turn divided into four ‘Classes’, or subgroups. ‘The Civil Corps’ was divided into (1) trusted men (Tromän), (2) trusted servants (Tro-­tjenare); (3) permanent staff, and (4) non-­permanent staff. ‘The Learned Class’ was divided into (1) professors, (2) Docentes (academic teachers), (3) Promoti (those awarded with academic degrees), and (4) students. The third corps contained (1) artists by appointment, (2) non-­appointed artists, (3) fully educated pupils, and (4) half-­educated pupils. ‘The Burgher-­Estate’ included (1) wholesale dealers, (2) manufacturers, (3) retail dealers, and (4) artisans. The final group, Land-­Junkers, drawing on the German term Junker, included (1) proprietors of mills and ironworks (Brukspatroner), (2) proprietors of land, (3) leaseholders, and (4) the more honourable lower state servants.83

The Nature of Order 33 Table 2.1  Order of Corporate Bodies in Essay No. 29. No. 29 ‘The Civil Corps’ ‘The Learned Class’ ‘Artists’ ‘The Burgher Estate’ ‘Land Junkers’ Source: Swedish National Archive (Riksarkivet), The Patriotic Society’s Archive, supplement to Proceedings 1774, No. 29.

There are several familiar features from the order of estates at work here. The burgher estate is called by name, and the functional division of society is decidedly present. Indeed, and as suggested previously, the depicted order can easily be read as a rephrased order of estates. At the top of the social order, there are those who rule, with the rows of state  servants. Then, moving down the hierarchy, there are those who are responsible for learning and teaching, expanded in the third group of ‘Artists’ to include practical learning and artistry alongside the theoretical learning of the scholar/clergyman. Next, there are the producers and providers of material goods, followed by the rural producers, working the soil and the land. Beyond that immediate familiarity, Waller’s described order clearly differed from the Swedish order of four estates. In fact, compared to that traditional order, only the burgher estate is recognizable. The four subgroups fit fairly well as burghers in the sense of urban, guild-­organized merchants and artisans, possibly with the exception of ‘manufacturers’, which did not necessarily denote an urban producer within the system of guilds. The manufacturer would more likely be found in the rural landscape, and outside the organization of the guilds. The remaining four groups have little to do with the traditional understanding of nobility, clergy, and peasantry. As already observed, the ‘The Civil Corps’ may very well have included nobles, but not exclusively, and, quite contrary to the social logics of the order of estates, they were not included in their capacity as nobles, but as civil servants. A nobleman without state office would not belong there, while a commoner with state office would. The clerical estate is even more unrecognizable. It has been detached from the religious sphere. The preachers and men of the church are replaced by secular categories such as university professors, academic teachers, artists, and students. Again, there might be bishops and priests included, but in their academic capacity as men of learning, not in their clerical capacity. The corps of rural producers is equally alien to the traditional peasant estate. The very designation Landt-­Junkare carried noble connotations, and indicated more elevated and gentrified social segments than the

34  The Nature of Order peasantry.84 Peasants in the traditional sense could be found among ‘proprietors of land’ (with the fairly large share of freeholders in the Swedish peasantry) and ‘leaseholders’ (with the tenants of noble and crown land). But land was owned and leased by others than peasants—from town-­ dwellers and rural clergymen to noblemen on their estates. Nor do the subclasses, as they were termed, refer to cultivation as such; they refer to forms of ownership. People could, and that was increasingly the case, own or lease land without cultivating it themselves, as the archetypal peasant would. The remaining two classes, the proprietors and the ‘the more honourable lower state servants’, were not rural in terms of agricultural production as such, but rather in the sense of living and working in the rural countryside. Rather than estates, these categories address another, equally fundamental and intimately estate-­related, category of early modern societies: corporate bodies. These often-­ medieval institutions were legally constituted communities, sometimes territorial, such as provincial assemblies, but more frequently professional, like urban guilds.85 As socially structuring entities, they married well with notions of estates. One of the meanings of ‘estates’ was precisely that: a group delineated either by privileges or otherwise defined by service and social function.86 Two prominent examples from the Swedish context are named by Waller in his essay: the universities, and, indirectly by the crafts and trades of the burgher estate, the urban guilds. All members of those bodies made up clearly defined groups, structured and governed by specific regulatory powers, legal courts and, to some extent, laws and rules: from the professor to the student at the university, from the master craftsman to the apprentice in the silversmiths’ guild. Waller’s essay exemplifies the authors who describe an order of corporate bodies, rather than estates. Compared to the order of estates, these corporate orders are less numerous; the more elaborate examples amount to a handful. In them, the peculiar features that were noted in the descriptions of the estates have taken over as the structuring principles of order. However familiar, the results constitute a different conception of society, not necessarily different in essence (it is still a fundamentally corporate order) but decidedly so in species (those are not the four estates). Looking closer at two additional examples, found in essays Nos 32 and A2, two distinguishing features in these corporate orders stand out: the composition of order and the structuring logics of that order (see Table 2.2). Starting off with composition, the stated categories differ from the estates. The social archetypes of the latter—the warring nobleman, the praying clergyman, the trading burgher, and the cultivating peasant— are pushed back and made secondary to other categories.87 As in Waller’s essay, there were those who worked in the state administration, those who had (and worked with) practical and theoretical learning, those who traded in and produced goods, and those who owned or worked with the

The Nature of Order 35 Table 2.2  Orders of Corporate Bodies in Essays Nos. 32 and A2. No. 32

No. A2

The royal court The royal courts of appeal The state colleges Regional administration (‘Lands Stat’) Proprietors of mills and ironworks Merchants Artisans Lowlier burghers The judiciary Priests The peasant estate

The military The spiritual estate The office of forestry and hunting The burgher estate The civil administration Judges Medical doctors Surgeons The peasant estate

Source: Swedish National Archive (Riksarkivet), The Patriotic Society’s Archive, supplement to Proceedings 1774, Nos. 32, A2.

produce of the land through agriculture, livestock, forestry, mining, and so on. But rather than socially defined categories with specific functions in the body politic, these groups are defined by their activities, more in the sense of modern professions than medieval social functions.88 They could be nobles, clergymen, burghers, and peasants, but their estates were not their defining qualities. The anatomy of order was related to, but largely detached from, the social archetypes of the order of estates. These examples demonstrate the incoherent nature of contemporary social vocabulary, as already made evident in descriptions of the order of estates. The fundamental categories into which people were sorted and ordered were far from stable, enclosed, or hermeneutically sealed. On the contrary, they were frequently used in ways that defied their formalized and institutionalized meanings.89 Categories from different systems of social stratification were mixed, resulting in strange concoctions. In essay No. A2, for instance, the nine corporate bodies represented no less than four different systems of order. The spiritual and the peasant estates were directly imported from the four estates; the military was a legally defined corporate body with its own jurisdiction; the civil administration was a corporate body defined by place of employment, while the medical doctors and the surgeons would rather pass as professions, defined by their education and professional line of work. In a similar manner, the author of essay No. 32 adduced the peasant estate and priests as relevant social categories, alongside corporate bodies such as the royal court and the state colleges, but opted to dissolve the burgher estate, and specify it into three entities: merchants, artisans, and ‘lowlier burghers’.90 Moving on to structuring logics, the differences between corporate bodies and the four estates continue. In line with early modern emphasis on order and difference, the notions of hierarchy and vertical relationships are ever-­present. The hierarchical nature was often made evident

36  The Nature of Order by means of numbering the groups in a falling order.91 Even without explicit numbering, the hierarchical relationships were often made clear by the order of appearance.92 But compared to the consistently stressed hierarchical nature between the estates, the orderings of corporate bodies were often vague and unclear, at times even incomplete. More to the point, the order in which the authors discussed corporate bodies did not always reflect back on vertical relationships. Looking at essay No. 32, it is unlikely that the fact that proprietors of ironworks, merchants, artisans, and ‘the lowlier burghers’ were introduced before priests reflected a radical understanding of hierarchy. Instead, the example serves as another reminder of the fact that the essays were not primarily on social order and hierarchies; the question posed was on forms of dress. Starting with groups connected to state administration, the author of essay No. 32 continued with groups involved in the production of goods. The presentation then turned to the make and cut of clothes for these groups, with a vindication for domestically produced fabrics and the particular suitability of overcoats in the harsh Swedish climate. Only then was the clergy introduced; they, too, the argument ran should be relieved from their costly cassocks and enjoy the advantages of overcoats. Thus, the social categories of order are there, but they were not necessarily, or consistently, placed in neat hierarchies. In this specific example, issues of order and hierarchy were second to the sartorial argument on the advantages of lay fashions over clerical fashions.93 But there were hierarchies at play. The absence of those familiar archetypes of the estates—the nobleman, the priest, the burgher, and the peasant—points to a different logic of stratification. Functions were indeed vital to the ordering logics; just as in the order of estates, the corporate orders were based on what people did. Equally familiar, the hierarchical relationships clearly drew on the status ascribed to those functions. Civil and military groups, the rulers and the warriors, were consistently hailed at the top of the social order, followed by functions related to knowledge (priests, academic professors, artists, medical doctors, etc.), followed by producers of goods (merchants, artisans, manufacturers, proprietors of iron works, etc.), ending with the agricultural producers, consistently assigned to the lowest social stratum.94 But—and this is key—the functions and the status ascribed to them were not fused with the social archetypes. Rather than the homogenous social composition of the estates, these corporate bodies were markedly heterogeneous in terms of social composition.95 While the archetypes were still present as categories of order, they were dispersed from their exclusive estate enclosures on to different corporate bodies. A  nobleman was, again, likely to be found in the civil and military corps, but those offices and positions were not noble reserves, and that same nobleman was just as likely to appear in the corps of proprietors of ironworks and of land, alongside burghers and peasants. The social imperatives inherent to functions were reduced.

The Nature of Order 37 It is an order based on what an individual did, but not so much an order based of who that individual was. The corporate imaginaries highlight another central aspect of early modern social order. Not only was there a hierarchical order between the corporate bodies but also a notion of sub-­hierarchies within them. There were similar tendencies in descriptions of the estates, with the specification of groups within the burgher estate and in the differentiation between high and low offices among state servants. Nor was the idea of inner hierarchies alien to the order of estates. There were counts, barons, and untitled nobles in the noble estate, just as there were bishops, deans, and rectors in the clerical estate. Correspondingly, and all the more so as the century progressed, merchants were deemed more eminent than artisans in the burgher estate.96 In everyday practices, these distinctions often came to the fore. When, for instance, the burghers of Stockholm were invited to the Royal Opera House to celebrate the Queen’s name’s day in 1778, the list of tickets, as well as the seating in the auditorium, made this quite clear. ‘Wholesalers’, ‘Manufacturers’, and ‘Retailers’ were first on the list and seated in the front rows; ‘Bakers’, ‘Tailors’, and ‘Wig makers’ were listed and seated in the middle, while ‘Carpenters’ and ‘Coachmen’ were last on the list and seated in the back rows.97 The peasant estate was equally differentiated, not least in terms of their legal relationship to the land they cultivated, where freeholders and king’s tenants were deemed superior to tenants of noble land. The latter were in fact excluded from the political estate of the peasants early on in the eighteenth century because of their alleged loyalties to their noble masters.98 Compared to the order of estates, these internal stratifications were more pronounced and elaborated on in orders based on corporate bodies. Again, essay No. 29 provides an example. The five hierarchically ordered groups were, in turn, divided into four hierarchically ordered subgroups. The civil, learned, and artistic groups were all ordered: from higher to lower servants, from senior to junior academics, and from titled to half-­ educated. Contemporary notions of hierarchy were equally reflected in the two producing groups. The stratification within the burgher group closely mirrored the order observed in contemporary court etiquette, with merchants and manufacturers at the top, and artisans at the bottom. Correspondingly, landowners preceded leaseholders in the rural group.99 These inner hierarchies were present in the other examples, as well: the royal court was distinguished from the royal courts of appeal, which were differentiated from the other state colleges, which were distinguished from the regional administration; the magistrates were differentiated from the burghers, and the merchants were distinguished from the artisans, who were distinguished from ‘the lowlier burghers’.100 As essay No. 29 demonstrates, these inner hierarchies add another layer of complexity to the structuring logics of order. The hierarchical order between the corporate bodies and the order within them may seem

38  The Nature of Order clear enough. But how do the sub-­categories of each relate to each other? Acknowledging the general notions of status and standing at the time, it would seem highly peculiar to, for instance, claim that proprietors of ironworks in the fifth group were socially inferior to artisans in the fourth or students in the second, or, for that matter, that a non-­permanent member of staff of the civil corps in the first group was socially superior to a professor in the first subclass of the second. Evidently, the relationship between the categories rather describes an overlapping sequence of hierarchical intervals than a clear-­cut order. The corporate bodies describe social functions with a distinct element of hierarchy between them, but while the sub-­classes within them describe clear hierarchies for that specific group, that was not the case for the larger whole. Thus, a lower civil servant of the first group would most likely be socially inferior to a higher ranking member of the second (a professor, for instance) as well as the proprietor of ironworks, in top of the fifth group.101 These general patterns in composition and structuring logics are easily discerned. But as with the orders of estates, there was considerable scope for variation in terms of structure as well as conceptual framework. Looking at structure, the same socio-­economic sectors keep appearing, but the named corporate bodies vary in terms of specificity and type. Civil servants were named collectively as one group or specified into individual branches of government, just as the rural producers were named in a collective manner analogous to the peasant estate, while at other times specified into quite different categories and social entities. Regarding concepts used, ‘corporate body’ or ‘corporation’ (Sw. korporation) was rarely used as such by the authors. Instead, an arsenal of related concepts was employed, sometimes in a mix, such as corps/bodies (with the Swedish term stat, denoting a government-­funded branch of state, such as the royal court or the military), estates, classes, societies, and offices.102 The additional layers of complexity are further unfolded in essay No. 22. The author named 12 groups for sartorial differentiation. It is a familiar mix of categories and social entities. The groups were all unlabelled and simply presented as ‘1’ down to ‘12’, with a paragraph each listing the included titles, offices, and trades. From a bird’s-­eye view, the groups fall neatly into the four main sectors, familiar from the order of estates. The first six groups described the civil corps—the rulers—from ‘Senators of the Realm’ and ‘Presidents’ of the state colleges, down to the regional and local levels with tax collectors and ‘District Scribes’. The military corps was incorporated as the seventh group of this suite of rulers. As number nine, representing learning, came the ‘Clerical Estate’, followed in turn by the urban producers with the ‘Wholesale dealers of the Burgher Estate’, ‘Proprietors of iron works’, ‘the remaining Burgher Estate’ with ‘the manifold artisans’, and ‘town councillors’. The rural producers were assigned to the lower end of the social scale, with the ‘Peasant and Mining Estates’, the latter including the very lowest servants

The Nature of Order 39 of the local civil corps, with ‘Mine-­Constables’ and ‘Mine-­Bailiffs’ alongside the mining peasantry.103 Alongside this familiar composition, a differently defined and composed entity appears as number 11. In the row of utterly male groups, all based on activities and occupation, ‘Women’ (Fruentimber) were singled out as a separate group. This is one of the rare instances in the essays when women were addressed specifically as a social category. Usually, women (and children) were referred to as integral parts of the male household, sharing the social position of the father/husband.104 But here, in essay No. 22, women were collectively presented as a social category in their own right—not based on occupation, privileges, jurisdictions, or education, but on their sex. In the utterly male social discourse of the essays, women are suddenly highlighted. There were state servants at the royal court, in the civil administration, in the judicial courts, in the army, in the navy; there were clergy men; there were merchants, proprietors of iron works, and artisans; there were peasants and miners—and then, in an otherwise male world, there were women. The seemingly odd insertion of women becomes more intelligible as the analysis moves from composition to hierarchy and the structuring logics at play. In essay No 22, there is a distinct hierarchical ordering of the 12 corporate bodies, emphasized by their enumeration. The principles of function and accompanying status and worth repeat themselves. State servants are cemented at the top, in falling ranks from higher to lower offices, followed by the clergy, followed by the urban producers, and ending with the rural producers, cemented at the bottom. But again, things were not clear-­cut. Certainly, the singling out of women as one separate body did not mean, or even imply, that all women were considered of equal social standing and worth. Nor did the insertion of women as number 11 mean that women as such were considered lower than urban producers, merely out-­ranking the rural producers at the very end of the social scale. The internal stratification of women is made clear in the describing paragraph, closely mirroring the hierarchical structure at large. Starting with ‘the ennobled’, the descriptions continue with ‘wives of clergymen and their equals’, and then moves on to ‘the Wives of the Burgher estate’, and ending with ‘those of the lower sort’.105 Rather than being second to lowest in the social hierarchy, women’s insertion as number 11 reflects back on the complexity of social order. In line with historian Susan Dwyer Amussen’s above-­mentioned model of ‘two separate systems of social hierarchy’ in early modern societies, the author fused an order of status with an order of gender.106 Women were not ranked 11th in a falling order. A gender category was infused into a male order of status and standing, and the descending order of women mirrored the falling order of men in the preceding groups—ennobled ones, and the wives of clergymen and burghers—as well as the following

40  The Nature of Order category, with the ‘lower sort’. Women were not so much socially inferior or superior to men; they were parallel to men. Historian Henrik Ågren’s study on social stratification via titles in early eighteenth-­century Sweden provides further illustration of the duality between the separate hierarchies. In a printed manual on how to correctly address people according to their social status in letter-­writing, published in 1731, the author discerned between four main categories. In a similar manner to corporate bodies, these categories were based on the person’s function and social standing. In the first category were royals, nobles, and commissioned officers; in the second were the clergy, including professors, and other academic teachers; in the third were civil servants, physicians, non-­commissioned officers, burghers, and the peasantry; and in the fourth category, again claiming gender as separate from occupation and status, were women.107 This did not mean that all women were equally ranked, or that all women were deemed lower than the non-­commissioned officers and the peasantry of the preceding category; it meant that women were to be addressed differently than men. Beyond the superior ranks of royalties, gendered practises set in, indicating the prescribed way to address the count and the countess, the president and the president’s wife, the goldsmith and the goldsmith’s wife, and so forth. The complexity of social order was reflected in the proper ways to dress and address it. Alongside the complicating qualities of gender, essay No. 22 also exemplifies the equally complicating qualities of noble pedigree in notions of social order and social hierarchies. The relative significance of nobility in the essays has been noted. The social category of nobility was frequently replaced with the administrative category of state servants. State servants, in general or specified by branches, were clearly considered a more relevant category than noblemen. Returning to essay No. 29, not only was ‘The Civil Corps’ placed as the superior category but also the author also went further and, albeit carefully phrased with a convenient caveat, advised against any sartorial differentiation based on ‘fortunate birth’, hailing instead the qualities of merit.108 In the midst of these emerging patterns, essay No. 22 presented an explicit exception. Within the structures of an order of corporate bodies— as such similar to those presented in essays Nos. 29, 32, and A2—the author delivered a vindication of the precedence of noble pedigree. The superiority of nobility was fused into the elevation of the higher administrative ranks. The contours of this vindication appear in the internal stratification of women. It was not the wives of the state servants in the higher corporate bodies that were named as the highest ranking women. It was ‘the ennobled’ women: the nobility. This emphasis on noble right permeated the proposed corporate structure. In effect, the three highest subgroups of the civil body become that socially defined noble reserve which is missing in many other examples. The first and highest group

The Nature of Order 41 consisted of the very highest state offices, with the addition of (offices or no offices) ‘Counts’. The highest ranking nobles—the aristocrats—were effectively included in the corporate body of the administrative elite. The second group consisted of the ensuing offices in rank, with the equally excluding addition of the nobles of the second highest rank: ‘the Barons’. The third group closed with the ‘remaining serving Knights’ (i.e. untitled nobles) along with a list of ‘Noble’ office holders. Only then, in the fourth group, did the non-­noble social categories and state offices appear.109 Returning to the larger context of the essays and their social imaginaries, the presence of divergent expositions like the one in essay No. 22 serves to further underline the complex and contradictory nature of the late eighteenth-­century social landscape. On the one hand, there were social imaginaries that echoed the claims of advancing social groups with regard to the order of estates: those middling groups with vested interests in promoting a social order in which their own endeavours for inclusion and recognition were satisfied. On the other hand, as illustrated by the deviant essay No. 22, these same relativized corporate understandings, with their dynamic elements and additional space for detailed stratification, were simultaneously and with the same air of inevitability used in defence of traditional foundations of difference and differentiation. The recurrence of relativized understandings of corporate orders, based on common activities, mirrored a relativized social hierarchy. Rather than the traditional framework of legal arrangements with socially exclusive groups, these notions represented a more, in the words of historian Colin Jones, discussing similar patterns in pre-­revolutionary France, ‘transcorporative’ understanding of society, and as such decidedly more inclusive beyond old elites and hierarchically dynamic beyond old restraints in terms of social advancement.110 On the basis of merits, a successful merchant would enjoy social recognition for his success and progress from, say, the ‘lowlier burghers’ to the ‘wholesale dealers’, without the restraints and formal regulations of legally defined corps of merchants or, for that matter, a burgher estate delimited by clerical ordination or noble standing.

An Order of Ranks As that complex universe of social imaginaries unfolds, one category in particular stands out as a prominent and somewhat unruly category, namely state servants. They were recurrent in descriptions of orders of estates, seemingly replacing the nobility at times, and blurring the delineations of the burgher estate at other times, and they were a nigh on compulsory category in orders of corporate bodies. They were sometimes phrased as a collective, sometimes demarcated into branches such as the civil service, the military forces, and the royal court, and sometimes further detailed as individual units and departments.

42  The Nature of Order As a social category, state servants bring a third notion of order to the fore: rank. Rank was not alien to or incompatible with estates or corporate bodies: rank coexisted with both. But it represented a different principle of order and hierarchy. In English, and to some extent Swedish, rank (rang) could simply denote social standing, in the sense that a count was of higher rank than a baron, and that any nobleman was of higher rank than any commoner. But there was a more specific meaning to rank, which referred to an administrative hierarchy of authority rather than a social hierarchy of status and worth. To an eighteenth-­century Swede, the word ‘rank’ would unequivocally denote a position of authority, relative to other positions of authority, as defined by a formalized and authoritative succession of positions.111 In this meaning, rank was ever present in early modern societies.112 In addition to characterizations such as ‘estate society’, ‘privilege society’, and ‘corporate society’, the characterization ‘rank society’ is equally apt. Sweden was no exception, and those frequently referred-­to state servants constituted a particularly eloquent example. The first Swedish Table of Ranks—rangordning, which literally translates into ‘rank order’—for the offices of State was issued in 1672, and listed nine successive classes of rank. A second and extended Table followed in 1680, with 28 ranks, reaching further down the chain of civil and military command. A third Table was issued in 1714, continuing the trend, listing in all 40 ranks. Additional revisions were issued in 1774 and 1778, but both were withdrawn, and, although formally repealed already in 1766, the 1714 Table continued, somewhat unofficially, to be the governing matrix for State ranks (see Figure  2.1).113 Its persistent importance is confirmed in the

Figure 2.1  The Table of Ranks (1714). Source: Photograph Universitetsbiblioteket, Uppsala universitet.

The Nature of Order 43 essays, as it was recurrently invoked and referred to by the authors, either sweepingly in references to state servants ‘included in the Rang-­ Ordningen’, or indirectly in references to ‘higher Civil Servants’, or more explicitly in specifications of ‘the rangförordning of year 1714’.114 Rank decided the individual state servant’s position in a variety of ways: it decided his authority in the chain of command (who commanded who); it decided his pay and other economic benefits (who earned more); and it decided his precedence and rights in ceremonial as well as practical arrangements (including who walked in front of whom in processions, who had access to where, how they were addressed, and how they were saluted by whom). The royal courts of Europe exemplify this world of ranks. The Gustavian court was characteristically structured and governed by a formal Royal Ordinance. The staff were meticulously ordered in rank under the superior Marshal of the Realm (Riksmarskalken, in effect the minister of court): •

The Lord Chamberlain (Överkammarherren) with his staff of chamberlains, pages, manservants, and footmen who served the king ‘in his room’; • The Marshal of the Court (Hovmarskalken) with his squires, stewards, chefs, cupbearers, and cellar boys who served the king ‘at his Table’; • The Lord Stewart (Överintendenten) with his keepers, makers, scribes, and hinds who cared for the king’s ‘house and household goods’. Where the Marshal of the Realm commanded the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Chamberlain commanded his subordinates, who, in turn, each commanded those subordinate to them. Where the Marshal of the Realm earned 1,500 dalers per year, the Marshal of the Court earned 800 dalers, a chamberlain 400 dalers, a footman 100 dalers, and a cellar boy 35 dalers. And where the Marshal of the Realm, among the precious rights bestowed upon him, was allowed to ride his coach all the way in to the inner courtyard of the royal palace, and to use the king’s own silver, tableware, and liveries at his table, the Lord Chamberlain enjoyed the right to walk immediately behind the king, sit on a tabourette in the king’s presence, and enter the king’s rooms unannounced. Chamberlains were granted the right to ride in the coach in front of the king’s coach, and, among other privileges, had access to the Royal Box at the Opera. Down to the allowance of candles, and the quality of those candles, everything was ordered according to rank.115 Rank was equally observed for staff and domestic servants in aristocratic households in European countries. ‘Panter, yeoman of the cellar, butler and ewerer, I  will that ye obey the marshal, sewer and carver’, a mid-­ fifteenth-­ century English conduct book for domestic servants

44  The Nature of Order instructed on that chain of command. At Chatsworth House, the Duke of Devonshire’s steward was paid £1,000 a year in the 1720s, while his stable boys were paid £4. Regarding precedence and status, the domestic servants of the Earl of Dorset at Knole House in the early seventeenth century were carefully sorted and ordered spatially in terms of where they ate and slept, crudely according to those serving upstairs and those serving downstairs, and more finely according to rank within each category.116 In this manner, the files of rank ran through the length and breadth of early modern social fabric. They went further and deeper than the state servants themselves. The administrative units within which they served were equally ordered by rank. The Swedish provinces—along with the governors, district judges, and county judges and serving in them— were ranked, Uppland first, and the northernmost ones last. The army regiments were ranked with a first differentiation between the mounted ones and those on foot, and then according to seniority, battle experience, and proximity to the king’s person. The men-­of-­wars of the navy were ranked according to size and armaments (and serving on a ship of the first rank obviously surpassed serving on a second or third rank ship). The dioceses—along with the bishops, deans, and vicars serving in them—were ranked, with the archdiocese in Uppsala as number 1, Linköping as number 2, Skara as number 3, and the rest following in succession. As a final example, the cities and towns, with their serving magistrates and mayors, were ranked and assigned authority in terms of the number of delegates in the burgher estate. Stockholm sent up to ten delegates; Gothenburg sent three; a handful of other larger towns sent two; the rest sent just one each.117 From these examples, the divergent principles at work in orders of rank appear: that movement away from the social understanding of order that underlay the estates, towards a more administrative understanding at work in corporate orders, continues. The social archetypes— the nobleman, the priest, the burgher, and the peasant—and the notion of their inherent and differentiating levels of social dignity, are pushed yet further back. Instead, a certain level of rank is inherent to an administrative office (or a diocese, a regiment, or even a ship). That rank is infused in the holder of that office, for as long as he holds that office, after which time it is divested of him and passed on to his successor. In case of a degradation, he would fall in rank; in case of promotion, he would rise in rank. Whereas a count was superior to an artisan by virtue of the social dignity he held as a nobleman, a president was superior to a mayor by virtue of the administrative rank of the office he held, regardless, at least in theory, of his social status. While administrative rank, social dignity and corporative belonging could and did coexist—even marrying well (the president was usually a nobleman, the mayor was not)—their dissimilar principles of hierarchy clashed, not least in contexts formally governed by rank. There was, as

The Nature of Order 45 phrased by historian Giora Sternberg in his study on the French royal court, an element of ‘instability’ in the rank system, as it often came in conflict with ‘competing status regimes’.118 Such competing regimes caused stirs throughout early modern societies. At Uppsala University, for instance, processions and seating at academic festivities were ordered according to rank. One recurrent cause of disturbances was the fact that the two higher classes of nobility held higher rank than the professors, while the third class held a lower rank. Two hierarchies competed. On several occasions, those lower noblemen, claiming their higher dignity as nobles, reportedly tried to force themselves in front of the non-­noble, but higher ranking professors in processions as well as in the cathedral pews. Their notions of noble precedence, where nobles preceded commoners, clashed with notions of rank precedence, where professors preceded students.119 Returning to the essays, the orders of rank present a by now familiar feature in the 1773 social imaginaries, namely the mixing of different modes of hierarchies. The number of clear-­cut orders was few. Most authors, whether departing from notions of estates or corporate bodies, tended to add and mix social categories and ordering principles. Non-­estate-­specific groups were included in orders of the four estates, and the estates—one, some, or all of them—were included in orders of non-­estate-­specific corporate bodies. These mixes were particularly pronounced in orders that include rank. There is only one essay which presented a strict and clear-­cut order of ranks; in all other instances, rank was mixed with other orders and other social categories. Most commonly, and as already discussed, rank was applied to the higher social echelons, while the ensuing steps in the social hierarchy were made up by other categories, defined by other structuring principles. This resulted in rather peculiar and unorthodoxly conceived hierarchies. Essay No. 59, an essay that has figured several times in this analysis, may serve as an example. The author discerns four ‘Classes’ in society (see Table  2.3). Of the four ‘Classes’, the first was straightforward in Table 2.3  Order of Ranks in Essay No. 59. No. 59 1. ‘the Gentlemen and Men that are included in the Table of Ranks’. 2. ‘the more honourable of the Clerical and Burgher Estates; the more considerable Agriculturists, who are distinguished by Lineage and Education; the wealthier of the Societies of Commerce and Factories; the Permanent and Non-Permanent staff of the Royal Colleges and other Public Departments and Staffs, and the civil servants serving within them’. 3. ‘the lesser of the Clerical and Burgher Estates; the less wealthy of the Societies of Commerce and Factories, and the lower serving staff of the Public Departments’. 4. ‘The Peasantry’. Source: Swedish National Archive (Riksarkivet), The Patriotic Society’s Archive, supplement to Proceedings 1774, No. 59.

46  The Nature of Order terms of rank: the social order was heralded by the very highest ranking state servants within the civil service, the military, and the court. Rank continued to work throughout the second and third classes, with the permanent and non-­permanent staff of the state colleges and civil departments followed by the lower servants of those civil departments. The differentiating principle seems clear: the highest ranking offices on top, followed by the not so high-­ranking offices, and ending with the lower offices. But here, rank, and those principles of public office and authority, was mixed with decidedly different differentiating principles. The state servants in the second class were joined by ‘the more honourable’ of the clerical and burgher estates, the ‘more considerable’ agriculturists ‘distinguished by Lineage or Education’, and the ‘wealthier’ of the merchants and iron-­work proprietors. The lower servants of the third class were similarly joined by ‘the lowlier’ of the clerical and burgher estates and the ‘less wealthy’ merchants and iron-­work proprietors. The hierarchical orderings were clear—from more honourable to lowlier, from wealthier to less wealthy, and so forth—but they did not reflect administrative rank of authority. Rather, they reflected social standing in terms of honour and lineage, economic standing in terms of wealth, and cultural standing in terms of education. Turning to the fourth class, those complex notions of difference turned brutally straightforward again, with the mass of rural producers: ‘the Peasantry’.120 Similarly, the author of essay No. 22 presented an extensive list of state offices, observing their order of rank, from presidents via mayors to tax collectors, but then moved on to social categories with the clerical, burgher, and peasant estates.121 The author of essay No. 32 listed civil servants at the royal court and the main central state departments, followed by the equally administrative servants on regional level, but then turned to socio-­economic categories with proprietors of iron works, merchants, artisans, lowlier burghers, priests and, at the bottom, ‘the Peasant estate’.122 As a final example, the author of essay No. A3 listed those same administrative categories with civil servants in central government, again, observing the rank between them, starting with the Royal Courts of Appeal, followed by the Collegium of the Chancellery, and then the other colleges. He then shifted to a decisively different category, and closed the list with ‘people of estate’.123 Again, these orders were markedly male; women—whether ordered by estate, rank, or any other principles—were rarely mentioned, and when they were, they were ordered according to their male heads of household (their husbands, or, if unmarried, fathers).124 So, how should the presence of rank be understood? What does it say about late eighteenth-­century social order and the 1773 authors’ notions of it? There are reasons to revisit that earlier question on the character of the essays and their social imaginaries. Were they descriptions of the social order, reflecting how the authors perceived it? Or were they

The Nature of Order 47 rather claims, reflecting how the authors wanted the social order to be (or become)? The element of rank adds to the complexity of the relationship between the two understandings. The social imaginaries as depicted in the essays were not either-­or; they were both, simultaneously and interactively. On the one hand, the assertions of rank represented those same claims for social status made by those upcoming middling groups, with regard to the adaptations of the burgher estate and, again, the conspicuous presence of state servants as a social alter ego of the noble estate. We can safely assume the presence of state servants from those non-­noble segments among the 1773 authors. The assertions of rank to define the social elites were another means to make room for themselves in the  social order, alongside such means as broadening burgher estate beyond the traditional burgher, and the disengagement of the highest social echelons from the traditional nobility.125 As Sternberg argues ‘instability’ in rank systems and the presence of competing orders posed opportunities in terms of status and order.126 Mixing categories and principles allowed for an element of dynamics and relativity which opened for inclusion (or exclusion). Rank was particularly rewarding to that end. Compared with the ordering logics of the estates, rank allowed for a more inclusive mould for the higher social echelons, detached from the social archetypes of estates society, and attached to the administratively defined entity of a public office. In short, to designate the superior category of a social order as ‘the nobility’ by virtue of social dignity, was more exclusive and narrow than to designate it as ‘higher state servants’ by virtue of the rank of state offices. The holder of that office might very well be a nobleman, but he was not defined by, or restricted to, noble standing. In theory, in a context of rank, having a position in the table of ranks elevated a person above everyone who did not have it, no matter how big their purses were, no matter how ancient their lineages were.127 On the other hand, turning from the social context to a political context, the authors, when asserting rank, were in fact describing actual processes and realities of the time. The presence of state servants in the imaginaries reflected the fact that they were highly present in social life. This in turn touches on a characteristic feature of early modern societies, namely the prominence of the powers, and the basic duality between these powers and rest of society: between authorities and subordinate, between the commanders and the commanded. The king and the royal government were at the core, but the powers permeated society as a superior layer above the rest: the governor in the county, the vicar in the parish, the mayor in the town, the count on the estate, the colonel in the regiment, and so forth. The Swedish word, överhet, is illustrative; it literally translates as the ‘above-­ity’.128 As European state formation progressed, with increasingly centralized and militarized absolute monarchies on the continent, state servants

48  The Nature of Order became an all-­the-­more-­prominent part of the State, and key to the exercise and representation of authority. As bureaucracies expanded, so did the number of bureaucrats, effectively replacing traditional, local, and less formalized authorities. The state servant became increasingly synonymous with the powers as such.129 The rise of the state servant stands out in seventeenth-­and eighteenth-­century governance. Authority became, as famously phrased by sociologist Max Weber, increasingly based on service of the state and administrative chains of command, rather than social class and birth.130 As the socio-­political elites became increasingly synonymous with state servants, they were increasingly referred to as such.131 That basic duality is present in the essays. God had created men differently, as the author of essay No. 67, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, proclaimed: there was a social difference between ‘the high and the low’, there was a gender difference between ‘the male and the female sex’, and, bringing in authority, there was a political difference between ‘the commanding and the Obeying’.132 This duality in authority was an underlying structure in orders of estates as well as corporate orders, but—seizing on state servants and orders of rank—it stands out in bolder relief. On the one hand, there were the powers, more or less specified in branches, departments, and offices; on the other hand, there was the subordinate and commanded society, more or less specified in estates, corporate bodies, or other entities. Certainly, the rise of the state servant had social implications: it was part and parcel of that transformation of the social elite from nobility to state servants. It also had implications for sartorial practices. The duality between the powers and civil society was echoed in dress. State servants were repeatedly addressed by the 1773 authors as a category for sartorial differentiation by virtue of the authority invested in the offices they held. Clergymen were recognizable by their black gowns, and the military branches by their arms and regimental uniforms, and so, it followed, the civil ranks of authority should be, as well. These proposals for sartorial uniformity of state servants were in line with more general trends with increasingly militarized and uniform modes of dress in contemporary European courts and government ranks.133 Turning to that one example of a strictly rank-­based order, presented in essay No. 60, the duality is drawn to an extreme in terms of the structure of social order as well as its sartorial regime. Departing from an adapted and condensed version of the 1714 table of ranks (‘leaving out some of the offices that have received rank in later years, and adding others that previously lacked rank’), the author proposed a differentiation between in all ten ranks for the royal court, the civil service, and the military (see Table 2.4). These ten classes were the ones to be sartorially distinguished. The proposed mode was an intricate system of embroideries on coats and waistcoats. In accordance with that basic duality, a first differentiation

The Nature of Order

49

Table 2.4 Order of Ranks in Essay No. 60. No. 60   1) From ‘General Field Marshals to Lieutenant-­Generals, and their equals’;   2) ‘From Court Chancellors to Major Generals and the Arch-­Bishop, and their equals’;   3) ‘From Marshals of the Court to Commanders of the Admiralty’ and ‘bishops’;   4) ‘From councillors in Pomerania to Lieutenant-­Colonels of the regiments and court chamberlains’;   5) ‘From Assistant Governors and Mayors in Stockholm to Quartermasters of the guard and the physician-­in-­ordinary to the King’;   6) ‘From Captains of the mounted lifeguard regiment to Directors of the State Land Survey, and Secretaries at the Admiralty’;   7) ‘From Adjutant General Lieutenants and magistrates in Stockholm to secretaries of the state colleges, and the Assessors of the Collegium of Medicine’;   8) ‘From Second Lieutenants of the guard to Mine-­Inspectors and university librarians’;   9) ‘From City Secretaries in Stockholm and Lieutenants of the regiments to Judge-­Advocates at the Artillery and Deputy Assistant Undersecretaries of the Royal Court’; 10) ‘From Second Lieutenants to Commissaries of the Collegium of Commerce’. Source: Swedish National Archive (Riksarkivet), The Patriotic Society’s Archive, supplement to Proceedings 1774, No. 60.

was made between the embroidered powers and unembroidered subordinates. A second differentiation was then made within the ranks of authority: the higher the rank, the finer the embroideries in terms of quantity and quality. The duality between the commanding authorities and the commanded public was total. No matter how far down in the official ranks the author had chosen to go, and no matter how many offices and titles he had included, there was a division between those who had state offices—that commanding ‘above-ity’—and all those who did not. Civil society, with the commanded world beyond and below State ranks, was passed over in silence, referred to at best in collective terms, without further differentiation. Society beyond the ranks of State was reduced to a blurred and grey mass; the faceless body of the world without rank. Again, other social categories may well have been present in these ranks. There were most likely nobles among the office-holders, and there were most certainly clergymen among the arch-bishops and bishops. And beyond those ranks, in that faceless mass of the commanded, there could have been burghers and peasants, too, or blacksmiths and medical doctors, mine owners and iron-works proprietors, rich widows, and poor kitchen maids. However, none of those categories were relevant to be addressed in that specific author’s thoroughly authority-focused view on social order and sartorial practices.

50  The Nature of Order

An Order of Classes Social dignity, corporate belonging, and administrative rank were all fundamental and structuring entities in early modern social discourse as expressed in the 1773 essays. However, none of them paid attention to a decisive mode of differentiation in early modern societies (or any society): wealth. These societies were not populated by just the high and the low in terms of social dignity or commanding or commanded in terms of administrative rank. They were, in addition and in the highest degree, populated by the rich and the poor in terms of economic fortune and wealth. Early modern societies were characterized by a markedly uneven distribution of wealth. Looking at late eighteenth-­century Sweden, as much as 30 per cent of the land, the very foundation of early modern wealth, was owned by a group that made up no more than 0.5–1 per cent of the total population. In France, the corresponding number was nearly 50 per cent owned by 1 per cent. Across the continent, the European nobility owned a considerable proportion of the land and of natural resources such as iron ore, coal, and timber.134 These economic variables in hierarchical relationships and social order are, unsurprisingly, addressed in the essays. Returning to essay No. 59, economic variables and their divergent principles of stratification stand out in the general mix of ordering principles that were delineated. Class and economically based stratifications were never employed systematically, but rather as another ingredient in mixtures of principles and social categories. The author proposed a ‘division of the Nation into four Classes’, quite straightforwardly named the first, the second, the third, and the fourth class (see Figure 2.1). Looking closer at the composition of those four classes, it is a strange brew. The first class consisted of a familiar category: higher ranking state servants on ‘the official table of ranks’ serving at the royal court, in the military forces and the civil service. The second class was outlined as ‘the more respectable members of the Clerical and Burgher Estates; the more considerable Agriculturists, who are distinguished by Lineage and Education; the wealthier of the Societies of Commerce and Factories; the Permanent and Non-­Permanent staff of the Royal Colleges and other Public Departments and Staffs, and the civil servants serving within them’. The third class was, following up on the second class, outlined as the ‘lesser members of the Clerical and Burgher Estates; the less wealthy of the Societies of Commerce and Factories, and the lower serving staff of the Public Departments’. The fourth class, following those lengthy delineations of the upper three classes, was simply stated as ‘the Peasantry’.135 The movement away from the blueprints of a traditional order of estates had taken yet another step. There are several familiar traits at work. The clerical and burgher estates were addressed by name, and the rural commoners were characteristically arranged as an assemblage at

The Nature of Order 51 the bottom of the hierarchy. Similarly, state servants and the societies of commerce and factories represented corporate bodies, and the differentiation within the former, between the higher servants in the first class and the lower ones in the third, exemplified an order of ranks. Continuing that comparison with the order of estates, there are some distinctly alien features, resulting in a decidedly differently conceived social order. The clerical and burgher estates were oddly partitioned and reassembled into something that would be bizarre in that blueprint of an estate society. The notion of more or less ‘respectable’ members of an estate was a reality; bishops had higher social status and were regarded as more respectable than parish priests, just as merchants had higher social status than artisans within the burgher estate. However, the very notion that, as the author proposed, the more respectable clergymen did not belong with the less respectable clergymen, but with the more respectable burghers, and that the less respectable burghers belonged with the less respectable clergymen, not the more respectable burghers, was directly contrary to the governing idea of an estate society. All clergymen were as such defined, and distinguished from members all other estates, by the dignity assigned to their specific social function: to pray. All nobles, all burghers, all peasants were correspondingly defined and demarcated as social entities, all based on their respective social function. And here, integrated in the mix and thickening the plot still more, the economic variable of wealth appeared. Starting with those more or less ‘considerable’ agriculturists, the chosen denomination (Sw. Lantbrukare, literally ‘cultivators of land’) basically referred to someone engaged in agricultural production, but the author evidently set the category apart from traditional peasantry, found in class four. More or less ‘considerable’ implies a quantitative measure of production output and thus ownership of land, that is: economic wealth. In terms of rural production, there were the ‘more considerable’ landowners in the second class, the ‘less considerable’ landowners in the third class, and the peasantry in the fourth class. Moving on to those societies of commerce and manufactories, the economic variable is explicit: wealth. There were merchants and manufacturers who were ‘wealthier’ in the second class, and there were those who were ‘less wealthy’ in the third class. It is tempting to bring into play the heavy theoretic apparatus of social history. The author’s descriptions seem to fit remarkably well into the models of social transformation in early modern European societies from the ‘old’ feudal order of estates to the ‘modern’ capitalistic class society, starting in the seventeenth century, gaining momentum in the eighteenth, and completed in the nineteenth. The perhaps best-­known wording of that shift is that of French historian Roland Mousnier. In an attempt to refute Marxist historians’ models of class analysis, Mousnier and his followers claimed that early modern societies were fundamentally different from modern-­class societies. They were societies of estates,

52  The Nature of Order with a social hierarchy ordered by different principles than modern-­class societies. The hierarchy of estates was not, as the modern class society, arranged according to wealth, role in the production of goods, control of the means of production, or capacity to consume. It was arranged according to ‘the esteem, honour and dignity attached by society to [their respective] social functions’. An ever so poor nobleman would always be socially superior to an ever so rich burgher, by virtue of the higher dignity that was attached to his specific social function, that of the warrior.136 The author of essay No. 59 has abandoned these principles and embraced the stratifying logics of a class society. Certain clerics belong with certain burghers, not with other clerics, for example. Wealth made a difference in terms of social superiority and those who produce more belonged in a higher class than those who produce less. Rather than confirming the reserves of the estates, the four classes cut straight through them, dividing that which should not be divided, based on variables that should not be there. Certain clerics belonged with certain burghers and with wealthier and considerable landowners, while other clerics were merged with other burghers and less wealthy merchants and less considerable landowners. The nobleman, never mentioned as such, could potentially be found in all the three upper classes, depending on his rank, wealth, or acreage (nowhere by virtue of his social dignity): as a high-­or middle-­ranking state servant, a landowner, or a proprietor of an iron works. In Marxist prose, the estate interest has been replaced by class interest, according to which groups within the feudal estates have a stronger community of interest with groups within other estates, than with those of their own estate. Similar ideas of an economically structured order were at play in contemporary public discourse. French economists and physiocrats such as Quesney, Turgot, Mirabeau, Dupont de Nemours, Mercier de la Rivière, whose ideas were readily taken on and developed by progressive thinkers around Europe, openly disregarded the feudal order and its estate categories. They presented alternative understandings of order based on classes defined by role in production: as a nation of three classes of ‘producers’, ‘proprietors’, and a ‘sterile class’ (with producers outside agriculture), or in variations with similar categories, such as a ‘class of land workers’, an ‘industrious class’, or a ‘class of artisans and salaried workers’.137 Despite their obvious analytical value, Mousnier’s ideal types have been found—as is usually the case, if not even the point, with ideal types—to simplify complex realities. While the model is a wholesome reminder for a modern observer of the fundamental differences in the fabrics of early modern and modern societies, and of the realities of a social hierarchy based on other variables than wealth alone, it would distort matters to disregard the fact that wealth did indeed make a difference in the early modern social world.138 The 1773 essays clearly confirm this complexity of social dignity and economic wealth. Rather than clear-­cut and

The Nature of Order 53 coherently conceived orders, the authors employed mixtures of elements of different orders, often merging theoretically incompatible values and entities. Economic variables of fortune and wealth were a component in those mixtures. Starting with the concept itself—‘class’—essay No. 59 stands out in its modern and analytic use of it to denote the constitutive categories of social order. The four classes aimed at describing the whole of society, with all its members, ordered in hierarchy. Here, as with the French economists, the concept was used in line with its Latin root. In ancient Rome, classis referred to the six classes of Roman citizens, from the senatorial class down to the proletarian class, divided by property and wealth.139 Compared to other social categories, however, ‘class’ is not that frequently used by the authors, and when used, it was more often used in a more general meaning, to denote a group of people, or more specifically, a subgroup within a social category.140 Thus, the author of essay No. 29 discerned four ‘Classes’ within each listed corporate bodies. The author of essay No. 67 similarly discerned ‘Classes’ of burghers, while the author of essay No. 68, in a more elaborate manner, proposed a subdivision of the burghers into ‘certain Classes’, each to include ‘ten to twelve Societies’ (most likely referring to urban trades and crafts).141 While the actual concept was rare, its analytical purport in terms of economic stratification was not. The 1773 authors clearly acknowledged that their social world was populated by, and ordered in, people of diverging economic wealth. In their reflections on sartorial matters, or in considerations on society and human interaction at large, economic standing presented a third basic duality between the rich and the poor, alongside the socially high and low, and the politically commanding and commanded. For instance, one author proposed that a national dress should be adopted by ‘the wealthy part of the Nation’ (implying a contrasting poor part).142 A closer regulation of the use of the fashionable gown robe de ronde, another author suggested, would effectively cut short the ‘competitions’ between ‘the more and the less wealthy women’.143 A third author explained that the dangers of changing fashion related to the poor ‘who ought to save their money’, not to ‘the rich, who are able to pour forth money’.144 Yet another author declared with dead certainty, again pinpointing that duality in riches, ‘a poor person should never think or live in the way of a very rich person’, and that it was the ‘simplest of truths’ that one could not be both rich and poor, or be one and act the other, simultaneously.145 The three dualities converge in an equally notable harmony in the authors’ commentaries. Those high in terms of social dignity usually coincide with the rich in terms of economic wealth, vice versa with regard to those of low dignity and economic poverty. The binaries are often phrased in pairs: ‘the lowly and poor’ stand against ‘the dignified and rich’, ‘the higher and wealthier’ stand against ‘the lowlier and

54  The Nature of Order less wealthy’, and ‘the high and the low’ are paired with ‘the rich and the needy’.146 These are concrete examples of the need to problematize ideal types as those phrased by Mousnier. In its normative wordings, the hierarchies of the estate society may well have defied and disregarded economic wealth, but in practice, social dignity and economic wealth married rather well. That harmonious relationship between the social and the economic makes sense. Those of higher social standing were most likely to be more economically prosperous, and in possession of more authority in terms of rank, vice versa. A  count would belong to the very highest social echelons, live well off his estates, rents, and state offices, and hold considerable authority in charge of state departments and armies or fleets. A peasant, on the other hand, was referred to the lowest of the low, lived from hand to mouth off his patches of land, and held little if any authority outside the realm of his own household. However, it is equally clear from the authors’ commentaries that the harmonious relationship between dignity and wealth was a fragile one. Their potentially colliding regimes, and the disorder that such collisions caused, is addressed. Everyone, one author raged, ‘wants to appear rich and dignified’, and, pinpointing the disorderly effect of collisions between the two, ‘a rich merchant’s Wife often smiles at a poor Lady, while she boasts in her treasures’.147 Is it reasonable, another author echoed to the same effect, that ‘Wives and Daughters of Artisans’ should dress like ladies of the court, ‘if not even more costly’? Is it, he continued, reasonable that people of such low dignity, should ‘despise and scoff’ people of higher dignity—‘yes, even the nobility’—because the latter ‘cannot afford to waste money on clothes as they can?’148 These were calls from a traditional order in a society in which traditional variables of social standing were increasingly askew and challenged. Wealth was shifting. The ideology of estates dictated that social dignity came first. A nobleman was not noble because he was rich; he was rich because he was a nobleman. An artisan that was richer than a nobleman was disorderly, and an artisan’s wife or daughter who claimed precedence over a noble dame was unacceptable.

Seeking Order The 1773 essays clearly illustrate early modern preoccupation with order. That preoccupation was noticeably focused on a strikingly small percentage of the population. Firstly, and from a social perspective, the authors were mainly preoccupied with the middling and elite social strata which made up some 10 per cent of the total population, most likely even less than that.149 This highly limited group is thoroughly discussed and minutely ordered into hierarchies, whether based on enlarged and expanded estates (such as the burgher estate), corporate bodies, ranks, or

The Nature of Order 55 economically defined classes. The remaining 90 per cent of the population, basically the rural commoners, were bundled up in sweeping and unproblematized collectives such as ‘the obeying’, ‘the poor’, ‘the peasant estate’, and ‘the peasantry’. Previous research has made clear that the rural commoners were by no means a non-­stratified mass; in contrast, they presented a group as complex and stratified as the upper 10 per cent in terms of variables such as property, legal rights of possession and terms of tenure, wealth, respectability, household size and number of hands employed, and political influence in local, regional, national communities, and so forth.150 This lack of interest in the finer points of difference among the lower strata of society reflects on the social composition of the authors and of the larger context of the 1773 essays as such. This was the business of an elite: it interested and engaged the higher and the educated audience. The average Swedish peasant or cropper was probably unconcerned regarding the issue of a national dress. The authors were primarily concerned with, and addressed, those middling to high social strata to which they themselves belonged (or claimed to belong), and within which, in these times of social change and contestation, they sought to bring order in general and negotiate room for themselves in particular. Those below were of little interest in such an enterprise; those competing for that space were key. The author of essay No. 29 phrased these sentiments particularly pointedly. While dealing in detail with those upper 10 per cent—dividing them into five corporate bodies, each divided into four subgroups, and elaborating at length on how to best differentiate between them all sartorially—the ‘peasantry’ is brutally cut short. The already existing manner of dress of the peasantry enabled them to ‘recognize one parish from the other’ and ‘the unmarried of the female sex from the married’; ‘The peasantry has no need for additional differentiation within them’. Geographic abode and marital status sufficed for the low; all other variables of difference were superfluous.151 Secondly, and equally striking, the authors were mainly preoccupied with the male half of the population. Women were rarely addressed as elements in, let alone categories of, the social order. Social order was a markedly male affair. When mentioned, women were (along with children) defined and ordered by their male kin: the fathers for the unmarried, the husbands for the married. In theory, a clergyman’s widow, who remarried a shoemaker, stopped being clergy, and became, along with any child she might have, a burgher (or an artisan, even a lowlier artisan, in a more detailed order). This merging of women with their male kin reflects on what Amussen refers to as the ‘two separate systems of social hierarchy’ in the early modern world. There was a hierarchy of ‘class and rank’ on the one hand, and a hierarchy of ‘gender’ on the other. Both hierarchies described relationships of power between superiors and inferiors, and the authors

56  The Nature of Order clearly and consistently, and in accordance with early modern gender ideals, asserted the harmony between the two. Some men were socially superior to, and in power of, other men in terms of class and rank. All women were inferior and in a position of obedience to their men in terms of gender, and they were effectively socially defined by their men in terms of class and rank.152 So, where do the findings from the 1773 essays leave us? How are we to understand the range of social imaginaries presented? None of the findings would suggest that the formal order of estates was irrelevant. In contrast, that idealized order depicted in the painting—with the riding nobleman, the milking clergyman, the pulling burgher, and the restraining peasant—was highly relevant and present in late eighteenth-­ century social discourse. But our understanding of the estates as organizing and structuring social categories in early modern societies needs to be problematized. Firstly, and contrary to the normative views of its perpetuity, the social order was far from static. There were apparent and ongoing processes of change and contestation. Positioning a clear-­cut and orthodox depiction of an order of estates, such as the one presented in essay No. A5, next to the fundamentally different conception of the social order such as the one presented in essay No. 59, with its intricate and detailed classes of rank, wealth, and honour, and those features of instability and change come to the fore. Here, the characteristics of those larger social processes appear in flesh. The author of essay No. 59 describes more of the nineteenth-­ century class society that was coming about, than the medieval society of the past. Secondly, the complexity and profusion of early modern societies— or rather, of contemporary imaginaries of those societies—stand out. The two examples mentioned previously, essays Nos 29 and 59, do not describe a chronological change or a movement from one society to another. They were both written within weeks of each other, and the two authors recorded observations of one and the same society: Sweden in 1773. The recurrent mixtures of elements from different orders and social categories are central to as well as instrumental for these complexities. The orders presented were united by a markedly corporate nature, and by the generally low position of rural commoners among those corporate bodies. But beyond that, variations and mixtures stand out. These mixtures of ordering categories and principles, and the wide variety of social experiences and claims that they project, would most likely be found in any society in history. But with their specific characteristics, and the embraced and contested values that they narrow down, they effectively reflect the veritable melting pot of categories and structuring principles, traditions, and challenges, which co-­existed and collided within the set framework of an officially imposed social order in a dawning age of revolutions.

The Nature of Order 57

Notes 1. PS, Proceedings, No. 67. Parts of this chapter were published in earlier versions in Mikael Alm, ‘En föreställd ordning: Olikhet och synlighet i det gustavianska Sverige’, in Allt på ett bräde: Stat, ekonomi och bondeoffer. En vänbok till Jan Lindegren, eds. Peter Ericsson, Fredrik Thisner, Patrik Winton and Andreas Åkerlund (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2013), 351–61; Mikael Alm, ‘Überlegungen zu einer Nationaltracht: “Social Imaginary” im Schweden des späten 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Diskurse—Körper— Artefakte: Historische Praxeologie in der Frühneuzeitforschung, ed. Dagmar Freist (Bielefeld: Trancript Verlag, 2015), 267–86. 2. PS, Proceedings, No. 3. 3. It is illustrative that when Swedish historian Kekke Stadin in 2004 set out to analyse gender relations and ideals in seventeenth-­century Sweden, the four estates were the chosen entities of social order, structuring the study. Kekke Stadin, Stånd och genus i stormaktstidens Sverige (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2004). 4. Karlo Wirilander, Herrskapsfolk: Ståndspersoner i Finland 1721–1870 (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1982), 59–60; Henrik Ågren, ‘Status, Estate, or Profession? Social Stratification via Titles in 1730s Sweden’, Scandinavian Journal of History 42:2 (2016), 167. 5. Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 10. 6. Sten Carlsson and Jerker Rosén, Svensk historia 2: Tiden efter 1718 (Stockholm: Svenska Bokförlaget, 1961), 56, 58; Thomas Lindkvist and Maria Sjöberg, Det svenska samhället 800–1720: Klerkernas och adelns tid (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2003), 336. 7. Sten Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner 1700–1865: Studier rörande det svenska ståndssamhällets upplösning (Lund: CWK Gleerup Bokförlag, 1973). 8. Henry French and Richard Hoyle, The Character of English Rural Society: Earls Colne, 1550–1750 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). 9. Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 10. 10. Gudrun Andersson, Stadens dignitärer: Den lokala elitens status-­och maktmanifestation i Arboga 1650–1770 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2009), 232–7; Hannah Greig, The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), ch. 2; Adam Fox, ‘Food, Drink and Social Distinction in Early Modern England’, in Remaking English Society: Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England, eds. Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard and John Walter (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2013); Alexander Engström, Olikhetens praktiker: Adlig begravningskultur i Sverige c:a 1630–1680 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2019). 11. See for example Peter Hallberg, Ages of Liberty: Social Upheaval, History Writing, and the New Public Sphere in Sweden, 1740–1792 (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2003), 136–8. 12. See for example David Warren Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Andreas Marklund, In the Shadows of His House: Masculinity and Marriage in Sweden, c. 1760 to the 1830s (Florence: European University Institute, 2002). 13. See for example Giora Sternberg, Status Interaction During the Reign of Louis XIV (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 15–21.

58  The Nature of Order 14. See for example Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (New York: Colombia University Press, 1988), 3; Margaret R. Hunt, Women in Eighteenth-­Century Europe (Harlow: Pearson, 2010), 13–16. 15. Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 6–13. See also Sarah Maza, ‘Luxury, Morality, and Social Change: Why There Was No Middle-­Class Consciousness in Prerevolutionary France’, The Journal of Modern History 69:2 (1997). 16. Michael J. Braddick and John Walter, ‘Introduction. Grids of Power: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Early Modern Society’, in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, eds. Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 8. 17. Peter Burke, ‘The Language of Order in Early Modern Europe’, in Social Orders and Social Classes in Europe Since 1500: Studies in Social Stratification, ed. M.L. Bush (London and New York: Longman, 1992), 1. 18. Maza, ‘Luxury, Morality, and Social Change’, 202–3; Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 10. 19. Dror Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), ch. 3, quotes 107 and 108. 20. Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 21. Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre, 116–23. 22. Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 16–21. 23. Duby, The Three Orders, see e.g. 354–6. 24. Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class, 6–10. 25. Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-­Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), xv–xvi. See also Tobias Larsson, ‘Ordering Vocabulary: The Language Employed by Sweden’s First Police’, in Powers of Description: Language and Social History in the Long Eighteenth Century, eds. Mikael Alm and Karen Harvey (Uppsala: Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 2019), 95–6. 26. The ‘discerning eye’, ‘the gaze’, and ‘practices of seeing’ have been much in focus of research on the relationship between the material world/things and social relations/people, especially in urban settings. These visual regimes had their evident counterpart in verbal regimes with phrases and speech acts. See, e.g. Denise Z. Davidson, ‘Making Society “Legible”: People-­Watching in Paris After the Revolution’, French Historical Studies 28:2 (2005), 265–74; Anu Korhonen, ‘To See and To Be Seen: Beauty in the Early Modern London Street’, Journal of Early Modern History 12:3 (2008), 335–7; Daniel Jütte, ‘Entering a City: On a Lost Early Modern Practice’, Urban History 41:2 (2014), 204–27; Karin Sennefelt, ‘A Discerning Eye: Visual Culture and Social Distinction in Early Modern Stockholm’, Cultural and Social History 12:2 (2015), 179–81. 27. On binaries, see Cordelia Heβ, Social Imagery in Middle Low German: Didactical Literature and Metaphorical Representation (1470–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 184–92. 28. See for example Braddick and Walter, ‘Grids of Power’, 1–2. 29. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 8, 22, 24, 29, 38, 46, 49, 73. 30. Amussen, An Ordered Society, 3.

The Nature of Order 59 31. PS, Proceedings, No. A5. See also No. 34 for a similarly exhaustive description. 32. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 13, 18, 19, 22, 24, 28, 29, 32, 36, 37, 38, 42, 43, 47, A2, A3. For the estates-­related phrases, in order of appearance, see Nos. 7, 9, 13, 24, 32, 47, 58, 73. See also Nos. 23, 39, 40, 64. 33. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 43. 34. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 6, 43. 35. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 29, 34. 36. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 28, 13, 29. 37. See e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 5, 8, 9, 6, 22, 34, 38. 38. In order of appearance, PS, Proceedings, Nos. 35, 3, 37, A3, 68. 39. Roland Mousnier, Social Hierarchies, 1450 to the Present (New York: Schocken, 1973), 19; Gail Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime, ed. William Doyle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 141–4. 40. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 41. PS, Proceedings, No. 3. 42. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 6, 8. 43. PS, Proceedings, No. A5. 44. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 5, 13. 45. On these privileged orders (aptly characterized as ‘A World of Privileges’), see Olwen Hufton, Europe: Privilege and Protest 1730–1789 (London: Fontana Press, 1980), 46–69. 46. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 7, 29, 73. 47. See Burke, ‘The Language of Order’, 9, who addresses the similar ambiguity of the German term Stände. 48. Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, 145. 49. Woodruff Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 1600 to 1800 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 29. 50. SAOB, S 13861; Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner, 17–19. See, e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 8, 40, 42, 47, 61, A3. 51. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 13, 73, 8. 52. PS, Proceedings, No. 61. 53. SAOB, S 13841–42. 54. In order of appearance, PS, Proceedings, Nos. 19, 46, 22. 55. SAOB, S 13841. 56. PS, Proceedings, No. 36. 57. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 5, 18, 19, 22, 24, 28, 34, 38, 47, 59, 61, A2, A5. 58. PS, Proceedings, No. 68. See also No. 67 for a similar take on the burgher estate. 59. PS, Proceedings, No. 34. 60. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 28, 32, 38. See also Nos. 3, 8, 29. 61. Mikael Alm and Bo Vahlne, Överkammarherrens journal 1778–1826: Ett gustavianskt tidsdokument (Stockholm: Kungliga Samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, 2010), 1. 62. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 63. Jan von Konow, Sveriges adels historia (Karlstad: Axel Abrahamsons Förlag AB, 2005), 198–201. 64. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 19, 32. See also Nos. 37, 38. 65. Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner, 117–19. 66. Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and Family in England 1680–1780 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 15–16. See also Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks, eds., The Middling Sort of

60  The Nature of Order People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994); Henry R. French, The Middle Sort of People in Provincial England, 1600–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson, A Day at Home in Early Modern England: Material Culture and Domestic Life, 1500–1700 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017). 67. Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner, 24–41. See also Wirilander, Herrskapsfolk, 31–2; Carl Mikael Carlsson, Det märkvärdiga mellantinget: Jordbrukares sociala status i omvandling 1780–1900 (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2016), 26–7. 68. PS, Proceedings, No. 7, 8. According to SAOB, the earliest occurrence of the word ‘middle class’ (medelklass) in written Swedish is from 1792. 69. Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner, 245–8; Patrik Winton, ‘Commercial Interests and Politics in Scandinavia, 1730–1815: Introduction’, in Scandinavia in the Age of Revolution: Nordic Political Cultures, 1740–1820, eds. Pasi Ihalainen, Michael Bregnsbo, Karin Sennefelt and Patrik Winton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 207–16. See also Hunt, The Middling Sort, 17–18. 70. Philip Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac 1760–1830’, Past and Present 96 (1982), 111; Philip Mansel, Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 28–31. 71. Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner, 90–2; von Konow, Sveriges adels historia, 198–201. 72. Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner, 245–8. 73. PS, Proceedings, No. 3. 74. PS, Proceedings, No. 64. 75. Ibid. 76. See e.g. Maria Cavallin, I kungens och folkets tjänst: Synen på den svenske ämbetsmannen 1750–1780 (Göteborg: Gothenburg University, 2003), 149–91; Hallberg, Ages of Liberty, 135–71; Jonas Nordin, ‘Frihetstidens radikalism’, in Riksdag, kaffehus och predikstol: Frihetstidens politiska kultur 1766–1772, eds. Marie-­Christine Skuncke and Henrika Tandefelt (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2003), 66. For similar arguments in Germany, see Alexander Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion: Clothing and Nationalism in Europe’s Age of Revolutions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 82–3. 77. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 78. Eva Bergman, Nationella dräkten: En studie kring Gustaf III:s dräktreform 1778 (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1938), 40–1. 79. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 80. Mikael Alm, Kungsord i elfte timmen: Språk och självbild i det gustavianska enväldets legitimitetskamp 1772–1809 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2002), 193–6. See also Stig Boberg, Gustav III och tryckfriheten 1774–1787 (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1951). 81. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 82. Braddick and Walter, ‘Grids of Power’, 39. See also Burke, ‘The Language of Order’, 11, who emphasizes that a ‘hierarchy looks very different according to one’s place in it’. 83. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 84. Regarding Junker and Lantjunker, see SAOB, J 282, L 212. 85. Mark Potter, ‘Good Offices: Intermediation by Corporate Bodies in Early Modern French Public Finance’, The Journal of Economic History 60:3 (2000), 599; Johan Sjöberg, Makt och vanmakt i fadersväldet: Studentpolitik i Uppsala 1780–1850 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2002), 21; Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, 146–50.

The Nature of Order 61 86. SAOB, S 13841–42. 87. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 32, A2, See also Nos. 18, 62, 67. 88. Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, 153–4; Ågren, ‘Status, Estate, or Profession?’ 176–7. The urge to categorize people and the search for valid bases for social stratification were equally present in the English context. Statisticians and economists such as Gregory King in 1690s, Joseph Massie in the 1750s, and Patrick Colquhoun in the 1810s all attempted to calculate and delineate English society, based on variables such as hearth-­tax returns and various records of income tax, census and poor relief. Their employed categories—‘Gentlemen’, ‘Persons in the law’, ‘Office holder’, ‘Master manufacturers’, ‘Labouring people and outservants’, and so forth—are similar to those used by the 1773 authors. See Peter Mathias, ‘Social Structure in the Eighteenth Century: A Calculation by Joseph Massie’, The Economic History Review 10:1 (1957), 32–3, 42–5. 89. On the instability of social categories, see William Doyle, ‘Myths of Order and Ordering Myths’, in Social Orders and Social Classes, ed. Bush, 220–1; Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, 147; Ågren, ‘Status, Estate, or Profession?’ 167–8, 181–2. 90. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 32, A2. 91. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. See also No. 22. 92. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 62. 93. PS, Proceedings, No. 32. 94. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 22, 29, 32, A2. 95. See Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, 147. 96. Ågren, ‘Status, Estate, or Profession?’ 170. 97. Alm and Vahlne, Överkammarherrens journal, 200–1. 98. Kalle Bäck, Bondeopposition och bondeinflytande under frihetstiden: Centralmakten och östgötaböndernas reaktioner i näringspolitiska frågor (Stockholm: LTs förlag, 1984), 24; Michael Metcalf, ‘Frihetstidens riksdag (1719–1772)’, in Riksdagen genom tiderna, ed. Nils Stjernquist (Stockholm: Sveriges riksdag, 1985), 123. 99. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 100. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 32. 101. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 102. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 29, 32, 62, 67. 103. PS, Proceedings, No. 22. 104. See e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 59, 67, 68, A2. See also Amussen, An Ordered Society, 3; Stadin, Stånd och genus i stormaktstidens Sverige, 20, 24–5. 105. PS, Proceedings, No. 22. 106. Amussen, An Ordered Society, 3. 107. Ågren, ‘Status, Estate, or Profession?’, 170–2. 108. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 109. PS, Proceedings, No. 22. 110. Collin Jones, ‘Bourgeois Revolution Revivified: 1789 and Social Change’, in Rewriting the French Revolution, ed. Colin Lucas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 96–7. See also Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, 153. 111. SOED, 2461; SAOB, R 247. 112. See e.g. Sternberg, Status Interaction, 15–22; Mikkel Venborg Pedersen, ‘Status’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion IV: In the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Peter McNeil (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 125. 113. Wirilander, Herrskapsfolk, 138–45; Alm and Vahlne, Överkammarherrens journal, 6 (footnote 2). 114. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 59, 38, 60 (in order of appearance).

62  The Nature of Order 115. Alm and Vahlne, Överkammarherrens journal, Appendix 2. 116. Jeremy Musson, Up and Down Stairs: The History of the Country House Servant (London: John Murray, 2009), 29, 58–62, 98–100. 117. Nils Ahnlund, De svenska städernas rangordning i äldre tid (Stockholm: Stadshistoriska institutet, 1933); Jan von Konow, ‘Om utvecklingen av rangordning och nummersystem i svenska armén’, Meddelande/Armémuseum 47 (1987), 9–20; Erik Petrén, Kyrka och makt: Bilder ur svensk kyrkohistoria (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2000), 19. 118. Sternberg, Status Interaction, 20–1. 119. Anders Thoré, ‘Maktens kultur: Den svenska högadelns utbildning under 1600-­talet’, in Främlingar—Ett historiskt perspektiv, eds. Anders Florén and Åsa Karlsson (Uppsala: Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 1998), 36–7. 120. PS, Proceedings, No. 59. 121. PS, Proceedings, No. 22. 122. PS, Proceedings, No. 32. 123. PS, Proceedings, No. A3. 124. See e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 59, 67, 68, A2. The same was the general case in European sumptuary laws; women were assigned the social rank of male kin. See Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, 49–51, 91. 125. Harald Gustafsson, Makt och människor: Europeisk statsbildning från medeltiden till franska revolutionen (Göteborg: Makadam, 2010), 136. 126. Sternberg, Status Interaction, 20. 127. Gunner Lind, ‘Uniform and Distinction: Symbolic Aspects of Officer Dress in the Eighteenth-­Century Danish State’, Textile History and the Military 41:1 (2010), 52. 128. Wirilander, Herrskapsfolk, 138–40. 129. Gustafsson, Makt och människor, 135–8. 130. On Weber, see Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-­Military States, 1500–1600 (London: Routledge, 2002), 60–1. 131. Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac’, 111; Gustafsson, Makt och människor, 135–8. 132. PS, Proceedings, No. 67. 133. Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac’, 110–12, 124; Mansel, Dressed to Rule, 97–8; Lind, ‘Uniform and Distinction’, 62–3. 134. Carlsson and Rosén, Svensk historia, 56, 58; Hufton, Europe: Privilege and Protest, 50; Lynn Hunt and Jack R. Censer, The French Revolution and Napoleon: Crucible to the Modern World (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 13. 135. PS, Proceedings, No. 59. 136. Mousnier, Social Hierarchies, 19. See also Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, 142–3; Sternberg, Status Interaction, 6. 137. Steven Wallech, ‘ “Class Versus Rank”: The Transformation of Eighteenth-­ Century English Social Terms and Theories of Production’, in Race, Gender, and Rank: Early Modern Ideas of Humanity, ed. Maryanne Cline Horowitz (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1992), 269–1; Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 36–7. 138. Hunt, The Middling Sort, 15–16; Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie, 36–7. 139. SOED, ‘class’ A1; SAOB, K 1142 (‘klass’ 1). 140. SAOB, K 1148 (‘klass’ 3). 141. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 29, 68, 68. 142. PS, Proceedings, No. 24. 143. PS, Proceedings, No. 38.

The Nature of Order 63 144. PS, Proceedings, No. 45. 145. PS, Proceedings, No. 48. See also Nos. 3, 19, 46, 50, A2. 146. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 49, 59, 62. 147. PS, Proceedings, No. 47. 148. PS, Proceedings, No. A3. 149. Carlsson and Rosén, Svensk historia, 56–62. 150. See Christer Winberg, Folkökning och proletarisering: Kring den sociala strukturomvandlingen på Sveriges landsbygd under den agrara revolutionen (Lund: Bo Cavefors Bokförlag, 1977), 35–8; Jonas Lindström, Distribution and Differences: Stratification and the System of Reproduction in a Swedish Peasant Community 1620–1820 (Uppsala: Acta Historica Upsaliensia, 2008), ch. 3. 151. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 152. Amussen, An Ordered Society, 3.

3 Disorder in the Sartorial World

‘In the beginning’, declared the author of essay No. 61, ‘clothes were used for two reasons: to cover the body, and to keep it from cold and heat’. With time, and as societies grew, a third reason evolved: ‘to adorn the body’ according to needs, means, and function. Some ‘performed rougher and heavier work’, others less heavy, less rough work, while others still ‘were set to advise and rule’. All was well. But as societies continued to grow, ‘Amor Sceleratus habendi’—that is, the ‘accursed love of possessing’—took hold of mankind, and two additional, previously unknown, motives in sartorial matters came into being: ‘Pride and Self-­ Indulgence’. Everything changed; everything once ‘natural’ was perverted by the omnipresent desire for ‘all things foreign’, for ‘more’, for ‘tastier’, for ‘grander’.1 The tone was righteous, the address was condemnatory, and the rhetoric was almost Biblical, with a familiar narrative of a Genesis, an original Sin, and a Fall. According to the author, something was obviously wrong in the sartorial world. But what?

Disorder The theme of degeneration is present throughout the essays. The exact timing of the Sin and ensuing Fall varied, but the notion of an original and Eden-­like state, perverted and destroyed by the condemnable and serpent-­ like newfangled things, permeates the arguments. One author gave a backward glance at ‘days of yore’, when fashions changed rarely and at a slow pace: when a dress design would last for ‘at least 15–20  years’, and when ‘not only among burghers, but Nobles, too’, mothers would dress their to-­be-­married daughters in ‘the same jewels and fineries that they themselves had worn as brides’. How different things were now, since ‘the wasteful State disease’ of fashions had fallen upon society, with ‘frequent changes in fashions’ and ‘a great superabundance in clothes’; with ‘childish distinctions between shirt cuffs for winter, Summer, spring, and autumn’; with waistcoats with ‘small buttons all the way down’, suddenly changed to ‘large buttons, only to the waist’, and all sorts of ‘foolish idiocies’ conjured up by ‘Embroiderers, Tailors,

Disorder in the Sartorial World 65 and Merchants’.2 ‘Some 30 Years ago’, another author recollected, people ‘dressed for the cold’; back then, during summer, those who carried their hats under their arms were considered ‘perfect fops’, and those who did so in winter were considered ‘fools’. Back then, ‘boots’ were worn ‘in the most distinguished houses’; back then, it was not deemed ‘inexcusable’ to have a coiffure ‘flattened and disarranged’ from the proper wearing of hats and headgear.3 Broadening the theme of a sartorial Fall to a more general moral collapse, the author of essay No. 48 recalls the moment in time when ‘the wool stockings, boots, cloths, fur coats, and fur caps’ were replaced by ‘silk stockings, thin shoes, thin silk fabrics, gauzes, crapes, lace caps and hats’; the moment when ‘husbands and wives’ broke with ‘morals and beautiful virtues’ of old, and dropped everything in order to ‘follow fashions’. They never ‘ask for their children’, he claimed, hardly ever ‘sleep in their houses’, and they ‘abandon their closest kin’ to spend their time instead ‘imitating’ all the novelties that were produced by ‘fickle minds, sizeable wealth, idle herds, and roused temperaments’.4 These concerns for the corrupting impact of fashion were part of a larger European discourse. French philosophe Jean-­Jacques Rousseau raged against the commercial modernity of the day, denouncing fashionable urban society as artificial and hypocritical, and ostentatiously dissociated himself from it by donning simple attires and oriental-­inspired caftans in public.5 His fellow philosophe Denis Diderot wrote a mocking satire on the pernicious logics of that same commercialism in the essay Regrets sur ma vielle robe de chambre (1772, ‘Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown’). It recounts the misfortunes of a man, who was one day gifted a new dressing gown by a friend. All of a sudden, next to that new and fashionable dressing gown, all his other possessions seemed old and shabby, and he ultimately ruins himself by replacing item after item with something new and fashionable (a phenomenon later dubbed as ‘the Diderot effect’).6 Where order was essential, there was disorder. So, what was this disorder all about? What was wrong? There are four main moral arguments at play in the essays. They define the root causes of the sartorial problems as perceived by the authors and specify the social values that were threatened. There were economic arguments, with concerns about the welfare of the nation and its inhabitants; there were social arguments, with concerns about the persistence and legibility of social order; there  were national arguments, with concerns about the physical state and the national character of Swedes; and, finally, there were religious arguments, with concerns about God, Christian manners, and a divine state of things. Related to the notion of a Fall, there were narratives of degeneration at work within each moral strand. In these narratives, the purport and structure of sartorial disorder were merged into a larger narrative of

66  Disorder in the Sartorial World something strong, righteous, and wholesome that had been destroyed, resulting in a weakened, unrighteous, and malign state of things. In terms of commentaries on economic morality, there was a narrative of economic ruin with the degeneration of a healthy economy into a derailed and dysfunctional economy, and how to heal it. Turning to commentaries on social morality, there was a narrative of social confusion with the demise of a once natural and legible social order, and how to rectify it. Continuing with the national arguments, there was a narrative of national degeneration, in which a once-­strong and patriotic nation had fallen into decay in body and mind, and how to redeem it. Regarding religious morality, finally, there was a narrative of the ungodly, depicting the fall of a once-­righteous and pious sartorial culture, the wickedness of the present, and the means to bring the necessary fear of God back. The relevance and historic presence of the four moral strands are confirmed by two related fields of research: research on early modern sumptuary legislation, and research on public discourse on consumer behaviour in early modern print culture. Starting with sumptuary laws, early modern governments were highly concerned with contemporary material practices and consumption. Clothes, not least the fabrics they used, were particularly prominent, with repeated concerns on what people wore, where they got their garments and fabrics, how much they spent on them, and so forth. It is an extensive research field, spanning all-­encompassing attempts to write European, even global, histories on the subject, to more geographically and chronologically confined studies on sumptuary legislation in specific states and specific periods. As governments stated the reasons for their actions, they entered that same moral discourse on sartorial matters as the 1773 authors and drew on strikingly similar moral arguments. Looking at the larger surveys, such as the synthesizing work of sociologist Alan Hunt, who sought to bring the early modern sumptuary attitudes together in a universal understanding, the central motives are familiar. There was an ever-­present social motive for sumptuary actions, stressing the need for social ‘recognizability’ as a means of preserving social order and hierarchical structures. Each and all had to be recognized by their physical appearance in terms of social standing, in the chain of hierarchical relationships. Economic concerns posed a second all-­pervasive motive in Hunt’s synthesis, with governments emphasizing mercantilist principles, and the need to stem imports of foreign goods and maximize domestic production.7 Similarly, historian Martha Howell, in her survey of ‘Europe’s great age of sumptuary legislation’ (1300–1600), traced these same basic themes in sartorial discourse: sumptuary laws were presented as the means to prevent social and economic decay.8 These patterns recur in studies on specific states and periods. Moving from Tudor and Stuart England, via the patchwork of kingdoms, duchies, and bishoprics of early modern Germany, and the city states

Disorder in the Sartorial World 67 of renaissance Italy, to seventeenth-­century town councils in Reval in the Baltics and eighteenth-­century France, declarations of legislators ring familiar.9 Social concerns on distinctions and the preservation of social hierarchies, good governance and social harmony, were intermixed with economic concerns about the financial health of the realm and its inhabitants, and the protection of local industry. These concerns were further spiced with elements of gender, femininity and masculinity, health and corporeal distortion, and with religious arguments on the sinfulness of pride and vanity. This was also the case in the Scandinavian peninsula. Historian Eva I. Andersson has written extensively on medieval and early modern Swedish sumptuary laws and her findings are fully in line with those of other European countries. The legislators were concerned with keeping up the proper difference between social estates. They were concerned with religious issues of Christian values and maintaining a necessary fear of God, paired with a need to chastise female sexuality. They were concerned with the national identity and stamina, threatened by foreign influences, and with the national economy and upholding of domestic production and a positive balance of trade.10 The same issues and moral concerns stand out in the second field of research: public discourse. The perspective is different, however. Rather than authority and government actions, these studies focus on the societies that those actions targeted. The rise of the public sphere in the eighteenth century, combined with increased consumption and availability of goods, nurtured moral concerns and apprehension, voiced, and passionately supported or refuted, in pamphlets, papers, magazines, and other prints. The different perspectives apart, the object at hand was the same: that delicate relationship and interplay between materiality and social practices, and the disorderly behaviours that allegedly ravaged contemporary societies. It is an equally vast research field. Three examples can illustrate the relevance for the present study. Firstly, Leif Runefelt’s study on moral debates on consumption and consumer behaviour in eighteenth-­ and early nineteenth-­century Sweden, as expressed in sources such as press, pamphlets, political debates, diaries and theatre plays. Secondly, Roze Hentschell’s study on sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century English debates on the future and well-­being of the domestic cloth industry in a variety of genres, including pastoral poems, satirical plays, broadside ballads, and polemical sermons. Thirdly, Kate Haulman’s study on the equally passionate debates on fashions and the meanings of appearance in eighteenth-­century British America, specifically in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The geographies vary, but the moral concerns are similar. There were social concerns on legibility and distinctions of rank and status in the face of increased availability of fabrics and goods. There were economic concerns on domestic industry, sustainable finances, and the welfare of state coffers and individual households in a time of increased commercialization and the lure of foreign goods.

68  Disorder in the Sartorial World There were national concerns on the persistence of the essentially Swedish, English, and American identity, and the very health and strength of the nation, besieged by cheap, fickle, and artificial goods. There were religious concerns about God’s commands, Christian—whether Protestant or Catholic, often one pitched against the other—values, and that element of sin, and the looming gates of Hell, in all things concerning appearances and the promotion of the self.11 The 1773 essays position themselves between the sumptuary laws and public debates. In line with the former, the authors were asked to comment on the regulation of sartorial behaviour, that is, on the advantages and disadvantages of a national dress reform as an alternative route to sumptuary laws in order to stem erroneous sartorial behaviours. However, the authors were not (or at least, did not speak from the position of) the authorities. They were members of the public, who reflected on the sartorial culture of their time, discerned disorderly elements and considered solutions to those elements. Yet, they were not on par with the public commentaries studied by Runefelt, Hentschell, and Haulman. Several essays were indeed published at the time of the competition, but the vast majority of them were submitted in manuscript, and interacted indirectly with the public debate—or rather in a one-­way manner, as several authors referred to printed texts, although their comments on those texts remained unpublished and thus unread by the addressed parties. In that sense, they provide a snapshot of eighteenth-­century sartorial culture: a still life, taken in the midst of a lively world of moralizing on the challenges presented by changing commercial culture. So, again, what was wrong with contemporary sartorial practices, as assessed and scrutinized by the 1773 authors? Certainly, the separation of the four moral arguments is largely analytical. Rather than separate, they were intertwined parts of a larger moral discourse on sartorial matters. They appear in a wide spectrum of different combinations: national arguments combined with economic arguments, economic narratives of ruin intersecting with social narratives of confusion, social concerns reinforced by religious dictums, and so forth. Alongside the nature and logics of individual moral strands, this interplay between them, where they coincided and how they interacted, comes to the fore, as focus shifts to the disorderly world of sartorial practices in the 1773 essays.

Economic Arguments Economic concerns were by far the most commonly invoked moral argument in the essays. This preoccupation with economic matters coincided with contemporary European sumptuary discourse, all the more so as long-­established mercantilist values were challenged by the rise of a commercial culture and with an increased availability of consumer goods to ever broader sections of society.12 The question posed by the Royal

Disorder in the Sartorial World 69 Patriotic Society, with its emphasis on costly changes in fashion and how to stop fraud and illicit trade, cut straight into these processes. The authors voiced the sumptuary discourse of their day, and eagerly mustered the economic aspects of sartorial disorder. There are examples of a more positive view on luxury and consumption. Advancing commercial theories were voiced in contemporary economic debates. Contrary to the commanding mercantilist doctrines, these theories emphasized the beneficial effects of luxury in terms of increased production, employment, trade, circulation of money, state revenues, and general economic growth. French political economist and precursor of the physiocrats, Jean-­François Melon was an early advocate. Unspent money, he explained in his Essai politique sur le commerce (1734, ‘Political Essay on Commerce’), remained ‘dead to society’. But when used for consumption, even conspicuous consumption, it fed into society’s bloodstream. Even the absolute luxury of keeping a non-­productive and purely decorative garden, he argued, paid the gardener’s salary, fed and clothed his children, and encouraged him to continue to work for future gains. Governments should not combat luxury, but instead use it to their advantage.13 Similar ideas resounded from Europe’s intellectual scenes. In Sweden, Count, and soon-­to-­be Senator of the Realm, Anders Johan von Höpken famously championed them in his speech on Yppighets nytta (‘The Benefits of Luxurience’) which he delivered to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1740 and had published the following year.14 These emerging ideas were echoed in the 1773 essays. With a metaphorical language comparable to that of Jean-­François Melon, one author likened luxury and consumption to ‘the rivers and brooks’ that water a field ‘where no rain falls’, adding in an equally colourful language that ‘the Golden vein must somehow be opened, if the body of the Realm shall be relieved from its ailments’.15 Others were more straightforward, stressing the necessity of luxury to be encouraged, even rewarded, as an effective means to strengthen industry and commerce. ‘If the rich were not a wee bit crazy’, one author candidly concluded, ‘the poor would starve to death’.16 But again, these examples are but few in comparison with the overwhelmingly negative understandings of luxury and consumerism that were voiced again and again. In these, fashion was referred to in animated terms variously as a ‘tyrant’ enslaving everyone; a ‘disease’ paralyzing the body politic; a ‘flood’ sweeping away all riches; a ‘rage’ pulling everyone into its torrents; and as ‘vermin’ scraping off the flesh down to the very bones of society.17 The narrative of economic ruin laid out in the essays had a dual character, combining a micro and a macro view. On a micro level, in terms of the household economy and the welfare of individual subjects, Swedes were depicted as a poor people, who, in their attempts to follow the changing fashions, spent beyond their means, pushing themselves to the brink of ruin. With compassion and contempt in equal measures, authors

70  Disorder in the Sartorial World outlined at length the wretchedness brought on by sartorial demands. Masters were succumbing under the heavy load of the high salaries claimed by maids and farmhands to support their sartorial habits, wearing ‘silk, fine chintz, and camlets’. Men, women, and children were daily brought to ‘earthly misery and want’. Artisans bought silk stockings instead of daily bread for their families. Civil servants advanced on their salaries ‘to procure several gala dresses for themselves’. The young forfeit their future inheritance to be able to ‘shine like peacocks’ for a month or two. Merchants had their names up on the ‘black board’ (i.e. lost their creditworthiness) in order for their wives to ‘swim in finery’.18 On a macro level, the authors provided a rich collection of textbook examples of mercantilist doctrine, where the severe damage caused by contemporary consumer behaviour, not least the import of foreign goods, on domestic economics, industry, and trade posed a fundamental problem. Industry and domestic production had fallen into decay; trading balances were negative, effectively bleeding the realm of specie and ready money; the economy was fraught with contraband and foreign interest, and the state was in ever-­escalating rates deprived of its main sources of income. Imagine, it was suggested, if the sums spent on fashion instead were collected in taxes and used for ‘the relief and needs of the Realm’.19 Rather than separated, the micro and macro levels converge and compose a larger understanding of contemporary economic problems. Negative trading balances and the plight of domestic industries on a macro level, and individual overspending and extravagance on a micro level, were the twin symptoms of a derailed and dysfunctional economy nearing collapse. Whereas a healthy economy was characterized by production and diligence, contemporary economy, caught in the spell of fashions, was described as fraught by consumption and idleness. It was an economy drained of its productive forces, and weighed down by ‘useless crafts’, and in desperate need of ‘genuine Industry’.20 Highlighting the imbalance between productive and consuming forces in economic life, one author stated that ‘Manufacturers, Dyers, Wig makers’, ‘superfluous Lackeys, Hairdressers, and so-­called domestic servants’ should be considered ‘deserters from agriculture’. The country cannot, another author resounded, ‘afford to constantly recruit to that troupe, which works for our superfluous finery, and to thereby reduce the working masses which work for our daily bread’.21 This dichotomy of production and consumption relates to another prominent feature in the European context of fashion, namely the dichotomy of the rural and the urban space. In research, the centrality of the urban town (alongside court society) as a place, if not the very birthplace, for fashion and for commercial culture and the circulation of luxury at large stands out. While the rural landscape represented production, the urban town came to represent consumption, with all the moral concerns it brought forth. From Paris to Grenoble, from London to Aberdeen,

Disorder in the Sartorial World 71 researchers have studied the emergence of commercial hubs all around Europe.22 This was also the case in eighteenth-­ century Sweden. The capital and larger provincial towns such as commercial Gothenburg and industrial Norrköping, became hubs of fashion. Historian Leif Runefelt aptly describes these urban spaces at ‘an open stage’ on which fashion (and not just in clothes) was acquired and played out in novel forms of sociability. There were public venues such as the royal court, theatres, coffee houses, assembly rooms, public parks, and gardens—not to forget the streets and the squares—and there were semi-­private venues such as visits, salons, and balls.23 These urban temptations, and the role played by urban space in the economically detrimental workings of fashions, are present in the 1773 essays. One author addressed the ‘vanity’ that had ‘infected’ the rural population through their ‘intercourse with towns’24 ‘Populous towns’, stated another author to the same effect, ‘are the places where new tastes and new fashions are generated and entertained’,25 while Stockholm in particular was singled out as ‘the town from whence the entire Realm gets its fashion’.26 Whether in an urban or rural setting, being fashionable was set in stark contrast against being a productive and useful member of society. With a sting of ridicule and scorn, the detrimental ways of contemporaries were given a thorough enumeration. The ‘excessive desire to ornate oneself’ kept people occupied during ‘the better part of the day’, wrote one author, and the ‘running of the Household is neglected by both Husband and Wife’. ‘Yes!’, exclaimed another author to the same effect, ‘It has now gone so far that the Wife and Daughter of an honest man’ spend ‘half of the forenoon at their toilettes, while their Chamber Maids tend to their hair and stuff their heads full of long needles’. For such ‘a pretty doll’, it would not do to work in ‘kitchens, pantries and cellars, let alone the cowsheds’, so the household was left in the hands of ‘useless and lazy maids’. From such abuse, ‘the full weight of the detrimental effects of fashion’ was felt by ‘every impoverished peasant’.27 The causes behind these anomalies, and the logic behind the economic disorder that they caused, were equally clear. Fashions did not change by themselves, and the desire to follow them did not come about by chance. The flock-­like behaviour of people as they ruined themselves and each other in order to keep up with fashions came down to the vanity of humanity, which was sewn into the very fabric of the social order. ‘It all emanates from a singular source’, one author characteristically declared: ‘the ambition to shine among those who can, and the competition or shame not to be inferior among those of lesser fortunes’.28 There was a vicious game of fashions going on. The forces at work were recurrently addressed. ‘Those of wealth, out of pride of their fortunes’, ran a typical argument, ‘want everyone to, at the sight of them, see their wealth’, while the poor will ‘imitate the wealthy, out of envy and out of vain greed’. The

72  Disorder in the Sartorial World wealthy, in turn, will soon want ‘something new, to distinguish them’ and, again, the poor will follow. ‘There, behold the perpetual chain of changes in splendour and dress, the ceaseless consequence of the lusts of human nature’.29 Thus, propelled by pride and envy, spun the devastating wheel of fashion changes. The notion of imitation, or emulation, as the engine of changes in fashion is well documented in early modern sartorial discourse.30 It has been the object of scholarly debates, where theoretical models of ‘trickle down’, with a vertical flow of fashions from the high to the low, have been tried against models of ‘chase and flight’, with the dynamics of lower groups imitating their social superiors, who then adopt new styles in order to distinguish themselves, and with models of ‘trickle round’, with a critical emphasis on the dynamics within social groups rather than between them.31 The concept of direct emulation has been increasingly criticized for being overly simplistic and narrow-­minded, with calls for attention to a more complex reality of sartorial practices and fashion dissemination.32 However, the point to be made here is not on the model’s validity as an analytical concept, but on its prominent place in social discourse at the time, as an historical concept. As the 1773 authors sat down to explain the economically ruinous effects of changing fashions, that ‘perpetual chain of changes in splendour and dress’, the emulation of the superior by the inferior was key.33 The emphasis on common people stands out. They were the ones who, in an attempt to keep up with the wealthy, consumed beyond their means, plunging themselves into poverty, and it was they who wrought havoc on the economy by deserting their designated roles in production, eating into society’s reserves instead of fulfilling their natural call to feed it.34 The intended strata was unmistakably defined by recurring social designations such as ‘the peasantry’, ‘country people’, ‘domestics’, ‘maids’, ‘farmhands’, ‘commoners’, ‘the lowly’, ‘the populace’, ‘the poorer’, ‘the impecunious’, ‘the masses’, and ‘the simple Citizens’.35 The ‘King’s peasantry’, one author raved, wore clothes ‘twice as expensive as in times past’—again, a clear reference to that moment of a Fall—with peasants swaggering about with ‘a blue and a green dress’ each. If the ‘ancient fathers’ were to rise from the dead, and ‘witness our ways of living’, they would surely believe that ‘sovereigns and Princes’ from lands afar had taken to the streets, squares and church greens.36 The emphasis on common people as the primary wrongdoers was further underlined by the distinction between their sartorial ways and those of their socio-­economic superiors. The core of the problem was people spending beyond their means. Spending in itself was not necessarily a problem. ‘It is not’, one author claimed accordingly, ‘excessive’ when ‘those of higher standing dress in braids and precious stones’.37 A ‘rich man’ following the fashions, echoed another author, was at worst ‘a mere vanity, worthy of contempt’, but no harm was done to himself,

Disorder in the Sartorial World 73 his household, or to society at large. With the poor, it was an altogether different matter: it was ‘the greatest form of excess’ when an artisan, who had to feed his family on a meagre pay, got dressed up ‘in silk stockings on Sundays’.38 The rich could afford to follow the fashions, and their consumption was potentially problematic on a macro level in that they should consume domestic rather than foreign goods, but not on a micro level. The poor, by contrast, could not afford it, and their consumer behaviour did not match their productive responsibilities, resulting in misery and economic dysfunction at household as well as national level. In the midst of the all-­pervasive condemnation of fashions, there were voices that portrayed the sumptuous displays of the rich and elevated as a necessity, essential for upholding social order and the polity. Here, the uncompromising imperatives of early modern visual culture, as once phrased by sociologist Norbert Elias and often repeated since, came to the fore. In order to be somebody, you had to act the part and appear as such: ‘A duke who does not live as a duke has to live . . . is hardly a duke any longer’.39 The royal court was a recurrent object of particular concern. The glory of royalty and, through them of the realm, demanded that the sartorial trappings (‘and all else’) of the court were equal to those of the courts of Europe, and that courtly splendour made ‘a fine impression with the Peasantry’ of the ‘Highness of their Lords’. In order to be respected and revered as in all things superior, the king and his court had to visually appear and act as such.40 To remedy the situation, the idea of a national dress followed logically, either as a fixed one-­dress-­for-­all or, more loosely, as specific regulations in the manner of dress. With the problem defined as the excessive import of foreign goods, and households consuming beyond their means, the mercantile battery of consumer control provided the remedy. If the peasantry ruined themselves by purchasing multiple suits in expensive colours, they should be forbidden to do so, and thus be forced back to their traditional and more fitting habits of uncoloured clothes. And if the import of foreign fabrics drained specie and harmed domestic production, it too should be forbidden, thus encouraging the production and consumption of domestic goods.41 A  for all times fixed national dress posed a radical solution. It would not only put a stop to changing fashions and save impoverished households the millions of dalers that would otherwise be spent on new clothes and fashionable alterations, but also ‘restore the health and strength of the Body Politic’. As the ‘Autocracy of Luxuriance’ subsided, ‘a purified and fixed Taste, dictated by reason and Thrift’ would prevail, and in place of ‘useless Crafts’, ‘genuine Industry’ would be revived.42 From the authors’ scrutiny of sartorial practices, a fundamental principle of instrumentality can be deduced. The basic function of dress was to keep warm and to cover the body. That constituted the instrumental and economically justifiable user value of any item of clothing. Anything

74  Disorder in the Sartorial World beyond that basic function was a step towards economically unjustifiable luxury and sartorial excess, be it expensive colours, fine fabrics, up-­to-­ date cuts, or trims and ornaments.43 The descriptions of condemnable economic behaviour were often paired with descriptions ridiculing the follies of fashion, mirroring in words the many taunting printed caricatures of the time that circulated as separate prints or as illustrations in newspapers, journals, and magazines.44 ‘Behold that Man with the coat’, one author stated pointedly, which was ‘too narrow’ to ‘be buttoned without pain’, but which still had buttons and buttonholes sewed on ‘all the way down to under the knees’.45 It is considered, agreed another, ‘more respectable’ for a man ‘to carry his hat under his arm in a Swedish snowstorm’ than wear it on his head, where it would be useful, and more ‘respectable’ to wear ‘greyish and ragged laces than clean and unscathed Batiste shirt cuffs’.46 A legal ban on use of powdered wigs, declared an equally mocking third author, would send the powdered lawbreaker into exile ‘and provide the rest of us with an abundance of wheat-­buns’.47 A fourth author expressed amusement at the ‘peculiar whims’ that came off the tailors’ cutting tables: coats with waists so high that they ‘neared the shoulders’, only to the next day be ‘lowered all the way down to the small of the back’, and coats with cuffs that were cut in such grotesque measures that a man ‘could hardly cut into a steak without practised manoeuvres’.48 This stern language of instrumentality materialized in critical and often satirical investigations of contemporary dress, systematically assessing individual garments and items of apparel from head to toe in order to identify economically unjustifiable fripperies that should be abandoned and banned. The lists of the latter were long. Frilled cuffs on shirts had no actual function (other than for cheating card players, we are told) and ‘removes a lot of ready money from the Realm’. Imported silk stockings had no use beyond sturdier and domestically produced wool stockings, and they damaged ‘the balance of trade’. Shoes without proper soles were impractical and contributed to the costliness of shoemaker production. Silver shoe buckles were excessive and should be duly replaced by textile or leather rosettes, while the precious metals should be put to better use for the national coinage. Jewellery served ‘no use whatsoever’, while removing ‘incredible sums of Money from the Realm’. All forms of bobbin lace and knitted lace should be banned, as they were the products of ‘time wasting’ and ‘vain’ labour. Leather trimmings on fur should be forbidden, since they did not add anything in terms of ‘warmth and strength’, but only to cost. Wigs were ‘useless’ to anyone with natural hair, and although coats were useful garments, they should be purged of ‘unnecessary’ (i.e. fashionable) lengths, pleats, buttons, and lapels.49 These critiques offered insights into the intrinsic role of sartorial items in social interaction. Hats, for instance, were deemed necessary ‘beyond question’, as they not only protected the wearer against the weather

Disorder in the Sartorial World 75 but were also essential for properly ‘exchanging greetings’ and showing ‘reverence’.50 The language of instrumentality had a social dimension. Extravagance was clearly relative to social standing. Whereas owning several suits of clothes was not instrumental for a peasant man, working the fields, it might very well be instrumental, that is, of a practical use that was worth the economic cost, to a count attending the royal court. There were recurrent calls for coercive corrections of the sartorial behaviour of common people, and demands to remove them from the commercial world of goods. Rather than consuming clothes and items that they could not afford, the argument ran, they should be limited to the primary use of home-­spun, home-­made, and home-­dyed clothes.51 A ‘peasant man’, it was laid down, should appear before his farmhands and maids dressed in ‘leather and frieze’, and not with ‘a silk cravat’ around his neck; a ‘peasant wife’ should attend country feasts dressed in ‘home spun’, not in ‘silk bodice and silk aprons’; and the maid and farmhand should go to the country fair stripped of ‘French ribbons in the shawl’ and ‘braids and edgings on the hat-­crown’.52 In a rare account of the life cycle of clothes, the author of essay No. 73 mapped the ideal downwards passage of garments, from the wealthy who could afford to consume down to the poor who could (and should) not. ‘I know not of any other way to consume clothes than through their daily wear and tear’. When the clothes of ‘the better or wealthier people’ were ‘worn out’ or went ‘out of fashion’, they were ‘given away’ to ‘poorer relatives, private tutors, Manservants, Stewards, Book-­keepers, Chamber-­Maids, Housekeepers, and so on, step by step down to the lowliest sort’, where they were finally ‘remade into children’s clothes’ and used for as long as they were ‘usable’.53 Taken together, this reflected on the wider understanding of the dysfunctional economic system. The lower classes did not belong in the commercial sphere of consumption; they belonged in the self-­sustained sphere of production. This ideal is apparent in Pehr Hilleström’s scenes from the daily life of the Swedish peasantry. In his People from Mora in Darlacarlia (1782–1810), we see the producing and self-­sufficient peasant household, with its homemade clothes, furniture, foodstuff, and tools (see Figure 3.1). The recommended sartorial regime, where a mere few were allowed to buy, and the rest were restricted to using what they could make themselves, was targeted at the practices of an expanding commercial culture. It represented an attempt to restore the economy, to bring it back into a good and sound working order, where the common people produced, as they were supposed to, and did not consume or otherwise dress beyond their meagre household means. Alongside the emphasis on common people, the narrative of economic ruin was decidedly gendered. Women were clearly perceived as particularly problematic and disorderly in terms of their sartorial practices. Here, the 1773 authors adhered to well-­known early modern notions of

76  Disorder in the Sartorial World

Figure 3.1  Pehr Hilleström, People from Mora in Dalecarlia, 1782–1810. Source: Photograph Hallwylska museet (Samuel Uhrdin), Stockholm.

women’s uncontrolled inclination to excess and their foolish pursuit of everything fashionable.54 The archetype of the consuming woman, often contrasted to the producing man, has been called out as a caricature and has been the object of scholarly revision and problematizing. It has (based on French sources) been observed that the eighteenth century witnessed a beginning divergence between women’s and men’s consumption patterns. From mid-­century onwards, the relative value of women’s wardrobes increased, seemingly across all classes, as much as five to ten times more rapidly men’s wardrobes.55 Meanwhile, Amanda Vickery shows that contemporary account books chart a more complex story. She describes the archetypes of the producing male and the consuming female as a trope which has survived in the face of evidence to the contrary. Within the household, men and women purchased different categories of items, where, for instance, male consumption of tackle rivalled female consumption of fabrics in terms of expenditures.56 Rather than argue that female spending conformed to a view of uncontrolled spending, the emphasis on the female consumer in the

Disorder in the Sartorial World 77 essays serves to illustrate the prominence of that trope in late eighteenth-­ century sartorial discourse. The authors repeatedly dwelled on women’s consumer behaviour, pointing to their weak moral fibre and selfish indulgence, and on the condemnable nature of female fashion at large with its many and frequent changes and costly details. Women were addressed indiscriminately. High and low, rich and poor, urban and rural: women across the social and geographical spectra were identified as responsible for economic disorder. ‘Let us turn to the women’, stated one author accordingly; ‘They are the ones who, according to many, are most prone for frequent changes in fashions’. They ‘pass the time’ with ‘monthly changes in headgears, neckerchiefs, trimmings and ruffles, and so much more’, and they were the ‘principal customers’ of ‘perjurers and smugglers’.57 No woman went without blame in this sweeping rhetoric.58 The pitiful lamentation of the author of essay No. 45 provides a vigorous example of the adversaries brought on by women’s unruly sartorial behaviour, also pinpointing that markedly urban character of fashion follies. ‘Every time’, he wrote, ‘I travel to town with my womenfolk’, they ‘hide behind locked doors’ for the ‘entire first week’—as if they had been ‘undressed’—while an army of ‘Capmakers, Hairdressers, Tailors, Smugglers, and other such henchmen’ brought forth the latest ‘finery’, re-­ arranged ‘locks of hair’, changed ‘flowers’, crafted a ‘bracelet’, ‘shorten or widen petticoats’, ‘raise or drop the trains’, ‘replace Fans’, changed ‘buckles’, and ‘many other such things’. By the end of the day, his ‘wallet was in such a state of ruin’ that he had to borrow money to pay for the family’s journey home.59

Social Arguments ‘Many will surely agree with me’, declared one author, ‘that there is barely any difference in the dress of a Lady and the daughter of a Burgher, an Artisan, an Accountant, a porter, a gardener, a Chimney-­Sweep, or other such people’.60 This notion of blurred sartorial ranks is found throughout the essays. ‘It is’, stated another author, ‘impossible’ to ‘make a difference between people at first sight’, and to be able to ‘pay each and every one the proper honours’, since there was no ‘distinction between Estates’, and ‘a Shoe maker is often dressed like a Mayor, and a Burgher’s wife like a Noble Dame’.61 ‘But can it be proper’, complained a third, ‘that the wife or Daughter of an Artisan is dressed equally to the Wife of a Senator of the Realm or a Lady of the Court?’62 ‘Let lion be lion!’, exclaimed a fourth, ‘And let donkey be donkey!’63 These lamentations sketch the outlines of the social concerns that were voiced in the essays. Again, early modern visual culture comes to the fore. The preoccupation with order and ordering was equalled by the emphasis on the legibility of that order. People’s place in the social hierarchy should be instantly recognizable from their appearance, manners, and behaviour. To extend that phrase

78  Disorder in the Sartorial World of Elias, not only were dukes supposed to live and act like dukes, but it was of equal importance that those who were not dukes did not live and act like dukes, or otherwise dress above (or, for that matter, below) their station. That would cause illegibility and confusion in the social world, a disorder most grave. Again, women stand out.64 The daughter of an artisan should not dress as finely as a lady of the court, but according to—and thus be recognized in—her station as the daughter of an artisan. Lions should be lions. Donkeys should be donkeys.65 Angry voices clearly pointed to the problems at the core of the social concerns and which made up the very essence of the narrative of social confusion. The sartorial signs of order were scrambled.66 Where legibility was of the essence, there was illegibility; where clarity was necessary, there was confusion. In short, the sartorial order was in disorder. The social standing of individuals had become hard to identify and unnervingly easy to misidentify. Early modern preoccupation with the perils of social confusion is well-­known. It was a running theme in sumptuary legislation alongside the economic concerns. By reserving certain garments and fabrics, even dress models and specific ornaments to people of a certain social standing, the rest of the population was to be kept away from dressing above their station. In the ideal sartorial world of Renaissance Venice, following the Senate’s act of 1442, a woman wearing gold or silver fabric was an aristocrat of le principesse or even la Dogaressa herself, since anyone below their rank was forbidden to wear it; and, again ideally, in Tudor England, following the 1514 royal act of apparel, a man wearing sable fur was at least an earl, since anyone below that rank was forbidden to wear it.67 Widening the view, the theme of sartorial confusion was an appreciated feature in contemporary literature and plays. The (il)legibility of dress was a metaphorical means to achieve humoristic, moralistic and even criticizing effects on social matters. In Pierre de Marivaux’s play L’Île des Esclaves (1725, ‘Slave Island’), a dramatic effect was accomplished by the offstage switch of clothes between, and striking re-­entrance of, the plot’s acting masters and servants following a shipwreck.68 In a similar way, Pierre Augustine de Beaumarchais, in his comedy La folle journée, ou La marriage de Figaro (1781, ‘The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro’), and later Mozart in the opera based on that play, amused and upset his contemporaries in equal measure by letting the count mistake his own wife, the countess, for a maid servant, as she wore the clothes of her lady’s maid, Susanna, for their secret meeting. Meanwhile in Sweden, the comedy Swenska Sprätthöken (‘The Swedish Fop’), written by Carl Gyllenborg, premiered in 1737 and published a few years later, ridiculed the pathetic figure of a newly made noble upstart who tried to claim the rank of the age-­old aristocratic families by donning gaudy French manners and fashions.69 The period’s great taste for masquerades, and the

Disorder in the Sartorial World 79 sartorially blindfolded interaction between unidentifiable people, played on that same thrilling sensation.70 However, in the 1773 essays, there were also exceptions from the rule of sartorial differentiation. Six authors explicitly argued against sartorial visualization of social order, pointing to its detrimental and counter-­ productive ramifications.71 ‘If’, one of them warned, ‘the prejudiced idea were to prevail, that certain Estates should be distinguished by certain clothes’, the entire purpose of a national dress reform would ‘be lost’. The existing sartorial differences between ‘Civil and military and other Corps and Estates’ were rejected as a ‘defect’ in contemporary dress, and the proposed national dress was one ‘that was the same for all’.72 In a similar vein, the other five authors called for a dress without distinctions between ‘estates, offices and crafts’; a dress relieved from ‘that ridiculous honour of showing off in clothes which the next person is not allowed to wear’; and a sartorial regime rid of ‘pretence’ and ‘bullying manners’.73 However, the arguments were not always consistent or clear-­cut. The author of essay No. 46 seemingly agreed with the rejection of sartorial differentiation, confidently stating that it was ‘a settled matter’ that the model (the ‘façon’) of a new national dress should be ‘universal for the whole of the Realm, without distinctions in terms of separate estates and corps’. But just a few lines further down, with the same air of certainty, the author adhered to the social imperative of a legible order, proposing that, ‘as is presently done’, those ‘who can afford it’ should wear ‘finer and more expensive fabrics than others’. The argument ran, it would indeed be ‘unjust’ and ‘an absurdity’ that ‘all, without distinction, should wear equally coarse and equally coloured fabrics’.74 At first sight, these diverging views seem radical and in line with the social critique and increasingly progressive calls for social reform, even equality. of the time. In his utopian novel L’An 2440 (‘Year 2440’), first published in 1770, the French radical writer Louis-­Sébastien Mercier had everyone dressed uniformly as a mark of social equality (except for the brocaded hat presented to and worn by aged citizens who had performed extraordinary service for humanity).75 But on closer inspection, the 1773 essays’ calls for ‘same dress’ did not carry radical calls for equality. On the contrary, the authors voiced a fundamentally conservative standpoint, aimed at preserving and safeguarding the social order, not challenging or toppling it. Rather than adhering to the necessity of a visualized social order, the authors sought to protect society from the social distress caused by sartorial differentiation. Differences in dress were described as ‘the most delicate subject of all’, and the cause of ‘jealousy’, ‘bitterness’, ‘contempt’, and ‘shame’ that could disturb the peace and excite envy, grudge, and animosity between citizens and social groups. These concerns, in turn, linked with economic distress, echoing the familiar logics of the game of fashions. Sartorial distinctions for the high and wealthy would enhance and provoke changing fashions, as the low and

80  Disorder in the Sartorial World poor would seek to emulate those of higher standing, and thereby cause damage to the economy.76 A streak of progressive thought can, however, be found in the arguments presented by the author of essay No. 42. Alongside lamentations on the spending poor and economic ruin, the author bluntly added that a national dress which differentiated between categories of people ‘would not be national’, and that ‘outward signs of merits’ should be ‘avoided’. Here, an emerging discourse on the nation and the national materializes, with a hint of the universal and, as time would tell, radical and revolutionary claim that the national capacity of an individual was larger than, and primary to, social collectives.77 Returning to the calls for sartorial differentiation and a legible visual order, identification was a key concept.78 Any individual should be readily identified by his or her appearance. That identification could refer to basic categories, such as being able to differentiate between the sexes. This was why one author called for a ban on horse-­riding dress for women; that form of dress ‘deformed’ the female sex ‘so that women were hardly recognized as such, had not their skirts made a difference between them and men’.79 The fear of a blurred gender order was as real as that of a blurred social order, and stories—real and fictional—were frequently  afloat at the time about women passing as men by wearing men’s clothes, and vice versa.80 The need for identification was also phrased in a more instrumental and every-­day way. One author aptly likened the practicality of sartorial identification to people wearing ‘signboards on the body’, signalling what and who they were. Concrete examples from daily life were used to illustrate the point. If a visiting friend suffered a stroke, the argument ran, ‘I could save his life, if I were able to recognize the barber-­ surgeon passing by outside the window by his clothes’, but without that sartorial identification, the barber-­surgeon walked on by and the friend ‘dies in my arms’. The same went for other crafts and trades: the broker, the prosecutor, the lawyer; ‘I would save myself many steps’, the author concluded, ‘if I could recognize them when I meet them’.81 But above all, the calls for legibility and the criticism against contemporary sartorial practices concerned social standing and the visualization of social hierarchies. The forces at play—the very root of the problem, as identified by the authors—link back to that ongoing game of fashion. With the poor imitating the rich, fashion threatened the very foundations of social order. Dress had performative qualities: to dress above one’s station, imitating the sartorial appearance of those of higher standing, was in fact to make false claims on status and worth. The social imperative of visual culture cut both ways; to act like a duke, was to claim to be a duke.82 Who was the count and who was the merchant if both wore gold-­ braided tricorns, velvet coats, and silk stockings? Who was the mayor’s wife and who was his maid if both wore colourful gowns and quilted silk petticoats?

Disorder in the Sartorial World 81 The two chief wrongdoers of the economic morals were present and blamed here, as well: the common people of modest standing and women in general. These were the ranks of the accountants, porters, gardeners, and chimney sweeps, all trying to appear to be of higher standing than they were. There was a raging ‘arbitrariness in dress’, in which ‘the clerk dresses up like a minister and pretends to be one’, and in which ‘the Pewterer’, by donning a fine dress, sought to elevate himself to ‘the Ranks of Gentlemen’, and in which ‘the common herd’ acted like ‘fools’ in their ‘debauchery and extravagance’.83 Women were, in their economically irresponsible behaviour, portrayed as equally, and as if by nature, given to the art of dissembling. This, ‘the most Beautiful Creature in God’s creation’, willingly adorned herself in ‘borrowed and vain bravery’; it was ‘an inherited vanity’.84 The air of ridicule is familiar from the language of instrumentality voiced in the economic concerns. The man whose ‘womenfolk’ stayed hidden in their rooms as if they had been naked, waiting for the army of hairdressers, seamstresses, and other artisans to dress them up in the latest fashions, exemplifies this.85 Another example is provided by the author who, in a clearly condescending manner, described his ‘particular agitation’ at the sight ‘lowly farmhands’ who arrived at church in ‘coloured clothes and shirts, German boots, velvet caps, and silk scarves around their necks’.86 Although similar to economic morals in terms of the logics at work, the arguments based on social concerns represent a shift in terms of the values at risk. Rather than who could and could not afford certain manners of dress, and the problem of people dressing beyond their means, the focus here was on the right to wear certain manners of dress, and the problem of people dressing above their social standing. Rather than a dysfunctional economic life, the result of social disorder was a dysfunctional and illegible sartorial system. Here, the foundations of early modern notions of social hierarchy come to the fore. In a society where entities such as esteem, honour, and dignity to a considerable extent decided status and social standing, wealth was not necessarily a primary variable in order and ordering.87 Social worth did not come with economic wealth. An ever-­so-­poor count would always outrank an ever-­so-­rich burgher. The fact that you could afford something did not necessarily make you entitled to it. In such a social order, a peasant (regardless of the size of his farm and purse) who wore clothing in the same expensive colours as a nobleman, would always, as one author bluntly put it, be a ‘deformation in social standing as well as in appearance’.88 The ‘abuse of sartorial splendour’, stated another author, pinpointing the conflict between social worth and economic wealth, had gone so far, that overdressed ‘Wives and Daughters of Artisans’, with the ‘pride infused in them by their precious clothes and jewellery’, ‘scorn and sneer at honourable people of higher standing, yes! even Nobles, because the latter cannot afford to squander on clothes as can the former’.89 Economic wealth was challenging the

82  Disorder in the Sartorial World rule of social worth, and the unworthy wore the sartorial signs of social worth which the worthy themselves could not afford. An erroneous and detrimental conception of the relationship between the sartorial and the social, between dress and social standing, plied society and the social order. Returning to the author who complained about overdressed clerks and pewterers, his full argument on the nature of their wrongdoing is telling. The said clerk would dress up like a minister instead of going to his office to work, and ‘what little he did’ at his office was of such poor quality as if it had been authored by those same good-­ for-­nothing hands which had ‘procured him his fineries’. To a similar end, the said pewterer tried to dress like a gentleman instead of ‘being content with his old name of honour: master’. He rarely attended his workshop, from fear of staining his fine clothes. But he ‘never doubts that he has as much intelligence’ as ‘a Secretary of State’ since he wore an ‘equally fine peruque’ on his head. These perverted notions were the  ‘unfortunate products’ of ‘a false and vain craving for honour’, where dress had become a means of obtaining social worth and status rather than a sign of it.90 The inverse relationship between dress and social standing was a recurrent object of criticism and condemnation. It is a ‘competition of façades’, cried one author. The ‘one and only true respect between men cannot be gained by any dress: it is the conviction of each and everyone’s inner worth’. It will soon enough be made clear, the author sourly added, ‘who is the Master and who is the servant when one sits down while the other remains standing’.91 Another author raged at the ‘Lust to, by use of fine clothes, gain respect’, pointing specifically at the preposterous behaviour of ‘extravagant Students’. They would ‘rather spend their money on hairdressers, fine clothes and other jewelleries’, than on buying the ‘assigned and elementary books’, since they ‘fancy that outward finery will compensate for the emptiness of their brains and intellect’.92 A third author was equally upset about the ‘enchanting, cowardly and depraved competition’ in which ‘everyone seeks to outshine each other’. But ‘What’, ran the rhetorical question, ‘is Finery in dress without the merits of those who wear it?’ It served solely to ‘delude, divert and dazzle those effeminate, unstable, and unduly Self-­complacent and coward hearts’, not least, again emphasizing the common people, ‘among the lowlier, who follow fashions like wood shavings follow the Stream’.93 In short: fine feathers did not make fine birds: ‘a crow will never be anything but a crow’, as it was phrased, ‘no matter how many feathers it borrows’.94 Clothes should reflect the worth and standing of the wearer; they should never be allowed to decide that worth and standing. The narrative of social confusion and the attacks on contemporary sartorial practices, relates to those larger historical processes described by Daniel Roche as the ‘vestimentary revolution’ during the seventeenth and, even more so, eighteenth centuries. There were two competing

Disorder in the Sartorial World 83 discourses on dress and clothing. On the one hand, there was a traditional system of the Old Regime, according to which everyone had an assigned place in society and the clothing of an individual clearly reflected his or her status. On the other hand, a modern system was in formation, according to which clothes reflected an individual’s acquired or even desired status. People dressing above their social standing were nothing new, as the centuries of European sumptuary laws make clear. But the old and stationary system was increasingly challenged by the formation of a commercial culture with increased availability of material goods by ever broader social segments, combined with a destabilized social landscape with advancing social groups making claims on status and importance. Clothes became a weapon in the social conflicts, and a means for status claims (in what Roche refers to as the ‘battle of appearances’).95 The 1773 authors are easily categorized as proponents of the Old against the onslaught of the Modern. The use of clothes as a means to appear better, higher, and grander was condemned in unison, paired with equally stern calls for each and all to remain at their assigned posts in society, including sartorially. But the authors, and the complex social realities of the time, are better understood as positioned in the midst of an ongoing battle. Considering the probable social composition of the authors, their calls were essentially pleas made by interested parties. Just as they made space for themselves in their voiced social imaginaries, they actively made sartorial claims for themselves. They defended their positions, and kept clear downwards, against groups that, in turn, challenged them and claimed positions for themselves.96 The emphasis on common people consistently referred to the lower strata of the lower middling sort and the labouring kind, with a focus on lower clerks, farmhands, mayors’ maids, daughters of chimney sweeps, and the like. It never extended to commoners of their own gentrified ranks, such as middling and higher-­ranking state servants, the proprietors of land and industry, the clergy, and so on. The battle of appearances was fought on several battlegrounds, and with many lines of defence, always attacking upwards and shielding downwards. As with economic concerns, the proposed remedies to these social ills focused on regulations of dress. Alongside repeated calls for restricted use of individual items of clothing, there were (as will be elaborated in Chapter  4) large-­scale sartorial systems for visual differentiation based on colours, fabrics, styles, and ornaments. Through these fixed and regulated systems, order was to be restored. The ‘most potent remedy’, as it was phrased, ‘against false and vain ambitions’ was ‘for each and all to be recognized for what they are by the clothes they wear’. Thus, echoed another author to the same effect, the ‘blessings’ will shortly appear from ‘visible distinguishing marks between each and every Estate’.97 In short: if the nobleman wore white and the burgher wore red, or if the

84  Disorder in the Sartorial World commanding official wore gold braids and the subordinate commoner wore none, how would they ever be confused? The emphasis on common people and the gendered nature of disorder stands out in the proposed remedies and sartorial regimes. The recommended regulations and sumptuary measures were particularly directed at the lower segments of society, dictating what they should and should not be allowed to wear. Rarely were the higher segments of the social order addressed. When they were, it was usually done with reference to bans that applied to everyone, explicitly including them, such as the use of silk, or, equally explicitly, excepting them from otherwise general bans, such as that on the use of jewellery, which was to be allowed exclusively for noble wives and children, or on the wearing of lace ruffles which were allowed only for ‘Higher Civil Servants’. Similarly, the recurring exception of court society, they were exempt from the ban on ‘frizzled and dressed’ hair that was allowed exclusively for women at court.98 These regulations were not, by any means, clear-­cut and monochrome in nature. They did not describe a black-­and-­white order of the high and the low, the noble and the commoners, or the rich and the poor. Again, as will be elaborated in Chapter  4, the sartorial systems corresponded with the complexity of the social imaginaries, allowing for degrees of sophistication and simplicity as well as intricate intervals of the middling lairs in between. Returning to the game of fashions, and the emulating behaviour of the low and the poor, the formative responsibilities of those of higher standing were repeatedly emphasized. Sartorial display and visualized difference may have been necessary, but there were repeated calls for caution, and for the high to set good examples in order to harness rather than provoke erroneous behaviour by the common people. ‘The examples set for the populace’, declared one author, had ‘much contributed’ to the present state of things, not least the poor examples set by local clergy for their congregations. ‘Who’, the rhetorical question ran, ‘among a simple-­minded people would think that what the teacher does and allows would be wrong?’ ‘What good’, echoed another author, ‘will Sermons do, when the teachers do not set good Examples to their Congregations?’99 Similarly, a national dress reform, or other ways to reform contemporary sartorial culture, was repeatedly proposed to begin from above, with the king and his court, then followed by others, trickling down through the social hierarchies in an ensuing stimulus of virtue and patriotism.100 The essays also explicitly and collectively addressed women. As their problematic sartorial behaviour was discussed, the means to correct them followed suit, with legal arrangements suggested to curb their consumption. More interestingly, however, women were the objects of exceptions and concessions in sartorial regulations, beyond those which frequently excused ladies of the court. To deprive women of all use of silk fabrics, one author declared, would be ‘overly severe and less necessary’. Another

Disorder in the Sartorial World 85 declared that all silk was to be completely banned for ‘the Male sex’ but conceded the use of (albeit ‘single coloured’) silks for the higher ranking of the ‘Female sex’. A  third author suggested a system of ‘signs’ to be worn in women’s hats as an extra marker of their social status, ‘to distinguish between the wives of nobles and their equals, of merchants, of artisans and of lesser burghers’, in addition to the colours of their husband’s or father’s dress.101 These gendered concessions indicate an additional layer in contemporary (male) notions of women’s consumer behaviour. They were not only more disposed to luxury and fineries but they were also considered to be in actual need of, and should be allowed, extra sartorial room to manoeuvre, quantitatively and qualitatively. Be as it may, the turn of events indicated that women would not be content with less. The national dress introduced in 1778 was, contemporary sources would suggest, never popular with the female sex (while at least tolerated by men). One contributing factor to this could be the limited scope for social display that was allowed in the female model, as compared to the male, and, even more vitally, in comparison with the scope allowed for the manifestation of the self in French fashions. The male model came in a large number of different colour combinations that visually communicated the status of its wearer, at court as well as in the military and the civil service. In comparison, the female model came in two basic versions: the everyday dress and the gala dress. The only difference made was between women who were introduced at court and those who were not. The former were easily recognized by the striking red details in their black everyday dress, the longer trains, and the historicizing virago sleeves (an early sixteenth-­century fashion, characteristically paned—i.e. made in panes, allowing a lining or shirt sleeve to show through—and gathered into two puffs by a ribbon above the elbow), which were exclusively for their wear. Noblewomen were visually differentiated from the rest.102 But that was it. While a man could sartorially express his status as a colonel of a royal regiment, a president of a state collegium, or a professor at a university, a woman could not correspondingly express her status as the wife of a colonel, a president, or a professor. In hindsight, the 1773 authors were more sensitive to the delicate circumstances of female social differentiation than the king in his sartorial rulings in 1778. The countesses of Gustavian court society would probably have welcomed those exclusive hat ‘signs’ to mark their higher rank next to untitled ladies.

National Arguments ‘The dress worn by Our Ancestors, up until a mere Hundred Years ago’, one author declared, ‘can quite rightly be called National’. This was so because, the argument ran, not only was it ‘sufficient against the severity of the cold weather’, but in addition, it ‘contributed greatly to the

86  Disorder in the Sartorial World preservation of the old Swedish bravery’. On the other hand, the same author continued, it was an ‘irrefutable and evident truth’ that none of this was the case with ‘the dress presently worn’. That modern dress ‘may do in Paris, from whence it came’, but ‘all the less so up here in Cold Sweden’. Through such foreign luxury, ‘the Nation’ had ‘grown weaker and weaker still’.103 As a Swede, echoed another author, observing the sartorial follies of the time, ‘I cannot but feel resentment, when I think about the abuse in these matters, which—I dare say it—has brought dishonour upon the Nation’. How different everything was now compared to ‘the past’, when ‘Sweden had worthier ambitions’, when Swedes ‘set examples’ rather than ‘followed those set by others’, and when it would never have occurred to anyone to wear clothes ‘not suited for the Swedish Climate, and not made of Swedish Produce; that is, that were not national’.104 Here, the national as a structuring theme in sartorial morality unfolds. It is a narrative of national degeneration, evolving around the notion of an original and benign ‘Swedishness’ in dress, under threat by an intruding and malign ‘foreign’ influence. As the quoted passages indicate, it was a broad theme which cut into economic issues of domestic industry and national welfare (‘Swedish produce’), via suitability and national conditions (‘cold weather’ and ‘Swedish Climate’), to issues of national character and morals (‘the old Swedish bravery’ and the ways of ‘the Ancients’). The notion of a genuinely Swedish form of dress is repeatedly apparent in the essays. Often, it was referred to in a matter of fact sense—as in unspecified references to ‘a Swedish coat’, ‘a Swedish waistcoat’, or ‘Swedish clothes and fashions’—or in a basic understanding as a way of dress that was opposite to the ways of foreigners.105 But looking closer, patterns appear. Sartorial Swedishness, as defined and argued by the 1773 authors, was twofold. Firstly, Swedish dress was made of Swedish produce. Intersecting with economic concerns, the emphasis on domestic industry and national economy on a macro level was infused with and reinforced by patriotic sentiments about the honour and prosperity of the fatherland. On a micro level, to refrain from unnecessary spending and to adhere to a responsible way of life was not merely an economic virtue. It was also a patriotic virtue, signalling that essential love of the fatherland. Silk was the villain of the deepest dye and the recurrent opposite of all things Swedish, whereas patriotic attire was made of wool, linen or leather, and often characterized in terms such as ‘earnest’, ‘honest’, ‘manly’, and ‘constant’.106 ‘Patriotism’, one author typically declared, ‘does not get on well with foreign fashions’.107 In this context, foreign produce and fashions represented a ‘contempt for all things ordinary and national’, a ‘discontent with the lot of being Swedish’, the rule of ‘illicit selfishness over Patriotism in the hearts of people’, a ‘cold indifference to the Fatherland’, and a ‘most infamous’ behaviour in the eyes of ‘True Patriots’. In short, foreign fabrics and fashions were unpatriotic.108

Disorder in the Sartorial World 87 Secondly, sartorial Swedishness referred to the model of dress, specifically an historical model, which was considered to be authentically Swedish; a national dress, original and untouched by foreign models and fashion influences.109 This historic apparel was often referred to in vague terms such as ‘according to the old Swedish way’, ‘the Dress of our Ancestors’, the dress worn ‘in days of yore’, or the dress worn ‘in the Middle Ages and then for a long time on’.110 When specified, the historic period in question was narrowed down to the reigns of Swedish monarchs Gustav I and Gustav II Adolf, that is the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.111 This preferred epoch was in line with the ‘Gustavian Romanticism’ of the time. The point was not so much the period itself, but the named kings. Since birth, King Gustav III had been hailed as ‘The Third Gustav’, in the succession of ‘The First Gustav’, who had allegedly saved Sweden from the Danish yoke and introduced the Lutheran faith, and ‘The Second Gustav’, who had protected the realm and Protestantism during the Thirty Years’ War. The game of names was primarily an assertion of royal virtues—Gustav III would go down in history as a great king like his historical namesakes on the throne—although the most was made from the thin stream of blood uniting the old Vasa dynasty of the first two and (by way of a grand-­daughter/sister given in marriage) the Holstein-­Gottorp dynasty of the third. The historical parallels were played out in all parts of public life: in the sphere of politics as well as in cultural life, with statues and other memorials erected in and around the capital, operas and plays written and staged, and in a wide range of antiquarian and artistic projects.112 The historical parallels were confirmed in the dress reform in 1778. In the official rhetoric, the dress (with its period, albeit markedly Burgundian/Spanish, cuts) was said to be in the very fashion used by ‘the Great Gustav Adolf’ and his contemporary Swedes.113 The Swedish model of dress was further specified with references to the Swedish peasantry, among which it was thought to have been preserved through the influx of foreign fashions.114 Each and everyone, one author decreed, elaborating on a return to that ‘medieval’ dress once worn by ‘Kings, Nobles, and Persons of Rank’, should ‘don the dress’ that was ‘customary among the Peasantry’ in the province where they were born or presently lived. The ‘national dress’, the argument continued, was the model of dress ‘commonly worn by the rural population in provincial Sweden’.115 This peasant romanticism may seem at odds with the otherwise royal nature of the historical dress. However, the two strands were happily married within Swedish national mythology. The role of the peasantry, no matter how sternly disciplined for their sartorial transgressions, was fundamental in that mythology, not least in the official liturgies on the great achievements of the Gustavian kings. The peasantry was an integral part of that characteristically ‘demotic’ element that Peter Burke attributes to early modern Scandinavian state-­making and political imagery.116

88  Disorder in the Sartorial World Furthermore, these rural qualities chimed well with the frequent emphasis on the simplicity, sturdiness, and earnestness of all things Swedish, with domestic wool and linen rather than foreign silk and velvet. The frugality of the ‘fashion commonly used by our peasantry’ was elaborated by one author, while emphasizing its suitability for a male national dress: a coat with ‘a few small pleats in the side’, ‘small cuffs’, and ‘without pockets’, a waistcoat ‘with pockets’ and ‘hooks or buttons’, and ‘trousers’ that covered the legs. Another author elaborated on the attire along the same lines. The male dress should consist of a shorter, a quarter-­above-­the-­knee jacket of woollen cloth, a waistcoat made of leather ‘with small buttons’, wide breeches of wool or leather, and low, black boots of goat skin (‘Safian’). The female attire, equally reduced compared to contemporary fashions, should consist of an ankle-­length sack dress, with an open front and wide arms, made of fine (the ‘finest’ that Sweden could make) black wool, worn over a bodice and a skirt, both made of ‘airy’ linen.117 ‘Foreign’ import was brutally straightforward. Illustrative of the European fashion geography of the time, those foreign influences were recurrently specified as ‘French’, while Paris was widely recognized as the centre of the fashion world.118 The two—the foreign and the French— were used more or less synonymously.119 This was applied across the field of sartorial matters; from the labelling of individual items of clothing (as in French ribbons and French gloves), via the contemporary models of dress and fashions (as in a dress ‘à la Française’ and French outfits), to the allegedly French origin and nature of fashions, even luxury as such.120 The Swedish and French ways of dress were often the subject of contrasts, emphasizing the positive qualities of the former and the negative qualities of the latter. The juxtaposition of Swedish fabrics such as wool, linen, and leather, to their French counterparts, such as silk and velvet, has already been addressed.121 Against the sturdiness of all things Swedish stood the flimsy and perishable nature of all things French. A ‘furious love for the foreign’, one author put it, has made people chose ‘two dazzling but fragile outfits made of French fabrics’ instead of ‘one stronger and better made of Swedish fabrics’.122 These themes of an old and authentic Swedish sartorial regime and an intruding and damaging French regime, of a glorious past and a detrimental present, clearly wove in to that larger and Biblical narrative of an Origin and a Fall. Swedish dress represented those original, instrumental, and righteous sartorial practices, while the introduction of French fashions marked the moment of the Fall, the beginning of sartorial disorder, and national deterioration. There was a French serpent in the Swedish garden of Eden. So, what was the nature of this national degeneration? Two main components appear: foreign fashions had caused physical and corporeal degeneration; moreover, they had also caused spiritual degeneration, affecting the national character. Swedes were deteriorating in body and

Disorder in the Sartorial World 89 mind. Starting off with the physical issues, the language of instrumentality carried a strong emphasis on the suitability of dress. Foreign fashions and foppish details were not only superfluous and economically unacceptable; such fashions were also equally criticized as unsuitable for the Swedish climate. With the long and cold Northern winters, Swedes needed warm and durable fabrics, and clothes that covered the body from the weather. Foreign fashions, designed and produced for other climates (most notably, French climate), did not provide for these needs. Silk fabrics were dismissed as ‘poorly suited for our climate’; they were ‘too cold in wintertime’ and ‘too warm in summertime’, while ‘wool, linen, and leather’, those earnest Swedish materials, did the job throughout the seasons. The same applied to fashionable cuts. It was well-­known from ‘the experiences of ages’ that tight-­fitting clothes did not ‘by far’ keep the body as warm as loose-­fitting clothes, and that the tight-­fitting fashions, with surtouts instead of proper coats, were ‘evidently contrary to the very purpose of clothes’. Similarly, fashionable female hats—‘with an added a la Greque, a la Geneve etc.’—were condemned as primarily designed to please the eye, not to keep the body warm, thus leaving vital parts of the body (faces, necks, and chests) bare to rough winds and cold air.123 The unsuitability of French fashions was often ridiculed, emphasizing the follies of the day. ‘Who’, one author mocked, ‘has not, with ridicule and vexation by turns, seen the Swedish Cavalier make his way through the cold Northern weather, crossing Norrbro [a bridge in Stockholm], wearing the same make of dress as the Frenchman, in a pleasant westerly breeze, crossing the Pont-­Neuf?’124 ‘He’, stated another author to the same point, ‘who wishes to be fine-­looking in French, must learn how to freeze in Swedish’.125 Beyond these ridiculing commentaries, foreign fashions were ascribed with detrimental physical effects in terms of illnesses and afflictions.126 The old Swedish strength and vigour had been broken, and the nation had been reduced to a pitiful state of physical weakness. Foreign fashions were blamed for ‘severe illnesses and sudden death’. They were described as ‘a torment, an inconvenience and the like of a comfortable prison cell’; they were singled out as the root cause of ‘chronic or incurable ailments’, of ‘injuries to more people that taxing wars’, and of ‘maladies and ticklish bodies’.127 Alongside these general correlations between physical decay and foreign fashions, there was a veritable catalogue of specific fashion-­ related ailments. Carrying one’s hat fashionably under the arm rather than wearing it on the head, combined with the excessive use of pomade in elaborate coiffures, caused ‘gout, headaches, earwax, inflammation of the teeth, and many such ailments’. ‘Thin shoes’ caused corns; ‘thin stockings’ caused weak chests and consumption; and bare chests caused ‘ailments to the lungs’. Poorly covered limbs caused ‘gout’, ‘fevers’, and ‘chest pain’, while the fashionable muffs, which were used by both sexes at the time, caused ailments such as ‘Colic’ and ‘arthritis’.128

90  Disorder in the Sartorial World There were gendered aspects at play in the narrative of national degeneration. The corporeal weakening of the nation was a general problem. It concerned men and women, young and old, rural and urban. But the poor state of Swedish women, caught in the trappings of foreign fashions, was repeatedly specified as particularly problematic. Female foreign fashions were designated as inadequate and unhealthy in general, with recurrent references to the bareness of the body (‘how can it other than contribute to the ruin of health’).129 One garment in particular stands out as the greatest villain of all in contemporary wardrobes: the stays.130 Rather than be worn by women, one author dramatically asserted, stays should be distributed to courts of law to be used in hard interrogations to extract confessions from suspects in criminal investigations.131 More specifically, and with regard to the physical degeneration, even diminishing, of the nation, stays were recurrently pointed out as detrimental to the ‘primary and foremost’ duty of the female sex: to give birth to, and to nurture, children. The ‘squeezed bodies’ of women were blamed for the ‘premature withering’ of their ‘blossoming youth’ and their inability to carry children, and to transfer to their ‘tender infants’ that ‘physical strength’, which in the past had characterized the Swedish people. This, in turn, had far-­reaching consequences for the fatherland. The female use of stays was no less than a ‘treasonous act’; it turned, with renewed references to that Biblical Fall, a ‘by Nature strong and vigoreaux nation’ into a ‘weak and piteous’ one, effectively causing the ‘Physical misfortunes’ and ‘final extinction’ of its offspring.132 Turning to the spiritual side of degeneration, the abandonment of those old and genuinely Swedish manners of dress, and the introduction of foreign fashions, had had an equally ruinous effect on the national character of Swedes. An originally brave, industrious, and virtuous people had its patriotic fibres weakened.133 More specifically, by donning foreign fashions and foreign manners of dress, Swedes had become less Swedish. Here, early modern notions of the formative, almost performative, qualities of dress come to the fore. Sturdy clothes made for sturdy characters; foppish clothes made for foppish characters; and foreign clothes made for foreign characters.134 ‘The essential and distinctive’ Swedishness, stated one author, had been erased, leaving Swedes ‘spoiled, Ridiculous, Wretched, and weakened’.135 The nation’s inclination for changes in fashion, declared another, had brought about a corresponding ‘fickleness in its very essence’, which was eating away on the ‘steadiness and the old decency’ of the national mind.136 A ‘servile imitation’ of foreign manners, raged a third author, had created a ‘false and ridiculous’ copy and fed ‘the most ruinous vices’ at the expense of a once ‘virtuous, earnest and decent nation’.137 The emphasis on Swedish produce and on that allegedly Swedish form of dress followed logically. If foreign fashions had weakened the national character and made Swedes less Swedish, then a return to a Swedish manner

Disorder in the Sartorial World 91 of dress would, by the same formative qualities, restore the national stamina by making Swedes more Swedish again. If, one author argued accordingly, the ‘ever-­changing’ and foreign fashions were removed, and ‘a fixed’ regime—with the appropriate frugality ‘in dress, food, drinks, travels, buildings, interiors, and attendance’—was established (or rather, re-­established), that lost ‘steadiness and old decency’ would soon again ‘occupy the minds’, and those ‘great men, of which earlier ages had such abundance’ would return, and the nation would regain its ‘former glory’.138 ‘The old National Character’, chanted another author to the same effect, ‘will not be invoked unless we start by invoking the earnestness and steadiness of our Ancestors’ manner of dress’.139 A third author turned to history for evidence of the importance of national manners of dress for strong morals and national glory: ‘the Therians, Arcadians, Phoenicians, Trojans, and the Ancient Greeks’, had they not had ‘their own dress?’, and had they not had ‘Great National morals?’140 Looking closer, the concerns about a weakened national character are gendered. Whereas women were targeted again and again—for their aptitude for consumption and luxury, for their proneness for dissembling and finery, for the unsuitability and dangers of their fashion, and so forth—the main object of concern in this instance was men. The narrative of a degenerate national character was largely a narrative of a threatened masculinity and an effeminate manhood.141 The interconnectedness of early modern national identities and masculinity is well known, as is the often problematic relationship between fashions and manliness.142 It is, one author stated, pointing at the unmanliness of overly fashionable behaviour, ‘effeminate for a Swedish man’ to ‘adorn his hands’ with frilled cuffs. The European batteries of derogatory names for fashionable men had their Swedish counterpart: ‘petit-­maîtres’ (sometimes phrased literally in Swedish as småherrar, ‘little masters’) who changed their dress every year, ‘sprätthökar’ (fops; literally ‘strutting hawks’) with their hats under their arms in winter, and ‘sprättar’ (snobs) who flaunted their ‘borrowed precedencies’.143 A distinct emphasis on martial virtues, drawing on Sweden’s martial past and with romantic references to its Baltic empire in the seventeenth century illustrates contemporary notions of manhood and masculine ideals. Historical examples were consistently drawn from the ranks of Sweden’s famed warrior kings—Gustav II Adolf, Charles X Gustav, Charles XI, and Charles XII—and the virtues promoted were those of the warrior: bravery, steadiness, and strength of mind and valour.144 ‘Our youth’, one author decreed, needed to be made ‘manlier’ than they were at present, since ‘softness and brittleness’ made them poorly cut out for ‘the warriors’ craft’, which demanded the kind of strength which would ‘never be won in the bosom of the effeminate’.145 So, while an unwomanly woman was characterized by her physical weakness and her ensuing inability to carry children to term and nurse

92  Disorder in the Sartorial World them, the unmanly man was characterized by his spiritual weakness— cowardice and softness—and his ensuing inability to wage war and defend his house, king, and country. Foreign fashion was the cause of both, and the remedy spelled a return to the Swedish manners of dress that had been used by manlier men and womanlier women.146 The part played by the adoption of French fashions, and the abandonment of the old Swedish ways, was explicit. The physical and spiritual weakening of the nation was an integral part of that Biblical narrative of the sartorial Fall. One author rhetorically asked, ‘Wherefrom have we got this so commonly lamented Gout and other such ailments?’ ‘Do you think these afflictions were as commonly heard of before the absorption of refined French taste?’, in times when people dressed in ‘the old Swedish way?’ Foreign customs, another author echoed, could not have instigated anything other than this ‘effeminacy’ in character, ‘unknown among the ancients’, with ensuing and equally foreign ‘bodily torments and ailments’.147

Religious Arguments Commentaries on religious morality were repeatedly apparent in the essays. There was a narrative of the ungodly at work that emphasized the fall out of Christian virtues and the sinful aspects of contemporary excessive sartorial practices. It drew on the master narrative of the Fall, with Adam and Eve as the original sartorial sinners, and the religious connotations of all things sartorial and anything referring to physical ornamentation and appearance at large.148 There are few essays without any reference to God or religious contexts. These religious dicta took the shape of recurrent and seemingly matter-­ of-­fact references to God, and to the presence of God and his interference in everyday human affairs, specifically in sartorial affairs, blessing, and punishing behaviours according to their devout or sinful nature. By reducing ‘our want in clothing’, one author declared, ‘God will surely give His blessing to us’.149 The rage to ‘show off in many French fashions’, another author declared to the contrary effect, ‘will anger God by pride’, and the time spent on ‘Pride and showing off in dress and headgear’ should be used for ‘the worship of an Almighty, Triune God’.150 The ‘abundance in fashions and dress’, a third author stated, ‘is an unchallengeable witness of none or far too little fear of God’.151 The ‘Heavens seem to Shudder and the Earth to Sigh’, chimed a forth author, ‘at our vanity, our Luxuriance and our abundance in Dress’.152 Biblical characters and stories were further mobilized to support the moral messages on sartorial abuse and the need for remedial behaviour. The wise King Solomon was employed to hail the Swedish king and to promote the redeeming nature of a future royal national dress reform, as a means to ‘mend all into good order and condition’.153 The cruel fate of

Disorder in the Sartorial World 93 the daughters of Zion (who had there scalps infested with scab) was held up to stress God’s displeasure with pride and ‘self-­imposed finery and lustre’.154 The story of Lazarus was retold to illustrate God’s blessing of frugality and displeasure with selfishness, pride, and finery.155 The Old Testament Judge Jephthah, who found himself forced to sacrifice his own daughter, was brought in to underline the lesser and more reasonable sacrifice that ‘Our Dames’ had to make by refraining from satins and silks.156 And the tribe of Levi, which was instructed by God to shave their bodies and wash their clothes in order to distinguish themselves from other Jewish tribes, was drawn on as evidence that God himself had ordained sartorial differentiation between peoples and sorts.157 In an even more studied manner, the Bible itself was cited in order to substantiate claims. One author characteristically asserted that ‘these frequent changes in fashions’ were ‘against God’s commandments’, explicitly referring to the first Epistle to Timothy158 to state that ‘such sinful waste in clothes as in the present’ excited ‘the anger of God’, and that anger was then further illustrated with references to the Book of Isaiah,159 with the story of God’s punishment of the Jews for their ‘blazing manner of dress’, and concluding with more sweeping references to the ‘many other passages in the Scripture’ that made clear ‘the displeasure which God declares in His word against a sinful luxuriance in dress’.160 Another author mustered no less than eight passages (apart from Timothy and Isaiah, also Ezekiel, Peter, Luke, John, and another passage from Peter), quoted one after the other in great detail and with full references in the margins, to reveal the wickedness and ungodliness of contemporary behaviour.161 These Biblical references would also suggest the presence of clergy among the 1773 authors. The presence of religious themes serves as a reminder of the religious nature of late eighteenth-­century mentalities and social discourse. Well-­ known processes of secularization and the rise of rational and empirical thought aside, early modern religiosity remained present, albeit weakened. For many of the 1773 authors, God’s presence in everyday life was clear, and the consequences of ungodly and sinful behaviour, in sartorial matters as well as elsewhere, were respected and feared. Hell and eternal damnation were real. Humans were not free to act as they wished; there were religious commands to abide by, and God’s anger and interventions were immensely more concrete beyond mere superstition. More specifically, this reflects on the religious nature of the Northern European Enlightenment. It differed from the French Enlightenment, which is too often held as the model of enlightenment thought, with its anti-­clerical écrasez l’infâme (‘crush the infamous’) of Voltaire and its materialist l’homme machine (‘man a machine’) of La Mettrie. The German philosopher Christian von Wolff, with his eclectic calls to unveil God’s creation through reason and scientific methods, was far more influential in Northern Europe: Wolffianism presented the ‘perfect compromise’, as phrased

94  Disorder in the Sartorial World by Peter Gay, for ‘literate Christians anxious to justify non-­ rational beliefs with rational proofs’.162 Enlightenment sentiments permeated the 1773 project. The Royal Patriotic Society itself was a product of and a herald of enlightenment, the competitions staged by the Society were presented as and conceived as enlightened projects for the improvement of the world and humankind, and the authors, most certainly, considered themselves as enlightened torchbearers of this glorious and patriotic cause. Religion and religiosity did not negate any of that; it was an integral and perfectly complementary element of it. Rather than a separate entity, religion, confirming its centrality in contemporary discourse, permeated and worked within all moral arguments, offering an illustrative example of the intersections between the different strands of sartorial discourse. The narrative of economic ruin was infused with religious sentiments and injunctions. People spending beyond their means, causing harm to themselves and their households, was clearly contrary to Christian virtues.163 Man may have been created weak and with an inherent disposition for vanity, but to give in to that weakness was a sinful betrayal of the intentions and will of God. There was nothing godly in consumption. To own, one author stated accordingly, pinpointing that frugal ideal of restraint and usefulness, ‘a simple dress of wadmal or Linen, and to devote one’s heart to God, and to be able to pay the King his dues, as well as affording one’s bread and butter’ would bring about a ‘to God more pleasing’ and to mankind more ‘comfortable’ economy and way of life, while ‘showing off in several French fashions in Velvet and Silk’ would ‘anger God’ as well as hurt Man.164 Economic concerns on a macro level were equally infused with religious commands on Christian obligations and sinful deceit. More specifically, the larger understanding of contemporary economic problems, with the merger of micro and macro levels as the twin symptoms of a derailed and dysfunctional economy, was infused with notions of divine design. One author aptly phrased it with regard to import of foreign fabrics—specifically that iconic evil: silk—had ‘the Infinitely Wise Creator’ intended for Swedes to use silk stockings, then ‘surely Silkworms would have thrived here with us’.165 Similarly, the calls for people to be content with, and to stay at, their allotted posts and functions in society and in economic life referred to that set order of things. The author of essay No. 61, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, exemplifies this. There were those who performed ‘heavier work’, those who performed ‘less heavy work’, and those who were ‘set to advise and rule’.166 These divine designs for the world of production and consumption in general, and the sartorial world in particular, were elaborated at length by the author of essay No. 34. This was also one of the authors who, with apparent predilection, spiced the arguments with passages from the Bible. When, the author argued, ‘we behold the Creator’s Wise and Merciful arrangements for each and every Land, and see that He has given to

Disorder in the Sartorial World 95 each as much for food and clothes, that its inhabitants may need’, then these divine designs ‘should convince us about the advantages—yes! the necessity—for each and every Land’s inhabitants to have their specific dress’. God had given, and mankind should use that which God had given. In short, Swedes should use what Sweden, by God’s own benign design, produced. To act differently, to import foreign fabrics, to imitate foreign dress, or to scorn domestic produce, would imply that ‘Man blamed God, and was discontented with His exalted designs’; a most ungodly and condemnable behaviour, indeed.167 Moving on to social arguments, the element of sin in the pride and vanity of contemporary sartorial practices stands out. Drawing on the first sinners, Adam and Eve, one author stated that mankind was given its intended ‘fashion’ by God Himself: the ‘dress of skin’.168 Building on the language of instrumentality, another author elaborated that the ‘two main reasons for dress’ were to ‘cover and keep the body warm’, and that the third reason, ‘to ornate’, was allowed only in as far as ‘Christianity, nature and reason’ permitted.169 The notion of divine design, in line with the economic dicta on allotted materials, comprised the social order and the sartorial visualization of that order. The differentiation between the high and the low, the rich and the poor, and the commanding and obeying was all by God’s design and intent. ‘The Majestic Lawmaker of the world Himself’, one author stated accordingly, has gifted mankind with so many ‘larger and smaller qualities’, and so many ‘hereditary and acquired benefits’ that the inequality between Men should be considered a ‘just and natural arrangement in Society’. The ‘Higher’, declared another author, has been elevated to his position ‘by the Lord’, and should ‘remain unmoved’. ‘The Majestic God’, echoed a third author, ‘who is a God of Order, has Himself from the very beginning ordained difference between the better and the lowlier, the commanding and the Obeying, and between the Male and the Female Sexes’.170 The proper visualization of that divine order followed suit. The author of essay No. 10 provides a particularly poignant example of this harsh and stationary rhetoric. ‘Why’, the argument ran, ‘has the Creator not created all creatures from the same mould?’ ‘Why did He not make all leaves and pine-­needles, which are the clothes of the trees, in the same form and shape?’ Why do not all animals have ‘equally fine wool or equally fine fur?’ Why does the little hedgehog differ from the large ox? The answer followed: ‘in order to facilitate discrimination’, so that mankind would not be so easily mistaken, and not ‘chop spruce as pine’, not ‘milk the mare as a cow’. Men, the argument continued, were similarly ‘different’, and the discernment between them was equally facilitated by ‘differences in dress’, so that ‘he who the finest appears, the finest is’. In short: ‘Since God did not dress the donkey in the lion’s skin, she should walk in the skin that best suits her. Let lion be lion! And let donkey be donkey!’.171

96  Disorder in the Sartorial World This all fed into the condemnation of that contemporary game of fashions and the unacceptable notions of the relationship between status and dress, with the lowlier, unworthy, and simple imitating the dress of the higher, worthy, and distinguished. Sartorial transgression was not only a disorderly behaviour leading to social confusion but also was an ungodly behaviour and a sin. The pewterer should be content with his divine lot in his workshop, rather than betraying God’s design and seek to elevate himself to the ranks of gentlemen by imitating their dress. The clerk should be content with his lot, and work diligently at his office, rather than committing the sin of pride and donning the wig of the far superior minister. ‘The benevolent hand of the Creator’, it was phrased, had planted the will to please, and gain the respect of others in the nature of mankind. But to seek that respect, which should be gained by ‘honour, virtue and merits’, by ‘vanity and pieces of folly’ was to abuse God’s gift and design.172 The common people were addressed from a religious angle in a more indirect way. Religious condemnations of pride and of falsely seeking to strike a finer figure by sartorial dissemblance implicitly involved the common people, as they were defined as particularly problematic in that respect. This is true for women as well, although they were more directly and explicitly addressed, not least through the choice of Bible passages. Whereas mankind was the usual object of address, women were singled out in a way that men were not. The story of the daughters of Zion has been mentioned. As a more concrete example, the author of essay No. 9, one of the most prominent authors in terms of Bible-­citing, explicitly pointed to women when referring to the New Testament, declaring that ‘the Spirit of God’ (as made evident in ‘1 Timothy 2: 9–10’ and ‘1 Peter 3: 3–6’) commanded ‘Women to adorn themselves in respectful dress, with timidity and chastity, not with plaited hair or Gold or Pearls or costly garments’, but with the inner qualities of virtue and good deeds, which would please God.173 The calls for economic patriotism, and for Swedes to love and respect the fatherland and its produce, rather than crave for the produce of the foreigner, were equally infused with religious commands. The patriot should be content with that which God had given to Sweden. To turn one’s back unpatriotically on domestic produce and consume foreign goods was to turn one’s back on God; conversely, the sinful act of pride in foreign fashions, rather than adherence to the frugality that God had ordained, was to hurt the fatherland and anger God. To paraphrase Roze Hentschell, whose study on sartorial debates in seventeenth-­century English literary sphere confirms the intertwined nature of nation and God in early modern nationhood, late eighteenth-­ century Swedish heaven, like its English seventeenth-­century counterpart, had ‘a dress code’ and, in both cases, foreign fabrics were simply not deemed appropriate.174

Disorder in the Sartorial World 97 Unlike the English case, religious confession was not an issue. As Hentschell vividly illustrates for the seventeenth century, and as Linda Colley acknowledges as a continually prominent feature throughout the eighteenth century, the Protestant faith was a fundamental component in English nation-­making. The familiar contrast between a benign Englishness and a malign Frenchness included a contrast between English Protestantism and French Catholicism (with additional coinciding cleavages such as English parliamentarianism versus French absolutism). Wearing French fabrics did not only make the Englishman less English and more French; it also drew him ‘further away from Anglicism and down a slippery slope toward moral decay and heresy’.175 This aggressive dichotomy, which was in no way alien to Sweden and Swedes as such, is absent in the essays. Protestantism and the Lutheran faith are present, but they were not set in contrast to Catholicism, or to that all-­familiar battery of derogative terms such as popery, superstition, idolatry. To wear French fabrics made Swedes less Swedish and angered God, but the confessional rifts between Protestantism and Catholicism were not part of the equation.176 Returning to the corporeal issues, the language of instrumentality, and the unsuitability of foreign dress, had religious connotations. The instrumental dress was not only a functional dress relieved of excess and adapted to climate, domestic produce, and national character. It also referred to the body as such and, more specifically, to the physical appearances of mankind. Clothes had the potential to change the body. In contrast to the natural body, as mankind was created, stood the fashioned body, with its deceitful capacity of clothes to change and pervert bodily features of its wearer. Corporeal arguments appear almost as an entity of its own, with calls for that natural body, in contrast to the malign fashioned body. There was a distinct aesthetic ideal at work, which coincided with more general European trends, moving away from the artificial and toward the natural, and an increased emphasis on the informal and on comfort.177 ‘That alone’, one author declared, ‘is beautiful in our dress which stands in good proportion to the human body itself, whose coverings clothes are’.178 ‘How beautiful would they be’, another author exclaimed, pointing to the fashionable women of the time, ‘if they were to discard of the powder, the preposterously high Owl-­coëffures’ and instead wore ‘their own shining hair in its own colour?’.179 The ‘beautiful nature’, stated a third author, ‘does not need weird ornaments’,180 while a fourth author declared that the ‘Human body is irrefutably the most beautiful figure’ and ‘the blueprint of proportion and symmetry for all other shapes and forms’. Dress should accordingly, and ‘infallibly’, ‘follow Nature’.181 The emphasis on the natural body, in turn, often linked in with the notions of divine design. The natural body was of God’s design, and the fashioned body was a violation of that body. Issues of vulgarity and propriety are surprisingly absent, beyond general calls for ‘modesty’ and ‘decency’.182 Instead, the criticized disorders referred mainly to those

98  Disorder in the Sartorial World overly fashioned bodies, and the deformation of God’s creation, with Man’s set length, set width, set shapes, set colours, and so forth. To apply any other measure than the human body in the making of clothes, one author declared accordingly, ‘is to claim that God should have created Man differently in His own image’. Thus, the head ‘has its proportions’, and ‘huge and voluptuous peruques’ and ‘hair piled up to the skies’ were ‘condemnable, of whatever kind they may be’. A waistcoat should be cut at the waist, and so should the coat. Through such arrangements, ‘the dress will be the widest where the body is the widest’, which would be in keeping with the human body, which, in a world of divine design, ‘constitutes beauty itself’.183 Thus, commentaries drawing on religion and religious morality served as a strengthening argument in sartorial discourse. Promises of Heaven and threats of Hell worked within the economic, social, and national narratives of disorder, making the demands for correct sartorial behaviour, and the denunciation of condemnable and sinful practices, all the more potent, all the more imperative.

Finding Disorder What was wrong in the sartorial world? There is a fourfold answer. Firstly, there were economic concerns about the malign effects of sartorial practices, where fashions and fashion changes ruined household economies and weakened domestic production, markets, and finances. Secondly, there were social worries regarding people dressing above their station, thereby blurring the legibility of the social order, and threatening the very persistence of society. Additionally, there were national anxieties concerning the weakening effects of sartorial practices, where the influx of foreign fashions and foreign produce were detrimental to the physical and mental strength of the Swedish people. Finally, there were religious concerns about the demoralizing effects of sartorial practices, where the artificial and dissembling lures of fashions fostered ungodly and unchristian vices and notions of the self. These moral strands were the structuring nodes around which disorder was defined and around which solutions were conceived and proposed. But there is a longer answer, and a larger story at play in the 1773 essays. The expressed concerns were all tell–tale signs of a sartorial culture rocked to its foundations. They represented reactions to the ongoing processes of commercialization and social change. Whether understood as a fundamental shift, as Daniel Roche would have it, between a traditional and a modern sartorial regime, or rather as an intensification of inherent tensions in all matters of appearances, and of an essentially human behaviour as old as clothes themselves, it is evident that sartorial practices, and that coveted but illusive correspondence between dress and social standing, were considered a particularly problematic aspect of late eighteenth-­century social interaction.184 According to the 1773 authors,

Disorder in the Sartorial World 99 something known and orderly was besieged and threatened by something novel and decidedly disorderly. In terms of economic concerns, the essays illustrate the role of fashion in commercial growth and cultural transformation, and the convergence of economic and cultural realms, as emphasized by researchers such as Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello.185 Commercial behaviours and material practices concerning core issues of what people owned, whence they got hold of it, and how they used it, were set in motion. This commercialized world of fashion consumption was the root cause of the economic disorder and dysfunction discerned by the 1773 authors. The blind craze of contemporaries to keep up with the fashions, not least the common people, who could not afford it, and women, who lacked self-­restraint, drained the productive sector of its necessary workforce, and filled the consumer sector with taxing and unproductive crafts and foreign goods, effectively leading to economic ruin. The narrative of economic ruin had its counterpart in a social narrative of a collapsed and dysfunctional social order. In that new and commercialized world of consumer behaviours, people from ever-­broader segments of society were not only able to obtain wider ranges of material goods but also they possessed and exercised the will and need to use sartorial means to make claims on social standing and respectability in an utterly disorderly quest for distinction and status. The 1773 authors provide contemporary observations of and comments on the ‘battle of appearances’ that Daniel Roche describes; a state of sartorial war, in which clothes and appearances became the means for change and transgressions, rather than the stationary symbols of a set order.186 Set social hierarchies were compromised and transgressed, and a once-­legible visual culture was challenged, and thrown into confusion and uncertainty on vestimentary signs and codes. The patriotic calls for the fatherland and nostalgia for past greatness equally entailed a larger story, namely the formation of the national category in socio-­political discourse. The national fervour that would be brought on by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars was still a distant future, but the key elements, with every Swede’s responsibility and loyalty to that abstract entity, the nation, were already present in the 1773 essays. Historian Alexander Maxwell has emphasized the role played by clothes and sartorial practices, and not least sartorial moral, in the formation of the national category in late eighteenth-­and early nineteenth-­ century Europe. He refers to a ‘sartorial nationalism’ that emerged from the anxieties caused by fashions. This nationalism was explicitly and fundamentally anti-­fashion, merging three familiar moral strands: religious, medical, and economic. In short, fashion, specifically the foreign nature of fashion, was religiously immoral and demoralizing, it was unhealthy and physically destructive (particularly for the fragile female body), and it was expensive and ruinous for households and national economies.187 Again,

100  Disorder in the Sartorial World the 1773 essays exemplify these interactions between a basically state-­ initiated sumptuary discourse, a popular discourse on sartorial moral, and emerging notions of the national and of nationalism as an ideology. The notion of the foreign was instrumental in the making of the self; it worked as a negative contrast against which the essential Swedishness was defined. Whereas, the nation represents an emerging category, the religious concerns represent continuity and the perseverance of traditional values in the midst of social motion and change. God and Christian values were highly present in the definitions of disorder. From a general viewpoint, the religious arguments also illustrate the interconnectedness of the moral strands. Beyond their presence as such, God and Christian values were used within other arguments, to further strengthen their commands on orderly behaviour. God resided in order, and all disorder—economic, social or national—was ungodly. However particularly evident, such interaction and cross-­references permeate the moral discourse at large. The condemnation of common people who spent beyond their means went hand in hand with the condemnation of common people who dressed above their social station; the condemnation of foreign produce similarly went hand in hand with the condemnation of the unpatriotic weakness of anyone choosing French frivolity before Swedish steadiness, and so forth. Sartorial disorder was a sea of crossing waves rather than separate pools. This interconnectedness can be boiled down to a lowest common denominator. From a bird’s-­eye view, vanity stands out as a uniting vice, running through all the moral discussions, effectively connecting all the strands and their narratives of disorder. In this world of order, disorder came down to wanting vainly to have something beyond, or to transgress somehow the set order of things. The economic arguments pinpoint an economic vanity, luring poor people to mimic those of wealth, and spend beyond their means, thereby causing economic disorder. Similarly, the social arguments pinpoint a social vanity, impelling people to dress above their social worth, and make claims to be equal or even superior to those of higher standing, causing sartorial confusion and social disorder. The national arguments pinpoint a national vanity, impelling people to yearn for foreign goods instead of that which the land provides, feeding unpatriotic sentiments and bringing disgrace down upon the fatherland. The religious arguments, finally, pinpoint a religious vanity, impelling people to be arrogant and disregard the word of God, causing disorder between the divine scheme and the temporal world. In short, in the early modern sartorial world, vanity was the quintessence of all that was wrong.

Notes 1. PS, Proceedings, No. 61. 2. PS, Proceedings, No. 13.

Disorder in the Sartorial World 101 3. PS, Proceedings, No. 18. See also Nos. 32, 34, 38, 48, 53, 62. Similar narratives of degeneration were voiced in contemporary England. See John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-­Century England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 182–5. 4. PS, Proceedings, No. 48. 5. Jennifer M. Jones, ‘Repackaging Rousseau: Femininity and Fashion in Old Regime France’, French Historical Studies 18:4 (1994), 940–4; Timothy Campbell, Historical Style: Fashion and the New Mode of History, 1740– 1830 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 142–8. 6. Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 118–19. 7. Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Laws (Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1996), 8, 42–3, 108–13, 361–78. 8. Martha C. Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), ch. 4 (quote, 208). See also, Alexander Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion: Clothing and Nationalism in Europe’s Age of Revolutions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), ch. 3. 9. Liselotte Eisenbart, Kleiderordnungen der deutschen Städte (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1962); Daniel Roche, A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 201–5; Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200–1500 (Oxford University Press, 2002); Susan Vincent, Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 120–7; Maria Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), ch. 1–2; Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ‘Sumptuary Laws in Italy: Financial Resource and Instrument of Rule’, in The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Laws in a Global Perspective, c. 1200–1800, eds. Giorgio Riello and Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), quote 167; Ulinka Rublack, ‘The Right to Dress: Sartorial Politics in Germany, c. 1300–1750’, in The Right to Dress, eds. Riello and Rublack; Astrid Pajur, Dress Matters: Clothes and Social Order in Tallinn, 1600–1700 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2020), ch. 3. 10. Eva I. Andersson, ‘Foreign Seductions: Sumptuary Laws, Consumption and National Identity in Early Modern Sweden’, in Fashionable Encounters: Perspectives and Trends in Textile and Dress in the Early Modern Nordic World, eds. Tove Engelhardt Mathiassen et  al. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 16–19, 24–8; Eva I. Andersson, ‘Dangerous Fashions in Swedish Sumptuary Law’, in The Right to Dress, eds. Riello and Rublack, 145–63. See also Leif Runefelt, ‘Från yppighets nytta till dygdens försvar: Den frihetstida debatten om lyx’, Historisk tidskrift 124:2 (2004), 205–8; Håkan Möller, Lyx och mode i stormaktstidens Sverige: Jesper Swedberg och kampen mot perukerna (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2014), 48–54; Marjatta Rahikainen and Kirsi Vainio-­ Korhonen, ‘Manlig och kvinnlig lyx: Överflödsförordningar och modeartiklar’, in Det svenska begäret: Sekler av lyxkonsumtion, eds. Paula von Wachenfeldt and Klas Nyberg (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2015), 28–36. 11. In order of appearance: Leif Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången: Anspråk, flyktighet, förställning i debatten om konsumtion i Sverige, 1730–1830 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2015); Roze Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: Textual Constructions of a National Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008); Kate Haulman, The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-­ Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 12. Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions, 361–72; Leif Runefelt, Hus­ hållningens dygder: Affektlära, hushållningslära och ekonomiskt tänkande

102  Disorder in the Sartorial World under svensk stormaktstid (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2001), 160; Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, ‘East  & West: Textiles and Fashion in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of Social History 41:4 (2008), 898; Howell, Commerce Before Capitalism, 218–19; Ragnhild Hutchison, ‘Exotiska varor som har förändrat vardagen’, in Global historia från periferin: Norden 1600–1800, eds. Leos Müller, Göran Rydén and Holger Weiss (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2010), 118–27; Pernilla Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet: Arbetsmetoder och arbetsdelning i tillverkningen av kvinnlig dräkt 1770–1830 (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 2010), 41–2; Klas Rönnbäck, ‘Socker och slavplantager i svensk historia’, in Global historia från periferin, eds. Müller, Rydén and Weiss, 109–12. On the birth of consumer culture, see also Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and John Harold Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-­ Century England (London: Europa Publications, 1982). 13. See Jeremy Jennings, ‘The Debate About Luxury in Eighteenth-­and Nineteenth-­Century French Political Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas 68:1 (2007), 80, 85–9. On these emerging economic theories, see also Bo Peterson, ‘ “Yppighets Nytta och Torftighets Fägnad”: Pamflettdebatten om 1766 års överflödsförordning’, Historisk tidskrift 104:1 (1984), 5–7; Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Cisie Fairchilds, ‘Fashion and Freedom in the French Revolution’, Continuity and Change 15:3 (2000), 421–2; Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 564–7; Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Luxury Debate’, in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, eds. Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 7–27; Michael Kwass, ‘Ordering the World of Goods: Consumer Revolution and the Classification of Objects in Eighteenth-­Century France’, Representations 82:1 (2003), 88–91. 14. Peterson, ‘Yppighets Nytta’, 7–8; Tore Frängsmyr, Svensk idéhistoria: Bildning och vetenskap under tusen år 1: 1000–1809 (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2000), 194–7; Runefelt, ‘Från yppighets nytta’, 203–5. 15. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 16. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 73, 64. 17. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 6, 7, 18, 33. 18. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 5, 8, 13, 45. See also Nos. 4, 6, 7, 10, 18, 23, 29, 33, 34, 37, 38, 62, 64, 69. 19. PS, Proceedings, No. 7. See also Nos. 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18, 23, 24, 28, 33, 34, 37, 38, 62, 64, 69. 20. PS, Proceedings, No. 7. See also Nos. 8, 13, 38, 45, 69. 21. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 1, 29. 22. For a general overview, see Marjo Kaartinen, Anne Montenach and Deborah Simonton, ‘Luxury, Gender and the Urban Experience’, in Luxury and Gender in European Towns, 1700–1914, eds. Deborah Simonton, Marjo Kaartinen and Anne Montenach (London: Routledge, 2015). See also Roche, A History of Everyday Things, 31–53; Amanda Vickery, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 1–24; Karin Sennefelt, Politikens hjärta: Medborgarskap, manlighet och plats i frihetstidens Stockholm (Stockholm: Stockholmia förlag, 2011), 47–9; Hannah Greig, The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 32–62; Anne Montenach, ‘Gender and Luxury in Eighteenth-­Century Grenoble: From Legal Exchanges to Shadow Economy’, in Luxury and Gender in European

Disorder in the Sartorial World 103 Towns, eds. Simonton, Kaartinen and Montenach, 40–4; Deborah Simonton, ‘Milliners and Merchandes de Modes: Gender, Creativity and Skill in the Workplace’, in Luxury and Gender in European Towns, eds. Simonton, Kaartinen and Montenach, 21–2. 23. Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången, 141–66. See also Klas Nyberg and Paula von Wachenfeldt, ‘Introduktion’, in Det svenska begäret, eds. von Wachenfeldt and Nyberg, 9–19. 24. PS, Proceedings, No. 5. 25. PS, Proceedings, No. 62. 26. PS, Proceedings, No. 46. 27. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 69, 45. 28. PS, Proceedings, No. 64. 29. PS, Proceedings, No. 49. See also Nos. 3, 37, 45, 50, 61, 64, 62, A1. 30. See, e.g. Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 324; Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660–1760 (Abington: Routledge, 1996), 194–6; Belén Moreno Claverias, ‘Luxury, Fashion and Peasantry: The Introduction of New Commodities in Rural Catalan, 1670–1790’, in The Force of Fashion in Politics and Society: Global Perspectives from Early Modern to Contemporary Times, ed. Beverly Lemire (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 72–4; Haulman, The Politics of Fashion, 202–3; Kristina Booker, ‘Richardson’s Pamela, Defoe’s Roxana, and Emulation Anxiety in Eighteenth-­Century Britain’, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 14:2 (2014), 42–6; Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången, 56–61. 31. The classic accounts of ‘trickle down’ or ‘fashion as social process’ theories were phrased by Thorstein Veblen (1899) and Georg Simmel (1904), respectively. See Daniel L. Purdy, The Tyranny of Elegance: Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 127–32; Woodruff D. Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability 1600–1800 (London: Routledge, 2002), 43; Lou Taylor, Establishing Dress History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 44–6; Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 126–7; Hayward, Rich Apparel, 4. 32. Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions, 49–57; Styles, The Dress of the People, 323–4; Paula Hohti, ‘Dress, Dissemination and Innovation: Artisan Fashions in Sixteenth-­and Early Seventeenth-­Century Italy’, in Fashioning the Early Modern: Dress, Textiles, and Innovation in Europe, 1500– 1800, ed. Evelyn Welch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 148. 33. PS, Proceedings, No. 49. 34. The same emphasis on common people of the lower social strata appears in the sumptuary legislation of the period. See Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet, 45. 35. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 5, 6, 13, 43, 50, 54, 58, 59, 62, 64, 69. 36. PS, Proceedings, No. 10. 37. PS, Proceedings, No. 13. 38. PS, Proceedings, No. 64. See also Nos. 15, 29. 39. Norbert Elias, The Court Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 63–4. See also Maria Hayward, ‘Luxury or Magnificence? Dress at the Court of Henry VIII’, Costume 30 (1996), 37–46; Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions, 85; Smith, Consumption and the Making of Respectability, 78–80; Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 133–4; Hayward, Rich Apparel, 22. 40. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 29. See also No. 32. 41. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 1, 6, 13, 15, 24, 33, 34, 37, 38, 41, 45, 69. 42. PS, Proceedings, No. 7.

104  Disorder in the Sartorial World 43. Regarding the distinction between ‘use value’ and ‘status value’, see Gudrun Andersson, ‘Forming the Partnership Socially and Economically: A  Swedish Local Elite, 1650–1770’, in The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain 1400–1900, eds. Maria Ågren and Amy Louise Erickson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 62. 44. See Diana Donald, Followers of Fashion: Graphic Satires from the Georgian Period (London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2002); Patrik Steorn, ‘Caricature and Fashion Critique on the Move: Establishing European Print and Fashion Culture in Eighteenth-­Century Sweden’, in Fashioning the Early Modern, ed. Welch, 267–76; Dagmar Freist, ‘Belief’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion IV: In the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Peter McNeil (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 92–3; Peter McNeil, Pretty Gentlemen: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-­Century Fashion World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 82–121. 45. PS, Proceedings, No. 10. 46. PS, Proceedings, No. 48. Carrying ones hat under the arm rather than on the head, necessitated by elaborate coiffures and wigs, was by critics considered as ‘an index of the silliness and impracticality’ of fashions. McNeil, Pretty Gentlemen, 131. 47. PS, Proceedings, No. 41. 48. PS, Proceedings, No. 62. 49. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 10, 37, 38, 41. 50. PS, Proceedings, No. 41. On hats and ‘hat honour’ in early modern social culture, see Penelope J. Corfield, ‘Dress for Deference and Dissent: Hats and the Decline of Hat Honour’, Costume 23:1 (1989), 68–70; Susan Wareham Watkins, ‘Hat Honour, Self-­Identity and Commitment in Early Quakerism’, Quaker History 103:1 (2014), 2–4; Kimberley Foy, ‘To Cover or Not to Cover: Hat Honour and the Early Stuart Court, 1603–1642’, Journal of Dress History 1:1 (2017). 51. See e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 6, 18, 34, 58, 59. 52. PS, Proceedings, No. 6. 53. PS, Proceedings, No. 73. On the social circulation by use and re-­use of clothes, see Aileen Riberio, Dress in Eighteenth-­Century Europe 1715–1789 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 61–2; Roche, A History of Everyday Things, 198–201; Beverly Lemire, ‘Production and Distribution’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, ed. McNeil, 53. 54. See Jones, ‘Repackaging Rousseau’, 947–59; Jennifer Jones, ‘Coquettes and Grisettes: Women Byuing and Selling in Ancien Régime Paris’, in The Sex of Things. Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, eds. Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 35–8; Beverly Lemire, ‘Second-­Hand Beaux and “Red-­Armed Belles”: Conflict and the Creation of Fashions in England, c. 1660–1800’, Continuity and Change 15:3 (2000), 398–9; Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 167–76; Amanda Vickery, ‘His and Hers: Gender, Consumption and Household Accounting in Eighteenth-­Century England’, Past and Present suppl. 1 (2006), 12–13; Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, 22–3, 49–51; Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången, 99–100; McNeil, Pretty Gentlemen, 149. 55. See Jennifer M. Jones, Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 74. 56. Vickery, ‘His and Hers’, 12–17, 32–3. See also Lorna Weatherill, ‘A Possession of One’s Own: Women and Consumer Behaviour in England, 1660–1740’, Journal of British Studies 25:2 (1986), 131–56; Beth Kowaleski-­Wallace, Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping and Business in the 18th Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 4–15;

Disorder in the Sartorial World 105 Andersson, ‘Foreign Seductions’, 16; Jon Stobart and Mark Rothery, ‘Men, Women and the Supply of Luxury Goods in Eighteenth-­Century England’, in Luxury and Gender in European Towns, eds. Simonton, Kaartinen and Montenach, 98–104. 57. PS, Proceedings, No. 36. 58. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 15, 36, 38, 43, 44, 54, 61, 73. 59. PS, Proceedings, No. 45. 60. PS, Proceedings, No. 3. 61. PS, Proceedings, No. 34. 62. PS, Proceedings, No. A3. 63. PS, Proceedings, No. 10. 64. Similarly, there are records by foreign travelers to contemporary England, commenting on the high quality of everyday clothing of lower ranking women, making it difficult to differentiate the lady from her maid. See Styles, The Dress of the People, 19–29. 65. See Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 39; Carlo Marco Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti, ‘Clothing and Social Inequality in Early Modern Europe: Introductory Remarks’, Continuity and Change 15 (2000), 359; Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 9; Amanda Vickery, ‘Mutton Dressed as Lamb? Fashioning Age in Georgian England’, Journal of British Studies 52:4 (2013), 868; Freist, ‘Belief’, 88. 66. The Scrambling of sartorial signs is a header in the English translation of Roche’s study on the culture of appearances in eighteenth-­century France. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 91. Richard Wrigley’s translation of the French original is equally apt: ‘the confusion of vestimentary signs’. Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 232. 67. Amanda E. Facelle, ‘Down to the Last Stitch: Sumptuary Law and Conspicuous Consumption in Renaissance Italy’ (Wesleyan University, Bachelor Thesis, 2009), 40; Hayward, Rich Apparel, 172. 68. Amy Wyngaard, ‘Switching Codes: Class, Clothing, and Cultural Change in the Works of Marivaux and Watteau’, Eighteenth-­Century Studies 33:4 (2000), 524–8. 69. Jonas Liliequist, ‘Från niding till sprätt: En studie i det svenska omanlighetsbegreppets historia från vikingatid till sent 1700-­tal’, in Manligt och omanligt i ett historiskt perspektiv, ed. Anne Marie Berggren (Stockholm: Forskningsrådsnämnden, 1999), 85–6; Rikard Karlsson, Svensk-­franska förhandlingar: Bland sprätthökar och franska flugor i svenskt 1700-­tal (Linköping: Linköping University, 2017), 49–56. 70. Sarah R. Cohen, ‘Masquerade as Mode in French Fashion Prints’, in The Clothes That Wear Us: Essays on Dressing and Transgressing in Eighteenth-­ Century Culture, eds. Jessica Munns and Penny Richards (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999); Aileen Riberio, Dress and Morality (Oxford: Berg, 2003), 104–5; Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet, 48. 71. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 35, 42, 44, 47, 49, 64. 72. PS, Proceedings, No. 35. 73. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 42, 47, 64. 74. PS, Proceedings, No. 46. 75. Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-­Sellers of Pre-­Revolutionary France (New York: Norton, 1995), 121; Fairchilds, ‘Fashion and Freedom’, 421. 76. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 53, 42, 44, 47, 49, 64. 77. PS, Proceedings, No. 42. See e.g. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 25–7.

106  Disorder in the Sartorial World 78. On the centrality of identification in early modern times, see Jean-­Yves Grenier, ‘Une économie de l’identification: Juste prix et ordre des merchandises dans l’Ancien Régime’, in La Qualité des produits en France (XVIIIe—XXe siècles), ed. Alessandro Stanziani (Paris: Belin, 2004), 30; Giorgio Riello, ‘Governing Innovation: The Political Economy of Textiles in the Eighteenth Century’, in Fashioning the Early Modern, ed. Welch, 62; Tobias Larsson, ‘Ordering Vocabulary: The Language Employed by Sweden’s First Police’, in Powers of Description: Language and Social History in the Long Eighteenth Century, eds. Mikael Alm and Karen Harvey (Uppsala: Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 2019), 92–3. 79. PS, Proceedings, No. 38. See also No. 40. 80. Christopher Breward, The Culture of Fashion: A  New History of Fashionable Dress (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 93–6; Rudolf Dekker and Lotte van de Pol, Frauen in Männerkleidern (Berlin-­ Wilmersdorf: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 2012). 81. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. See also No. A2. 82. Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 124–7, 143; Wyngaard, ‘Switching Codes’, 524; Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 59. 83. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 29, 43. 84. PS, Proceedings, No. 44. 85. PS, Proceedings, No. 45. 86. PS, Proceedings, No. 43. 87. Roland Mousnier, Social Hierarchies: 1450 to the Present (New York: Schocken Books, 1973), 19. See also Gail Bossenga, ‘Estates, Orders and Corps’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime, ed. William Doyle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 141–3. 88. PS, Proceedings, No. 61. 89. PS, Proceedings, No. A3. 90. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 91. PS, Proceedings, No. 64. 92. PS, Proceedings, No. 67. 93. PS, Proceedings, No. A5. See also Nos. 6, 13, 29, 34, 35, 37, 48. 94. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 95. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 4–7, 55–7. See also Wyngaard, ‘Switching Codes’, 525–6. For a critical assessment of Roche’s model, emphasizing the presence of sartorial signs of individuality as early as in the sixteenth century, see Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 261–2; Rublack, ‘The Right to Dress’, 40–2. 96. Accordingly, Daniel Roche stresses the centrality of servants/domestics (not least in urban contexts) in the movements of the time. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 40–1, 78, 201–2. 97. See e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 29, A5. 98. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 38. 99. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 38, 8. 100. See, e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 10, 34, 49. 101. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 41, 59, 37. 102. Eva Bergman, Nationella dräkten: En studie kring Gustaf III:s dräktreform 1778 (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1938), 124–5; Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet, 45–6. 103. PS, Proceedings, No. 1. 104. PS, Proceedings, No. A2. 105. Quotes, PS, Proceedings, Nos. 6, 28, 58.

Disorder in the Sartorial World 107 106. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 1, 6, 29, 32, 33, 35, 52, 53, 54, 59, A2, A5. On dress and national identity in early modern Europe, see Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth, 104–8; Rublack, Dressing Up, 125–75; Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, 1–8. 107. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 108. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 7, 29, 31, 53, A2. See also Nos. 15, 48. 109. History and notions of a glorious past and an ‘Old German Style’ were equally present in contemporary German discussions on a national dress (largely inspired by Swedish events) in the 1780s and—renewed—in the 1810s. See Karin A. Wurst, ‘Fashioning a Nation: Fashion and National Costume in Bertuch’s “Journal des Luxus und der Moden” (1786–1827)’, German Studies Review 28:2 (2005), 371–7. For similar findings in seventeenth-­century England, see Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth, 120–1. 110. PS, Proceedings, Nos. A2, 1, 6, 42. 111. See, e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 9, 32, 48. 112. Birgitta Schyberg, ‘ “Gustaf Wasa” as Theatre Propaganda’, in Gustavian Opera: An Interdisciplinary Reader in Swedish Opera, Dance and Theatre 1771–1809, ed. Inger Mattsson (Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Music, 1991), 293–5; Marie-­Christine Skuncke, Gustaf III. Det offentliga barnet: En prins retoriska och politiska fostran (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1993), 78–82; Marie-­ Christine Skuncke and Anna Ivarsdotter, Svenska operans födelse: Studier i gustaviansk musikdramatik (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1998), 227–44; Mikael Alm, Kungsord i elfte timmen: Språk och självbild i det gustavianska enväldets legitimitetskamp 1772–1809 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2002), 177–83. 113. Lena Rangström, Kläder för tid och evighet: Gustaf III sedd genom sina dräkter (Stockholm: Livrustkammaren, 1997), 168–9. 114. See Berit Eldvik, Möte med mode: Folkliga kläder 1750–1900 i Nordiska Museet (Stockholm: Nordiska Museets Förlag, 2014), 15; Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången, 75–80. 115. PS, Proceedings, No. 42. See also No. 24. 116. Peter Burke, ‘State-Making, King-Making and Image-Making from Renaissance to Baroque: Scandinavia in a European Context’, Scandinavian Journal of History 22:1 (1997), 6–8. 117. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 24, 35. 118. Riberio, Dress in Eighteenth-­Century Europe, 13–16; William H. Sewell Jr, ‘The Empire of Fashion and the Rise of Capitalism in Eighteenth-­Century France’, Past and Present 206 (2010), 81–2; Macushla Baudis, ‘ “Smoking Hot with Fashion from Paris”: The Consumption of French Fashion in Eighteenth-­Century Ireland’, Costume 48:2 (2014), 142–3; McNeil, Pretty Gentlemen, 123. 119. Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth; Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet, 57–8; McNeil, Pretty Gentlemen, esp. ch. 4. 120. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 18, 21, 28, 29, 34, 46, 48, 49, 64, A2. 121. For a similar anti-­French contrast in the British context, see Nicola Phillips, Women in Business, 1700–1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 195–202. 122. PS, Proceedings, No. A2. 123. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 35 (fabrics), 1, 18 (styles). See also Nos. 9, 10, 11, 23, 38, 59, A2. 124. PS, Proceedings, No. A2. 125. PS, Proceedings, No. 34.

108  Disorder in the Sartorial World 126. On fashion as physically debilitating, see Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions, 78–81; Michael Kwass, ‘Consumption and the World of Ideas: Consumer Revolution and the Moral Economy of the Marquis de Mirabeau’, Eighteenth-­Century Studies 37:2 (2004), 195–6; Freist, ‘Belief’, 93–4. 127. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 4, 9, 23, 53. See also Nos. 11, 15, 32, 36, 40, 50. 128. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 9, 23, 29. On muffs, see Kimberley Chrisman-­ Campbell, ‘ “He Is Not Dressed Without a Muff”: Muffs, Masculinity, and la Mode in English Satire’, in Seeing Satire in the Eighteenth Century 2, eds. Elisabeth C. Mansfield and Kelly Malone (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2013), 131–44. 129. PS, Proceedings, No. 40. See also Nos. 22, 29, 36. The author of essay No. 46 voiced a deviating opinion. Fashions alone, the argument ran, could not account for the weakening of Swedish women; bad diet, sedentary life and the lack of fresh air were as contributing to the downward spiral of women’s (and men’s) physical health. 130. See Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, 21–2. 131. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 132. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 29, 41. See also No. 36. For the medical discussions on tight-­lacing, see Riberio, Dress and Morality, 115. 133. See also Charlotta Wolff, Vänskap och makt: Den svenska politiska eliten och upplysningstidens Frankrike (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland/Atlantis, 2005), 18. 134. This corresponds neatly with Roze Hentschell’s study on English seventeenth-­and eighteenth-­century debates on the use of foreign (again, usually French) fabrics, and how an Englishman dressed in French clothing would be condemned as something transformed, unrecognizable and foreign, even treasonous. Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth. On the formative qualities of clothes, see also Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 4; Michael Zakim, ‘Sartorial Ideologies: From Homespun to Ready-­Made’, The American Historical Review 106:5 (2001), 1554–6; Baudis, ‘Smoking Hot with Fashion from Paris’, 146–7. 135. PS, Proceedings, No. 7. 136. PS, Proceedings, No. 15. 137. PS, Proceedings, No. 48. 138. PS, Proceedings, No. 15. 139. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 140. PS, Proceedings, No. 63. See also Nos. 7, 42, 48, 49, 53, 68. 141. See Liliequist, ‘Från niding till sprätt’, 82–3. 142. Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, 24–8; Elizabeth Currie, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 116– 22; McNeil, Pretty Gentlemen, 13–35. 143. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 7, 46 (petit-­maître/små-­herrar), 18, 34 (sprätt-­ hökar), 7, 62, 64 (sprättar). 144. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 7, 15, 49, 69. 145. PS, Proceedings, No. 15. 146. Although widely voiced, the historical logics of the national arguments were not uncontested. The author of essay No. 64 made an explicit and quite contrary case regarding the formative qualities of dress, specifically the formative effects of a return to a historical form—‘We will not get their bodies by wearing their clothes’—concluding that he had ‘little inclination to be in the clothes of the ancients’, when he could be ‘just as good and even better in my own’. PS, Proceedings, No. 64.

Disorder in the Sartorial World 109 147. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 34, A2. 148. See Alastair Bellany, ‘Mistress Turner’s Deadly Sins: Sartorial Transgression, Court Scandal, and Politics in Early Stuart England’, Huntington Library Quarterly 58:2 (1995), 189; Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 20–1; Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 122–4; Freist, ‘Belief’, 95; Amanda Vickery, ‘The Moral Negotiation of Fashion in Regency England’, Eighteenth-­Century Life 44:3 (2020), 165–7. 149. PS, Proceedings, No. 1. 150. PS, Proceedings, No. 8. 151. PS, Proceedings, No. 38. 152. PS, Proceedings, No. A5. See also Nos. 18, 23, 36, 61, 64, 67, 73. 153. PS, Proceedings, No. 8. Book of Kings 1–11. 154. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 9, 61. Isaiah 3: 16–17. 155. PS, Proceedings, No. 9. Luke 16:19, 20:46. 156. PS, Proceedings, No. 45. Book of Judges 11–12. 157. PS, Proceedings, No. 61. 4 Moses 8:5. 158. Timothy 2:9. 159. Isaiah 3:16–23. 160. PS, Proceedings, No. 38. 161. PS, Proceedings, No. 9. See also Nos. 10, 16, 36. 162. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Norton, 1977), 323–35 (quote 329). See also Sten Lindroth, Svensk lärdomshistoria: Frihetstiden (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1989), 501–30; Tore Frängsmyr, Sökandet efter den svenska upplysningen: En essä om 1700-­talets svenska kulturdebatt (Höganäs: Wiken, 1993), ch. 5. 163. In addition, in early modern societies, poverty was often depicted as the hotbed for vice and unchristian, even criminal, behaviour. See e.g. Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 122–4. 164. PS, Proceedings, No. 8. See also Nos. 9, 23, 33, 38. 165. PS, Proceedings, No. 1. 166. PS, Proceedings, No. 61. 167. PS, Proceedings, No. 34. See also No. A5. 168. PS, Proceedings, No. 33. On Adam and Eve in sartorial morality, see also Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 20–1. 169. PS, Proceedings, No. 10. 170. In order of appearance, PS, Proceedings, Nos. 67, 58, 3. See also Nos. 10, 40, A5. 171. PS, Proceedings, No. 10. See also Nos. 3, 9, 61, A5. 172. PS, Proceedings, No. 44. 173. PS, Proceedings, No. 9. On women, see also Nos. 3, 36, 40, 44. 174. Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth, 115. 175. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London: Vintage, 1996), 10–58; Hentschall, The Culture of Cloth, 553–8 (quote 554). 176. Joachim Östlund reaches a similar conclusion in his study of official communiqués of intercession. During the period 1680–1700, when such aggressive rhetoric might have been expected, confessional contrasts were unusual, while calls for Christian unity were strong. Joachim Östlund, Lyckolandet: Maktens legitimering i officiell retorik från stormaktstid till demokratins genombrott (Lund: Sekel Bokförlag, 2007), 99–107. Nils Ekedahl ventures as far as to claim that, while religion remained essential, the Lutheran faith lost its role in the formation of a Swedish national identity during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Nils Ekedahl, ‘ “Guds och Swea barn”: Religion och nationell identitet i 1700-­talets Sverige’, in Nationalism och

110  Disorder in the Sartorial World nationell identitet i 1700-­talets Sverige, eds. Åsa Karlsson and Bo Lindberg (Uppsala: Opuscula Historica Upsaliensia, 2002), 57. 177. See Riberio, Dress and Morality, 115. 178. PS, Proceedings, No. 33. 179. PS, Proceedings, No. 41. 180. PS, Proceedings, No. 48. 181. PS, Proceedings, No. 64. See also Nos. 24, A2. 182. See e.g., PS, Proceedings, No. 9. 183. See e.g., PS, Proceedings, No. 33. See Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 127–31. Whereas commonly invoked in religious rhetoric—not least during the seventeenth century—there is only one example of an explicit claim of divine punishment and monstrosity in the essays; the author of essay No. 19 recalls an incident in the Swedish parish of Habo in 1715, where women’s insistence on sporting fontanges (a high headdress), attracted the ‘wrath of God’, causing a baby girl to be born with her head deformed into such a headdress. Regarding monstrosity, see also Sabine Sander, ‘Blicke auf angeborene Fehlbildungen in der frühen Neuzeit’, in Erst-­und Frühbeschreibungen ortopädischer Krankheitsbilder, eds. Ludwig Zichner, Michael A. Rauschmann and Klaus-­Dieter Thomann (Darmstadt: Steinkopff, 2003); Julia Crawford, Marvelous Protestantism: Monstrous Births in Post-­ Reformation England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Möller, Lyx och mode, 92–112. 184. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 4–7, 55–7. 185. Lemire and Riello, ‘East & West’, 887. 186. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 57. 187. Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, 9–24.

4 The Ordering of Difference

‘Differences in dress’, declared the author of essay No. 61, ‘with regard to fineness, colours and make, have always been, and must, due to the very nature of the composition of a State, always be an irrefutable fact’. ‘Splendour and cost’, the argument continued, ‘differentiate the high from the low’, ‘Colour and façon differentiate between specific estates and branches of government’, and ‘Finer and coarser clothes owned by each and all differentiate between workday and holy day’. These ‘sartorial allocations’, the author continued, drawing on the theme of a divine order of things, were ‘set by the All-­wise creator’, and adopted and observed by ‘every enlightened nation in the world’. On ‘these foundations’, the author concluded, it was evident ‘that there must be order in dress’, and that all ‘disorder’ must be repealed: ‘modes of dress should be prescribed for all and sundry according to their estate and worth’.1 This is illustrative of the visual qualities of early modern differentiating practices and the role of clothes in the ongoing performance of order and ordering. Clothes constituted a visual language, effectively communicating who you were—what you were—by seemingly basic modes of quality and quantity in terms of ‘splendour’, ‘cost, ‘colour’, ‘fineness’, and so forth. On this correlation between social standing and sartorial appearance rested the very notion of social legibility and, in essence, the persistence of order. That visual world of sartorial practices is the focal point of this chapter. Granted the composition of the social order already described, and granted the discerned shortcomings and disorderly elements of contemporary sartorial practices, how was difference—be it between estates, corporate bodies, ranks, or classes—to be visualized in an orderly way?

Ordering In the essays, the calls for a proper correlation between social standing and sartorial appearance are formulated by recurrent proverbs. Some of them are general statements of that characteristically early modern assertion of the stationary nature of order. One such proverb is the familiar

112  The Ordering of Difference ‘Shoemaker, stick to your last’ (Sw. Skomakare, bli vid din läst). Found in various versions throughout Europe, it refers to the writing of Pliny the Elder, first century AD, and the story of the painter Apelles. One day, he was approached by a passing shoemaker, while working on a painting. The shoemaker criticized Apelles’ rendition of a sandal. The artist willingly obliged and changed it. Spurred on, the shoemaker pointed out additional faults in the painting, but Apelles cut him short with the said phrase: Ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret (‘A cobbler should not judge beyond his shoe’). Like the shoemaker, everyone should remain in their designated stations, not venture off and pretend or otherwise try to be something else or better than they were.2 Other proverbs were specifically sartorial. The crow, one author stated, would never be anything but a crow, no matter how many borrowed feathers she wore. Positing a direct counterpart to the English saying that ‘Fine feathers make fine birds’, the Swedish proverb, ‘As you are dressed, you will be esteemed’ (Som man är klädd blir man hädd) was equally employed to make the point.3 Like the English counterpart, the Swedish proverb was decidedly moralizing. The moral of both was the deceptive and potentially disorderly qualities of clothes and appearances. Fine feathers did not make fine birds, and people should not be esteemed according to the finery of their dress. People should be dressed according to their esteem, not the other way around.4 A crow with a borrowed eagle’s feather was still just a crow, and a common shoemaker wearing a fine waistcoat was still just a common shoemaker. So, returning to the question at hand: how was proper and desirable sartorial differentiation to be made? There are systems of sartorial codes and signs at work, effectively visualizing difference and allowing for a legible social order. They are constantly engaged in those moralizing expositions on disorderly practices and over-­dressed people, and in the proposed solutions that dictated bans and exclusivity of certain manners of dress for certain social categories. Looking closer, there are four main modes of sartorial differentiation at play: colours, fabrics, styles, and ornaments. The author quoted at the beginning of the chapter touches upon them in the call for an ‘order in dress’ for ‘all and sundry’ according to ‘estate and worth’: difference in dress should be made with regard to ‘fineness, colours, and make’. Similarly, another author refers explicitly to an ‘order of dress’ (klädordning), based on ‘three circumstances’: the material, the make, and the colour (closely echoed by yet another author, who refers to the differentiating qualities of ‘a certain Mode’, ‘a certain Colour’, and certain ‘fabrics’).5 Ornaments, such as embroideries, braids, and tassels, are rarely stated separately in these general overviews of visualizing modes, but they are highly present in the 1773 essays, and, as will become apparent, there are analytical reasons to look at them separately. Research on sumptuary laws confirms the historic presence and relevance of these basic modes. As early modern states sought to regulate

The Ordering of Difference 113 an orderly use of dress, colours, fabrics, styles, and ornaments were the recurrent objects of legal provisions.6 For instance, French historian Daniel Roche discerns ‘three hierarchies of distinction’ in the regulated order of dress for state officials in seventeenth-­century France: those of form, those of fabric and those of colour. While in terms of forms, a magistrate wore a long gown, a notary would wear a shorter gown; in terms of fabrics, the président of the Chamber of Accounts wore silk velvet, but the clerk would wear taffeta; and, in terms of colours, the chancellor of the King’s Council wore crimson, whereas the secretary would wear black. In her study on sumptuary laws in Tudor England, Maria Hayward discerns that same troika of objects for state regulations: ‘colours, fabrics, and garment types’.7 It should be added that, although neither Roche nor Hayward delineate ornaments as a separate, fourth mode of differentiation (rather, they include them as an integral part of dress styles), ornaments were indeed included in the sartorial orderings that they analyse. In seventeenth-­century France, the fur linings for gowns were as regulated as their length, fabric, and colour, and in Tudor England, embroideries, bonnet bands, and fur linings were equivalent objects of state regulations.8 These modes of differentiation, and the shifting values that were attached to materials and models within them, structured the ideal sartorial regime of early modern societies. Colours visualized the regimental belonging of a soldier or the royal household of a courtier, or, for that matter, the religious character of a passing clergyman, or the licentious profession of a woman lingering in a publican’s doorway, just as the richness or poverty in colours worn would differentiate between the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the nobleman and the commoner.9 The quality of the fabrics worn—in terms of exclusivity, lustre, fineness, and so forth—would visually differentiate between the officer and the soldier, the master and the servant, and the count and the shoemaker. Styles of dress made a difference between man and woman, but also between the lady in her tailored robes and the farm maid in her jacket and petticoat. Ornaments and worn accessories, finally, made the king stand out next to the prince, the general next to the lieutenant, the professor next to the student, and the bishop next to the vicar. It all seems clear cut. But how were those structuring values decided? Why was a certain fabric valued higher relative to another fabric? Why were certain colours deemed to be of higher worth, and thus suitable to signal a higher social status of its wearer, than other colours? What made a certain style or a certain dress ornament a potent social marker? Obviously, there were raw and material variables, such as cost and availability, at play. However, as the analysis now turns to the ordering regimes suggested by the 1773 authors, the social values at work in eighteenth-­century sartorial hierarchies were more complex than simple economics.

114  The Ordering of Difference Art historian Andrea Feeser and literature historians Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin have phrased this complexity well. Discussing the value of colours, they discern three distinct but overlapping categories of human activity that together, in any historic context, decide an individual colour’s ultimate value. There is indeed an economic value at work: the labour, capital, and expertise involved in the production and circulation of a colour all make that colour perceived as more or less valuable. In short, some colours are expensive to procure, which render them a higher value than the value of a less expensive colour. But ultimate value is decided by the workings of two additional variables. There is an aesthetic value, basically reflecting the attractiveness and popularity of a colour. And, most importantly, there is a social (or cultural) value, with the various connotations, meanings, and functions that are attached to different colours in different cultures at certain points in time, and which actively affects its ultimate value.10 This is in line with French historian Michel Pastoureau’s characterization of colours as ‘a social phenomenon’: ‘It is society that “makes” color, defines it, gives it meaning, constructs its codes and values, establishes its uses, and determines whether it is acceptable or not’.11 This multi-­layered understanding of value and valuation can advantageously be broadened to a general understanding of all sartorial modes of differentiation. As with colours, the value ascribed to a certain fabric, style, or ornament in the eighteenth century was equally influenced by aesthetic and social–cultural variables alongside economic issues of cost. The high value of a colour such as purple was not only a question of economic price; the fact that it had royal connotations probably played a part, as well. Similarly, the high value attached to silk was certainly due, in part, to production and circulation costs, but the fact that it was highly fashionable, and that it had connotations for wealth and social status inspired its valuation, as well. The same logic applies for styles and ornaments: costs always affected social value, but contemporary aesthetic preferences and social–cultural connotations also acted on the values attached. The distinction between the four modes is analytical, and a simplification of historical realities. In practice, all four modes were working simultaneously. More often than not, the authors invoked more than one mode in different constellations. The author of essay No. 29, consequently, suggested a combination of colours and the modelling of ‘collars, cuffs, buttons and the like’. The author of No. 37 added an extra mode of differentiation for women alongside a general order of colours, where ‘signs’ worn on hats would further distinguish between ‘nobles and people of their kind’ on the one hand and ‘the wives of merchants, artisans or petty burghers’ on the other. As a final and particularly elaborate example, the author of No. 59 suggested a hierarchical order of fabrics, supplemented by an equally hierarchical order of styles and dress types,

The Ordering of Difference 115 supplemented further by an order of colours and of ornaments (gold and silver braids).12 However, the four modes serve their analytical purpose. Although often complex and multifaceted in nature, the suggested sartorial regimes tended to employ a primary mode of differentiation—be it colours, fabrics, styles, or ornaments—while other modes were employed for additional or more detailed distinctions.

Colours Colours are by far the most commonly invoked mode of differentiation in the essays. In many cases, the accounts are sweeping, with unspecified colours and vaguely defined wearers. One author proposed that ‘each State Department and Collegium should have their particular colour’, while another, equally vague and undefined, proposed that ‘each Collegium’ and ‘some, but many of them merged, Burgher Societies’ should be granted ‘certain and particular colours for their uniforms’ (and, in addition, to be carefully kept from ‘being lavish with secondary colours’). A third author, who proposed that ‘each and every Estate’ should wear specific colours, simply and rather evasively declared that ‘there are so many colours to choose from, which would be beautiful, each in itself, for each estate, such as Rose-­red, Light-­blue, Couleure de feu, Aurora, Green, and Grey’.13 The known palette of eighteenth-­century male and female wardrobes was clearly represented, with assigned or otherwise proposed colours spanning the full spectrum: from black, via varying tints of brown, red, blue, and green, to white.14 Furthermore, colours were the most versatile mode of differentiation. Whereas other modes were generally specific in their use and delimited in their preferred use to certain types of hierarchical contexts, colours were employed in an all-­encompassing manner to visualize difference throughout the complex world of social imaginaries. In ordering estates, one author proposed a sartorial system in which every estate had its specific colour, for ‘both sexes’, to be worn ‘only and solely, without change’. The nobles should wear white clothes, the clergy should wear black clothes, the burghers should wear clothes in ‘Genuine Rose-­Red’, and the peasants should all be clad in ‘dark grey’.15 Moving on to corporate orders, the creativity is striking. One author discerned between nine different groups, which were all assigned specific colours. The military, the clergy, and the hunting and forestry staff should each wear their ‘usual’ colours (most likely referring to blue, black, and green, respectively). The burgher estate (too) should wear blue, the civil corps (including academic professors and students) should all wear ‘light grey’, judges should wear white, medical doctors should wear ‘olive green’, surgeons should wear ‘red–brown’, and the peasant estate, finally, should wear ‘blackish’ clothes.16 Turning to orders of rank, the colourization of the civil corps, along with references to the already colourized military corps, is recurrent.

116  The Ordering of Difference The element of internal hierarchy inherent to rank was also dealt with using colours. Thus, one author suggested that if ‘6 to 8 of the most pleasant and beautiful colours’ were chosen and allotted to each state collegium, ‘darker and lighter’ tints of those colours could then be used for further differentiation between the ranks within them: the higher the rank, the darker the tint.17 Using additional modes of differentiation provided another solution. If every corps was assigned a colour, one author proposed, ‘collars, lapels, buttons and the like’ would allow for ‘more than enough of variations’ for differentiation within them.18 Another author, illustrating the usability of colours as well as the complexity of order, was more concerned with the social pedigree of the individual civil servant than with the formal rank of the office he held. Each part of the civil corps were to be assigned a colour, but those of ‘distinguished estate’ should, in parallel to that administratively determined colour scheme of corporate belonging, be further distinguished as such by a socially determined colour of dignity, proposedly ranging from ‘mort durée’ (i.e. mordoré: a russet colour), via light grey, to a lighter blue.19 Colours lent themselves equally well to orders of class, with hierarchical relationships based on economic wealth. Returning to the clearest example of such an order, as presented in essay No. 59, the proposed sartorial regime highlights a fundamental aspect of the ordering and visualizing capacities of colours, namely the differentiating effect of the very existence of colours. This was a first and crude mode of differentiation. In a world where colours communicated status and wealth, the lack of colours indicated a corresponding lack of status and wealth. The author opted for a sartorial system of fabrics, where the four classes were assigned fabrics on a sliding scale of fineness. But in addition to the use of simple and crude wadmal (a felted, usually home-­made, woollen fabric), the fourth and lowest class, sweepingly referred to as ‘The Peasantry’, was assigned the natural colours of that wool—‘grey, white or black’— and explicitly deprived of the use of ‘foreign expensive dyestuffs’.20 In an order where colours were allowed for the higher few, but not for lower many, hierarchies were effectively visualized: not only the lowliness of the uncoloured but also all the more so the elevation of the colourful few. Alongside the visualization of these categories of order—the high and the low, the burghers and the clergy, the court clerks and the lieutenants, the wealthy and the poor—colours were used to visualize relationships within those social units. As already noted, the patriarchal nature of early modern households was clearly present in the recurrent proposition that wives (and children) should, irrespective of their own pedigree or means of making a living, wear the colours of their husbands or, if unmarried, the colours of their fathers.21 In these coloured orders, an individual’s familial belonging was visualized: the baker’s wife was recognized as such by the colour she wore, walking next to her colourized husband, and a secretary at the Collegium of War formed a coloured unit with his wife

The Ordering of Difference 117 and children, just as he did with his peers and their wives and children at that collegium. Colours proved equally useful to distinguish those who were attached to a household, but who were not fully part of it: domestic servants.22 ‘It would not be proper’, one author decreed, ‘for Lackeys and servants to be dressed as persons of estate’; that is, as their employers and masters of household. The solution spelled sartorial differentiation, which in effect resulted in a visual exclusion. Each and all who could afford to maintain domestic servants, should chose a colour for them to wear, ‘in accordance with his Estate and means’. The higher and the richer the master, the more expensively coloured his servants. A  similar solution proposed that domestic servants in noble households should wear liveries in the colours of the family coat-­of-­arms, while domestics in non-­noble households should wear their masters’ colour, but with the addition of a, again, visually separating the wearer from that coloured entity, sash in blue and yellow.23 This apparent preference for colours references the contemporary stress on a legible social order and that ever-­present concern about social confusion and blurred ranks.24 A sartorial regime based on colours would conjure up an extreme enhancement of contemporary practices with its historically transmitted repertoire of social codes and modes for differentiation. It would be a social order—whether based on estates, ranks, or classes—clearly represented by colours, efficiently visualized by colours, and readily legible by colours. If the nobleman wore white and the merchant wore green, how could they ever be confused? This is confirmed by the widespread use of colours as a communicative means in early modern societies. These societies were far from as colourless as the modern observer might assume, all the less so towards the late eighteenth century, with an increased availability of affordable material goods, including dyes and coloured and patterned fabrics.25 For centuries, colours had signalled and structured the passing of time for Europeans by way of the liturgical colours used to mark the phases of the ecclesiastical year: from the violet (or blue) of Advent, via the white (or ash grey) of Christmas, the green of Epiphany, the return to violet during Fasting, to white during Easter, and the return of green during Trinity.26 In theory, everyone—from paupers to kings—followed this coded passing of the year by the colour of the vestment worn by the minister in the pulpit. The seasonal stages were colourized; the white of Easter heralded the sowing of the fields, the green of Trinity announced the time for harvest, waiting for the next cycle of life to begin. The armed forces of Europe were an equally colourized realm: the blue uniforms of the Swedish and the Prussian soldier, the red of the British, the white of the French and the Austrian, and the green of the Russian soldier. A corresponding example from the civil ranks was the sartorial regime at the court of the Archbishop of Cologne at the dawn of the eighteenth century. There were four categories of courtiers, and the colour of

118  The Ordering of Difference their dress corresponded with the colour of the respective antechamber in which they served and to which they had access, thus immediately signalling the status conferred on them by their proximity to the Archbishop who resided in the innermost of the suite of rooms.27 Colours were also the chosen mode for differentiation when Swedish national dress reform actually took place in 1778. The national character of the new dress was based on its allegedly Swedish style and the use of Swedish fabrics. But the mode of differentiation was almost entirely made up of colours. The red details on otherwise black dress differentiated between those who were introduced at court and those who were not, while the blue and white colours distinguished court gala dress (and the wearer’s access to these royal spectacles as a participant rather than a mere spectator) from the black and red dress which was used for everyday court life. With time, the distinguishing palette grew as colours were assigned to branches of government and court, resulting in a colourized order for the state machinery. The knights and commanders of the royal orders of chivalry were all granted specific colours for their ceremonial costumes: white with black details for the Order of the Seraphim, blue with white details for the Order of the Sword, red with white details for the Order of the Northern Star, and green with white details for the Order of Wasa. The state colleges received their colours, too, by royal grace: one wore violet with white details, another blue with straw-­coloured details, a third carmine-­red with yellow details, and so forth. The uniforms of the military branches followed suit with different colour combinations, augmented by the use of trims such as braids, stripes, cords, and tassels, to mark the arms, regiment, and rank of the individual soldier.28 The essays provide rich insights into the particular usefulness of colours, as the authors argued for their choice of differentiating mode. There was an aesthetic notion at work, emphasizing the visual beauty and pleasantness of a uniformed nation, often with explicit references to the military uniform and the captivating effect of an army on foot.29 More specifically, moral concerns regarding the disorderly aspects of contemporary sartorial practices were employed in arguments for the pre-­eminence of colour regimes. In terms of economic morality, assigning specified colours to different groups was presented as a means of diminishing consumption of expensive, and often imported, colours in dyes and fabrics, which would ‘contribute immensely to the purpose of economy’, and result in ‘a substantial saving for each and all’.30 The redeeming and ordering qualities of colours were equally straightforward with regard to social morality, and the need for a legible order. ‘If each and every Estate’, one author declared accordingly, was assigned ‘a particular colour’, then the ‘great abuse of the magnificence of dress’ which at present seemed to ‘rage unrestrained’ would effectively be thwarted.31 Such a colour-­coded regime, another author elaborated, with a distinct

The Ordering of Difference 119 reference to the need for identifiability, would make for a ‘visible difference’ between ‘Estates and Societies’.32 Finally, social colour schemes, and the sense of uniformity they created, were attributed formative qualities, familiar from the national morals and the strengthening effects of Swedes wearing Swedish clothes and not French. A likeness in colours, one author declared accordingly, would ‘shape a likeness in temperament’, and promote ‘an internal connectedness, a common Comradery and trust’ in society at large, just as it had allegedly done within other uniformed corps.33 The military with its sartorial uniformity stands out as the example to follow. A colourized society was likened to ‘a Garrison’, with its different military branches with their specific uniform colours: ‘One troupe will hold the other in respect, and each one will try to distinguish itself in fidelity and bravoure’ (those patriotic virtues that made for a victorious national character).34 There were dissenting voices. Departing from that very same and equally urgent call for a legible social order, the author of essay No. 3 condemned the thought of a colourized order. ‘To maintain’, the argument ran, ‘that each Collegium, Department, Guild, and so forth, should have their particular colour of dress’ would be ‘unreasonable’. Colours simply lacked the differentiating qualities required. Imagine, the argument continued, ‘that a Collegium chose a colour for itself’. There would be ‘no difference between the President, Councillors, Assessors, Secretary, Prosecutor, Clerk, Auscultator, and so forth, and the Beadles, the Watchmen, and so forth’. By wearing the same colour, they would wrongly appear as being of equal social standing and of one and the same rank, which would result in that dreaded confusion and ensuing disorder. The same perverted result would come from specific colours for the guilds. ‘There would be no difference between a merchant and his assistant, nor between a master and his apprentice’. ‘The assistant would soon be addressed as Mr  Merchant just like his employer’, and ‘the apprentice would soon be addressed as master, just like the master himself’, and that ‘would not do’.35 The less elaborate arguments against the use of colours presented in essay No. 64 put further emphasis on the complexity of social order and the difficulties involved in visualizing it. The ‘known Basic colours’ would simply not ‘suffice’ to muster up a ‘passably thorough Classification’ of the social order.36 These concerns for an insufficiently visualized order were also at play in the colour-­based proposals where the authors employed additional modes of differentiation, whether secondary colours or exclusive ornaments to distinguish the higher from the lower. If the president mentioned previously wore silk in his dress, the assessor wore gold embroideries on his chest, and the secretary wore a coloured sash over his shoulder, they would not be confused with the wool-­dressed, embroidery-­less and sash-­less beadle. As the authors specified the colours and their assigned wearers, the proposals offer further insights into early modern visual culture, and

120  The Ordering of Difference the semiotics and hierarchies at play. Starting off with semiotics, early modern colours were imbued with meaning. Over time, certain colours had been paired with certain connotations, spatial as well as sensual.37 Black had connotations of solemnity and mourning, but also of power and authority, not least in the ecclesiastical realm as the colour of the European clergy.38 Similarly, white signalled purity, as in virginity, virtuousness or infancy; purple and crimson (and related shades of red) signalled royalty and majesty, while yellow, although popular in the eighteenth century, was a colour with more negative connotations and even stigmatizing qualities, historically assigned to outcasts and the unwanted, such as Jews, who were already marked with yellow in medieval times.39 Multi-­coloured patterns were equally imbued with meaning. Stripes and striped fabrics had a long history of disorderly, even ungodly connotations (branded as ‘the Devil’s cloth’) and assigned to stigmatized categories such as criminals, the insane, prostitutes, and heretics.40 Colours could also be part of larger, semiotic systems, such as the liturgical colours, which all corresponded to phases in Christ’s life, marking the time of joy, of penance, and finally death and mourning, or have contextually defined meanings, such as red in Lancashire, white in Yorkshire, blue in Sweden, and red–white–blue in revolutionary France. These everyday meanings were at work in the essays. Black was repeatedly referred to as an ‘earnest’ or ‘Spiritual’ colour, regularly paired with the clergy, as their age-­old colour.41 Purple and red were referred to as ‘elevated’ colours, royal in connotation, while grey was understood as an agrarian colour with references to the soil, and blue as a particularly Swedish or somehow nationally charged colour, associated with the military, and also, as noted by one author, found on the ‘Coat of Arms of the Realm’.42 These colourized orders also presented more elaborate semiotic systems, which drew on a notion of correspondences between colours and certain characteristics of the intended wearer. The author of essay No. A2 offered several examples. The burgher estate should wear blue, as the military, to visualize its military capacities (and thus military connotations) as a town militia in the defence of their respective towns and cities. The black colour should be assigned to the clergyman, as, by way of those earnest and serious connotations, ‘a reminder of his steadiness and earnestness’. The white colour should, by way of a similar correspondence, be assigned to ‘the Judge’ as ‘a reminder of innocence and purity’. Medical doctors, turning to even more tangible correspondences, should wear olive green ‘equal to the concoctions of herbs from which most medicines are made’, while the surgeon should wear a reddish-­brown colour, which would not so easily be ‘ruined by their plentiful surgeries’.43 Drawing on that same correspondence between colours and the qualities of people, another author suggested that the judicial corps on central, regional, and local levels should wear white, ‘the pure colour of justice’,

The Ordering of Difference 121 while the military should wear the ‘vigorous’ colour of blue, and the mining peasants should be clad in the ‘iron-­grey’ colour.44 These semiotics also drew on more comprehensive ideological systems. Thus, the fundamental ideological principles of the order of estates, with the emphasis on the dignity of each estate and their specific functions in the body politic, were put to work in justifying the choice of colours. According to one author, who closely adhered to an order of four estates, the peasant estate should wear grey because that colour was ‘in accordance with their habits’ and ‘most functional for their way of life’, that is, dirty work in agricultural fields and pastures. The burgher estate should wear red to denote ‘their lively trades’, most likely referring to the exotic dyes from far-­away ports that were used in making that colour. For the clergy and the nobility, the age-­old practices and traditions of social order, handed down through history, were employed; the clergy should wear black since ‘the said Estate already wear that colour of clothing’, and the nobles should wear white ‘since that Colour has since Older days been worn by this Estate of the Realm’.45 The proposed colours were also motivated by everyday considerations, detached from any deeper meanings or connotations. The hands-­on utility of colours was one such practical consideration. It was on those grounds that one author proposed the colour ‘light blue-­grey’ for the new national dress. Fastened to the essay with a needle is a sample of the proposed fabric in the said colour (this is the only preserved textile sample in the collection). True, that colour was found on the Swedish coat of arms and was therefore suitable to be worn by Swedes in a Swedish dress. But that was not the fundamental reason for choosing it. Instead, the utility of that particular colour was stressed: that colour was, as made evident by ‘considerable experience’, the ‘strongest and most durable’ colour in terms of ability to ‘withstand water as well as sunshine, without deteriorating too much’. In short: it was a durable colour that would last for long, which, in turn, would be cost efficient and in line with the economic objectives of the reform.46 For the same reasons, but by reversed logics, another author strongly discouraged the use of black. It was, the argument ran, ‘one of the poorest Colours of them all’; it ‘collects more dirt and impurities’ than other colours, and it deteriorates too quickly, ‘turning almost brown’, with the ensuing need for frequent and costly re-­dyes.47 There was a specific sartorial practice that the authors recurrently called into question, namely the custom of wearing black for mourning. This was an age-­old practice. The prolonged periods of mourning at the royal courts of Europe at the deaths of royalties were spectacular, but the donning of black was a strong tradition in much broader segments of society as well.48 It was not the colour black and its function as a sartorial sign of mourning as such that was called into question; the critique was of an essentially economical nature and formed an integral part of the economic morality with its calls for restraints on unnecessary

122  The Ordering of Difference consumption. Changing the entire suit of clothes upon the death of a relative was, the argument ran, not economically justifiable. Such practices harmed household economies as well as national economy. Instead, and fully recognizing the cultural significance of black, the authors repeatedly proposed that mourning should be marked with black details, added to ordinary wardrobes: ‘black buttons and buttonholes’ that could easily be added and removed, ‘black trousers’ worn with ordinary coats and waistcoats, or, as the least intrusive alternative, ‘a black Gauze, longer or shorter, hanging from the hat, or tied around the arm’.49 Moving on to hierarchies, a basic and already mentioned differentiation presents itself in the deliberations, namely the very presence of colours. There are repeated suggestions to regulate and, in effect, limit the use of colours for those of lower social standing, specifically the peasantry. Specific colours, such as ‘blue, green, violet, and red’, should be banned from use by the peasantry. Other colours, to the same restricting effect, were reserved for the higher echelons of society, such as ‘Crimson and Scarlet’ for nobles.50 Another means for restricting the access and use of colours was to ban the use ‘foreign expensive Colour dyes’, and to instruct that the peasantry should only be allowed to use colour dyes that they themselves could make: those colours which the ‘peasant’s wife herself can dye her yarns in, make textiles with, and dress herself, her husband and her children with’.51 These restrictions lay bare some fundamental aspects of the hierarchies of colours in early modern societies. Not only were there coloured fabrics and uncoloured fabrics, there was also a quality-­based element of relativity at play. There was red, and then there was red. There was blue, and then there was blue. The field of home-­made dyes was indeed a broad and rich one. The authors themselves provided catalogues of colouring dyes readily available for the peasantry in nature. Club-­moss, birch leaves, and alder buckthorn bark produced tints of yellow; birch bark and blood roots produced tints of pink and red; bearberries and spiked willow produced tints of purple and blue; alder bark produced tints of brown; and so forth.52 Nevertheless, there was a definite, and brutally visualizing, line between expensively dyed fabrics and cheaply dyed ones. A bright red waistcoat, meticulously coloured by a professional master dyer from super-­fine dyes brought in from foreign shores, stood out next to a pale reddish jacket, coloured with collected roots in a boiling cauldron on the farm courtyard. The author of essay No. 61 emphasized the distinct visual effects of poorly dyed fabrics. Even when using ‘the more expensive dyes of cochineal, Indigo and green’, the domestic dyeing techniques of the peasantry—‘pernicious and lousy’—resulted in clothes that had an ‘unpleasant appearance’, which in turn made the peasant look ‘namby-­pamby in church’ and ‘lazy at work’.53 These restrictions went hand in hand with the logics of economic morals on contemporary disorders. The consuming behaviour of the lower classes,

The Ordering of Difference 123 not least the peasantry, had resulted in a dysfunctional economy, with the unbalanced and untenable relationship between production and consumption. Bans on foreign dyes, or even on the use of colours as such, would effectively keep the lower classes away from the commercial sphere of consumption, and detain them where they belonged, in the self-­sustained sphere of production. There, in the domestic household unit of production, they could dye their fabrics with the dyes they could make themselves.54 So, rather than a clear-­cut line between the coloured and the uncoloured, there was a difference between the more or less coloured, with a distinct qualitative aspect of the well-­coloured and the poorly coloured at play. This ideal world of colours is amply illustrated in the production of contemporary artist Pehr Hilleström. His painted suits on everyday life of people from all walks of life offer detailed insights into the sartorial layers of eighteenth-­century Sweden. From the quite uncoloured peasantry, neatly arranged in their homes (see Figure  3.1), working in the fields, or drunkenly celebrating the completed hay-­making (see Figure 4.4), to the moderately coloured maids and mamselles, polishing copper ware, spinning yarn, and inspecting eggs (see Figure 4.1), to the dazzling and

Figure 4.1  Pehr Hilleström, Testing Eggs: Interior of a Kitchen, c. 1770. Source: Nationalmuseum (Photo: Erik Cornelius/Nationalmuseum), public domain.

124  The Ordering of Difference

Figure 4.2  Pehr Hilleström, The Morning Toilette: Boudoir Scene, c. 1770. Source: Nationalmuseum (Photo: Nationalmuseum), public domain.

strikingly colourful higher echelons, in their boudoirs (see Figure 4.2), at their tea tables, and in royal interiors.55 These were the coloured orders that the authors had in mind, and these were the orders that they aimed at preserving in an orderly fashion. Beyond the differentiation between coloured/well-­ coloured and the uncoloured/poorly coloured, there were more specific hierarchical notions at play. As they assigned different colours to different social categories, the authors clearly valued colours differently, just as they valued people differently. Certain colours were deemed higher, more worthy, than other colours, and therefore deemed as more suitable for higher social categories. These hierarchies were far from clear-­cut, but the examples given allow for a sketchy reconstruction of the order of colours. Beginning with the polarities, there are high-­and low-­ranking colours. White, red, purple, blue, and, to a certain extent, black and shades of brown, were held high, and invoked to colour the elite and more distinguished categories in society.56 Conversely, grey was the recurring colour of the low, repeatedly

The Ordering of Difference 125 hailed as the ‘ancient’ and ‘traditional’ colour of the peasantry, sometimes specified as dark grey or ‘blackish’, and occasionally in variations such as melanges of black–white–grey. Apart from its connotations to the soil and to agriculture, grey obviously fit well into the ideal of the self-­ sufficient peasant household. It was, which was stressed, the natural and greyish shade of the black sheep’s wool, or more specifically of the wadmal fabric used by the peasantry.57 In the order of things, the grey peasant was the uncoloured (albeit not necessarily colourless) peasant. The natural grey of the fabric could be touched up and improved by domestic dyeing, but it was still grey.58 Between these polarities of high and low, there was a series of ‘middling’ colours that were used to denote the equally middling social categories, distinguished from the lowest social ranks, but inferior to the very highest: from moss green, olive green and olive brown, via light grey and steel blue, to yellow.59 Hierarchically ordered colours as presented in the essays can illustrate these notions in action. One author proposed a descending order of four colours: white, black, red, and dark grey.60 Another author proposed an order of eight colours, starting with blue, black, and green, moving on with light grey, white, olive green, and brown, and ending with the low and ‘blackish’ colour of the uncoloured wool.61 A third author proposed an order of nine colours: red, white, grey (most likely a dyed fabric other than wool), yellow, brown, blue, green, black, and again that low dark tint of ‘iron grey’.62 Although somewhat inconsistent regarding individual colours, the overall patterns of high and low are confirmed by other contexts of early modern colourizations. The differences in the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy (as well as in the Protestant one, although with fewer layers) were stressed through a similar scale: white for the Pope, scarlet for the cardinals, purple for the bishops, and black, grey, and russet for the regular clergy.63 Similarly, the three British orders of knighthood in the early modern period—the Garter, the Thistle, and the Bath—were visually distinguished by sashes in blue, green, and red, respectively.64 Returning to Sweden and the actual dress reform in 1778, it was not a coincidence that the colour red was chosen to mark the distinguished few who were introduced at court from the rest, nor that the colours light blue and white were chosen for the gala dress for men and women respectively.65 The complex nature of the hierarchical qualities of colours must be emphasized. Exclusivity and cost were important parameters, but they co-­existed and interacted with other parameters, not least the traditional values and instrumental implications inherent in the colours. Returning to the models of materiality and worth, colours were social phenomena: they were made, defined, and valued in specific social contexts and by standards set by overlapping aesthetic, economic, and social measurements.66 Consequently, black may not necessarily have been the most expensive colour to produce, and its apparent high status might in

126  The Ordering of Difference addition have drawn on tradition and its close relationship to, not least, the clergy. Similarly, the recurrent coupling of white and the nobility clearly drew on more than the costly process of bleaching fabrics: wearing white was, perhaps more than anything else, a bombastic manifestation, and an easily understood visualization, of a refined life of leisure, free from manual labour.67

Fabrics Fabrics were evidently infused with social meaning, and, as such, used as a means for sartorial differentiation by the 1773 authors. It would be ‘absurd’, one author asserted, to even suggest such a ‘ridiculous notion’, that ‘everyone, without distinction, should wear equally coarse and coloured fabrics’.68 The ‘best and finer fabrics’, another author decreed to the same effect, should ‘first and foremost’ be reserved for ‘Their Majesties, the Royal House, and for those who at or outside the Royal Court need to wear them for the honour of the Realm, the splendour of Court, the dignity of Offices, and for other such reasons’; ‘Everyone else’ should be content with less good, less fine fabrics.69 ‘The materials, types and fineness of fabrics’, a third author stated, should be chosen and worn by each and all ‘according to discretion, wealth, estate, and worth’.70 It is equally evident that colours and fabrics interacted closely in notions of visuality and social differentiation, effectively adding another layer to the distinction between well-­coloured and poorly coloured clothes. Just as there was red, and then there was red in terms of colour dyes and colouring techniques, there were red fabrics, and then there were red fabrics. Different fabrics, by their very quality and their weave, enhanced colours in different ways, resulting in dramatically different visual effects. The baron’s red waistcoat made of fine and lustrous silk would stand out next to the cobbler–apprentice’s red jacket, made of coarse and dull wool, even if the latter had been coloured by that same professional master dyer, using those same super-­fine cochineal dyes from the Americas. Similarly, although the colour grey was routinely assigned to the peasantry, there are instances where it, in different shades, was assigned to higher social groups, such as civil servants, clergymen, professors, and students. Alongside the quality of the dyes, the quality of the fabrics would create a visual difference. The grey wadmal of the poor, whether uncoloured or coloured, would make a different visual effect next to the grey broadcloth or cotton worn by the civil servant, or the grey silk fabrics worn by the courtier. This interplay allowed for a rather fine differentiation. While the author of essay No. 22 assigned ‘iron grey’ to the entire peasant estate, fabrics were brought in to make difference within that category. The lowlier peasantry was assigned grey wadmal, those serving at the mines were assigned grey broadcloth, while the ‘wealthy of this Estate’ were assigned ‘fine broadcloth’ in the same grey.71 Engaging in that same interplay, but

The Ordering of Difference 127 in a somewhat more subtle way, another author decreed that women serving in noble households should be allowed to wear the same silk fabrics as their ladies, but ‘without the least of purple colour or gold’. Thus, the noble lady herself, in her purple silk dress, would visually stand out in her equally, and in accordance with her own station, silk-­clad entourage.72 There are several examples of such interplays in contemporary Europe, beyond the 1773 essays. The colourized order of the Catholic Church was clearly emphasized by one in fabrics. Silks were worn by the higher echelons of scarlet and purple bishops and cardinals, while wool was the fabric assigned to the regular black and grey clergy.73 To a similar effect, but through the interplay between fabrics and furniture, the ranks of the Swedish court and government were visualized at state ceremonies (baptisms, coronations, sessions of four estates, funerals, etc.). The closer to the raised podium of the king’s throne someone was seated, the higher rank they had, and, accordingly, the higher dignity their furniture and the fabric it was covered in hand. On the podium, the king sat on a throne, clad in purple velvet. Below the throne, a few steps down but still on the podium, the dukes sat on chairs clad in blue velvet. Below the podium, the Senators of the Realm sat on tabourets clad in blue damask. The spectators, whether it was the court or the four estates, sat on benches clad in blue broadcloth.74 To explain the differentiating qualities of fabrics, a first and crude mode of hierarchical ordering was the repeatedly addressed need for a regulated use of certain fabrics, either by making the use of finer fabrics the exclusive right for the higher social ranks or by banning the use of such fabrics among the lower social strata. The opening quote of this sub-­chapter, with the claim to reserve the ‘best and finer fabrics’ for court society, exemplifies the first mode. To the same effect, another author suggested that silk and velvet, if not altogether and categorically banned, should ‘only and solely’ be allowed for ‘the most Distinguished’, whose ‘incomes could match the expense’.75 The latter mode of regulations often went beyond the very finest fabrics. One author drew up a list of fabrics that should be banned from use by peasants: ‘silk fabrics, coloured wadmal or charlack, Velvet pile, Plush, finer linen . . . Satins, Camelots and Kalmuchs’.76 Another author settled for a ban on ‘broadcloth and silk’ for peasants (‘other than by their women for their caps’, which probably referred to silk ribbons worn with headgear).77 Preserved rights or excluding bans: the net effect was the same. Both modes of regulation created a basic duality between the haves and the have-­nots, coinciding with the duality between the coloured and the uncoloured (or poorly coloured). This urge to regulate the use of fabrics corresponds to early modern sumptuary legislation in general and to Swedish sumptuary laws in particular. The quality of fabric allowed for different social orders, with

128  The Ordering of Difference particular attention paid to the lower orders, was at the core of Swedish sumptuary laws from the sixteenth century up to those still in force at the time of the 1773 essays.78 A torrent of bans emphasized an ever-­present insistence on social differentiation. The Swedish Act of 1720 banned ‘Servants and other lowly and poor People in Towns and on the Countryside’ from the use of silk fabrics, half-­silks, and ‘Holland Cloth’ (a fine, plain-­woven linen). The Act of 1731 decreed that the use of velvet, plush, and expensive silks was exclusively allowed for ‘Nobles, their equals, and their Wives and children’, while silk caps, hoods, muffs, and gloves were allowed for all, except domestic servants and the peasantry. The Act of 1746 lashed out particularly against disorderly journeymen and day labourers, decreeing forced military or public service as punishment for male sumptuary offences, while their female counterparts were to repent at the spinning house. In the Act of 1766, as a final example, the coercive regime was hardened still, as the unlawful use of ‘all silks and half-­silks, also for caps’ was forbidden for ‘poor Women and Maids’, on penalty of heavy fines and the stocks. The corporeal punishment was withdrawn in 1770, leaving just the fines.79 The degree to which early modern governments were actually able to enforce these laws and regulations remains largely uncertain, although the continuous flow of new laws would indicate that they were not overly effective.80 However, it is telling that the few known Swedish cases of judicial proceedings generally involved common people of the lower sorts. When the local authorities levied charges against parishioners in  the county of Asker in central Sweden in 1724 and 1725, seven women of lower or clearly moderate social standing were brought to court on charges of sumptuary offences. Some had worn silk caps, others had worn calico jackets, and yet others had worn lace that was broader than the law allowed. Three of the women were referred to as ‘maids’, and the remaining four were addressed as ‘wives’. One was the wife of a cavalryman, another of a gardener and two were unspecified. Their sentences, with fines of 200 silver dalers each, were nothing short of draconian (the sum equalled the price for some 20 cows), but as such, they vividly illustrate the perceived severity of the crimes committed.81 Looking ahead to the reform in 1778, fabrics remained a key issue. The reform was presented as an alternative route to failing sumptuary laws, but the regulating ambitions were largely the same. Based primarily on economic arguments, the new national dress was to be made from domestically produced fabrics; that was (in line with the 1773 proposals) one of the essential aspects of the officially defined ‘national’ element of a national dress. Even at court, particoloured silks were banned from female dress, while men were altogether banned from the use of silk, except for linings, sashes, and the characteristic red decorations (although preserved garments and inventories make clear that silks, unsurprisingly, continued to be appearing in male wardrobes alongside the decreed broadcloth).82

The Ordering of Difference 129 Returning to the regulating discourses in the essays, the lower social ranks, specifically the peasantry, were repeatedly limited to the use of homemade fabrics. They should be ‘denied the use of any fabrics other than those that they themselves can make, namely Leather and Wadmal’; they should ‘keep to wadmal and homespun’; they ‘should never be allowed to use anything other than that which they themselves can make from domestic produce and raw materials’. They should use fabrics ‘that are equal to their Estate and which they themselves can weave and make’, and they should be confined to the use of ‘wadmal, leather, and what else they can make themselves from wool and linen’.83 Homespun fabrics walked hand in hand with homemade dyes: the grey peasant was a peasant who wore homespun and home-­dyed (or undyed) grey wadmal. Again, this fed into the economic morality and the emphasis on the self-­sustained peasant household, kept in its productive sphere and away from non-­productive consumption in the commercial sphere. Turning to the more systematic and elaborate proposals for a visual differentiation through fabrics, these hierarchical qualities become more detailed. Disregarding the social categories and forms of ordering and simply focusing on the fabrics as they are proposed, from those assigned to the very highest to those assigned to the very lowest, distinctly sliding scales of fabrics start to appear (see Table 4.1). Consequently, one author assigned fabrics descending from silk and velvet through chintz, calicoes, and cotton, down to wool; another from silks, half-­silks, and linen to wool camlet, broadcloth, and wool down to wadmal; another from silks, to wool, camelhair, cotton and linen, down to wadmal; another from silks, to broadcloth and camelhair, down to wadmal; another from silk, to velvet, broadcloth, linen, cotton, and camelhair, to wool, linen, cotton, and camelhair, down to wadmal, leather, and homespun wool and linen; and yet another from silk and velvet, to wool, cotton, and linen, down to leather and wadmal.84 From these proposals, a hierarchy of fabrics can be deduced. As with colours, the polarities are readily identified. Silk fabrics and velvet were, without exception, held in the highest regard, solely— when not forbidden altogether—assigned to the very highest ranking social categories. On the opposite end of the spectrum were wadmal and Table 4.1  The Overlapping Intervals of Fabrics.

HIGH Silk Cotton Wool Linnen

MIDDLING Cotton Wool Linnen

LOW Wool Linnen Wadmal Leather

130  The Ordering of Difference leather. These were the epitome of low social standing, the equivalent of the colour grey, and the fabrics of the peasantry, of workmen and the lowest of the low. And, between the two, there were the middling fabrics—wools, cottons, and linens—assigned to the equally middling social categories.85 The author of essay No. 3 provides an illustrative example of these intervals. Two parallel regimes for order through fabrics were presented: one for women and one for men. Tellingly regarding the gender construction of the time, the female order was based on household affiliation, while the male order was based on professional affiliation. For women, there were four categories. The highest ranking, that is ‘the wives and children of the Knights and Nobles’, were the only ones to be allowed silk and velvet in gowns and ‘grand’ headgears. ‘Other wives and Mamselles’, and ‘the Mamselles and Maidens’ serving at noble households’, were also to be allowed silks and camelhair (paired with equally lower ‘simpler’ headgears). All ‘lower Wives, Madames, and Maidens’ should be deprived all use of ‘silk, velvet, and the like’, and instead use calicos. The lowest group of women were ‘maids’. The author differentiated between maids in noble households and ‘other maids’. The former, as a mark of their noble employment, were allowed calicos, but not of the finer quality that was allowed for the women in the third group; the latter were restricted to cotton fabrics, deprived the patterns of the calicos, and homemade fabrics (i.e. linen and wool).86 Turning to men, the four categories and their visualizing order of fabrics were repeated with certain adjustments. Nobles were allowed to wear silks. That was as far as the male use of silks went. In the second rank, ‘the more distinguished Persons of Estate’ should wear ‘the finest broadcloth’. Moving further down to the ‘lower persons of the Burghers and State and Private servants’, the quality of fabric was equally dropped to ‘poorer broadcloth’. And finally, the lowest ranks of ‘porters, hinds, Lackeys, coachmen, and so forth’ were assigned ‘coarser broadcloth’.87 These particularizing adjectives—‘finest’, ‘poor’, ‘coarse’—are recurrent in the essays, with variants such as ‘fine’, ‘plain’, and, again, ‘homespun’ as the lowest form of any fabric (usually referring to forms of linen or wool, as the domestically produced raw materials). They add yet another stratifying aspect to the hierarchies of fabrics. Again, Pehr Hilleström’s scenes from daily life illustrate these differentiating qualities. The basic distinctions appear in his depictions of peasants and aristocrats, with grey wadmal fabrics around the peasant hearth in People from Mora in Darlacarlia (1782–1810, see Figure 3.1), and the colourful and rustling silks in the aristocratic salon in The Morning Toilette: Boudoir Scene (c. 1770, see Figure  4.2). The finer distinctions are equally present. The lowly kitchen maid downstairs, with her cotton and linen jacket, petticoat, and apron in Testing Eggs: Kitchen Interior (c. 1770, see Figure 4.1), is readily recognized as such next to the higher standing,

The Ordering of Difference 131

Figure 4.3 Pehr Hilleström, A Lady Sitting and Reading, the Chambermaid Bringing Tea, 1775. Source: Photograph Nordiska museet (Birgit Brånvall), Stockholm.

and more elegantly dressed chambermaid upstairs, waiting on her lady in the drawing-­room, wearing a fashionable robe with shiny fabrics in A Lady Sitting and Reading, the Chambermaid Bringing Tea (1775, see Figure 4.3). Compared to colours, with their inherent semiotic connotations alongside their economic cost, the hierarchies of fabrics were more unambiguously determined by economic value.88 Silk was the most precious fabric, commanding a high price, and should therefore be worn by the highest social echelons. Cotton, linen, and wool were all mid-­range in terms of cost to produce and procure and should therefore be worn by the middling sorts. Wadmal, along with leather, finally, was not only the least valuable fabric of the lowest degree of refinement, but also the fabric that was most suited for household production. Returning to the gendered aspects of early modern sartorial culture, fine fabrics and their higher economic values were at the centre of the

132  The Ordering of Difference notion that women were particularly problematic. The view of women as prone to excess spending and fashion changes permeated all matters relating to dress and physical appearances. But as the authors specified the objects of this disorderly behaviour, fabrics were recurrently emphasized, specifically and foremost the female inability and unwillingness to refrain from conspicuous fabrics, in particular from that epitome of sartorial immorality, foreign and expensive silk fabrics. Furthermore, and closely intertwined with the notion of female weaknesses, fabrics— specifically silk—were equally often the object of the concessions and special arrangements that were made for female dress, allowing women extra room for sartorial extravagance than men.89 In this sliding scale of fabrics, then, a nobleman or a wealthy merchant would be recognized by his silk, or at least finer broadcloth, but he would never be seen (or recognized as such) in wadmal. Conversely, a peasant or a workshop servant would not be associated with (or recognized by) silk or those other finer fabrics, but with (and by) leather breeches and less refined wool jackets.

Cuts and Styles The cuts and styles of clothes touched upon the heart of contemporary fashions, leading straight into the very core of the question posed by the Royal Patriotic Society: how to stem the tides of changing fashions with all the disorderly behaviour and moral concerns attached to them. For instance, the complaining husband with his vain ‘womenfolk’—hiding away as if they were naked every time they went to town, waiting to be dressed up in the latest fashions—pinpointed milliners and tailors among the ‘henchmen’ of fashion, always ready to ‘reduce or widen hoop skirts’, or to ‘lower or raise the trains’.90 His own male dress was not spared from these rapid changes between ‘puffy or flat chests’, ‘stiff or baggy tails’, ‘deep or shallow hems’, ‘slim or wide breeches’, ‘long or short sleeves’, ‘open or sealed lapels’, and so forth.91 In the mere period of the last 50 years, another author exclaimed, fashionable dress, as worn by ‘better People’, has been the object of ‘such strange alterations’ that have caught the bemused attention of ‘every reasonable person, Philosopher and Patriot’.92 These changing styles were also the recurrent object of assault in the ridiculing condemnations of contemporary sartorial practices in the essays, with styles going in and out of fashion, driven on by those ‘foolish idiocies’ conjured up by ‘Embroiderers, Tailors, and Merchants’, and the flock-­like behaviour and those fops and dandies who tirelessly tried to keep up with them.93 In this flow of deliberations and considerations, the anatomy of eighteenth-­ century dress with its repertoire of models and garments appears. Men dressed in the characteristic three-­part suit, with a coat, a waistcoat (with or without sleeves) and breeches. The coat is often specified in its various models, such as ‘a frock-­coat’ (surtout), ‘jacket’ (tröja),

The Ordering of Difference 133 and ‘dolman jacket’ (Huzar-­Tröja or hussar). The essays also exemplify the catalogue of male outer garments, such as ‘overcoat’ (kapprock or kappa), ‘cloak’ (mantel), and ‘fur coat’ (päls).94 The corresponding female attire consisted of a petticoat (kjol/kjortel), a jacket (tröja or kofta), or a bodice (väst or liv), and, often, an apron (förkläde). There were also specified models of female dress, often referred to by their French names, such as ‘saqu’, ‘saloup’, ‘robe de ronde’, ‘contouche’, and ‘pellice’.95 Equally present is the strict hierarchy that permeated these garments, and which was inherent to eighteenth-­century sartorial culture. Again, the very presence of tailoring was a social marker in itself. The more added value any piece of clothing had beyond the basic user value—be it pleats, trains, or draperies—the more exclusive they appeared, and the more status they conferred on their wearers.96 Gowns with trains stood out next to jackets and petticoats, just as a well-­tailored coat, with fine cuffs, fashionably cut over the chest and down the back, would stand out next to a simpler coat, deprived, not only of the richer colours and the more exclusive fabrics, but also of the added elegance of pleated slits, decorative cuffs, and hidden seams. The homemade garment was the lowest of low. More specifically, there was a hierarchy of dress styles. It had been shaped and refined, and had visualized social difference throughout the previous centuries, and it would continue to do so well into the next century. There were slight national variations, but it was a general Western European order. It was basically a dual system, which distinguished between the high and the low. There was a common dress (or popular dress) for the low, and there was a fashionable dress (in Swedish research referred to as modedräkt, that is ‘fashion dress’, or högreståndsdräkt, roughly ‘dress of the higher estates’). The former was worn by the vast majority, while the latter was preserved for an exclusive social elite, with its most refined form in the lavish court suits and robes worn by European royalty and aristocratic courtiers. The differences were most prominent in female dress. While the common dress consisted of petticoat, jacket or bodice, and apron, the fashionable dress consisted of stately gowns and robes with hoops, stomachers, trains, elaborate draperies, and decorative stitches galore. The male dress was the same for high and low: coat, waistcoat, and breeches. The fashionable dress stood out by means of its advanced and fashionable style—with the fit, length, and width of the individual garments—and, more than anything, through the exclusive fabrics, colour coordination, and lavish accessories, such as embroideries, buttons, and the ultimate mark of gentility and nobility: the sword.97 This duality is clearly discernible in Pehr Hilleström’s paintings. In the rural scene Hay-­Making Celebrations at Svartsjö (c. 1780), with a romanticized depiction of peasants celebrating the completion of haymaking at Svartsjö Royal Palace outside Stockholm, with the Dowager Queen’s court, dressed in the new national dress, amusedly looking on from safe

134  The Ordering of Difference

Figure 4.4  Pehr Hilleström, Hay-­Making Celebration at Svartsjö, c. 1780. Source: Photograph Nordiska museet (Mats Landin), Stockholm.

distance, we see the lowest form of the common dress (see Figure 4.4). The men are clad in breeches, waistcoats, and long coats or shorter jackets. The women are uniformly dressed in foot-­length petticoats, jackets or sleeve-­less bodices, with aprons tied around the waists, and they are all wearing the characteristic cap, bindmössa (a small round-­stitched headpiece used by peasant women throughout the Nordic countries in early modern times). Turning to another royal palace—Fredrikshof and a door panel that Hilleström made, in the drawing-­room scene Gustavian Style Interior with Cardplayers (1779)—the fashionable dress worn by the highest echelons inside these elevated milieus appear at full strength (see Figure  4.5). Painted one year into the 1778 reform, the national dress is worn by the man seated on the left of the table, and by the man and woman to the far right, while the rest of the party, along with the lady facing away in front of the mirror, illustrate the persistence of the traditional French dress, with shiny silk robes with sack backs, trains, and hoop skirts, and equally shiny and colour-­coordinated male surtouts, waistcoats, and breeches, all further enhanced by tassels and braids. This duality was referred to by the 1773 authors. The common dress was more or less prosaically invoked as such clothes that ‘in days of

The Ordering of Difference 135

Figure 4.5  Pehr Hilleström, Gustavian Style Interior with Cardplayers, 1779. Source: Nationalmuseum (Photo: Nationalmuseum), public domain.

yore were worn by such people, namely cap, linen jacket and petticoat’, or—for men—as ‘that fashion’ that was used by ‘our peasantry’, specified as coat, waistcoat, and breeches, but also more explicitly in terms of the social standing of wearer, as a ‘peasant dress’ and, referring to the cut of an individual garment, a ‘peasant jacket’.98 The fashionable dress worn by the higher social echelons was similarly phrased as ‘the dress, or fashion, worn at His Royal Majesty’s court’, or the dress worn by ‘better People’, but also more explicitly and to the point regarding the elevated nature of its cuts, as ‘the gran[de] Modes’.99 Alas, the sartorial realities of late eighteenth-­century dress were more complex, and the hierarchies of cuts and styles were far more problematic, than this clear-­cut duality between a high and a low would suggest. They describe two extremes. Certainly, the common cuts of the lowly crofter and his wife, as they drudged on their patch, were clearly set apart from the fashionable dress of the count and his countess as they headed for an assemblé at the royal court. But there was a wide range of hybrids between them. Between those crofters and aristocrats, the mayor and his wife—as well as the professor and his wife, the East-­Indies’ merchant and his wife, and the secretary at the Collegium of War and his wife— were visually distinguished by way of their fashionable, albeit not quite stately or courtly, styles of dress. Swedish textile–historian Berit Eldvik aptly describes this unruly range of middling dress as ‘fashionable common dress’ (also as ‘bourgeois dress’): that is, variants and mutations of a common dress which had taken on and appropriated fashionable cuts and details from the fashionable dress.100 English historian Aileen Ribeiro similarly emphasizes this unruly range of dress styles in the larger European context, in which ‘the middle and professional classes’, depending on their status and resources, wore clothes that were ‘recognizably

136  The Ordering of Difference imitative of current fashions’.101 Disregarding the complex issue of imitation and emulation from below, the point to be made is that there were, in the words of Daniel Roche, sartorial ‘intermediaries’ at work, interacting and making social claims, between the ideal types posed by the extremes of the very high and the very low.102 Again, Pehr Hilleström illustrates the point. His preferred motif was not the peasant or the aristocrat (although he had a particular interest in regional modes of peasant dress, much in line with that element of peasant romanticism in early Swedish nationalism).103 His recurrent motif was those middling, often urban, groups of varying standing, and— accordingly—dressed in varying styles. The painting A Maid Taking Soup from a Pot (1770s) depicts just that (see Figure 4.6). It is a familiar scene with a maid at work in a kitchen, wearing the familiar set of jacket,

Figure 4.6  Pehr Hilleström, A Maid Taking Soup From a Pot, 1770s. Source: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Ordering of Difference 137 petticoat, and apron. But the cut of her dress, the evidently fine fabric notwithstanding, markedly stands out compared to the simplicity of the ideal common dress. Her jacket is fashionably tailored, closely fitted on the upper body, with elegantly (and far from merely instrumental) laced half-­long sleeves, and volumes of draped fabric in falling pleats over the back (further emphasized by an artfully draped apron), over an equally fashionable petticoat with what would appear as bobbin-­lace trimmings along the hem.104 On The Milliner (c. 1785) the motif moves upwards in social hierarchy, to the illuminated cabinet of an apparently wealthy household (see Figure  4.7). A  young woman, dressed in a blue bodice with tailored and fashionable décolletage and sleeves, and a white fichu draped over the neck and chest, sits by the candlelight, inspecting the

Figure 4.7  Pehr Hilleström, The Milliner, c. 1785. Source: Nationalmuseum (Photo: Nationalmuseum), public domain.

138  The Ordering of Difference goods. The milliner herself, presenting her goods, is equally fashionable in her light blue pelisse with fur trimmings. This unruly spectacle spelled potential disorder and its incarnations in contemporary sartorial realities were the very stuff of the moral concerns voiced by the authors. Whether social concerns about people dressing in styles above their standing, or economic anxieties about people spending beyond their means on expensive alterations of their wardrobes to keep up with fashions, they blurred the legibility of social hierarchies. When the authors addressed the ideal order of styles, it was mostly done to raise attention to problems and transgressions within it. Thus, the author referring to ‘the dress, or fashion’ worn at the royal court did so to address the problem of ‘the use’ and ‘aping’ of that dress outside (or rather below) the ranks of court, and the author referring to ‘the gran[de] Modes’ did so to deliver an biting critique of the clergy, ‘who nowadays are too far gone in in splendour and Fashions’, and who, presumptuously, wore ‘the gran[de] Modes of the most distinguished’.105 The proposed solutions followed logically: regulations of the use of cuts and models. These calls for bans and exclusive rights constitute a basic ordering by means of styles. Preserving certain dress models and garments for certain social categories, aimed at ensuring a socially tailored, and thus legible, social order. Stately gowns (such as the robe de rond) were repeatedly and explicitly preserved for the nobility, the court and ‘the most distinguished women’, while women below that very highest social segment should be restricted to the use of common dress. The regulating calls sometimes moved beyond the basic duality, acknowledging the finer differences in ranks within the common spectre. Thus, one author asserted that ‘Magistrates’ should be allowed to have ‘gatherings and pleats’ on the sides of their coats.106 Another author proposed a differentiation between nobles and burghers on the one hand, and clergy and peasants on the other, allowing men of the former estates (but not the latter) the use of ruffles, and the women of the former two (but not the latter) the use of stays.107 Alongside the calls for social differentiation, there were also regulations based on more instrumental arguments. One such example is the author who suggested that day labourers in towns should wear ‘short’ jackets, rather than longer ones, since such a model would better suit their ‘daily work’ and be less of a hindrance. The net effect was nonetheless a visualized difference: in a world of long coats, the day labourer, in his short jacket was made visible and readily identifiable for all.108 These concerns were an integral part of early modern sumptuary discourse. In Tudor England, the yards of fabric allowed for different garments were regulated according to social standing, in an attempt to order the kinds of garments used and amount of tailoring involved. The more exclusive the dress—with trails, pleats, and drapery—the more fabric was required.109 Moving on to eighteenth-­century Sweden, sumptuary laws

The Ordering of Difference 139 sought to uphold the duality between the common dress and the fashionable dress. In 1731, the use of hoop skirts were reserved for ‘women of distinction’, and explicitly banned from use by ‘lowly [women] and domestic servants’, thus depriving the latter of the use of a garment that was essential to contemporary female fashionable dress.110 Looking at the 1778 reform, it too sought to lay down that duality in dress, and to preserve the fashionable female cuts and models for the socially elevated. The model reserved for the ladies of court, that is, the longer trains and the virago sleeves, all represented fashionable dress, and, alongside the red details, visually distinguished them from lowlier women. The differences in rank were meticulously asserted in the length of the trains; the official ordinance on the new dress decreed that the trains on a court dress should be three ‘qwarter’ (approximately 45 cm), while only half as long (1½ ‘qwarter’) on the common dress.111 Though ever present in the 1773 essays, cuts and dress styles were rarely used in more elaborate systems for differentiation. Rather, the notion of duality, and the social connotations of certain models and individual garments, formed an implicit backdrop, while other modes of differentiation were employed as the explicit and primary means for more elaborate ordering. Cuts mattered, but they rarely played the first violin in the sartorial regime. Essay No. 59 exemplifies the state of things. The proposed order of four ‘Classes’ has been addressed before, with its complex mix of social, economic and administrative categories, governed by a mix of rank, status, and wealth. The proposed sartorial regime was equally complex, and it involved styles. In line with contemporary manners of dress, this was not so much the case for men. In classes 1–3—ranging from high-­ ranking state servants down to ‘lowlier’ members of the clergy and the burgher estate and ‘less wealthy’ merchants and proprietors—men were ascribed with the standard eighteenth-­century male attire, with a ‘coat, waistcoat, shirt, overcoat, or fur coat’ (and most likely, but not specified, breeches). The system was more elaborate for women, closely adhering to that notion of duality between high and low cuts. Women in classes 1 and 2 were assigned fashionable robes (the ‘roberong’, i.e. robe de ronde), while women in the third class were assigned the common dress, ‘a jacket and a petticoat’. Finally, men and women of the forth class— ‘the Peasantry’—were restricted to the simplicity of their ‘presently worn models of dress’, but without the finery of ‘pleats in coats and jackets’, and with ‘hooks and eyes’ instead of buttons.112 Certainly, this made for a visual difference between the four classes— but apparently not a sufficiently clear difference, according to the said author. Additional orders of fabrics, colours, and ornaments were employed to play that first violin on top of the base-­line provided by cuts and styles. Fabrics were used to differentiate between the silk-­clad women of the highest two classes, the wool-­, linen-­, and cotton-­clad women of the third class, and the wadmal-­clad women of the lowly peasantry.

140  The Ordering of Difference Colours differentiated the men in the second class from the men in the first class, while that all-­familiar and inescapably low colour grey marked out the peasant. Finally, an elaborate system of gold and silver braids on cuffs and collars differentiated between the falling ranks within the first class.113 Thus, simplicity of homemade garments marked out the peasant next to his social superiors. But it did so in concert with the simplicity of homespun wadmal, and the simplicity of home-­dyed grey, with the added simplicity of a plain coat where others had pleats, and of hooks and eyes where others had buttons and button holes.

Trims and Ornaments The fourth and final mode of sartorial differentiation was trims and ornaments, that is the array of material decorations—embroideries, braids, lacings, insignias, and so forth—that were applied on the defined fabric in its set colours and style of a dress. Again, ornaments were part of an established repertoire of sartorial differentiation. They had historically been used to signal authority. The most evident example was the military ranks. Hand in hand with the need for legible uniforms to discern friends from foes ran the need for legible signs for command on and off the battlefield. Whereas everyone wore basically the same uniform, trims, and ornaments differentiated between the ranks of commanders and commanded. The rank and authority of the individual officer were declared and made legible from the quantity and quality of the ornaments worn on his uniform: the number of leaves, stripes, and braids on the one hand, and the material of their making (gold, silver, brass, etc.) on the other. The higher ranking and the more commanding the officer, the larger the quantities and the more precious the quality of the ornaments worn.114 Closely related to ornaments, and an equally important part of that visual totality that made up a person’s physical appearance, were the various accessories worn by eighteenth-­century men and women. They file past in the many calls for regulations in the 1773 essays as the objects of economic, social, national, and religious concern: shoe and knee buckles, jewellery and trinkets, wigs, swords, walking sticks, tassels, chignons, false hair, ruffles, and so forth.115 The urge to regulate the use of such objects clearly reflects the social meanings inferred to them. In this visual culture, a rapier represented social standing (nobility) and corporate belonging (military), and therefore, it was not for everyone to carry.116 In terms of the differentiating workings of dress ornaments in the 1773 essays and the notions of visual hierarchies at play, two main features stand out. Firstly, ornaments were rarely employed for elaborate systems of visualization.117 More often, they were added to other and more primary modes of differentiation, in order to allow for additional and more detailed differentiation within the framework set by those other modes. Secondly, and reflecting the notion of authority infused in them, in the

The Ordering of Difference 141 few instances where ornaments were employed as the primary means of differentiation, they were intimately linked with administrative hierarchies, and to visualize ranks and levels of command in contexts of power and authority. Essay No. 59, with its notably complex sartorial regime, illustrates the use of ornaments as added modes of additional differentiation. The four classes were differentiated by a combination of dress styles and fabrics, with sliding degrees of exclusivity from robes de ronde in silk down to pleat-­less coats in wadmal. Added to this basic sartorial regime, the author proposed additional differentiation within the four classes, using colours and—finally, on top of it all—ornaments. While colours would differentiate between the similarly attired men of the first and second classes, ornaments—in turn, and introducing the administrative ranks— would visualize the differences in ranks between the higher civil servants of the, in terms of styles and fabrics, uniform first class. The very highest ranking men, ranks 1–18 in the official table of ranks, would wear gold braids on their coat cuffs and collars. The rest would follow: ranks 19–31 should wear gold braids, but only on the coat cuffs; ranks 32–37 should wear braids on cuffs and collars, but in silver; and ranks 38–40 should wear silver braids, but only on the cuffs.118 Similarly, one author proposed that, in a sartorial regime of colourized corporate groups, retired members of the armed forces should be differentiated from those still in active service by way of differently coloured lining and cuffs, and, turning to ornaments, yellow stripes on their waistcoats. The differentiating effect was further emphasized as the author proposed that this ‘honorary attire’ should be to preserved for those who had served for an excess of 20 years; all others would do with a plain uniform stripped of the distinguishing ornaments.119 Another author proposed a similar regime of colours for corporate groups, but recognized the need for additional ‘Signs’ for further differentiation. Hat ornaments offered the options: ribbons of different colours worn at the crowns provided the required differentiation within the coloured categories.120 Returning to those gendered patterns in sartorial practices, and the notion of women as not only more prone but also more in need of differentiation than men, trims, and ornaments, alongside special allowances in fabrics, were a useful means for the purpose. One author, championing a regime of colours, proposed that the contemporary abuse in female coiffures would be replaced by a set form of ‘hats or caps’, and that these headgears in turn should be equipped with ‘signs’ that distinguished noble women from ‘the wives of merchants, artisans and petty burghers’. The hairdresser’s segregating work was to be replaced by that of the hatter.121 Equally concerned with the visual distinction of women of higher standing, another author proposed that a regime of colourized corporate bodies was supplemented with a system of ornaments, where ‘The most distinguished Ladies of the Realm’, down to ‘the Wives of

142  The Ordering of Difference Company Officers and their equals’, would be granted ‘an additional distinction’, such as ‘something brightly shining on the Bodice’. Other women of lower standing could wear the same colours as these high ladies in accordance to the corporate belonging of their husbands, but ‘without the least added sign of distinction’.122 Moving on to the administrative connotations and authority-­related nature of ornaments, essay No. 60 stands out. Here, the only elaborate and systematic sartorial regime with ornaments as the primary mode of differentiation was presented. The author explicitly stated that the applied ornamentations alone should make difference, and that ‘everyman’ should wear the colour of his choice, and, except for a general ban on silks and satin, whichever fabric he wished. The proposed regime referred to the ranks of state administration and was based on a combination of embroideries and braids on coats and waistcoats.123 Departing from a revised version of the 1714 table of ranks for military and civil offices, the author considered 11 ranks (see Table 2.4). They ranged from the very highest ranks, with the senators of the realm, the generals, admirals, and field marshals (these were considered ‘above rank’, and thus preceded the actual first class of the order) via the rows of bishops and chancellors, governors and quartermasters, secretaries and deputy judges, all the way down to the ‘Second Lieutenants’ and ‘Commissaries of the Collegium of Commerce’ of the lowest rank.124 Using sliding degrees of applied decorations, the hierarchies of rank were visualized. A president of the first rank class was to wear ‘gold embroideries on the front, back and sides of his coat, on his cuffs and on his pocket flaps’, with ‘gold thread button holes and buttons’, and ‘embroideries on the sides and on the pocket flaps’ of his waistcoat, again adorned with ‘gold thread button holes and buttons’. The chancellor of the court in the second class would wear ‘identical’ embroideries and sets of buttons, but, stepping down in quality, in silver. A marshal of the court of the third class would wear—high quality, but stepping down in quantity— a ‘broad golden braid on his coat and waistcoat, on the pocket flaps and on the back, and on the cuffs of the coat, with gold thread buttons and button holes’, while a chamberlain of the fourth class would wear an identical decoration, but, stepping down in quality, in silver. And thus continued the falling scales of quantities and qualities of embroideries, braids, and metals, all the way down through the ranks, to the said commissary of the lowest class, whose decorations were reduced to ‘plain silver or silver-­plated buttons in the coat and a thin silver braid on the waistcoat and on the pocket flaps, with silver thread in the button holes’.125 By adding a specific decoration to the uniforms, the members of the military ranks were visually distinguished from their civil counterparts. The author calls them ‘balletter’, which most likely refers to vertical stripes.126 All generals were to wear silver embroideries like those worn

The Ordering of Difference 143 by the second civil class, but with the differentiating addition of ‘embroidered silver balletter on each side [of their coats], around the buttons and the button holes’ and an additional ‘3 balletter on the pocket flaps, 3 on each cuff, and 3 on each side on the back’. Officers ranking from colonels down to second lieutenants were all to wear an identical set of balletter on their coats—on the lapels, underneath the lapels, on the pocket flaps and the cuffs—without any additional gold or silver ornaments on the waistcoats (although colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors were allowed gold or silver thread in the waistcoat buttonholes).127 Leaving the realm of clothes, but steadfast in the visual world of appearances, the author included the ornamentation of coaches in the proposed system of ornaments, ‘for the sake of distinction’, as it was phrased. The ranks visualized by the clothes that entered halls and paraded in galleries should be equally visualized and legible in the traffic to, from, and around the power hotspots of the royal capitol and regional seats of government. The two highest military and civil ranks, and they alone, were allowed gilded coaches, ‘around the coach windows and doors, and on all four corners’, and also, equally visualizing, to have tassels on the horses’ heads, while gilded coach undersides were an exclusive privilege of their excellencies the senators of the realm. Again, in its elaborate nature, the essay is a rather singular example in the collection. But it reflects on and vividly illustrates those large-­ scale processes of militarization, centralization, and bureaucratization in European state formation at the time. The presence and centrality of state servants as a social category in the social imaginaries of the 1773 essays have already been emphasized. Here are the visual expressions of those socio-­political processes with the well-­known tendencies towards sartorial uniformity in the state ranks. The military idiom of dress had already appeared in the 1760s, as described by Danish historian Gunner Lind: ‘Uniforms became more and more fashionable, in Denmark as in the rest of Europe’, and during the decades around 1800 ‘a very large number of civilians got a service uniform patterned on the military traditions’.128 The repeated calls for colourized regimes for the branches and departments of government in the essays exemplify these sartorial trends. But in essay No. 60, they are particularly pronounced and employed in a sartorial regime with civil as well as military uniforms, based on a condensed form of established military signs of rank: ornaments worn on an otherwise uniform and homogenous dress. The duality that characterized social imaginaries based on rank stands out: the fundamental difference made was between the commanding ranks of the official table of ranks on the one hand, and the commanded population on the other. The former were effectively visualized and easily legible by the presence of embroideries and other ornaments on their uniforms, while the latter, whose form of dress the author flatly left aside, were equally visualized

144  The Ordering of Difference and recognized by the corresponding lack of such embroideries. On a given day, on a given street, there would be no hesitation or confusion as to who was who. Beyond that political–administrative divide between the commanding and the commanded—between the rulers and the ruled, between those in authority and those subjected to it—with undiluted attention the author was occupied with the differentiation of ranks and authority within the category of servants of state. That difference was not concerned with social class or economic wealth, but solely with administrative rank.129 There could very well be noblemen, burghers, and clergymen in those ranks, and there could very well be those who were richer than others, those who owned more than others, and those who were more educated than others; but none of those differences were deemed necessary to be sartorially visualized.

Trying to Re-­Order Colours, fabrics, styles, and ornaments: these were the modes employed for a visual differentiation in dress. There was obviously a great degree of understanding of the shifting values of sartorial materiality, which enabled sartorial hierarchies of high and low, with a middling level in between, to intelligibly visualize social hierarchies of the high and the low, and the middling in between. Quantities and qualities were key. More and finer signalled worth, rank, and wealth. But additional variables clearly played in alongside cost, such as culturally constructed connotations of certain colours and fabrics, as well as of certain styles and ornaments. Beyond these hierarchies of values, on a more general level, certain patterns in the workings of the different modes are discernible. The preference for colours stands out. It is not merely the most employed mode of sartorial differentiation, assigning specific colours to defined social categories, but also the most versatile method as employed by the authors. Colours are found in all sorts of orders and ordering regimes. They were deployed to visualize difference in line with the structuring logics of the estates; grey with its soil-­connotations would mark out the cultivating peasant, the trade-­related red marked out the merchant burgher, and black with its solemn and serious connotations would mark out the clergyman. These semantic qualities were equally utilized in orders of corporate bodies, effectively marking out categories by their field of action: the herbal green for medical doctors, the white of innocence for judges, a blood-­tinted brown for surgeons, and so forth. Colours were not that prominent for visualizing orders of rank, but they were indirectly used in terms of the colour effects at work in falling orders of metals: from yellow gold and white silver, down to the yellow colour of brass and the white colour of tin. In terms of wealth-­based orders of class, finally, the

The Ordering of Difference 145 costliness of different colours and colour dyes was assigned to mark out the wealth of its wearer: from general and self-­regulating arrangements for each and all to wear the colours they could afford, to the colour bans issued for the grey and poor peasant. Compared to colours, the use of fabrics, cuts, and ornaments was more specific in terms of ordering. Certainly, these patterns reflected discernible preferences, and not ruling principles or clear-­cut laws. Nonetheless, they mirrored aspects of early modern visual culture. Fabrics were mainly (albeit not exclusively) utilized to visualize social worth. Those descending intervals of fabrics—from silks and fine broadcloths, via cotton and linen, down to wadmal and leather—were allotted to wearers of equally descending social worth, with nobles dressed in silks or fine broadcloth, burghers dressed in broadcloth or linen, and peasant dressed in crude wadmal. Similarly, styles were in the main utilized for differentiation of worth and social status. It was a basic differentiation between the fashionable higher echelons and the common attire of the rest, with explicit restrictions on fashionable dress models (particularly for women and the use of courtly gowns) and dress details referring to the amounts of tailoring allowed. Finally, trims and ornaments were predominantly used for orders of ranks in the administrative realms of shifting authority, drawing directly on an established system of signs within the military ranks, and broadening its use into the ranks of civil administration and court society. However, the fundamental lesson regarding early modern visual culture does not refer to the workings of individual sartorial modes for differentiation. Instead, the mixing and constant interplay between those modes was key in social differentiation and visualization. A peasant was not recognized by the colour grey alone. That colour grey interacted with his homemade dress style, crude fabrics, and low status ornaments, such as hooks instead of buttons. The colour grey worn on a well-­tailored surtout in broadcloth would signal something altogether different. Similarly, the nobleman was not recognized by silk fabrics alone, but equally so by the fashionable and tailored cuts of that silk, the fine and well-­dyed colours, and the elaborate and (again) colourful embroideries on details such as buttonholes, pocket flaps, collars, and cuffs. Sartorial modes, in turn, interacted with other material and non-­material modes of differentiation within a larger visual regime. That grey and wadmal-­clad peasant was further denoted and recognized by walking on foot (or perhaps riding his oxen-­drawn cart for longer journeys), by drinking beer and aquavit with his black bread, and by his sunburned neck and face. Accordingly, the silk-­clad count would be further recognized as such by riding on horseback, in a horse-­drawn carriage, or by being carried through the urban space in a sedan chair, by drinking wine with his white bread, and by his pale complexion.

146  The Ordering of Difference

Notes 1. PS, Proceedings, No. 61. Parts of this chapter were published in earlier versions in Mikael Alm, ‘Making a Difference: Sartorial Practices and Social Order in Eighteenth-­Century Sweden’, Costume 50:1 (2016), 42–62. 2. See e.g., Proceedings, No. 3. John Simpson and Jennifer Speake, eds., Oxford Concise Dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 46. 3. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 29, A5. 4. Simpson and Speake, eds., Oxford Concise Dictionary of Proverbs, 94. SAOB, H 1875. 5. In order of appearance, PS, Proceedings, Nos. 61, 10, 24. 6. Alexander Maxwell claims that sumptuary laws ‘typically neglected cut or design’, but admits that they ‘occasionally targeted styles which became prestigious’. Alexander Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion: Clothing and Nationalism in Europe’s Age of Revolutions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 47. 7. Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 39–40; Maria Hayward, Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), xv. See also Carlo Marco Belfanti and Fabio Giusberti, ‘Clothing and Social Inequality in Early Modern Europe: Introductory Remarks’, Continuity and Change 15 (2000), 359. 8. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 40; Hayward, Rich Apparel, 29–39. See also Amanda E. Facelle, ‘Down to the Last Stitch: Sumptuary Law and Conspicuous Consumption in Renaissance Italy’ (Unpublished Bachelor Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2009), 28, 41, who—with regards to the objects of Italian sumptuary laws—states ‘ornamentations’ alongside materials, cuts and colours. 9. In several larger European cities, prostitutes were known to wear yellow, or don yellow dress details, to signal their trade and attract customers. Michel Pastoureau, Yellow: The History of a Color (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 189–90. 10. Andrea Feeser, Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, ‘Introduction: The Value of Color’, in The Materiality of Color: The Reproduction, Circulation, and Application of Dyes and Pigments, 1400–1800, eds. Andrea Feeser, Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 1–8. 11. Michel Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 10. 12. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 29, 37, 59. 13. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 45, 67, A3. See also Nos. 18, 19, 29, 32, 37, 49, 68. 14. On popular colours of dress in Sweden during the period (as found in inventories and accounts), see Gudrun Andersson, Stadens dignitärer: Den lokala elitens status-­och maktmanifestation i Arboga 1650–1770 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2009), 197–8; Eva I. Andersson, ‘Swedish Burghers’ Dress in the Seventeenth Century’, Costume 51:2 (2017), 186. 15. PS, Proceedings, No. A5. See also Nos. 23 34, 37, A3. 16. PS, Proceedings, No. A2. See also Nos. 18, 22, 29, 32, 45, 62. 17. PS, Proceedings, No. 67. 18. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. 19. PS, Proceedings, No. 40. 20. PS, Proceedings, No. 59. 21. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, 67, 69.

The Ordering of Difference 147 22. It has been suggested that the relationship between domestic servants and their masters shifted during the eighteenth century (based mainly in French studies), from a paternalistic to an increasingly contractual mode with a primarily monetary employer-­employee relation. See Sarah Maza, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-­Century France: The Use of Loyalty (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 14. 23. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 24, 32. See also No. 5, suggesting that ‘domestic servants in towns’ should wear clothes in a ‘certain and stipulated’ colour. 24. See e.g. Hayward, Rich Apparel, 96–101; Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 99–101. 25. John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-­ Century England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 109–10; Daniel Roche, The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the 18th Century (Berkeley: California University Press, 1987), 164–5, 170–2; Leif Runefelt, ‘Grå bonde, blå bonde: Den globala indigomarknaden som etiskt problem på den svenska landsbygden kring sekelskiftet 1800’, in Det svenska begäret: Sekler av lyxkonsumtion, eds. Paula von Wachenfeldt and Klas Nyberg (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2015), 117. 26. Bengt Stolt, Kyrklig skrud enligt svensk tradition (Stockholm: Diakonistyrelsens bokförlag, 1964), 28–32. 27. Juliusz Chroscicki, ‘Ceremonial Space’, in Iconography, Propaganda, and Legitimation, ed. Allan Ellenius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 200–1. 28. Eva Bergman, Nationella dräkten: En studie kring Gustaf III:s dräktreform 1778 (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1938), 81–119; Nils-­ Göran Nilsson, ‘Den gustavianska armén’, in Gustav III:s ryska krig, ed. Gunnar Artéus (Stockholm: Probus, 1992), 46–8; Lena Rangström, Kläder för tid och evighet: Gustaf III sedd genom sina dräkter (Stockholm: Livrustkammaren, 1997), 165–77; Pernilla Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet: Arbetsmetoder och arbetsdelning i tillverkningen av kvinnlig dräkt 1770–1830 (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 2010), 45–6. 29. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 62, A3. See also No. 19. 30. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 18, A3. See also Nos. 23, 40. 31. PS, Proceedings, No. A3. 32. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. See also No. 62. 33. PS, Proceedings, No. 62. 34. PS, Proceedings, No. 29. See also Nos. 23, 62. 35. PS, Proceedings, No. 3. 36. PS, Proceedings, No. 64. 37. See Kekke Stadin, ‘Stormaktsmän’, in Iklädd identitet: Historiska studier av kropp och kläder, eds. Madeleine Hurd, Tom Olsson and Lisa Öberg (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2005), 31–59, who aptly refers to a ‘semiotics of colours’ (my translation). See also Karin Sennefelt, ‘Runaway Colours: Recognisability and Categorisation in Sweden and Early America, 1750–1820’, in Sweden in the Eighteenth-­Century World. Provincial Cosmopolitans, ed. Göran Rydén (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 225–46, who offers concrete examples of these ‘semiotics’ and meanings. See also Christopher Breward, The Culture of Fashion: A New History of Fashionable Dress (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 65–7; Elizabeth Currie, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 93–4. 38. Michel Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 95–9, 134–5, 159; John Harvey, The Story of Black (London: Reaktion, 2013), 96–101, 189–207; Currie, Fashion and Masculinity, 93–108.

148  The Ordering of Difference 39. Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 59–85; Hayward, Rich Apparel, 158; Mitchell B. Merback, Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-­Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1–2; Pastoureau, Yellow, 189–90. 40. Michel Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabrics (New York: Colombia University Press, 2001), 2, 16–17. 41. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 5, 18, 22, 28, 37, 38, 44, 59, 62, A2, A5. 42. PS, Proceedings, No. 3 (purple/red); Nos. 5, 22, A5 (grey); Nos. 22, 24 (quote), 37, 38, A2 (blue). 43. PS, Proceedings, No. A2. 44. PS, Proceedings, No. 22. 45. PS, Proceedings, No. A5. 46. PS, Proceedings, No. 24. 47. PS, Proceedings, No. 19. 48. Philip Mansel, Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 16–17; Pastoureau, Black, 135; Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet, 47–8. 49. See e.g. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 1, 24, 37, 67. 50. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 19, 3. 51. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 59, 5. 52. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 19, 28. 53. PS, Proceedings, No. 61. 54. See Runefelt, ‘Grå bonde, blå bonde’, 127. 55. On Hilleström’s work, see Gerda Cederblom, Pehr Hilleström som kulturskildrare (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet, 1927–1929), 1–2. 56. PS, Proceedings, No. 3, 22, 38, 40, 61, A2, A5. 57. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 5, 37, 59, 61, A2, A5. 58. On grey as the traditional colour of the peasantry, see also Peter Henningsen, I sansernes vold: Bondekultur och kultursammenstød i enevældens Danmark 1 (København: Københavns Stadsarkiv, 2006), 340–1. 59. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 19, 22, 61, 62, A2. 60. PS, Proceedings, No. A5. 61. PS, Proceedings, No. A2. 62. PS, Proceedings, No. 22. 63. Hayward, Rich Apparel, 252. 64. Antti Matikkala, The Orders of Knighthood and the Formation of the British Honour System, 1660–1760 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008), 61–97. 65. The gala models of the court dress, male and female, were originally white, which in 1782 was changed to light blue and white for men, while the female dress became all white, stripped of its original red elements. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 83. 66. Feeser, Goggin and Tobin, ‘Introduction’, 1. See also Pastoureau, Blue, 10. 67. On white as fashionable among early modern social elites, see e.g. E. Claire Cage, ‘The Sartorial Self: Neoclassical Fashion and Gender Identity in France, 1797–1804’, Eighteenth-­Century Studies 42:2 (2009), 206–7. 68. PS, Proceedings, No. 46. 69. PS, Proceedings, No. 54. 70. PS, Proceedings, No. 42. 71. PS, Proceedings, No. 22. 72. PS, Proceedings, No. 3. 73. Hayward, Rich Apparel, 252. 74. Mikael Alm, Kungsord i elfte timmen: Språk och självbild i det gustavianska enväldets legitimitetskamp 1772–1809 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2002), 64–5;

The Ordering of Difference 149 Mikael Alm and Bo Vahlne, Överkammarherrens journal 1778–1826: Ett gustavianskt tidsdokument (Stockholm: Kungliga Samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, 2010), 194. 75. PS, Proceedings, No. 40. See also Nos. 3, 5, 6, 9, 40, 54, 59. 76. PS, Proceedings, No. 28. Charlack was a finer wool, camelot was an Angora wool, and kalmuchs was a curly wool. 77. PS, Proceedings, No. 32. See also Nos. 18, 61. 78. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 34–9; Leif Runefelt, Hushållningens dygder: Affektlära, hushållningslära och ekonomiskt tänkande under svensk stormaktstid (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2001), 171–82; Eva I. Andersson, ‘Foreign Seductions: Sumptuary Laws, Consumption and National Identity in Early Modern Sweden’, in Fashionable Encounters: Perspectives and Trends in Textile and Dress in the Early Modern Nordic World, eds. Tove Engelhardt Mathiassen et al. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014), 17–19; Eva I. Andersson, ‘Dangerous Fashions in Swedish Sumptuary Law’, in The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Laws in a Global Perspective, c. 1200–1800, eds. Giorgio Riello and Ulinka Rublack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 145–52. On the German lands, see Ulinka Rublack, ‘The Right to Dress: Sartorial Politics in Germany, c. 1300–1750’, in The Right to Dress, eds. Riello and Rublack, 37–73. On England, see Hayward, Rich Apparel, 17–39. On Denmark, see Tove Engelhardt Mathiassen, ‘Textiles’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion 4: In the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Peter McNeil (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 26–31. 79. On these acts and the cited passages, see Majatta Rahikainen and Kirsi Vainio-­ Korhonen, ‘Manlig och kvinnlig lyx: Överflödsförordningar och modeartiklar’, in Det svenska begäret, eds. von Wachenfeldt and Nyberg, 33–6. All translations are made by the author. 80. Historian Johanna Ilmakunnas convincingly shows that Swedish aristocrats at the time purchased goods in seemingly open defiance of existing sumptuary regulations. See Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘The Luxury Shopping Experience of the Swedish Aristocracy in Eighteenth-­Century Paris’, in Luxury and Gender in European Towns, 1700–1914, eds. Deborah Simonton, Marjo Kaartinen and Anne Montenach (London: Routledge, 2015), 116–25. 81. Gudrun Andersson, Tingets kvinnor och män: Genus som norm och strategi under 1600-­och 1700-­tal (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1998), 225. For prices, see Lars O. Lagerqvist, Vad kostade det? Priser och löner från medeltid till våra dagar (Lund: Historiska Media, 2011), 125. 82. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 49–56, 124–215; Rangström, Kläder för tid och evighet, 165–77. 83. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 6, 18, 34, 58, 59. 84. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 5, 18, 22, 59, 61. 85. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 18, 22, 34, 59, 61. 86. PS, Proceedings, No. 3. 87. Ibid. 88. Feeser, Goggin and Tobin, ‘Introduction’, 1–8. 89. See above, chapter 3, sections Economic Arguments and Social Arguments. 90. Louis-­Sébastien Mercier offered a similar comment in his Le Tableau de Paris (1781, ‘Panorama of Paris’): ‘What is spent on fashion today exceeds the expenses of the table and that for horses and carriages. The unfortunate husband can never calculate to what price these changing fantasies will climb; & he will need swift resources to fight off these unexpected whims’. Quoted in Marjo Kaartinen, Anne Montenach and Deborah Simonton, ‘Luxury, Gender and the Urban Experience’, in Luxury and Gender in European Towns, eds. Simonton, Kaartinen and Montenach, 4.

150  The Ordering of Difference 91. PS, Proceedings, No. 45. 92. PS, Proceedings, No. 62. See also Nos. 1, 3, 8, 13, 21, 24, 33, 38, 59, 61. 93. PS, Proceedings, No. 13. See also Nos. 18, 32, 34, 38, 48, 53, 62. 94. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 1, 6, 22, 23, 24, 28, 33, 35, 41, 59, 62, 68, A5. 95. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 3, 5, 6, 22, 28, 33, 35, 38, 40, 44, 45, 59, A3, A5. 96. Regarding the distinction between ‘use value’ and ‘status value’, see Gudrun Andersson, ‘Forming the Partnership Socially and Economically: A Swedish Local Elite, 1650–1770’, in The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain 1400–1900, eds. Maria Ågren and Amy Louise Erickson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 57–73 (quote 62). See also Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 120, who states that ‘social differentiation was a matter of quality and quantity, and of the contrast between the necessary and the superfluous’. 97. Aileen Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth-­Century Europe 1715–1789 (London: B.T. Bathsford Ltd, 1984), 62–5; Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet, 33–5, 45–6; Berit Eldvik, Möte med mode: Folkliga kläder 1750– 1900 i Nordiska Museet (Stockholm: Nordiska Museets Förlag, 2014), 15–16. On the dress of the lower (‘plebeian’) common people in England at the time, see also Styles, The Dress of the People, 31–55. On the apron as a garment linked the laboring classes in the eighteenth century, see Elizabeth Spencer, ‘ “None but Abigails Appeared in White Aprons”: The Apron as an Elite Garment in Eighteenth-­Century England’, Textile History 49:2 (2018), 164–71. 98. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 6, 24, 45, 62. 99. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 22, 28, 62. 100. Eldvik, Möte med mode, 15–16. 101. Ribeiro, Dress in Eighteenth-­Century Europe, 62. 102. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 106. 103. See chapter National Arguments. 104. Again, the recurrence of fashionable details in the dress of domestic servants is in line with Daniel Roche’s emphasize on that particular social category as fashion intermediaries. Roche, The Culture of Clothing, 40–1, 78, 201–2. 105. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 22, 28. 106. PS, Proceedings, No. 22. 107. PS, Proceedings, No. A5. See also Nos. 3, 6, 38. 108. PS, Proceedings, No. A2. 109. Hayward, Rich Apparel, 32–3. 110. Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet, 45 (see also footnotes 101 and 102). The quotes are from the royal ordinance of 8 November 1731, cited (but not quoted) by Rasmussen. 111. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 61, 125; Rasmussen, Skräddaren, sömmerskan och modet, 45–6. 112. PS, Proceedings, No. 59. 113. Ibid. 114. Nathan Joseph, Uniforms and Nonuniforms: Communication Through Clothing (New York: Greenwood, 1986), 66–9; Leif Törnquist, ‘Colours, Standards, Guidons and Uniforms, 1788–1815’, in Between the Imperial Eagles: Sweden’s Armed Forces During the Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars 1780–1820, ed. Fred Sandstedt (Stockholm: Army Museum, 2000), 139–40; Gunner Lind, ‘Uniform and Distinction: Symbolic Aspects of Officer Dress in the Eighteenth-­Century Danish State’, Textile History and the Military 41:1 (2010), 50–3, 57–9. 115. PS, Proceedings, Nos. 1, 3, 28, 37, 38, 52.

The Ordering of Difference 151 116. Mikkel Venborg Pedersen, ‘Status’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, ed. McNeil, 133. 117. In his 1772 proposal for a ‘Landes uniform’ for the prince-­bishopric of Osnabrück, Justus Möser proposed that all citizens should wear a dress of the same cut and shape, while a system of embroideries would display difference in social standing. Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion, 83. 118. PS, Proceedings, No. 59. 119. PS, Proceedings, No. 18. 120. PS, Proceedings, No. A2. 121. PS, Proceedings, No. 37. 122. PS, Proceedings, No. 40. 123. PS, Proceedings, No. 60. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid. 126. The word ‘balletter’ is only found in this essay. There are no notes of it in a textile meaning in the authoritative dictionary Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB). There, the word ‘balletter’ occurs at two instances, first as an alternative spelling of ‘ballet’ (the theatrical dance), and secondly—and opening for my understanding of it as referring to stripes—as an alternative spelling of ‘paletter’ (changing ‘b’ for ‘p’ was common), referring primarily to the tool of the painter (eng. palette/pallet). However, ‘balletter/paletter’ also opens up to the vocabulary of heraldry, where a ‘pallet’ referred to the heraldic sign of a pale, from the French Pal, which in a diminutive form—as a small pale, i.e. a vertical stripe—would be palette, which in turn, in the hands of a French speaking Swede in 1773, could become ‘balletter’. See SAOB, B 162, P 73. See also SOED, ‘pale’ 5, ‘pallet’. 127. PS, Proceedings, No. 60. A further distinction is proposed, but not elaborated, with varying applied decorations for the different branches of the armed forces: ‘the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and admiralty’. 128. Lind, ‘Uniform and Distinction’, 62–3. See also Philip Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac 1760–1830’, Past and Present 96 (1982), 110–12, 124; Mansel, Dressed to Rule, 97–8. 129. This is in line with Philip Mansel’s characterization of the rise of uniforms in the European context. See Mansel, ‘Monarchy, Uniform and the Rise of the Frac’, 111.

5 Fashioning Difference Conclusions

On the morning of 28 April 1778—the ceremonious Day of the Royal Orders (Ordensdagen)—King Gustav III entered his assembled court dressed in the new national dress that, in accordance with public ordinances and circular letters instructing regional authorities, was introduced on that day. The king had, and would often in the future, made use of his royal prerogative and chosen a rather singular version of the dress (see Figure 5.1). The model was in line with the instructions: a short jacket with characteristic shoulder decorations, a waistcoat, breeches, a

Figure 5.1  National dress, worn by Gustav III (1778). Photo: Livrustkammaren/SHM (CC BY), Stockholm.

Fashioning Difference 153 knee-­length cloak attached at the back and elegantly resting on a shoulder, and a sash tied in a bow at the waist (the latter is missing from the preserved costume). The colours, fabrics, and ornaments signalled its royal wearer. The jacket, breeches, and cloak were made in uncut dotted velvet, in the fashionable colour referred to as ‘coleur de puce’ (‘the colour of the louse’, a reddish brown), lined with a lighter red satin. The waistcoat and cloak lapels were made in a narrow-­striped silver fabric. The front, cuffs, collar, and edgings of the jacket, waistcoat, and cloak were all decorated with multi-­coloured sequin embroideries with metal foil and twined gold and silver threads.1 The royal court was the first to don the dress; Stockholm’s clothiers, haberdashers, and tailors had been busy over the last few months, dressing courtiers ahead of the grand occasion. But the reform reached beyond the introduction of a court dress. Through a combination of royal command and well-­staged patriotic shows of voluntary adoption, the dress spread out into the government branches. At court, variations were introduced as liveries for serving staff; the four royal orders were each assigned a ceremonial dress in the national model; and one by one, the colleges of central bureaucracy were assigned versions of the dress. The military soon followed with new uniforms for the arms and regiments. Furthermore, a ‘common version’ of the dress—with the set pieces worn in a single colour, never more than two, linings included (if worn in two colours, the jacket and the breeches should be in the same colour)—was introduced to be, voluntarily, donned and used by the general public.2 In the long run, the grande reform proved a failure. It did not take long before complaints were being made about transgressions and before renewed restrictions on fabrics in the face of a continued use of silks were voiced.3 Already in 1794, with the national dress reform still in full force, a new sumptuary law was issued, aimed to curb the luxury and unruly consumption that the reform had set out to rectify. The calls for additional regulations sounded throughout the early 1800s.4 The dress itself gradually phased out of public life following the death of Gustav III in 1792 and the dethronement of his son, Gustav IV Adolf, in 1809. In post-­Napoleonic Sweden, it became hopelessly associated with the Old Regime of the Gustavian kings. When it was eventually abandoned at court by a royal decree in 1823, it had in reality been out of use for many years, replaced by new continental fashions, and by new uniforms for court and state officials.5 Nonetheless, in a Europe where similar projects were much in vogue, but chiefly remained abstract products of drawing tables, the 1778 reform, along with its prelude with the 1773 competition, stands out in terms of actual execution and scope.6 So, how did the final reform—this authoritative intervention in contemporary sartorial practices—compare to the social culture, sartorial culture, and visual culture as expressed in the 1773 essays?

154  Fashioning Difference

Order Unlike the suggestions offered in the 1773 essays, the four orders were absent in the categories chosen for sartorial differentiation in the royal design. The estates were present in the royal rhetoric, but they were not the basis of the sartorial regime. However, the 1778 reform confirmed and aligned with the social imaginaries of the essays on several points. The distinction between a court dress, with additional versions for civil and military service, and a ‘common’ dress for everyone who was not part of those ranks, confirms that basic duality between the powerful and the subordinates in society. There were the king’s servants, and then there were the king’s subjects. More specifically, the king’s design was in line with the numerous 1773 proposals for an order of corporate bodies. The common dress model differentiated between corps and branches within the authorities: between the State colleges, between the courts of law, between the royal orders and so forth. As in the 1773 essays, this order of authority emphasized state servants. Those state servants, who constituted an increasingly important and prominent category in society and affairs of State, were equally singled out sartorially by the king, and made to stand out in any crowd. Just like the 1773 authors, the king’s social imaginary was clearly preoccupied with that upper segment of the social order, that small proportion of the population that rose above the vast majority of peasants and rural and urban servants. The royal proclamations explicitly exempted the peasantry from the reform, allowing them to continue with their ‘traditional’ modes of dress.7 Here, albeit implicitly, the familiar view that the peasantry did not need to be sartorially differentiated was further embedded. Also like the 1773 authors, the king’s design did not pay much attention to women. Women were included in the reform, but the female dress only made a basic distinction between court dress and a common dress, nothing more. Clearly, the innovative approach to male dress was never applied to female dress, and—unlike male dress—the female national dress remained much of a court dress, primarily worn at court by ladies of the court.8 Beyond its seemingly strict and clear-­ cut regime, the 1778 reform embodied another prominent feature from the 1773 essays, namely the mixing of orders, and how that very mixing allowed for social relativity and inclusivity beyond traditional social archetypes in otherwise stern hierarchies. The black and red dress—the epitome of distinction in Gustavian high society, signalling proximity to the king’s person—also carried distinct noble connotations. Nobles populated the ranks of the royal court, and the higher the rank the more aristocratic the holder. But, like the essays, the dress was not socially defined as a noble reserve. It came with the status of being introduced at the court. A non-­noble person who was introduced at the court was allowed to wear it. The king could—and

Fashioning Difference 155 did—bestow the right to wear the dress as a sign of royal favour, and it was indeed worn by non-­noble advisors, favourites, and artists in the midst of counts and countesses (clearly, that element of relativity, and the room for manoeuvre it allowed, was useful for an absolute ruler, too).9

Disorder The royal proclamations presented the reform in a way that had several features in common with the moral concerns put forward in the essays. Economic concerns dominated. Changing fashions and the dependence on foreign produce was damaging to the economy. A  Swedish dress, made  from Swedish produce, would bring about a boom for domestic textile production. Also, with its durability, easy maintenance, and independence of changing fashions, a fixed national dress would prove economically advantageous in the longer run. The national morals chimed equally strongly in the royal rhetoric. As in the essays, there was a patriotic element to the economic morality: using Swedish produce was a patriotic act; buying foreign goods was an unpatriotic act. The formative qualities of dress were also employed. ‘One people, one dress’ was the official motto of the reform. A  common dress worn by everyone was designed to foster a patriotic sense of community, and the historic models of the age of Gustav II Adolf were consciously chosen to revive the national strength and patriotism of that era. The king himself spoke in terms of dressing the realm in an ‘esprit nationel’.10 In contrast, the social and religious morals that featured strongly in the 1773 essays were markedly toned down in the royal rhetoric. In terms of religious commands, Gustav III sounded more like the stereotype of an enlightened ruler, pointing to worldly utility and progress rather to divine design and a proper fear of God. The reform was all about stronger textile manufactories and better Swedes, not about stronger piety and better Christians. In terms of social morals, the visual and legible differentiation between categories of people was apparently, and unexpectedly in that day and age, deemed necessary and benign. But that sartorial legibility was not explicitly phrased against disorderly practices, with people posing as and pretending to be something better, higher, or worthier than they were. Instead, the characteristically early modern call to ‘remain by your last’ remained implicit in references to previous sumptuary legislation and in the actual designs on a social regime in dress.

Ordering Colours were key in the royal reform. The 1778 reform presented a colourized order of corporate bodies that was similar to many of the proposed regimes in the 1773 essays. The black and red dress (and the light blue and white for gala) was assigned to the court, while the other

156  Fashioning Difference branches of government described a differentiating palette. The ‘coleur d’evêque’ (bishop’s colour, a dark bluish green) and violet was assigned for the Royal Courts of Appeal and all judges under them. Black with a crimson sash was assigned for the Medical Collegium and academic staff. The Collegium of War and the Collegium of the Admiralty were given light blue and straw-­coloured yellow details, the Collegium of Finances got greenish grey and crimson, the Office of Surveying was assigned black and green, the Office of Forestry got green and yellow, and the Consulates got blue and grey.11 The semantics and hierarchies of colours found in the essays are at work here, too—albeit rarely explicit or explained. Thus, it was no coincidence that the Order of the Seraphim, the most senior and highest ranking of all royal order, was assigned white. Similarly, regarding connotations and semantics, assigning green to the Office of Forestry falls close to the colour correspondences proposed in the essays (with herbal green for Doctor of Medicine, blood brown for surgeons, etc.). More specifically, and equally illustrative for visual culture and the workings of colours, certain colours, and combinations of colours became imbued with higher status through the royal prescriptions. For instance, the combination of black and red became synonymous with high status in Gustavian Sweden, as the social elite at the royal court was assigned and wore those colours. Had those colours been blue and green, or any other colours, the end effect would have been the same. Tradition and passed-­on values apart, innovation and new practices made a difference in repertoires of visual codes and meanings. Additionally, within this colourized scheme, other modes of differentiation were employed, too, to make additional distinctions and to mark the nuances in social life. The cut of the robes (the sleeves and the longer trains) worn by the ladies at the court set them apart from common women outside court society; golden details in the green dress of the higher ranking staff at the Office of Forestry set them apart from the ordinary yellow details of the lower ranking staff; and the Masters of the Horse at the Crown Equerry were readily recognized next to lower staff by the golden tassels they wore on their russet dress.12

Four Men and a Cow Revisited Returning to that anonymous oil painting of the four men and a cow (see Figure 1.1 and front cover), it is as illustrative of the results of this study as it were of its points of departure. On the one hand, it illustrates the ideal correlation between four separate estates, clearly recognizable and identifiable from the appearances in dress. On the other hand, and with the 1773 authors’ commentaries in mind, the painting may illustrate decisively more complex realities of the late eighteenth-­century sartorial world. The nobleman on the cow’s back, along with the burgher by its

Fashioning Difference 157 horns, might just as well be imagined as state servants, or a colonel in rank and a surgeon by profession. That seemingly simple cap worn by the peasant might just as well be perceived as a disorderly use of fabric dyes, well beyond his economic means and his social worth. And, finally, those ostensibly legible symbols and signs might need to be made even clearer, more distinct, in their visual ordering of an evidently unruly society and its members. Here, the 1773 essays have provided a source material of a rare kind. They constitute a live wire to late eighteenth-­century notions on difference and differentiation. They allow the historian to get in close to daily social interaction and the role of sartorial practices in them. In the midst of a well-­known age of revolutions—with its political, economical, and social contestations—some 70 authors sat and penned down their reflections on what they observed. The results that these reflections have yielded provide valuable contributions to our knowledge of the social, sartorial, and visual cultures of the age; specifically Swedish, but also more generally European, specifically late eighteenth century, but also more generally early modern. In terms of social culture, the 1773 essays have confirmed the complexities of early modern social order that have been increasingly emphasized in research. Societies are never as clear cut as normative sources may suggest, and early modern European social orders were no exception. An individual’s social position or belonging differed depending on the social context. While estate affiliation was key in the position of an early modern burgher or a peasant in the political context of the assembly of the four estates, or in the economic context of urban trade or rural landowning, it was less relevant (albeit not irrelevant) in the religious context of a Christian community, or in the household context of husband and wife or master and servant.13 More specifically, the concept of social imaginaries, as defined and used by researchers such as Sarah Maza, has brought forth the particular complexity of early modern social order in the late eighteenth century, as they appear in the 1773 essays.14 Here, the concrete expressions of that contested social order, on the verge of collapse, were voiced as they were imagined and perceived by people in its midst. In the Swedish context, the apparent centrality of the ‘non-­noble persons of estate’ (ofrälse ståndspersoner) in the late eighteenth-­century social landscape was expected and in line with the state of research. They formed the very core in the transformation of the Swedish estate society, and in the emergence of a middle class, as described by Sten Carlsson and Nordic social historians in his succession.15 These Swedish lines of development were closely related to the larger European processes. This was the Swedish version of those dynamic ‘middling’ groups that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries grew increasingly strong in numbers and standing, challenging the traditional elites of the Old Regime

158  Fashioning Difference economically, socially and politically.16 In this larger narrative of the disintegration of the Old Regime and the historic rise of the middle class, the apparent centrality of state servants and the preoccupation with the composition of the burgher estate in the 1773 essays is of particular interest. Both specify that dynamic middling sort. State servants composed a differently defined elite, largely detached from the reserves of Old regime social archetypes, while the burgher estate encompassed those mercantile and industrial groups in the growing social segment middling between commoners and nobles. Moving on to sartorial culture, the analysis of the moral arguments at work in the 1773 essays vividly illustrates the importance that was attached to matters of dress in early modern societies. Far beyond sumptuary legislation and government actions, the essays point to the much deeper and everyday presence of sartorial concerns in social discourse. Most evidence would suggest that the even flow of early modern sumptuary laws had limited if any actual effect on consumer behaviours. Nonetheless, the essays make clear that the governmental concerns on the dangers of sartorial disorder were shared and echoed by the public. Such disorders were directly connected to fundamental social values, and to the very persistence of society: from the economic prosperity of the nation in terms of industry and trades, all the way down to the physical well-­being of the individual. Failing manufactories and raging gout had their shared root in sartorial disorder. More specifically, the essays shed light on a particular phenomenon in eighteenth-­century sumptuary discourse, namely the notions of national dress. Such projects were widely discussed, albeit rarely realized, across the continent. In research, they have been analysed as products of their enlightened age, combining the patriotic fervour of a dawning nationalism with the civic quest for alternatives to oppressive laws and enforced restrictions.17 Here, the 1773 essays provide a healthy reminder of the liminality of eighteenth-­century thought. Those modern elements were indeed there, pointing forward towards the nineteenth century, with calls for a less coercive regime, for the economic advantages of luxury and consumption, and for a sense of national community, with all Swedes dressed as one.18 But those utterances of modernity were mixed with decidedly traditional values, which might just as well have been voiced in a medieval context, and stressing mankind’s belonging to stationary orders of economic roles, social station, and religious commandments. Turning to visual culture, the essays make the visual world of early modern societies come to life. Through variables such as cost, aesthetics, and cultural connotations, different colours, fabrics, styles, and ornaments were attached with different social value, and, accordingly, employed to visualize social hierarchies and social standing. These sartorial signs and codes interacted with those other differentiating social practices that were at work in almost every part of daily life, visualizing

Fashioning Difference 159 the belonging of each and all in the hierarchies of dignity and worth, authority and command, riches and wealth: housing and manners of living, movement and manners of transportation, diet and manners of eating, and so forth. The 1773 essays tell the history of that visual world in late eighteenth century. It was a contested system. Researchers have pointed to the ‘gradual effacement of the apparent distinctions between classes’, and a period when clothes and manners of dress became ‘weapons in a battle of appearances’, fought out between traditional elites and advancing social groups.19 The 1773 essays do not merely depict those advancing groups and the social drama. They also provide close-­up depictions of another theme in eighteenth-­century research, namely the increased availability of goods.20 Compared to sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century contexts, the sheer number of colours and fabrics at play in the essays stands out. More specifically, the 1773 essays make clear the interconnectedness of these processes. In short, the authors described a markedly complex social order, with the rows of those unruly groups, and they discerned the sartorial disorder caused by the increased availability of goods, but they also testified to a richer palette of sartorial means to order them. In closing, these visual regimes in the 1773 essays illustrate a main finding of this study: the constant mixing of entities and things. There was not one mode of sartorial visualization, but several, and they were used intermixed. They are all at play in the painting. The nobleman wears fine colours on fine fabrics, in well-­tailored clothes with ornamental trim, while the peasant wears poor colours on coarse and home-­woven fabrics, in home-­made clothes, with hooks and eyes instead of lavish buttons and embroidered buttonholes. The same is true with regard to social and sartorial culture. The man on the cow’s back was not a nobleman or a state servant; in contemporary social imaginary, he could be a nobleman and he could be a state servant, all depending on the observer and the context. Seemingly conflicting categories, based on different principles of hierarchy, were often fused into composite understandings of order. Likewise, the violations committed by the peasant in his red cap were of a multifaceted nature, combining seemingly modern with utterly traditional conceptions of the workings of human societies. Such were the complex realities of sartorial practices and social order in late eighteenth-­ century Europe.

Notes 1. Lena Rangström, Kläder för tid och evighet: Gustaf III sedd genom sina dräkter (Stockholm: Livrustkammaren, 1997), 173. See also Lena Rangström, ‘A Dress Reform in the Spirit of Its Age’, in Catherine the Great & Gustav III, ed. Magnus Olausson (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 1999), 261–6.

160  Fashioning Difference 2. Eva Bergman, Nationella dräkten: En studie kring Gustaf III:s dräktreform 1778 (Stockholm: Nordiska muséet, 1938), 30, 80–119. 3. Ibid., 60–2. 4. Leif Runefelt, Att hasta mot undergången: Anspråk, flyktighet, förställning i debatten om konsumtion i Sverige, 1730–1830 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2015), 265. 5. Rangström, Kläder för tid och evighet, 176–7. 6. See Alexander Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion: Clothing and Nationalism in Europe’s Age of Revolutions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Enrico Wagner, Die Nationaltrachtdebatte im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Motivation und Durchsetzung einer nationalen Kleidertracht in Schweden, Deutschland und Dänemark (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2018). 7. Rangström, ‘A Dress Reform in the Spirit of Its Age’, 262. 8. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 65–6, 104. 9. Ibid., 89. 10. Rangström, Kläder för tid och evighet, 167–9; Rangström, ‘A Dress Reform in the Spirit of Its Age’, 262. See also Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 11–33. 11. Bergman, Nationella dräkten, 93–115. 12. Ibid., 91, 108, 125. 13. See e.g., Michael J. Braddick and John Walter, ‘Introduction. Grids of Power: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Early Modern Society’, in Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland, eds. Michael J. Braddick and John Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3–5; Cordelia Heβ, Social Imagery in Middle Low German: Didactical Literature and Metaphorical Representation (1470–1517) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 92–122. On the Nordic context, see e.g. Henrik Ågren, ‘Status, Estate, or Profession? Social Stratification via Titles in 1730s Sweden’, Scandinavian Journal of History 42:2 (2017), 167–8. 14. Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 6–13. 15. Sten Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och ståndspersoner 1700–1865: Studier rörande det svenska ståndssamhällets upplösning (Lund: CWK Gleerup Bokförlag, 1973). 16. Margaret Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and Family in England 1680–1780 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). On the Nordic context, see Kaarlo Wirilander, Herrskapsfolk: Ståndspersoner i Finland 1721–1870 (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1982). 17. See e.g. Maxwell, Patriots Against Fashion; Wagner, Die Nationaltrachtdebatte im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. See also Rangström, ‘A Dress Reform in the Spirit of Its Age’. 18. In her ongoing PhD project at Stockholm University, historian of ideas Sara Ekström adds to our knowledge of these national sentiments. She studies governmentality, national identity and emotions during the Gustavian period (1772–1809) by examining the national dress reform alongside two other contemporary ‘national’ projects: the institution of the royal order of Vasa in 1772, and the founding of the Swedish Academy in 1786. 19. The ‘gradual effacement’, see Amy Wyngaard, ‘Switching Codes: Class, Clothing, and Cultural Change in the Works of Marivaux and Watteau’, Eighteenth-­Century Studies 33:4 (2000), 524; the ‘battle of appearances’, see Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 6. 20. See e.g., Beverly Lemire, ‘Production and Distribution’, in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion 4: In the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Peter McNeil (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 45–6.

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Index

accessory 113, 133, 140 Ågren, Henrik 40 Amussen, Susan Dwyer 22, 39, 55 Andersson, Eva I. 67 Andersson, Gudrun 18 de Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustine 78 Braddick, Michael 19, 32 Braudel, Fernand 3 burgher/burgher estate 3, 17, 22 – 8, 32 – 41, 44 – 7, 49 – 56, 64, 77, 81, 83, 85, 114 – 16, 120 – 1, 130, 138 – 9, 141, 144 – 5, 156 – 8 Burke, Peter 19, 87 Carlsson, Sten 18, 28 – 9, 157 Charles X Gustav 91 Charles XI 91 Charles XII 91 civil servant 5, 9 – 10, 26, 28 – 9, 31, 33, 38, 40, 43, 45 – 6, 50, 70, 84, 116, 126, 141 class(es), order of 4, 20, 22, 26, 32 – 4, 38, 42, 45 – 6, 48, 50 – 3, 55 – 6, 75 – 6, 111, 116 – 17, 122 – 3, 135, 139, 140 – 4, 159 clergy/clerics/clerical estate 3, 9 – 10, 20, 23 – 8, 31, 33 – 41, 45 – 6, 48 – 52, 55 – 6, 83 – 4, 93, 113, 115 – 16, 120 – 1, 125 – 7, 138 – 9, 144 Colley, Linda 97 colour 73 – 4, 79 – 81, 83, 85, 97 – 8, 111 – 31, 133 – 4, 139 – 45, 153, 155 – 6, 158 – 9 commercial culture 68, 70, 75, 83 Corfield, Penelope 3 – 4 corporate body(ies), order of 10, 22, 25, 32 – 42, 44 – 5, 48, 50 – 1, 53 – 6, 111, 115 – 16, 140 – 2, 144, 154 – 5

court 10 – 11, 19, 27, 29, 35, 37 – 9, 41, 43, 45 – 6, 48 – 50, 54, 70 – 1, 73, 75, 77 – 8, 84 – 5, 117 – 18, 121, 125 – 8, 133, 135, 138 – 9, 145, 152 – 6 court dress 139, 152 – 4 cuts (of clothes/of dress) 36, 74, 87, 89, 98, 132 – 3, 135, 137 – 9, 145, 156 Darnton, Robert 20 Diderot, Denis 65 domestic servant 4, 43 – 4, 70, 117, 128, 139 Duby, George 20 – 1 Dupont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel 52 Eldvik, Berit 135 Elias, Norbert 73, 78 emulation/imitation 72, 90, 136 Engström, Alexander 18 Enlightenment 5, 11 – 13, 93 – 4 estate(s), order of 2 – 3, 12, 17, 19 – 39, 41 – 2, 44 – 8, 50 – 2, 54 – 6, 67, 77, 79, 83, 111 – 12, 115 – 21, 126 – 7, 129, 133, 138 – 9, 144, 154, 156 – 8 fabric(s) 36, 65 – 7, 73 – 4, 76, 78 – 9, 83 – 4, 86, 88 – 9, 94 – 7, 112 – 18, 120 – 3, 125 – 33, 137 – 42, 144 – 5, 153, 157 – 9 fashion/fashionable/fashioning 1, 3, 6, 11 – 12, 27, 36, 53, 64 – 5, 67, 69 – 82, 84 – 99, 114, 124, 131 – 3, 135 – 9, 143, 145, 153, 155 Feeser, Andrea 114 femininity 67 Fox, Adam 18 French, Henry 18

Index  175 garment 66, 74 – 5, 78, 90, 96, 113, 128, 132 – 3, 135, 138 – 40 Gay, Peter 94 gender/gendered 19, 22, 39 – 40, 48, 55 – 6, 67, 75, 80, 84 – 5, 90 – 1, 130 – 1, 141 Goggin, Maureen Daly 114 Greig, Hannah 18 guild 5, 20, 26, 33, 34, 119 Gustav I 7, 87 Gustav II Adolf 87, 91, 155 Gustav III 5, 11, 87, 152 – 3, 155 Gustav IV Adolf 153 Gyllenborg, Carl 78 Haulman, Kate 67 – 8 Hayward, Maria 113 Hentschell, Roze 67 – 8, 96 – 7 Hilleström, Pehr 11 – 12, 75 – 6, 123 – 4, 130 – 1, 133 – 7 home-dyed/-made/-spun 75, 116, 122, 129, 130, 133, 140, 145, 159 von Höpken, Anders Johan 9, 69 Howell, Martha 66 Hoyle, Richard 18Hunt, Alan 66 Hunt, Margaret 28 Jones, Colin 41 La Mettrie, Julien Offray 93 legible(-ility), illegible(-ibility) 2, 4, 13, 21, 66, 78 – 81, 99, 112, 117 – 19, 138, 140, 143, 155, 157 Lemire, Beverly 99 Lind, Gunner 143 luxury 4, 24, 69 – 70, 74, 85 – 6, 88, 91, 153, 158 Mansel, Philip 11 de Marivaux, Pierre 78 masculine(-ity) 67, 91 Maxwell, Alexander 12, 99 Maza, Sarah 18 – 20, 157 Melon, Jean-François 69 mercantilism/mercantilist 66, 68 – 70, 73, 158 Mercier, Louis-Sébastien 79 Mercier de la Rivière, Pierre-Paul 52 middle class 20, 28, 135, 157 – 8 middling group/kind/segment/sort 9, 26, 28 – 9, 31, 41, 47, 54 – 5, 83 – 4, 125, 130 – 1, 136, 144, 157 – 8

military 9 – 11, 24 – 5, 27 – 9, 31, 35 – 6, 38, 41 – 2, 46, 48, 50, 79, 85, 115, 118 – 21, 128, 140, 142 – 3, 145, 153 – 4 Mirabeau, Victor de Riqueti 52 moral/morality/moralizing 22, 65 – 8, 70, 77 – 8, 81, 86, 92, 94, 97 – 100, 112, 118 – 19, 121 – 2, 129, 132, 138, 155, 158 Mousnier, Roland 51 – 2, 54 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 78 nation/nationalism 13, 50, 52 – 3, 65 – 6, 68, 80, 86, 89, 90 – 2, 96, 99 – 100, 111, 136, 118, 158 national dress 1 – 2, 6, 10 – 13, 24, 31, 53, 55, 68, 73, 79, 80, 84 – 5, 87, 88, 92, 118, 121, 128, 133 – 4, 152 – 5, 158 navy 28, 39, 44 nobility/noble/noble estate 2 – 3, 9 – 10, 17 – 18, 22 – 37, 40 – 2, 44 – 52, 54 – 6, 64, 77 – 8, 81, 83 – 5, 87, 113 – 15, 117, 121 – 2, 126 – 8, 130, 132 – 3, 138, 140 – 1, 144 – 5, 154, 156, 158 – 9 non-noble person of estate 18, 28, 157 officer 9, 23, 29, 40, 113, 140, 142 – 3 ornament/ornamentation 74, 78, 83, 92, 97, 112 – 15, 119, 139 – 45, 153, 158 – 9 Pastoureau, Michel 114 patriot/patriotic/patriotism 5, 9, 11, 66, 84, 86, 90, 94, 96, 99 – 100, 119, 132, 153, 155, 158 peasant/peasant estate/peasantry 3, 5, 10, 17 – 18, 23 – 7, 33 – 40, 44 – 6, 49 – 51, 54 – 6, 71 – 3, 75, 81, 87 – 8, 115 – 16, 121 – 3, 125 – 30, 132 – 6, 138 – 9, 140, 144 – 5, 154, 157, 159 person of estate 25 – 6, 28, 117, 130 physiocrats 52, 69 priest 3, 9, 17, 19, 23, 26, 33, 35 – 6, 44, 46, 51 privilege 24 – 5, 27, 34, 39, 42 – 3, 143 Quesney, François 52 rank, order of 4, 10, 19, 21 – 2, 24 – 5, 27, 29 – 52, 54 – 6, 67, 77 – 8, 81, 87,

176 Index 111, 115 – 19, 127, 130, 138 – 45, 154, 157 religion/religious 18, 19 – 20, 33, 65 – 8, 92 – 4, 96 – 100, 113, 140, 155, 157 – 8 Ribeiro, Aileen 135 Riello, Giorgio 99 Roche, Daniel 4, 82 – 3, 98 – 9, 113, 136 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 65 Royal Patriotic Society 1, 3 – 6, 9 – 11, 69, 94, 132 Runefelt, Leif 67 – 8, 71 sartorial culture 1, 13, 66, 68, 84, 98, 131, 133, 153, 158 – 9 sartorial practices 2, 4, 13, 22, 48 – 9, 68, 72 – 3, 75, 80, 82, 88, 92, 95, 98 – 9, 111, 118, 121, 132, 141, 153, 157, 159 social confusion 4, 66, 78, 82, 96, 117 social culture 1, 13, 153, 157 social imaginary 13, 19 – 21, 24 – 5, 28 – 9, 31, 41, 45 – 7, 56, 83 – 4, 115, 143, 154, 157, 159 social practices 1, 4, 10, 13, 18, 67, 158 state servants 9, 19, 22, 27 – 30, 32, 34, 37, 39 – 44, 46 – 8, 50 – 2, 83, 139, 143, 154, 157 – 9

Stiernberg, Giora 45, 47 style (of clothes/of dress/dress style) 72, 83, 112 – 15, 118, 132 – 3, 135 – 6, 138 – 41, 144 – 5, 158 sumptuary (law/legislation) 4, 10 – 12, 66 – 8, 78, 83, 112 – 13, 127 – 8, 138, 153, 155, 158 Table of Duties 19 Table of Ranks 42, 45, 47 – 8, 50, 141 – 3 Tobin, Beth Fowkes 114 trims/trimmings 74, 77, 118, 137 – 8, 140 – 1, 145, 159 Turgot, Jacques 52 uniform(-ed/-ity) 9, 11 – 13, 28 – 30, 48, 79, 115, 117 – 19, 134, 140 – 3, 153 Vickery, Amanda 76 visual culture 2, 13, 73, 77, 80, 99, 119, 140, 145, 153, 156 – 8 de Voltaire, François 93 Wagner, Enrico 12 Wahrman, Dror 20 – 1 Walter, John 19, 32 von Wolff, Christian 93 Wyngaard, Amy 4