Contracted Coercion: Land, Labour and Gender in the Swedish Crofter Institution

In the early modern rural setting, labour was organized with varying degrees of coercion depending on landowning, social standing, and gender. This article analyses the crofter institution, characterized by corvée labour (obligatory work as payment), from the perspective of gender and coercion. The purpose is to answer the question of how the crofter institution was created, shaped, enabled and questioned. The right to establish a croft made the position as head of household available for men but it also increased social stratification. While crofters were masters of their households in contract signing, their position was ambiguous when it came to the organization of labour. Regarding physical integrity, crofters could be forced by physical violence and were subject to rules not connected to work, such as subservience. I argue that this was made acceptable through marriage and allowing the position as head of household to landless men. Crofters held an intermediate position, caught between the market logic of leasehold of land and the coercive logic of labour extraction, and this continued to colour the crofter institution until its final dissolution in 1943.