That eighteenth-century political life outside political institutions was largely merged with sociability and the culture of politeness, and that political spaces were contested and identities constantly negotiated, has become a commonplace in recent scholarly work. Sites such as the coffeehouse, the salon, the tavern, the street and the pleasure garden have been studied as parts of a ‘public sphere’ with regard to the intricacies of inclusion and exclusion on the basis of gender and social standing. These sites have been recognized not only as nodes in an information network, but as vehicles for socialization into prevailing political values.Footnote ¹ In this great body of work, the experience of political action in European cities in the eighteenth century has tended to be investigated place by place; the coffeehouse, the salon and the street have largely separate historiographies.Footnote ² By contrast, we know fairly little about how these political sites related to each other and, in consequence, what types of political action and socialization were open to different social groups in the same city.

From a practical point of view, political sites were not far from each other geographically, though they might be socially; public houses were often only a threshold away from a street or square. Furthermore, while urban mobility certainly should not be underestimated in earlier centuries, it grew during the course of the eighteenth as ties of neighbourhood and kinship were overridden by new household structures that separated home and work. Individuals moved about in the city, and their range of political action, at least hypothetically, went beyond that of a particular site. Finally, studies of crowd behaviour have shown that there were points of contact between ‘high’ and popular politics, which means that, however socially differentiated certain political sites may have been there were others where interaction occurred.Footnote ³

This raises a number of questions regarding the significance of mobility in the everyday structures of political life, and the range of sites and political opportunities available to the individual. Were there ways of working around the boundaries set up in one place in order to take part in political life? Under what circumstances might individuals gain entrance to places that were territorialized by social superiors, or regulated by authorities, and participate in political life?

This article employs an analytical approach focusing on political action in public space, in its everyday spatial negotiations of inclusion and exclusion. Demarcations between sites were put in place, not only in ordinances, but also in moral discourse, through social practice, by the use of violence and by financial constraints. While lines were drawn, however, they did not always create impassable boundaries. Consequently, this article uses the concept of thresholds, which were dependent on the historical actor's gender and social standing. Thresholds, as opposed to boundaries, facilitated communication and other forms of interaction, while still demarcating transitions from one space to another.Footnote ⁴

Geographical proximity, it is argued here, opened the way for presence and participation across the constraints of social ranks. In this context, Tim Harris has usefully conceptualized certain spaces as politically ‘dense’. This refers to the way information networks of communication, population, bureaucracy, ideology and space have all influenced political action to different degrees.Footnote ⁵ Politically dense periods of time have been characterized by an intensity of political action on the part of the lower orders, and by an abundance of information and means of communication. All these factors have come together in particular places and offered great opportunities for the politically ambitious. The city of Stockholm proves an interesting case study in this respect.

In eighteenth-century Stockholm, politicization flourished and political subjectivities were under constant negotiation. When Sweden adopted a parliamentary constitution in 1719, a constitution that lasted until 1772, the Riksdag and its four Estates (nobility, clergy, burghers and peasantry) also gained power over matters of war and peace, legislation, taxation and occasionally judicial power as well. In a European perspective, the representative system had a comparatively broad social base, particularly with the rare inclusion of the peasantry in the foremost governing body. Despite their representation, large groups were excluded from the franchise. Owning property was a prerequisite for political participation among the peasantry, while elections to the burgher estate were restricted to those with rights of burghership. In rare cases this meant that property-owning widows could take part in the election of representatives, a right which women had lost by the end of the century. Servants, journeymen, labourers, soldiers and landless groups in the countryside were not involved in the formal political process. Nor was the increasingly wealthy group often referred to as ‘non-nobles of high standing’ represented.Footnote ⁶

The constitution provided for a meeting of the Riksdag, or Estates of the Realm, at least every three years for at least three months, but meetings were both longer and more frequent, culminating in sessions of 20 and 21 months in the 1760s. The constitution also stated that the preferred site for Riksdag meetings was Stockholm, the principal city of the realm. By the 1720s the city had become the undisputed political centre, whereas previously the centre had been dictated by the travels of the absolute king. The importance of being in Stockholm was increased by the small supply of printed media before the Freedom of the Press Act in 1766. When the Estates were in session, the city became a place rich in political information, where politicians, bureaucrats and hangers-on were readily available for passing on news in the streets and squares.Footnote ⁷

For those who wanted to gain influence or discuss how others governed, Stockholm was the place to be. The high density of people, information, ideology and bureaucracy in this small area made space an important part of the political process. Here, it is impossible to map the multiplicity of political places and their usage in eighteenth-century Stockholm. For the purpose of this article, social and political boundaries around three particular places will be examined, as well as the factors that facilitated traversing them: the city of Stockholm itself, the central square Riddarhustorget and the wine shops. The object is to illuminate the conditions for political participation in the national arena through people's presence in the city. The argument is that the dimensions of accessibility, connection and separation in political life were defined when different social groups territorialized certain places, and attempted to restrict access to them, while the practice of other groups ‘invaded’ these territorializations and challenged social distinctions.

Conditional presence in the city

Gaining access to the city of Stockholm during sessions of the Estates was not simply a matter of entering it. Travel within the realm required permission from local authorities and obtaining a passport signed by the county governor, stating the purpose of the trip. Local authorities could very well challenge the reasons for an individual's travel to Stockholm and deem him or her unfit to go there. This reluctance to let people travel to the city had less to do with its capacity to corrupt, although this was believed to be great,Footnote ⁸ than with the general consensus that the Riksdag needed to be protected from improper influences.Footnote ⁹

The rights of members of the Estates and the political interests of local authorities would sometimes collide when office holders took it upon themselves to judge the political capabilities of the lower estates. During the Riksdag of 1771, officers of the Stockholm governor general received orders to seize a member of the peasant estate and send him home, because he had travelled without a proper passport. This type of meddling with members' privileges was disliked by the peasantry, and the member concerned was allowed to stay. Nevertheless, the common complaints that office holders attempted to influence the election of members of the peasant estate suggest that many felt they should hinder the presence of certain individuals in the city.Footnote ¹⁰

Having committed a political crime was another reason for being excluded from the city during Riksdag sessions. Expulsion was in fact a ban on political participation altogether: such a restriction on a person's mobility also restricted their ability to influence others in the political sphere. The factory owner Abraham Hedman, who received such a sentence in 1747 for having ‘meddled in public matters that were not his’, considered his sentence a grave circumscription of his political rights, although formally he had none, and sought to have it overturned. He reminded the court that the charges against him of having bribed members of the Riksdag had been dropped, and therefore his sentence was ‘a kind of exile’ that brought him great suffering.Footnote ¹¹

Despite sporadic attempts to hinder the presence of particular individuals in the city, the influx of people when the Estates were about to meet was considerable. Lists of prominent travellers were published in local newspapers from the 1740s onwards, and there is a striking increase in reported arrivals during the few weeks before each Riksdag session. The numbers are difficult to gauge, but in a city with a population of some 60,000 at mid-century, the arrival of 1,000 members of the Estates must have been noticeable to the regular inhabitants. Most of the members belonged to the nobility, but around 150 peasants, 100 burghers and 50 clergymen also made their way to the city. In addition to the members, many others came as well – wives, servants, supplicants and delegations from the localities represented, checking up on their members.Footnote ¹²

The city authorities systematically monitored arrivals. Several ordinances in the eighteenth century required everyone who housed visitors from outside the city to register them with local officials. Name and place of residence had to be reported, along with the traveller's nationality and business in Stockholm. This information was relayed to the governor general. The regulations were first interpreted as pertaining only to foreign visitors, but ordinances repeatedly underscored that all visitors were to be registered, no matter their class or standing. City ordinances were enforced in the local courts, where house owners were fined for not handing in their lists of travellers every Saturday. Later in the century monitoring of visitors became the responsibility of the kvartersuppsyningsmän (quarter overseers), who also supervised street cleaning, lighting and adherence to sumptuary laws in their assigned quarter of the city.Footnote ¹³

If actual arrival in the capital involved passing through a very rudimentary screening process, yet another was in store for members of the lower estates during their stay there. The constitution protected all members of the Estates: they were not to be hindered in their travels to or from the Riksdag and were to be protected from insult, slander and violence while attending its sessions. A pattern of attacks and insults directed at members of the peasant estate by the lower ranks of the city's inhabitants can be discerned – occurrences which to a degree circumscribed the actions of the peasantry while in the city. Restrictions began at the toll gates. In 1761 the guards arbitrarily took it upon themselves to judge who was to be allowed to enter Stockholm. A member of the peasantry, Johan Pardanen, was held for a day at the gates at Skanstull for allegedly having insulted the guards. Some confusion may have arisen, as Pardanen's mother tongue was Finnish and he did not understand Swedish. He was released when it was revealed that he was a member of the Estates and that the peasant estate had decided to investigate the affronts against him.Footnote ¹⁴

Although Pardanen's case may have been the result of a misunderstanding, the many examples of attacks on members of the peasant estate indicate that their presence in the city was a provocation to some. In March 1720 the member Bengt Andersson reported that he had been attacked by two soldiers in the Royal Life Guard who had been armed with rapiers. Andersson suffered two stabs to his left hand. In October 1726 another member, Söne Nilsson, was insulted and pushed to the ground by a soldier in the Royal Artillery while leaving a joint committee meeting, receiving ‘a hole in his head’ in the process. Others were verbally attacked, boxed about the ears or had their canes broken by city guards.Footnote ¹⁵ Erik Jöransson was insulted at two different Riksdag sessions. At the first, in 1741, a Royal Life Guard soldier called him a ‘peasant thief, rogue and dog's cunt’. Two years later, he was forcibly held by a member of the nobility, who called him a ‘damned leather shirt’, referring to the traditional peasant costume.Footnote ¹⁶

Very few offences against members of the peasant estate were committed by their superiors. More often they occurred at the beginning of Riksdag sessions, between people with no previous contact. As the affronts to Erik Jöransson make clear, members of the peasantry were particularly recognizable in the city because of their dress, and were considered ‘out of place’ there, despite their formal status and constitutional protection.

The most frequent offenders were soldiers of the Royal Life Guard and Royal Artillery. These regiments were stationed in the city and patrolled the streets at night. They also guarded the Royal Palace and important state buildings. Recruits to the Life Guard came primarily from the lower strata of urban society, some of them forcibly conscripted vagrants and criminals, and the regiment was generally held in low regard. Others who abused members of the peasantry had a similar social background – people such as stable hands and servants. These groups lacked political representation, but more importantly, the many offenders among the city guards suggest that they had a sense of ownership of the city they were guarding – a control that peasants challenged when they rose above the guards in rank because they were members of the Riksdag.Footnote ¹⁷ These social tensions did not diminish over time. Finnish members of the peasant estate told their fellow members shortly after arriving at the Riksdag in 1771 how they had already been attacked in the streets on several occasions.Footnote ¹⁸

Members of the Riksdag were not always innocent victims, however, and asserted their presence in the city, sometimes by attacking guards or refusing to take orders from city officers. This caused delicate problems for officials of the city, particularly when the perpetrators were noblemen. One member of the nobility was found lying drunk in the snow in January 1741. A couple of fire guards took him to their corps de garde where he began insulting them, as well as the absent governor general, when he felt he was not being treated in accordance with his station. The guards claimed that they could not judge his social status because his clothes were covered in snow. In another case of mistaken social standing, a city guard forced a member of the nobility out of a restricted area during an exhibition of fire-fighting in 1738. Magnus Lagermarck was particularly affronted at being moved out of the way as if he had been ‘part of the common folk [the guard] had orders to govern’. Members of the Riksdag expected to have no limits to their freedom in the streets, but different estates conceived of the scope of this freedom differently.Footnote ¹⁹

The authorities and the Estates themselves hoped to create an atmosphere in the city in which the Riksdag might function without interference. This provided a pretext for excluding individuals from the city on the grounds of their lacking political reliability – exclusions that were primarily directed at members of the peasantry. Formal admittance to the city did not automatically result in social acceptance. Members of the peasant estate, and sometimes others, were reminded that their presence was questioned by the city's inhabitants, particularly those whose job it was to defend it.

Social mobility and political communication in the square

The political heart of the city was Riddarhustorget, a square that stood proxy for elite political engagement and political communication in general. It was here that the estate of the nobility met in the House of the Nobility (Riddarhuset) from which the square took its name. Eventually the peasant and burgher estates moved their meetings to the neighbouring building, the new City Hall. Along the opposite side of the square, printers, wine shops and coffeehouses catered to the tastes of the polite and fashionable. Politicians and newcomers alike were identifiable and accessible, though not always looked upon benevolently, as they were seen moving between Estate sessions and committee meetings.Footnote ²⁰

The attraction of the square had to do with the availability of political information from the different estates, publishers and public houses. The peasant and burgher estates advertised their meetings on the front door of the new City Hall. Next door, at the House of the Nobility, a hoarding on the west side of the square was used to announce the nobility's plenary sessions and joint committee meetings. Together with the front door and vestibule of the House, the hoarding was also the most commonly used site for libelling and the posting of political texts. The information system based at the square not only provided information from many sources, it was also remarkably effective: within two hours of posting a notice on the hoarding in June 1756 the 100 members of the Secret Committee scattered across the city had assembled.Footnote ²¹

State and city authorities expressed a view of political discussion among the lower orders as promoting lies and injustice and undermining morality. Besides the ever-present fear of uprisings springing from public discussion, the disorderly character of public opinion contributed to its perceived danger.Footnote ²² Accordingly, city and state authorities went to great lengths to prevent people congregating, especially in Riddarhustorget. The lower orders among the city's inhabitants, journeymen, soldiers and the poor, were restricted from using public space at certain times of day by various city ordinances. City authorities also tried to hinder their presence in Riddarhustorget, under the pretext of avoiding rioting and disorder, in the 1737 ‘Act against violence in Stockholm’.Footnote ²³

But it was not only the lower strata of the city whose assemblies were considered dangerous. A Royal Act of 1619 had forbidden all congregations of burghers unless they were explicitly called for by the city or state authorities, and in the eighteenth century this Act was made more stringent in response to political turmoil at elections of magistrates. In Stockholm in 1748, and later throughout the realm, public meetings were prohibited, with the exception of formal proceedings at the City Hall. The decree restricted assemblies in public space, but also severely curtailed meetings of the city's elders until it was abolished in 1766.Footnote ²⁴

Decrees notwithstanding, large numbers of people passed through or gathered in Riddarhustorget. The largest gatherings occurred before and after the morning plenary and committee sessions. There is evidence of people being able to access information here that was confidential on grounds of national security: in 1765, for instance, the Secret Committee investigations into the alleged financial mismanagement of Crown funds attracted a crowd that waited for committee members to emerge and divulge the decisions reached. When the burghers of Stockholm held elections for Riksdag representatives in 1769, a crowd assembled in the square to await the results. Despite worries expressed in the Council of the Realm, the crowd dispersed peacefully once the results had been made public. Outside the print shops across the square from the House and the City Hall, crowds gathered when long-anticipated pamphlets and newspapers were published, in order to obtain a copy or read one displayed in the shop windows.Footnote ²⁵

Disorder could not be avoided altogether, but it was unusual. One of the rare cases of rioting in Stockholm in the eighteenth century took place in Riddarhustorget, and the occasion was clearly associated with national politics. The event was the arrest of Burgomaster Kierman, leader of the Hat party in the burgher estate and one of the wealthiest men in the realm, on charges of having embezzled Crown funds. Because of Kierman's partisan affiliation, his arrest was heavily charged with political connotations. A party system had emerged in Swedish politics in the 1740s, and since then the Hat party, which mainly functioned as a loosely organized network for mobilization in preparation for elections, had managed to get its supporters into prominent positions. Kierman had been one of the party's staunchest supporters in the burgher estate for over 20 years. In 1765 he had been under investigation by the Estates, since the Hat party had for the first time lost its parliamentary majority to the rival Cap party, and his arrest was long anticipated. On the day he was brought into custody at the City Hall in Riddarhustorget in May 1765, the city authorities took precautions to prevent assemblies. The plan was to convey Kierman in a carriage from his home to the prison at midday while the journeymen would still be at work – journeymen being the group that were most commonly associated with disorder. The arrest dragged on into the evening, however, and Kierman was brought across Riddarhustorget at the end of the day. A crowd assembled at his home and in the square, and pelted rocks at the windows of his home and his jail cell, shouting slogans referring to rampant inflation and Kierman's embezzlement.Footnote ²⁶

Naturally, the number of ordinary people in Riddarhustorget on any given day is difficult to assess. Journeymen, lesser burghers and peasants gathered there, according to their own confessions in political trials, but also noblemen, officers, burghers and members of the state bureaucracy. Women are mentioned only fleetingly in this connection, and then only as passing through. The youth of the people in the square was often commented upon. This was not only a place to meet people you already knew; new contacts would be established between strangers as well, leading to sociability and political co-operation. Party supporters accused each other of posting recruiters in the square, where they would whisk away newcomers to local wine shops, hoping for votes in plenary sessions in exchange.Footnote ²⁷

The mobility of people in the square exaggerated the social diversity and pluralism of the city. The nobleman Axel Reuterholm, who arrived in Stockholm for his first Riksdag in 1738, described the square as a seething anthill where ‘the daring and the moral, the busy and the light-hearted, the gentle and the proud, beautiful and ugly, young and old, common and dignified faces moved about one another’. Some, he said, seemed to have a definite purpose, while others fumbled their way around as if driven by the weather. In an almost impressionistic manner, Reuterholm talks of faces flashing by, glistening gold and silver braid and the deafening rumble of carriages. But to ‘vary the fricassée’, as he put it, there were also many common people in the square who served as a contrast to the glory of the distinguished.Footnote ²⁸

Others were even more critical of the social variation apparent in the square and saw it as an expression of social ambition and corruptive effects of luxury. An anonymous author of a verse entitled ‘When I think of Stockholm’ (‘När som iag på Stockholm täncker’) juxtaposed the absence of people of quality there with the wealth of luxuries which was also present. The author directed criticism at scribes in the state bureaucracy, whose presence was ‘like thorns among roses, like copper compared to gold, like stone compared to turquoises’. A prediction of what fate awaited these ambitious young men concluded the verse: like so many others, they would end up under the table of a wine shop, corrupted both morally and physically.Footnote ²⁹

Riddarhustorget provided a site in which to see and be seen, to gather information from many different sources, and most importantly in the present context, it offered a gateway to further sociability. This gateway was not open to everyone, access to the square being formally regulated by the city and state authorities, and moralized by the political elite: state office holders and the lower strata among the city's inhabitants were among those considered out of place here. While this was a place where one learnt a great deal about the politics of the day, it was not where one gained legitimacy to participate in them.

Patronage and entering a wine shop

If Riddarhustorget offered opportunities to be invited along to a wine shop, further social and political delineations were made on entry to one. In part, the distinction at public houses was simply a question of affordability, which led to different patrons being catered for. Stockholm public houses were divided into three categories, depending on what rights the owner had with regard to the serving of alcoholic beverages. Wine shops (vinskänkar) were the most exclusive. They were kept by burghers with a licence to import wines and to sell them, both to other merchants and on the premises. Wine shops could be large, and often provided rooms for travellers.Footnote ³⁰ Wine shops had been sites for political discussion in Sweden from the early eighteenth century, and evidence of this activity becomes much more frequent in the second half of the century.Footnote ³¹

Wine shops were the preferred locations for political discussion in eighteenth-century Stockholm, while coffeehouses were comparatively few. Just over 15 coffeehouses had been established by 1728, and later their number was restricted to 25. They seem to have been patronized primarily by men from the nobility, wealthy burghers and ‘non-nobles of high standing’. In exceptional cases a clergyman might have been seen there: jokes and plays indicate that Stockholm coffeehouses were considered exclusive polite places well into the eighteenth century. In 1723 Abraham Dahlén, a notary at the Estate Offices for the National Debt, met a captain at Poppelman's coffeehouse to discuss the proposals he was writing on behalf of the peasant estate. It is noteworthy that Dahlén never met members of the peasantry he was working for at coffeehouses, only in other people's lodgings; and they for their part rarely visited such establishments. It seems as though coffee was considered to be a product that peasants simply did not consume. A proposal to ban coffee and champagne imports in 1752 gives an indication of the social boundaries of coffee: the peasant estate had no objections, saying that the country's peasantry did not use either.Footnote ³²

Arranging open tables at wine shops at the beginning of Riksdag meetings and maintaining party ‘clubs’ for the remainder of sessions was arguably the main function of the Hat and Cap party organizations. Wine-shop sociability was especially important before elections of speakers and joint committee members; this was where the two parties rallied support.Footnote ³³ Party divisions seem to have varied in importance, depending on the political climate and the places members of the Estates chose to patronize. Partisan politics occasionally restricted movement by making a person's presence in certain public houses suspicious. At the Riksdag of 1765–66, when the Hat party was in a minority, supporters had only one wine shop to resort to, the ‘Hat club’, admission to which seems to have been rather indiscriminate. In 1769, however, when the Hats had regained a majority, noblemen who had not voted with the party were shouted at and thrown out of a wine shop where its members usually met.Footnote ³⁴

Social demarcations were important at public houses. When, late in the period, the peasant estate decided to follow the example of the other estates and organize its own club, it met at a tavern. The reasons for establishing a club arose from concerns that the peasantry would become divided and lose its political force if members went to different public houses, implying that this might lead to shifts in political loyalties. It was decided that all members should take their refreshments at the tavern Hwita Lammet, and two members were appointed to ensure that no one strayed elsewhere. Sven Hofman, a peasant who was not admitted into the estate but remained in the city for the duration of plenary sessions, was not allowed into Hwita Lammet. Members were not happy about these restrictions. The overseers could soon report that a handful of members had patronized the ‘Hat club’ mentioned above.Footnote ³⁵

When social mixing occurred at wine shops, spatial demarcations had to be made within the premises. When entertainment for individuals from several estates occurred, it was in a regulated form, so that mingling and conversation were minimized and the social hierarchy made clear. The factory owner Abraham Hedman, who was not a member of the Estates himself, treated 30–40 members of the peasant estate to dinners in the spring of 1743. The object was to convince the peasantry to support the Danish crown prince in his bid for the Swedish throne. The dinners were held at the wine shop Stora Christopher and were financed by the Danish government. The peasants sat in a large room and dined separately from the host and hostess, who occupied an adjoining room together with some noblemen. During the dinner, the host came into the room where the peasants were eating and asked if they were happy with their meal. He requested that they stand by the Danish crown prince, which all the guests promised to do.Footnote ³⁶

For a member of the peasant estate who was a newcomer to the city, an invitation from a social superior or a patron was required to venture into a wine shop. Sometimes, wine-shop keepers invited people to their establishments, either when they met in the street or at other public houses. Hosts and patrons could very well be strangers to the newcomers, but members of the peasantry rarely entered these places initially without some sort of invitation.Footnote ³⁷ Some members of the estate splashed out in 1743 for a delegation of peasants from Dalarna. Jan Persson and Olof Håkansson entertained them at the wine shops Riddarhuskällaren and Hoppet.Footnote ³⁸ Both men were prominent members of the peasant estate – the former its speaker – and had the political experience and financial means to act as patrons themselves.

It was the issue of patronage that made the presence of peasants in wine shops potentially subversive. In 1747, Jonas Nilsson was accused of hosting ‘suspicious and harmful dinners’ after he had treated fellow peasants to food and drink at Förgyllda Druvan. This was not strictly illegal, so the charge was bribery. The parties Nilsson had hosted had been of up to nine men, sometimes as many as eighteen, but usually they had not eaten together. Instead they had sat in smaller groups in different rooms. Nilsson had been given funds for the dinners by the aforementioned Abraham Hedman, after presenting receipts from the publican. The case went to trial, and although both Nilsson and Hedman were charged, only the peasant Nilsson was found guilty.Footnote ³⁹

A Riksdag decree in 1751 codified prevailing views of political sociability among the lower orders by outlawing the hosting of parties when the intention was to sway people's opinions. The decree stated in particular that dinners with political motives were dangerous because no one in the realm had permission to ‘lead and drive an ignorant congregation . . . under the pretext of particular affection for the Authorities or zeal for the Common Good’.Footnote ⁴⁰ This type of ‘zeal for the Common Good’ – we might call it integration into a set of political values – was promoted through drinking practices at the wine shops and was a means of social inclusion. The culture of drink in Stockholm was integrated with political culture, as it was in the rest of Europe and in North America.Footnote ⁴¹ This social/political function of drink was reinforced by the frequent recitation of political verse and drinking of health in the wine shops during Riksdag sessions. Verses summarized the basic elements of political ideology in a few short stanzas and provided an opportunity to show loyalty not only to the company at the table, but also to the constitution, the Estates and king and country, as well as to celebrate masculinity. One type of verse simply named the four Estates in different allegories, and toasts were drunk to the Estates and to parliamentary rule. Other verses honoured the delicate balance of power and liberty, as manifested in the constitution.Footnote ⁴²

There was very little public debate about the immorality of visiting coffeehouses (or wine shops) in Sweden.Footnote ⁴³ In Stockholm, issues of effeminacy were raised in connection with visits to the exclusive coffeehouses, but this gendered rhetoric was eclipsed by that of social division in relation to the wine shops. Because wine shops were not ‘natural’ sites for peasant sociability, the presence of peasants there provoked reactions, but in Sweden they were court investigations into whether peasants had been treated to drink and therefore owed their patrons political favours in return.

The decree in 1751 banning political dinners led to further investigations into transactions between peasants and wine-shop keepers. Everything that happened among peasants while consuming wine in a wine shop became suspicious.Footnote ⁴⁴ The hypocrisy surrounding the social division of wine-shop sociability did not escape those whose morality was questioned. One patron under investigation for treating members of the peasantry to wine for no apparent reason exclaimed that ‘if a peasant enters a place, the doors are kicked open and the hosts are put under inquisition, but if a nobleman, clergyman or burgher is treated, nothing is said of it, even though everyone knows that others have treated them’. Despite several accounts of similar activities among the nobility and clergy, the courts took pains to ignore everything but political sociability among the peasantry.Footnote ⁴⁵

An invitation was vital for members of the peasant estate wishing to enter a wine shop, and for admission to many of them membership of the Estates seems to have been a prerequisite. This tallies with the fact that this was where integration into political values occurred. It was in the wine shops that ‘self-proclaimed statesmen’ were ostensibly made. While the access of peasants to Stockholm wine shops was restricted to some extent by the subtleties of social practice, it was put under scrutiny and regulation as a result of intense suspicions among the state authorities regarding peasant political sociability, further limiting their use of place.

Mobility, social thresholds and political participation

Political participation in Stockholm was conditioned by the places an individual had access to, and these in turn were conditioned by social status. Riddarhustorget, the wine shops and indeed the city itself were controlled spaces where decrees and regulations limited access for the lower orders and defined how places were to be used. Other constraints were created in moral discourse and through social conflicts over place. Crossing thresholds involved learning and adapting to the social and political conditions of boundaries. I would argue that when we look at passages between places, at thresholds, it becomes clear that political participation and engagement were not confined to discrete areas, but were spread throughout the city. Mobility between sites and the use of multiple places offered the means by which the lower orders could take part in political life. The remarkable ‘political density’ of eighteenth-century Stockholm gave the lower orders the opportunity to cross thresholds into elite spaces, as a large influx of people engaged in politics temporarily upset the city's corporate social divisions.

What is important to note in the case of Stockholm is the temporary character of the political space created when the Riksdag was in session. In both Paris and London we see the gradual development of places in which the better-off easily moved from one place to the next, creating ‘a unified social arena’ or a ‘public sphere’. Here people of the same sort shifted their loyalties from neighbourhood concerns to a shared class and culture and to public, national matters. In Paris, social and psychological boundaries between neighbourhoods were being broken down in the mid-eighteenth century, opening the way for a wider range of political topics as well.Footnote ⁴⁶ The structural conditions for a similar gradual change in Stockholm – a rising middle class, urbanization and cultural change – were not present in the eighteenth century and would not be until early in the next.

Further analysis is needed in order to draw more general conclusions about the importance of spatial mobility for political life. However, as these case studies have shown, mastery of particular sites, such as the coffeehouse or the salon, was not the only way of taking part in political life. Neither was a unified ‘public sphere’ a prerequisite for extra-parliamentary politics. Instead, participation was made possible by moving between places, and learning how to navigate many different social and political boundaries.