Historical Sweden: The Napoleon and Bernadottes Years
Sweden during the years of the French Revolution, and then later, the years when the succession had been placed in the Bernadotte dynasty.
This article follows my first article Historical Sweden: The Great Northern War. Here we come upon successions being placed in the Bernadotte dynasty in the year 1810. As a result, Bernadotte became the pre-dominant power in the Swedish government. Once Bernadotte took the reigns of government, his influence and control over Swedish policy-making seemed to happen as if overnight.
Bernadotte ended up disbanding from France and joined the coalition fighting against the French and Napoleon during the years of 1813 and 1814. In 1814, Norway was given to Sweden by Denmark with Denmark receiving the possessions in Pomerania from Sweden.
At the closing of the Napoleon war years, Sweden no longer held any territory in Germany.
In the year 1815, Vienna recognized the union of Norway and Sweden.
In 1818, Bernadotte succeeded (to the throne) as Charles XIV John. Bernadotte was continually involved in a power-struggle with the Riksdag. He reigned over Sweden from 1818 to 1844 (some twenty-six years.) Nevertheless, historically he was considered a good administrator of government. It is thought by some, because of his foreign status, he was not able to gain a tremendous amount of popularity with the (Swedish) people.
During his reign Bernadotte was able to affect a great deal of positive change: Both Norway and Sweden made enormous progress in a political, economic and cultural sense. Bernadotte’s successors, including: Oscar I, Charles XV, and Oscar II were accepted by the people as Swedes.
The constitution was revised somewhat between 1864 and 1866; however, the new one was close in similarity to the one currently in force.
During the latter portion of the 1800s, the union with Norway began to come apart and in 1905, the Norwegian legislature initiated and declared its independence. The Swedes ratified the dissolution without much resistance.
Social legislation progressed during the leadership (and reign) of Oscar II. Examples included laws involving factories; accident compensation for laborers; and shorter hours of work for females and children.
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