Project: Turning Points. Conditions of entrepreneurship in Småland Province across 100 years
A collaborative project between Linnaeus University and Huseby Bruk AB.
Landscape changes and global relations during the social and economic turnaround in the Småland Province, 1870-1930, are at the centre of the project ‘Turning Points’.
The project keeps the Huseby Estate as a starting point and focus for studying the fundamental changes when global capital and industrial usage of forests took off. The 1860s hunger-years forced many in Småland – one of Europe’s economically weakest regions – to leave Sweden. Simultaneously, landed and forest properties were purchased by foreign investors at low prices. These new owners saw timber and wood products from Sweden as a profitable business, and the southern Sweden industry for wood products grew parallel to a dramatically changing natural landscape.
Project information
Project manager
Gunnel Cederlöf, Linnaeus University
Other project members
Eleonor Marcussen, Linnaeus University
Kristofer Jupiter, Linnaeus University
Sofie Magnusson, Huseby Bruk AB
Markus Brunskog, Huseby Bruk AB
Sanna Karlsson, Huseby Bruk AB
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University
Huseby Bruk AB
Financier
The Kamprad Family Foundation
Timetable
1 September 2024 – 31 Augusti 2027
Subject
History (Department of Cultural Sciences and Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies)
More about the project
The Project generates knowledge of the economic turn in the Småland Province in Sweden and the consequences for landscape, climate, and society across the short and long term. It centres on two turning points in time. The first is the severe years of agrarian stress and hunger in the 1860s and the introduction of industrial forest management. Already within a few decades, large clear-cut areas caused critical debates and demands for reforestation. Forests and wetlands were simultaneously drained by making dikes in order to protect young saplings against the early autumn frosts. Today, we face the second turning point. Consequences of the early operations are now observed in the high-level coal leakage from dried-out bog land and in low biodiversity in the dense spruce forests.
‘Turning Points’ is a continuation of the earlier project ‘Huseby in the World’ (also funded by the Kamprad Family Foundation 2016-2019). Historical research made in a unique collection of documents from India, that were found during a cleaning of the manor house attic, have shown how global transformations of the British Empire tied events in India, USA, and Great Britain to Southern Scandinavia and Småland. The low-level railway contractor and, subsequently, estate owner Joseph Stephens was a small cog in these large transformations. Thanks to a successful career as contractor operating in the large railway constructions in British colonial India, Stephens was able to buy the Huseby Estate in Småland during the most severe hunger year 1867. The project researchers were able to show how Huseby’s and Småland’s industrial development partly depended on global transformations and British imperial expansion. The new project takes account of how Stephens became a similarly driving force as estate owner of Huseby.
‘Turning Points’ investigates the consequences of the early industrial forest management in the Småland Province, for the period 1870-1930. The project maps landscape and social change by analysing forest management in the long-term. It compiles information about ownership, forested land, and diking of forest- and wetland from estate archives, historical maps, and maps produced digitally in GIS (geographical information system). The project further investigates how global flows of people and capital were transmitted by international entrepreneurial networks, which thereby strengthened global presence during the industrialisation of Småland. Here, the larger producers of wood products are at the centre.
The project works by the collaboration between Linnaeus University and Huseby Bruk AB across three years (2024-2027). Historians at the Department of Cultural Sciences and the research centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies carries out research in historical archives at Linnaeus University, the estates of Huseby and Engaholm, Kulturparken Småland, the National Archives Gothenburg, and the British Library.
The research results are made use of in the work at Huseby Bruk, today the province’s largest visiting destination. It further develops its pedagogical work at Huseby by the established approach ‘Then, Now, Tomorrow’ and in the exhibition concept ‘Curious About’. Children and youth specifically, and the public in general take an active part in interactive exhibitions, which give the best preconditions for taking new knowledge to heart, understanding small and large contexts, and changing ways of thinking about the world. The project will further develop the permanent exhibition ‘A Chest in the Attic’, created by the earlier project ‘Huseby in the World’. Citizen Science and collaborative work with an estate in Britain, which shares some of the historical experiences with Huseby, will further add to the high quality of the work.
Historical research studies
Global connections and networks
Eleonor Marcussen, Senior lecturer in History at the Linnaeus University, investigates how entrepreneurs built their businesses by investing in and moving to Småland, using global knowledge and networks that were gained from the processes of industrialisation. She now continues to develop her own research from the earlier project. This showed the close relationship between Stephens’ operations in India and his investment in property and industry at the Huseby Estate. This research has contributed to establish how technology, knowledge, and capital moved in unexpected ways between economically weak yet resource-strong regions in Småland and western India and, further, between these two regions and the British imperial metropolis.
Studies of the period 1870–1920 highlights the importance of mobility, especially of the global migration flows and how these generated capital, knowledge, and contacts supporting the region’s development. Marcussen now makes in-depth studies of how entrepreneurs such as Stephens both invested in and influenced the industrialisation of forest and agrarian management. She also investigates the growing export of forest products from Småland to a global market.
Marcussen’s preliminary archive-based research gives an overview of the timber companies’ operations and export from Gothenburg, Karlshamn, and other cities from where the Småland forest owners exported their goods. One of the key companies with immediate relationship to Huseby Bruk in 1870 was the Gothenburg-based company Bark & Warburg.
The project expands the earlier research in the Huseby Archives by working with source material in Swedish, Danich and British private and estate archives, as well as in national timber companies’ archives in the collections of the National Archives in Gothenburg. This is expected to provide a clear idea of entrepreneurs’ networks, trading partners, and their local and international investments.
The social economy of forests
Kristofer Jupiter, researcher in agrarian history, LNU and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, investigates the transformation of forests and forest management in the Småland Province from 1860-1920. He focuses on the spatial changes in landscapes and the socioeconomic consequences of individualizing and privatizing a collective village organisation and jointly claimed forest- and agrarian lands. The project particularly targets changes caused by ownership changes and the new interests in forest management that resulted from an expansion of areas forested for timber production. The study will particularly keep an eye on properties with new foreign owners whose competence and capital were generated outside Sweden. The work progresses by archival research, especially in estate archives, and by analyses of historical and digitally produced maps in GIS.
The study proceeds from the Huseby and Engaholm estates’ archives and uses documentation also from other estate archives whenever relevant for gaining a representative distribution of data. Maps that were drawn when the landscape’s hydrology was changed will be digitized in GIS and analysed in order to see how human intervention affected naturally given preconditions. Priority is given to afforestation during Stephens’ management, the effects of diking and draining forestland, and the lowering of the surface of lakes. Central to these changes were the protracted judicial conflict between the Huseby and Engaholm estates about the lowering of the surface of the Lake Salen.
Historical sources showing changed land use is collected from the estate archives’ economic accounts, the ordnance map including the classification of forest based on field inventories when the map was made, and historical maps which are digitized and georeferenced against modern maps. Compiling these maps will visualise the relative distribution of land types and is an important part of interpreting and understanding the landscape. By including different generations of maps, different layers of time can be identified in GIS for analysing changed forest usage across time. The combination of historical maps and other statistical spatial archival sources, which contribute information to the digitally generated GIS layers makes this study unique.
Huseby Bruk AB
The project ’Turning Points’ develops further Huseby Bruk’s permanent exhibition, supported by new research of the estate’s transformation and impact on the surrounding society and environment from when Joseph Stephens assumed ownership and management. The exhibition is made according to STEAM, the pedagogical concept Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Maths. This aims to raise learning abilities among children. Huseby uses this approach to increase children’s knowledge about Huseby’s and the Småland Province’s modern history in accessible and enjoyable way.
Citizen Science makes the public participate in the production of knowledge. It makes possible to assemble and utilise the participants’ own experiences and knowledge about the region’s past and, from this, to create a ‘living archive’ for stories, texts, and images. The methods will be refined in collaboration with the participants and the results exhibited in different forms and media.
The project establishes a partnership between Huseby Bruk AB and a British visitors’ destination, where the history and surrounding nature of an estate or a factory form a part of the destination’s profile. This is expected to introduce new pedagogical tools and communication methods to understand and convey knowledge about societal change. In such a partnership the project aims to focus in depth on different aspects of societal change which have impacted nature, landscapes, and businesses, both in Småland and in the British region in question.
Earlier research
The project builds on earlier research in the Huseby Estate Archives, especially in the estate owner Joseph Stephens' Archive. You can read more about it in Open Access.
Project team
Gunnel Cederlöf, Professor of History at the Linnaeus University, Primary Investigator and head of research in ‘Turning Points’. Gunnel teaches and carries out research in Indian modern history and the British Empire in South Asia and Europe with a particular focus on environmental history, legal history and colonial history. She was the P.I. of the earlier project ‘Huseby in the World’, funded by the Kamprad Family Foundation.
Eleonor Marcussen, PhD in History and Senior Lecturer in History and the Linnaeus University. She carries out research and collaborative programmes with Huseby Bruk, especially Citizen Science and the production of an exhibition at Huseby Bruk. The field of research spans environment and politics in India and Bangladesh. She was a member of the former project ‘Huseby in the World’, funded by the Crafoord Foundation and the Swedish Research Council.
Kristofer Jupiter, PhD in Agrarian History and researcher at Linnaeus University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. His research focuses on landscape history and Swedish agricultural spatial organisation and practice.
Sofie Magnusson, Managing Director, Huseby Bruk AB (the Huseby Estate Ltd), oversees the project’s work at the old iron and agrarian estate Huseby Bruk. Huseby Bruk is the province’s largest visitors’ destination. It works through knowledge-based activities that gives visitors’ inspiring experiences of Huseby and its surrounding environment in the past and present through innovative and creative pedagogics, called ‘edutainment’.
Markus Brunskog, develops activities at Huseby Bruk AB and heads the Huseby Knowledge Centre Forest and Water, within Huseby Bruk AB. Within the project, he works primarily in the Citizen Science part of the project.
Sanna Karlsson, develops activities at Huseby Bruk AB. Sanna is an agronomist, specialised in rural development. She has worked at Huseby Bruk AB as a visitor’s destination since 2016. Within the project, she works with Citizen Science and the production of an exhibition at Huseby Bruk.
Advisory group
Iva Lucic, Associate Professor in History, Stockholm University and the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Studies. She specialises in environmental history, focusing on transformations of forests and forest management in Europe under modern empires and processes of industrialisation.
Oscar Jacobsson, PhD in Cultural Geography, researcher at the Unit for Human Geography, Department of Economy and Society, Gothenburg University. He specialises in water system changes under the impact of agrarian economic development.
Anders Koskull, owns and runs the Engaholm Estate.
Anders Wästfelt , Professor of Cultural Geography, Stockholm University. He specialises in historical geography, landscape analysis, remote sensing f landscapes which includes agrarian and forest management.