Förenade mot elden : En analys av stormaktstidens brandordningar

Sammanfattning: The 17th century saw a time of great power for Sweden, in some cases called the Swedish empire. This period in Sweden is known as a time where Sweden’s government and state organization became more structuralized. One of the many elements that contributed to this was the process of centralization where more matters were handled by the central government and many laws were standardized throughout the nation. This essay looks at this process through some of the local fire law documents that were written during this time in order to establish a more effective fire prevention system. The aim of the essay thus becomes to analyze these documents to see whether or not they share similarities enough to showcase a centralization process. The key theoretical terms in the essay are organization, participation, central, local, private and public. The last three of these terms will be used partially to analyze how the division of responsibility worked in these laws as this time also saw development in the differentiation of what is public and private respectively. The documents were compared with each other to see whether or not they shared similarities as well as if there was any development in them between the older and newer ones. The conclusion was that the documents do prove that a certain development can be seen. The fire departments organization became much clearer in the later editions of the documents. Centralization can also be seen to a certain extent as some of the laws that came out of Stockholm started appearing in other cities documents as well. Some cities chose to have a different format but still applied some of the same laws as the capital. As a whole, however, there is no evidence to suggest a complete centralization of fire prevention in early modern Sweden. Responsibility did prove to be somewhat equally shared between the population and public officials such as the local fire department.