Suchergebnisse

In the Norwegian-Swedish Union, Norway had home rule; the Swedish foreign minister conducted its foreign relations. This fact created the impression that Norway 'played second fiddle' in forging its relations with foreign Powers. This analysis contends that the organisation of the apparatus for policy-making secured Norwegian influence and interests in the Union's foreign politics. It uses 'concertmaster' as an alternative metaphor to sum up the role of the Norwegian government in the king's Norwegian foreign politics during the Union period. Whilst the king of Norway and Sweden's authority dwindled as politicians in both countries limited royal powers and strengthened those of the Parliaments, the impression of Norway as the foreign political loser increased. In the context of growing European nationalism in the 1890s, the impression of Norway playing second fiddle shored up the radical opposition against the unpopular Union and led to its dissolution in 1905. ; publishedVersion

The aim of the article is to study the border between Norway and Sweden during the nineteeth century on the basis of Karl Deutsch's theory of "pluralistic security community" from the 1950s and modern international border theory and research literature on nation building processes. The establishment of a non-violent border relationship including the development of a shared Norwegian-Swedish belief that political problems must and can be resolved by processes of peaceful change, was an issue that Deutsch dated to the years after the peaceful dissolution of the political union between them—in 1905. Confronted with an overview of the history of the border during the union period from 1814 to 1905, the article claims that the demilitarized union zone was established already in the 1820s. The border was gradually solidified as a consequence of the development of modern cartography, but its significance was weakened as a result of the industrialisation during the nineteeth century. On the emotional level it seems possible to find expressions of bad feelings based on bad historical experiences having political consequences, up till today.