History of Norway - Union With Sweden

Union With Sweden

Denmark–Norway entered the Napoleonic Wars on France' side in 1807. This had a devastating effect on the Norwegian economy as the Royal Navy hindered export by ship and import of food. Sweden invaded Norway the following year, but after several Norwegian victories a cease-fire was signed in 1809. After pressure from Norwegian merchants license trade was permitted with corn from Denmark to Eastern Norway in exchange for Norwegian timber export to the United Kingdom. Following the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, the Treaty of Kiel signed on 14 January 1814 ceded Norway to Sweden.

Christian Frederik, heir to the Danish crown, had since 1813 been governor-general of Norway. He traveled to Trondheim to gain support for his person and assembled twenty-one prominent citizens at Eidsvoll on 16 February 1814 where he laid claim to the throne. They rejected a new absolute monarch and instead wanted a liberal constitutions; therefor, representatives from the entire country would be elected to create a constitution. The 112 members of the Constituent Assembly gathered and, after six weeks of discussion, concluded the work on the Constitution of Norway on 17 May 1814. Power would be split between the king—a position which Christian Frederik was appointed—and the Parliament of Norway. King Carl Johan of Sweden invaded Norway in late July; at the Convention of Moss on 14 August Norway surrendered while Sweden accepted the constitution. The union between Sweden and Norway under Carl Johan was approved by Parliament on 4 November.

The Napoleonic Wars sent Norway into an economic crisis, as nearly all the merchants had gone bankrupt during the blockade. Recovery was difficult because of export tariffs and the country underwent strong inflation. The Norwegian speciedaler was established as a currency by the Bank of Norway when it was established in 1816, financed through a silver tax which lasted until 1842. Under threat of a coup d'état by Carl Johan, Norway reluctantly paid the debt stated in the Treaty of Kiel, despite never having ratified it. Constitution Day on 17 May became an important political rally every year; in 1829 the Swedish governor-general Baltzar von Platen resigned after he used forced against demonstrators in the Battle of the Square. The first half of the century was dominated by the ca. 2,000 officials, as there were few bourgeois and no aristocracy following a 1821 decision to abolish nobility. From the 1832 election, farmers became more conscious of electing themselves, resulting in a majority of farmers in Parliament. This resulted in rural tax cuts and higher import tariffs, shifting the tax burden to the cities. They also passed the Local Committees Act, which established elected municipal councils from 1838. Cultural expression from the 1840s to the 1870s was dominated by the romantic nationalism, which emphasied the uniqueness of Norway.

The textile industry started in the 1840s, which was followed up with mechanical workshops to build new machinery as the British embargo hindered import of textile machinery. A economic crisis hit the country from 1848, resulting in Marcus Thrane establishing the first trade unions and demanding that quality for the law independent of social class. Parliament passed a series of laws abandoning economic privileges and easing domestic trade during the 1840s and 1850s. Population increase forced the clearing of new land, although some of the growth came in the cities. The population of Christiania reached 40,000 in 1855. By 1865 the population reached 1.7 million; the large increase was largely caused by better nutrition from herring and potatoes, a sharp decrease of infant mortality and increased hygiene. Emigration to North America started in 1825, with the first mass emigration commencing in the 1860s. By 1930, 800,000 people had emigrated, the majority settling in the Midwestern United States.

The population decrease resulted in a labor shortage in the agriculture, which again resulted in increased use of machinery and thus capital. The government stimulated the process through the creation of the Mortgage Bank in 1851 and the State Agricultural College eight years later. The 19th century saw a large increase of road construction and steamship services commenced along the coast. The first railway, the Trunk Line between Christiania and Eidsvoll opened in 1854, followed a year later by the first telegraph line. Export industry commenced with steam-powered sawmills in the 1860s, followed by canned herring, wood pulp and cellulose. From 1850 to 1880 the Norwegian shipping industry enjoyed a large boom, stimulated by the abolishing of the British Navigation Acts. By 1880 there were 60,000 Norwegian seaman and the country had the world's third-largest merchant marine. As the first coast-to-coast railway, the Røros Line connected the capital to Trondheim in 1877. Norway joined the Scandinavian Monetary Union in 1875 and introduced the Norwegian krone with a gold standard, along with the metric system being introduced.

Annual parliamentary sessions were introduced from 1869 and in 1872 ministers were, though a constitutional amendment, required to meet in Parliament to defend their policies. The king, despite having no constitutional right to do so, vetoed the amendment in three successive parliaments. The 1882 election saw the first two parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, run for election, and subsequently the majority succeeded at impeaching the cabinet. In 1884 the king appointed majority leader Johan Sverdrup as prime minister, thus establishing parliamentarism as the first European country. The Liberal Party introduced a series of legal reforms, such as increasing the voting rights to about half of all men, settling the language conflict by establishing two official written standards, Riksmål and Landsmål, introduced juries, seven years of compulsory education and, as the first European country, universal suffrage for men in 1889.

The 1880s and 1890s saw the rise of the labor movement and trade unions became common; the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions was established in 1899 and the Norwegian Employers' Confederation the following year. The Labor Party had its first parliamentary members elected in 1903. The women's issue became increasingly dominant through the 1880s and they were gradually permitted to take secondary and tertiary education. Norwegian support of the union decreased towards the end of the 1890s, especially following the 1897 Swedish abolition of the free trade agreement and the lack of a Norwegian foreign minister. Negotiations of independence commenced, but were not effective because of shifting governments and the Swedish threat of war.