Description
My paper traces the crises, class relations and geopolitical pressures that gave rise to the Scandinavian personal union, the Kalmar union, around the turn of the 15th century by utilising Geopolitical Marxism to integrate the so-called levels of analysis theoretically. The process was co-constituted by the recently integrated Baltic order, especially pressure from its leading power, the Hanseatic League, the mid-14th century Black Death, Swedish intra-ruling class conflict and general kingdom-specific class conflicts. The formation of the Scandinavian personal union showcases the contours of dynastic sovereignty, as the region-wide integration of geopolitical power in one monarch flowed from marriage and inheritance policies of the Scandinavian royal houses. This problematises accounts that see the formation of the kingdoms as national processes tied to proto-nations. Rulers of the Kalmar Union waged continuous wars on the Hansa, and their geopolitics were central in the subsequent breaking of the League’s Baltic supremacy, but these efforts in geopolitical accumulation also heightened its own social conflicts that were ultimately central to its demise. This double disintegration decreased the quasi-centralised control over the development of the Baltic and opened up space for the development of a new kind of political community, the territorialising dynastic state. Russian state-formation under Muscovy, for example, relied on this space.
