Per Frånberg

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Umeåsystemet

THIS DISSERTATION DEALS with temperance in rural economically backward communities in the county of Västerbotten in Northern Sweden. Most Swedish historians have related the rapid break-through of organized temperance to industrialization and industrial areas. The connection temperance - industrialization is indisputable. The question then arises: why did temperance establish its very strongholds in predominantly rural and backward areas of Northern Sweden? In the referendum over Prohibition in 1922, when the prohibitionists lost their case, the industralized part of Sweden took least interest in the question. In Norrland over 70% and in Vastebotten 81% of the population wanted and voted for Prohibition. The mechanisms of temperance in non-industral areas are dealt wich against this background. Was industrialization seen as a threat to the agrarian communities? How did the commercialization of liquor and wine after 1864 affect small peasant communities and pre-industrial towns, and in which ways and to what extent were these communities ready to defend themselves from the Demon Rum? In the town of Umeå and the southern part of the county of Västerbotten, temperance was able to dominate the left-wing factions of the regional populistic party variations of liberalism and social democracy. These populist parties were genuine prohibition parties and were often in opposition to their own central bureaucracy in Stockholm. They represented, like the American populist movement, a reaction against laissez-faire capitalism and commercialization. With the support of these political parties temperance succeeded in building up Sweden's most severe system of alcohol restrictions - the Umeå system - in 1923.