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Makemakean Does Various Graphical Things!

Trying to come up with three STV constituencies for Copenhagen, I find the statistics for the FPTP constituencies for Copenhagen in OTL to be rather alarming. The map in 1887 looked as follows:

Kopenhagen1887_mod.jpg

The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th constituencies (they didn't have more elaborate names than that, unfortunately) containted 2916, 2209, 1523, 1904, 1621, 2737, and 2659 voters respectively. Far from perfect uniformity, but close enough, given the time period.

Then the 1st constituency contained 7978 voters, and the 5th contained an insane 17828 voters, more than 11 times as many as the 4th!

I have absolutely no idea what the reasoning was there.
 
I have absolutely no idea what the reasoning was there.

My guess would be that the constituency boundaries are several decades old at this point. The 5th would originally have been the rural fringes of the city, but due to massive expansion of the industrial and suburban areas it's spiralled out of control.
 
My guess would be that the constituency boundaries are several decades old at this point. The 5th would originally have been the rural fringes of the city, but due to massive expansion of the industrial and suburban areas it's spiralled out of control.

Looking into the statistics from earlier elections, that seems to be what has happened. In 1869, the 4th had 1842 voters, and the 5th had 4058 voters in it. Still a considerable discrepency, but not beyond what you can see in the UK when, for example, you compare Orkney and Shetland with the Isle of Wight.

Still, that is quite some spiralling out of control going on there.
 
Grønland will be gone the moment the working classes get the vote, but I don’t think any part of Christiania voted for Venstre IOTL.

The first Labour MP is of course Hakon Kirstein who is elected for one of Malmö's three burgher seats in 1891, after Sønderheim's introduction of the income tax ends up widening the franchise considerably:

As a final note, a mere footnote in this election of course, something nobody really paid much attention to at the time, was the election of one single shipyard worker by the name of Hakon Kirstein to one of Malmö's borough seats. Kirstein was a bastard child of a Pomeranian shoemaker and a Danish linen factory worker, a man with no formal schooling to speak of. Yet he was engaged in his union, and after having given a particularly angry speech while somewhat intoxicated one Friday night, complaining about the owner of the shipyard, a wealthy Liberal donor who nonetheless refused to increase his worker's wages despite Sønderheim's trade and tax policies having made sure that he had to spend much less on materials, someone had pointed out to him that he ought to run for the Unionsdag, because “it would be much better if the wealthy gentlemen in that august hall have to listen to your damned rants than that we should have to”. And for some reason, the idea refused to leave his head. Not even on Monday the week after when he was informed that on account of his radical preachings while drunk he was now to be laid off. If anything, it just hardened his resolve.

And so it was that Hakon Kirstein was elected under the banner of the Malmö Radical-Workingmen's Association, a small little success that were to lay the foundation of a political party that would come to play a major role in 20th century Scandinavian politics, the Nordic Labour Party.

One single fix idea, sometimes, that's all it takes.

But I anticipate that other urban areas will soon follow suit and elect similarly minded people.

By the late 1830s/early 1940s, they will have a Chancery President in Thorsager Brandstrup:

brandstrup_hero.png

Still, that's something that I'll look closer into at a later date!
 
Some further notes on party dynamics: the Norwegian and Fenno-Swedish Cap Party are only the same party in that both campaign under the Cap banner, but they have virtually no shared infrastructure and separate leaderships, and generally regard one another with much scepticism until Sønderheim becomes leader in the late 1870s.

The Hats and the Norwegian Unionist Party are theoretically very much different parties, as the Hat brand is toxic in Norway. In practice they are closer than the CDU and CSU. Because they are seen as being overly pro-Swedish by many Caps, they are ironically called the ”Swedish Party” by their opponents (as happened to Højre in OTL).
 
So that damned Fenno-Russian border is turning into a problem again. It has come to my attention that the border I’ve been using is the one from the Russian internal reforms of 1833, not the one from 1721 that I wanted.

Annoyingly most maps of Finland from the 18th century are kept in, well, Helsinki for pretty obvious reasons. Fortunately, they do keep some very well drawn detailed map at the Royal Archive of War in Stockholm where I’ve just been.

Am a bit perturbed by how the archivist gives off the vibe of having worked there literally forever:

”Ah, yes! Nordencreutz’ handdrawn maps from 1721! Those were some of the few maps we got to keep in the Peace of Fredrikshamn when the Russians took Finland! See, the Tsar and his men needed the maps for purposes of landsurveying, and so we had to hand most of them over, but seeing these maps are of no value from that point of view we got to keep them!”
 
Odds on the pre-1833 border won’t be tightly defined anyway. Anyway, the 1721 borders don’t include Viborg.

No, of course not, but it's the northern borders I was after, those were the ones that changed in 1833.
 
What with the particular backstory I put together to justify Copenhagen going with *STV for their borough seats for the 1867 election, I figured it actually makes most sense to divide Copenhagen into four constituencies as follows. What makes Andersen agree to support the scheme is that rather than dividing Copenhagen up into 16 artifical divisions, you can now to a greater extent preserve the idea of a "natural community" that Andersen is so fond of:


CopenhagenSTV.png

Blue: Vesterbro; Population: 36,811; Representatives: 2.
Red: Amager og Kastellet; Population: 66,311; Representatives: 5.
Orange: Nørrebro og Østrebro; Population: 45,363; Representatives: 3.
Green: Indre København; Population: 86,365; Representatives: 6.
 
Translated the entirety of the electoral law for the Estate of Burghers of 1731 into modern English from 18th century old Swedish legalese. It’s a rather loose translation, I must add, as 18th century Swedish had this perverse love affair with inserting subordinate clauses at odd places in a sentence structure that already is rather different from what we moderns are used to. Frankly, it often comes across as Yodaspeak. While Swedish still is far more loose about the SVO rule than English (in many cases, OVS is just a valid a sentence structure as SVO), back in the 18th century, it was far more so. Oh yes, and sentences in old Swedish just keep going on and on forever, adding commas after commas after commas, and seemingly never a proper punctuation mark.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it:

WE FREDERICK, etc. make known that as persistently we have to our displeasure learned of how all kinds of disorder, discontent, and division between the burghers have occurred at the elections for Members of the Riksdag in the boroughs, that it is inevitable that the same will continue to transpire in the future, and that such an urgent matter ought be addressed and concluded with mutual confidence, amity, and love for the boroughs; therefore, in connection with all the Estates of the Realm at the late Riksdag having testified thereof, we have found it fit to author the following ordinance, whereafter elections of Members of the Riksdag for the boroughs henceforth are to be conducted, to stand for perpetuity; that which is contained from the first paragraph to the sixteenth paragraph, both inclusive, is established as law solely for the City of Stockholm, and further to stand as an example for other boroughs in the realm.

§ 1​

The Members of the Riksdag for the boroughs are to be elected at the council house before the sitting magistrate, but not otherwise; all other polls, that be irregular and unauthorised for reason that they occur at other places in the borough or without the calling and supervision of the magistrate, are henceforth entirely banned.

§ 2​

To that end, after our writ of election to the Riksdag has been announced from the pulpits, the mayors and council are to, through both proclamation at the council house gate and the dispatchment of the borough servants to the houses, gather the whole of the borough's burghership at the council house at a certain day and hour to elect a Member of the Riksdag.

§ 3​

At the appointed time all those, who are rightful burghers in the borough and who at the time truly have paid their dues to the Crown and the borough, are to assemble; it is incumbent upon the magistrate to ensure that no one, who at the imminent election not be entitled to vote, encroaches, such as those who have not been admitted to the burghership, not those lacking a common and interlinked sincere interest with the City of Stockholm and its burghership, bankrupts, and those who are foreign travellers, not legal adults, declared infamous, and others of kin nature.

§ 4​

When they are assembled, the mayors and council are to read to them this ordinance, and in particular are to acquaint those simple of mind of all that which in the present election is to be observed; to further impress upon the gathering that they are to approach the election with calmness, and unity, and without any one-sided intentions, as well as those skills and other qualities a Member of the Riksdag from Stockholm necessarily ought to have, that the city may enjoy profitable service and honour from him.

§ 5​

As a rightful and competent election cannot directly be conducted by the entirety of so numerous a burghership, so the affairs of Stockholm, as well as other boroughs, are to be conducted through forty-eight aldermen or electors chosen thereof.

§ 6​

That the appointment of these forty-eight, being the foundation of the whole election and all that is to be decided, may proceed more properly, the magistrate should, for all preceding years, keep at hand a thorough taxation record of the city's entire burghership, divided into forty-eight classes after each and every one's trade and commerce as well as the correspondingly assigned dues, the merchants into twenty-four classes by themselves, and those in the guilds into twenty-four classes by themselves, so designated that to the closest measure each and every society can be tallied, all classes constitute the same sum and contribution to the city.

§ 7​

When now the electors are to be chosen, the classes are to be called up separately, one after the other, and each appoints, either through unanimous agreement or thorough voting, a competent and wealthy burgher from the aldermen in each society, such that the merchant classes elect twenty-four, of which twelve should be grocers and twelve of the other trading societies, and the craftsman classes elect twenty-four from the guilds.


§ 8​

As from the City of Stockholm there are to be ten Members of the Riksdag, so the electors are to vote in the council house before the sitting magistrate, according to their ability and best conscience, by secret ballot, upon six from the burghership for whom they have the most confidence; these six should consist of two proper grocers, one of the other trading societies, and three of the guilds and the craftsmen, all wealthy, experienced, and for the management of the affairs of the Riksdag, skilled and competent men; every society elects their own, such that the twelve grocers put on their ballots two grocers, the twelve other merchants one who deals in trinkets or other goods, while the twenty-four electors from the guilds three guildsmen and craftsmen; and they, who receive the most ballots in the voting, are made Members of the Riksdag.

§ 9​

No one is to be elected either as elector or Member of the Riksdag, who is not a natural-born Swedish man and burgher since at least seven years prior, as well as a resident of Stockholm and annually paying to the city at least sixty dollars silver if a merchant or thirty dollars silver if a craftsman, further neither commissioners nor officials of foreign powers and cities, nor those in the service of foreign ministers, nor other foreigners, nor in company with foreign subjects whose interests are in conflict with Sweden's; every time that the classes or the electors are to conduct any election this paragraph is to be read to them for their information and closely observed.

§ 10​

After the electors have chosen representatives from among the burghership, they are for the filling of the remaining seats to elect six people from among the mayors and the council; of these six the magistrate then votes for four and they, who thereof receive the plurality, are all made Members of the Riksdag for the City of Stockholm, along with the other six already elected from among the burghership.

§ 11​

If at some vote the election comes to an impasse because two or more have received the same number of votes, the matter is to be settled by lottery. But all other disputes, that may occur in the elections, are to be resolved by the magistrate after this method and law and royal ordinances.

§ 12​

They, who upon the announced time and calling, be they entire classes or singular individuals, have not presented themselves for the election, lose for that time their vote, and further have no right to complain or to seek to change that which by those present is established and which nonetheless determines the election.

§ 13​

When thus the election has been conducted properly, in accordance with the preceding, the magistrate is to authorise letters of attorney to the elected Members of the Riksdag.

§ 14​

Were it yet to happen that any of those authorised Members of the riksdag were to pass away, to be assigned to other duties, or to by any other means to be made so disposed that another in their place is needed, then the magistrate is to speedily convene the forty-eight electors and to choose another in the place of the former Member in the manner previously mentioned; so too if a Member from the magistrate is to be replaced, then the lectors are to choose two candidates, of whom the mayors and the council are to elect one by plurality vote.

§ 15​

As soon as the Members of the Riksdag have been granted their letters of attorney, they are to assign certain days of the week to gather amongst themselves and with the forty-eight electors to discuss and agree concerning everything, that which pertains solely to the city or which at the Riksdag needs be observed; to act industriously, that nothing be postponed till the last moment or be forgotten, wherefore the mayors and council is to grant them all necessary relief and assistance.

§ 16​

In all of this, the High Steward and magistrate are entrusted, on the one hand to ensure that no encroachment on the liberty of the Estate is suffered, and on the other hand that if abuse or recklessness were to occur, to appropriately act and hamper the same.


As pertaining to the elections of Members of the Riksdag in other boroughs in the realm, with respect to the manifold differences and distinctions that are between them, both in numbers of burghers, in wealth, and in governance, as well as in other matters, it cannot be expressed in a single ordinance all the considerations which ought to be observed so specifically as for the City of Stockholm; nevertheless we wish for the other boroughs in the realm to make use of the aforementioned method for Stockholm and in accordance with the local considerations to change and adjust the following, as well as to affirm those points for which no change is necessary.

§§ 1, 2, 3, and 4 for the City of Stockholm are so general that they may be applied to all the boroughs in the realm without modification.

§ 5. As in particular in the larger boroughs, which consist of numerous burgherships, rightful and competent elections cannot directly be conducted to the convenience of the burghership, so as with the borough's other affairs they are to be conducted through appointed aldermen and electors, whose numbers, as well as how many there are to be from each society, is to be regulated by the magistrate in each and every borough in accordance with the plurality and governance of their burghership.

§ 6. That the appointment of these electors, being the foundation of the whole election and all that is to be decided, may proceed more properly, the magistrate in every borough should in as far as circumstances allow, for all preceding years, keep at hand a thorough taxation record of the borough's entire burghership, divided after each and every one's trade and commerce as well as the correspondingly assigned dues, into as many classes as in each borough there ought to be electors, the merchants and the craftsmen into certain classes by themselves, so designated, as well for each society as is possible, that the classes are equal either with respect to their contribution to the borough or in taxation, or in any other proportion, which for the tallying of the burghership in a given borough may be assumed as a measure.

§ 7. When now the electors are to be chosen, the classes are to be called up separately, one after the other, and each appoints, either through unanimous agreement or thorough voting, a competent and wealthy man from the aldermen, from the merchant classes as many grocers or other merchants, and from the guilds as many guildsmen, as by the preceding § 5 there ought to be.

§ 9. No one is to be elected either as elector or Member of the Riksdag, who is not a natural-born Swedish man and burgher since at least seven years prior, as well as a resident of the borough in question and annually paying to that borough a certain sum, which for merchants as well as craftsmen is to be determined after each and every borough’s burghership’s wealth, further neither commissioners nor officials of foreign powers and cities, nor those in the service of foreign ministers, nor other foreigners, nor in company with foreign subjects whose interests are in conflict with Sweden's; every time that the classes or the electors are to conduct any election this paragraph is to be read to them for their information and closely observed.

§ 10. Hereupon the electors are now to conduct their election before the sitting magistrate, according to their ability and best conscience, by secret ballot; when a vote for a representative is taken, either from the magistrate or from the burghership, each is to write a single name on their ballot, and the one who obtains the most votes thus becomes a Member of the Riksdag.

§§ 11, 12, and 13 are applicable to all boroughs in common, and so too §§ 14, 15, and 16, provided one observes that in the boroughs there are not to be as many electors as here mentioned for Stockholm, as well as that the manner for electing those of the magistrate as Members of the Riksdag does not everywhere become the same as for Stockholm; it is our gracious desire that in those boroughs where the magistrate and burghership wishes to and are able to conduct their elections for Members of the Riksdag without recourse to electors and the here enunciated method, that that be granted them, provided that in the course of which no encroachment is made on the free elections of the boroughs.

In the absence of His Royal Highness, our highly beloved consort and lord,

ULRICA ELEONORA
 
Very pleased to learn that Fredrik Lagerroth, a noted Swedish 20th century historian and political scientist actually wrote a surprisingly long essay in 1966 in which he speculate on what could have happened if Gustav III:s coup hadn't happened and the Age of Liberty would have continued uninterrupted. He makes references to some things I honestly didn't know and am pleased to learn, such as that while Gustav III first got serious about bicameralism in the early 1790s, already before he staged his coup, he and his conspirators were already floating the idea of merging Clergy and Nobility into one Estate, and Burghers and Peasants into another.

Lagerroth is no Churchill, he is very sober in his predictions and analyses, and never dares to suggest that any particular chain of events inevitably would have proceeded. That's not to say though that he doesn't muse upon tangents and roads not taken, and in the final analysis, he says that there is very good reason to believe that had it not been for Gustav III:s coup, the Swedish constitutional settlement had every ability to evolve into a proper parliamentary system, though of course, one cannot definitively state that that would have happened.

It is a very good example of what I would consider academic alternate history.
 
Very pleased to discover that in William Coxe's Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark from 1792, not just does the British author provide his commentary on the Swedish constitution of 1772 from the point of view as a foreigner, but he also includes the entire constitution in English. It's not his own translation, this is an official translation that King Gustav III himself decreed to be made, presumably because he was very keen that people in foreign courts should read about his exploits and marvel at his statecraft. Or at least what he thought was exploits and statescraft.

Curiously, and in my view rather distatefully, Gustav III very much seems to have been of the opinion of translating government titles by simply taking the closest analogue he could find in the British constitution and letting that stand. Consequently, Riksmarskalk is translated into Lord High Steward, whereas I would personally prefer Realm Marshal or Marshal of the Realm (the latter of which would appear to be the current 'official' translation). There would appear to be a French official translation also, but I have yet to find it so that I can see how Gustav III rendered various government offices in that language. Though Gustav III was very proud that he (unlike his two immediate predecessors) could not just speak Swedish fluently, but actually composed works of prose, plays, and librettos in Swedish, French was always the language he spoke the best and felt most comfortable in.

Coxe's one comment about the Swedish constitution that I find most amusing is him expressing befuddlement over how the Swedish constitution gives so relatively little power and influence to the class of wealthy non-noble landowners, whereas they in Britain at the same time basically ran government by virtue of being virtually the only ones who could vote for the House of Commons. While I cannot speak authoritatively on this point, my guess is that the answer can be found in that Sweden at this point didn't really have a particularly large class of wealthy non-noble landowners. Despite only having a fifth of the population of Great Britain at the time, Sweden had several times as many noblemen as could be found throughout the British Isles, and I would guess that most wealthy landowners in Sweden were already nobles, and so wouldn't feel themselves disenfranchised by the constitutional settlement.

In Sweden, it is fair to say that Pitt the Younger certainly would have been made a nobleman early on in his career (the first police master of Stockholm was made a nobleman for his services to the crown, so doubtless a Pitt the Younger would have gotten a peerage in his own right early on), and Sir Robert Peel's father as a wealthy industrialist would not have had to settle for a mere baronetcy, but would probably have been made a proper baron.

Of course, Coxe also recounts with amusement and alarm the story of the Literal Rubber Stamp, much to my satisfaction. :)
 
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Faces of Nordic Reunification

lindroos_pic.png

Welcome to Åbo, or Turku, or, whatever you want to call this place, I-...

Oh, you're offering cigarettes? Sure, why not? Would be discourteous of me to turn down-...

Ah-...

Nah, on second thought, I think I'd prefer not.

No offense, you smoke what you want, but those you have there are those new French things, those cheminées, that you're supposed to inhale in your lungs. I can't stand them. Tobacco is supposed to be tasted in the mouth, at least in my opinion, so I think I'll prefer my own, thanks.

Oh, you want to know about Reval, that whole mess? Sure, I can tell you.

I admit I didn't really know what I was expecting when I signed up, if it ever came to war, what I'd be doing. Maybe, I dunno, running around in the Karelian forests, looking for Russians running around looking for us, like had been the case in the Napoleonic Wars, like had been the case in the War of the Long Winter. The way these wars used to be fought...

But, no, they got us together and decided to ship us off to Reval for some proper strategizing. This was just after Palmstierna had moved the capital to Helsingfors, well, Helsinki, for the remainder of the war.

They sat us down and explained it to us. If we could just take this, this, this, and that point, then Reval would be ours, and it would just be marching to St Petersburg from then on, and the Russians wouldn't be able to stop us, because they would never be able to send enough troops back in time from the Black Sea, and the war would be over in a week.

I didn't believe it for a single moment: that plan was suicide, I thought. But, you know, I had my orders, so I didn't protest. I trusted in my superior officers that they knew what they were doing.

Then of course, we found out that our superior officers also thought it was suicide, but, you know, they counted on that the generals and the marshals and the government up in Helsingfors, they knew what they were doing, there was some grand plan here, everything would make sense in the big picture.

It was first after the war that I found out that the government and HQ up in Helsingfors had also thought it was suicide all along, but apparently, the request for the assault had actually from London, and there they didn't think it was suicide, they knew it was suicide, they never thought we'd be able to take Reval, they just figured that if one could create a bloody mess up there, that could distract the Russians properly, making them re-evaluate the overall strategy what with it being a two front war, and, I dunno-...

See, that was the thing with the Brits in the late war, they weren't really trying to win the war as such, they were merely aiming for a protracted struggle to bleed the Russians for as long as possible, decimate them in the Black Sea.

But, yeah, so they shipped us over, and-... well, it was a fucking bloodbath.
 
New layout for the now 528 member Folketing of the Nordic Unionsdag:


Parliament_Of_Canada_Seating_Plan_2015_(With_Speaker_Included).png

I've truly tried to find it written somewhere if the benches facing one another at the front of the room in the old Riddarhus had a special name for them, but so far can find nothing. I suppose that I'll have to make up something myself for the particular terminology of the seating arrangement.
 
Faces of Nordic Reunification

Strömer.png

The name is Gustaf Strömer, Master of Police in Åbo on the east side of the Aura. Welcome to my beautiful, peaceful city, the capital of the Grand Principality of Finland!

A couple of things.

First of all, the Åbo Police Corps is not a military organization. We are but humble servants of the city, and keepers of the peace. No different in either spirit or tradition than the farthingmen out in the hundreds. Our duties as such also extends to maintaining the city’s roads and infrastructure and to aid the fire brigade, which any reasonable man will agree are a legitimate usage of public funds.

Second, our uniforms are not intended to provide us with an air of authority, as in the military, as the Åbo Police Corps is not a military organization. They are merely intended to make known to the public that we are officers of the peace in case they would desire our help, and in fact there to allow for the public to inspect us and make sure that we do not neglect our duties. By making every policeman wear a uniform at all times while on duty ensures that they do not go off getting drunk in some beer cellar when they should be serving the city, as in the past has unfortunately occurred too frequently in our lovely city.

Third, our officers are entrusted with mere wooden batons made out of spruce which they strictly may only use in self-defense. Our officers most certainly are not allowed to carry firearms, nor do we maintain anything that could even remotely be considered an arsenal in our stations, because once again, the Åbo Police Corps is not a military organization.

We are here to protect and serve the people of Åbo, and while you are visiting Åbo, we are here to serve and protect you. In a very real sense, you are our boss!

Now, as unfortunately the City Council has decided to cut our funding again, if you could please put any spare change you might be willing to depart with into the donations box on the way out, that would be most appreciated.
 
Faces of Nordic Reunification

View attachment 13335

The name is Gustaf Strömer, Master of Police in Åbo on the east side of the Aura. Welcome to my beautiful, peaceful city, the capital of the Grand Principality of Finland!

A couple of things.

First of all, the Åbo Police Corps is not a military organization. We are but humble servants of the city, and keepers of the peace. No different in either spirit or tradition than the farthingmen out in the hundreds. Our duties as such also extends to maintaining the city’s roads and infrastructure and to aid the fire brigade, which any reasonable man will agree are a legitimate usage of public funds.

Second, our uniforms are not intended to provide us with an air of authority, as in the military, as the Åbo Police Corps is not a military organization. They are merely intended to make known to the public that we are officers of the peace in case they would desire our help, and in fact there to allow for the public to inspect us and make sure that we do not neglect our duties. By making every policeman wear a uniform at all times while on duty ensures that they do not go off getting drunk in some beer cellar when they should be serving the city, as in the past has unfortunately occurred too frequently in our lovely city.

Third, our officers are entrusted with mere wooden batons made out of spruce which they strictly may only use in self-defense. Our officers most certainly are not allowed to carry firearms, nor do we maintain anything that could even remotely be considered an arsenal in our stations, because once again, the Åbo Police Corps is not a military organization.

We are here to protect and serve the people of Åbo, and while you are visiting Åbo, we are here to serve and protect you. In a very real sense, you are our boss!

Now, as unfortunately the City Council has decided to cut our funding again, if you could please put any spare change you might be willing to depart with into the donations box on the way out, that would be most appreciated.
Yeesh. Poor guy.

If the story was sent in,say,1867 Romania,the police would argue that no only are their uniforms met to provide authority and are necessary to put the fear of God in criminals and others who don’t obey the law,but that you should start being grateful of that OR ELSE.

I think the difference is more of a cultural one,given how Eastern Europe/The Balkans think.
 
Yeesh. Poor guy.

If the story was sent in,say,1867 Romania,the police would argue that no only are their uniforms met to provide authority and are necessary to put the fear of God in criminals and others who don’t obey the law,but that you should start being grateful of that OR ELSE.

I think the difference is more of a cultural one,given how Eastern Europe/The Balkans think.

In this timeline, at this time, Finland is undergoing rapid and disruptive changes. Though pushes for greater Finnish autonomy dates back all the way to the late 18th century, which was the reason why they got a devolved assembly in the 1820s, this push has paradoxically always been led by the Swedish-speaking elite who has never been too keen to make friends with the Finnish-speaking peasantry. Now, in the past decades, there has been a rural, Finnish-speaking national-cultural awakening, and in the cities along the coast (of which Åbo is the largest) where there has been a lot of urbanization due to the industrial revolution and so Swedish-speakers and Finnish-speakers often come into contact with each other, it can frequently get very tense. In this timeline, the British situation in Ireland has become even nastier than it was in OTL, Québéc* managed to achieve independence just a few years ago, and while the peace has so far been preserved in Finland, many observers, both foreign and domestic, are deeply worried that Finland might be the next catastrophy waiting to happen.

Add to it that the very idea of a professional police corps is a very new one, and that many people would already be deeply suspicious of having armed people in uniform walking around on the street, and that's the situation in which Strömer finds himself.

He is deeply committed to the Åbo Police Corps and is its zealous guardian. While he might not be good at doing actual police work, and has a nervous and melancholic character that frankly in most cases would be entirely unsuitable for a Master of Police to possess, he is actually very good and capable at keeping anti-police sentiment to a realistic minimum, and keeping the City Council from defunding the police even further, seeing that most of their officers frankly are incredibly shite.

Rest assured that if any of the policemen under Strömer's authority were to misbehave or abuse their position in any way, they would be in deeply fucking serious trouble.
 
Making sense of the northern border between Finland and Russia is more difficult than you can imagine, because even on the most detailed maps you can find, lakes and cities are way off the grid than they by rights should be, and it is quite clear that the people making the maps had only very limited information to go on. Some maps outright contradict one another, and I cannot help but believe that some mapmakers were outright making things up. I can only assume that the reason why this didn't lead to war was because neither Sweden nor Russia at the time had a clear idea of where the border actually went.

I have no idea how I am to resolve this properly.

Part of me wanted to have the border be established properly at the end of the Baltic War in 1859, but part of me now kind of want to have that part remain unclearly defined, in line with how border treaties between Sweden and Russia always left that part "as it was prior to this treaty", and that in as far as that part is concerned, in the peace treaty, Sweden, Russia, and Norway agree that that part of the border "speedily be settled by conference once better geographical data is available", only for various things to always happen to keep postponing this matter. Like, the first team they send up to explore the area is never seen again, and then there's a civil war in Russia that makes Sweden halt the matter, etc., etc.
 
There! I'm not changing Finland's border with Russia any further:

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Official explanation:

Ambiguities regarding the northern part of the border between the Grand Principality of Finland and the Empire of Russia had long persisted since the late 18th century. For the most part this had not been a problem. The only people who actually lived up there were the nomadic Samis, and both the Swedish and Russian government had officially granted them the right to cross the loosely defined border as they pleased as they migrated over the year, following their reindeer.

Problems first arose in the famous David Flynn Incident in 1843 when a Swedish soldier got lost and was captured by Russian forces. Had it not been for the fact that Chancery President Magnus Björnstjerna had first been elected in 1832 on a platform of peace and normalized relations with Russia, and that the Tsar in St. Petersburg at the time, Constantine I, was deeply engaged in internal reforms and modernization and so did not wanted to be distracted by a war with Sweden, the incident very well could have provoked a new Russo-Swedish War. Fortunately, both the Russian and Swedish foreign ministries acted quickly to diffuse the situation, and within a week, David Flynn was returned unmolested to the Swedish armed forces in a small ceremony whereby both the Fenno-Swedish and the Russian troops involved ended the day by having dinner together, playing sports, and drinking vodka, joking about the "accidental invasion of Russia", while the Swedish and Russian governments agreed that at the soonest most appropriate moment, a conference be organized to clarify the status of the border.

Alas, this never happened, and following the Great Baltic War of 1857-59, the Swedish Chancery President Henrik Johan Palmstierna decided to settle matter once and for all with a quick, easy, and inelegant solution, in the peace treaty simply having it be written that the northern border went from "the Northernmost point of Lake Paanajärvi to the Southernmost point of Lake Måmeljaur, and from the Northernmost point of Lake Måmeljaur north to the River Neiden".

And in doing so he had actually only made the problem far worse. Though Lake Paanajärvi and the River Neiden had long been well-charted, nobody knew exactly where Lake Måmeljaur was located, only that it was somewhere to the east of Lake Inari, which was where maps had located it for over a hundred years.

In 1862, the Landsurveyor's Office decided that it was worthwhile to get a better idea of the precise coordinates of the location of Lake Måmeljaur for the purposes of map-making in particular since the location actually defined where the border between Sweden-Finland and Russia went. To that end, they recruited none other than Plantagenet Hastings, KCB, FRGS, the famous British gentleman-adventurer to lead an expedition to find its location.

And neither Plantagenet Hastings nor his expedition was ever seen again.

Expeditions to find the elusive Lake Måmeljaur was sent out intermittedly throughout the rest of the 19th century, but they all came back empty-handed. First in 1921 did the Landsurveyor's Office finally find itself forced to conclude that Lake Måmeljaur does not in fact exist.
 
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