Great Partition ( sv, storskiftet fi, isojako) was an agricultural land reform in

Swedish Empire The Swedish Empire was a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries ( sv, Stormaktstiden, "the Era of Great Power"). The beginning of the empire is usually ta ...

. It was a reform supported by the government with the purpose of shifting the land of the village communities, from the ''

solskifte The solskifte system was a land tenure system that developed in the early middle ages, but was formalised in Swedish law around 1350. Solskifte means ''sun division'' and is a way of allocating land within the community, such that each farmer g ...

'', where every farmer owned several pieces of land split about the village, to a new system, where every farmer owned a connected piece of farmland. The purpose was to increase profit. This was the greatest land reform in Swedish history. The shift begun in 1749 by the initiative of

Jacob Faggot Jacob (; ; ar, يَعْقُوب, Yaʿqūb; gr, Ἰακώβ, Iakṓb), later given the name Israel, is regarded as a patriarch of the Israelites and is an important figure in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ja ...

, and in 1757 a regulation was issued to given the reform a set organization. Initially, the request to start a reform of a peasant community demanded consensus, but in the regulation of 1757, a village could be shifted upon the request of only one farmer. The reform greatly changed the rural life. According to the old rules, ''

'', the farmers of a village all had equal share in the land owned by the village collectively, and the land belonging to their farm were split around the area. This made the land belonging to each farm hard to access and work, as it was spread with long distances, but it also secured a greater social justice, as everyone had both bad and good land in their possession. The result of the reform was that each farm possessed fewer but larger land parcels. This made the land easier to use, but also lessened the standard of living for those being allotted bad land. The reform was slow, however, and new reform laws were introduced: the radical ''

enskiftet Enskiftet was an agricultural land reform in Sweden–Finland in 1803-1807. Its purpose was to replace the scattered farmland in village communities to connected lands for each farm. This was in fact a continuation of the previous land reform '' st ...

'' of 1803-07 by initiative of

Rutger Macklean Rutger Macklean (28 July 1742 – 14 January 1816) also Rutger Macklier II was a Swedish jurist, military officer, politician and land owner. He was a driving figure in the introduction of Swedish agricultural land reforms ('' Enskiftet'') w ...

signified the partition of the traditional villages in to separate farms, while the ''

laga skiftet Laga may refer to: Places * Laga (East Timor), a subdistrict of Baucau in East Timor * Laga, Lochaber, a village on the north shore of Loch Sunart, Scotland * Club Laga, a concert venue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1991 to 2006 People * Mart ...

'' of 1827 was a more mild reform with better consideration for local necessities.Hadenius, Stig, Nilsson, Torbjörn & Åselius, Gunnar, Sveriges historia: vad varje svensk bör veta, Bonnier Alba, Stockholm, 1996

References

{{reflist * Niklas Cserhalmi, Fårad mark. Handbok för tolkning av historiska kartor och landskap, temanummer av tidskriften Bygd och Natur (Lund 1998). * Eirik Hornborg, Finlands hävder III, Det svenska väldets upplösning: tiden 1697-1809 (Helsingfors: Schildt, 1931) History of agriculture Agriculture in Sweden 18th century in Sweden Sweden during the Age of Liberty Agriculture in Finland 18th century in Finland