Leisure culture, entrepreneurs and urban space: Swedish towns in a European perspective, eighteenth–nineteenth centuries

• Autores: Dag Lindström
• Localización: Leisure cultures in urban Europe, c.1700-1870: a transnational perspective / coord. por Peter Borsay, Jan Hein Furnée, 2016, ISBN 9781526104304, págs. 140-160
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • After having charted the transnational diffusion of a few specific leisure institutions and genres throughout Europe, the second section of the book departs from specific countries and analyses in a more focused way the central actors and factors involved in the selection and adaptation of a variety of leisure institutions. The first chapter analyses the introduction and development of theatres, restaurants, cafes, parks and promenades in three Swedish towns in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The three towns under study – Stockholm, Linköping and Norrköping – experienced similar types of development, but the chronologies and structures of change appear to have been very different. While the Swedish capital to some extent transmitted foreign cultural models to the provinces, provincial towns also appropriated several foreign innovations directly from abroad. Crucial actors in this process were foreign entrepreneurs, such as a German restaurateur opening a theatre or a Swiss entrepreneur starting up a confectioner’s shop. In Sweden, like elsewhere, the church appears to have been a key institution in inhibiting as well as promoting the adoption of international trends in leisure culture. After banning comedies in 1798, the church authorities in Linköping only seven years later took an active part in the building of a new theatre.