From great power to welfare state : 300 years of Swedish social development

The world's oldest central bank, the Bank of Sweden, celebrates its 300 years with a book which does not deal with the Bank's own history, but with the economic, social and political development of Sweden during that period. Dr. Kurt Samuelsson describes this development clearly and tersely and gives the first integrated' presentation of this long period: commercial industrial life, social history, the struggle for power, and the balance of power. The period was a dramatic one, too. For Sweden was a great power' in the middle of the seventeenth century, but this power broke down eventually and was followed by the poverty of the nineteenth century, the age of industrialization and the emergence of the welfare state, which is here seen against its historical background.

From Great Power to Welfare State does not follow this development step by step. The writer has chosen to concentrate the sketch around five dates the years 1668, 1768, 1868, 1908 and 1968 and from the standpoint of each year depicts the

character of the century to which it belongs. The book is intended as a at university level, but is addressed also, and above all, to a

larger public. The writer is already known to the English speaking public through his book Religion and Economic Action, a discussion of Max Weber's ideas on Protestantism and Capitalism.