Joseph Stephen was far from the only foreign citizen who purchased landholdings in Småland County when he became the owner of the Huseby iron estate including its large agrarian and forest properties. Of the many new holders of landed property that entered the market in the late nineteenth century due to emigration from Sweden, a significant number were German and Danish citizens. During Stephens’ 67 years as estate owner and ironmaster, the estate’s land and forest economy came to prosper, whereas the industrial operations slowed down towards the end of his life. As a member of the Upper House of the Swedish Parliament, Stephens favoured the interests closest to Huseby’s manufacturing and agrarian production, and he supported protectionist trade policy. When he died in 1934, the estate passed on to his three daughters and Florence, the oldest, inherited the main part. The chapter locates the trajectory of the estate’s economy and Stephen’s interests and priorities within the economic, industrial, and demographic transformations of Sweden.

Arguments invoking increased functional efficiency have had a profound impact on local government reforms in advanced democracies during the past 60 years. Consequently, most mature democracies have implemented municipal amalgamation reforms, often through top-down coercion. In this article, we demonstrate how far central governments have been willing to go, in terms of coercion, by providing an in-depth historical account of Swedish municipal amalgamations between 1952 and 1974. Debates on amalgamation reforms have typically revolved around pros and cons of mergers. But very few discussions have addressed the more fundamental moral problem of enforcing amalgamations through coercion. Often, large-scale mergers are carried through against the expressed will of municipalities who wish to remain self-governing. In this article, we present a normative defense of strong local self-government, based partly on values of individual autonomy, and partly on group-based human rights, and we show how coerced amalgamations are at odds with these values.