I want to stay : local community and prisoners of war at the dawn of the eighteenth century

Prisoners of war (POWs) are an extraordinary group of wartime
migrants, in the sense that they are defined as enemies of the
community. Even so, archival evidence from the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries includes striking accounts of POWs who settled
permanently in communities where they were held captive.
I Want to Stay studies three towns forced to receive POWs during the
Great Northern War (1700–1721), analysing how the POWs’ social
position was negotiated in these communities. Based on a wide range
of sources, the thesis investigates how war captivity was organized on
the local level, but also reconstructs the movements and activities of
individual POWs to reveal how these people became integrated into the
social order of the towns. Underlining how these communities became
deeply involved in the administration of war captivity, the thesis shows
how the treatment of POWs became intertwined with the wider
challenges facing the three towns in a time of war and epidemics.
I Want to Stay provides important new perspectives on the nature
and dynamics of war captivity in the early modern era. More than this,
it offers a unique insight into how three local communities negotiated
their boundaries towards the outside world in the face of mounting
political, social and economic pressure.

This is a doctoral thesis in History at Stockholm University, Sweden [2023.