The Danish Reformers

Abstract

Enlightened absolutism in Denmark followed patterns common to many other governments in Europe. The aim was not just greater efficiency in administration, maximisation of state revenues, liberalisation of internal trade and guild regulation, and development of economic resources, important though these naturally were to most European governments at the time. In keeping with the influence of the Enlightenment, Danish reformers also sought to improve educational standards, to encourage public debate by reducing censorship, and to achieve greater fairness before the law. In a European context, however, it was the Danish efforts to achieve effective agrarian and peasant reform that stand out, partly because a serious effort was made to deal both with land usage and with relations between peasant and landowner, but above all because the reforms carried out in the later 1780s — uniquely in later-eighteenth-century Europe — actually worked as intended, and survived the revolutionary period.