Anders Chydenius (Finland Swedish: [ˈandærs tɕyˈdeːniʉs]; 26 February 1729 – 1 February 1803) was a Swedish-Finnish Lutheran priest, member of the Swedish Riksdag, and one of the most important champions of democratic development in 18th-century Sweden, known as the leading classical liberal of Nordic history. He championed free trade, freedom of the press, and the rights of servants, labourers and the rural poor.
Born in Sotkamo, Finland (then part of Sweden), Chydenius became a priest and Enlightenment philosopher. As a member of the Riksdag of the Estates in 1765–66, he played a decisive role in establishing Sweden's first Freedom of the Press Act. He was ultimately expelled from the Diet as punishment for his radical political activities.
Anders Chydenius was born in 1729 in Sotkamo, Ostrobothnia (now part of Kainuu Region) where his father Jacob was a chaplain. The family moved to Kuusamo in 1734 where his father became a parish rector. Anders' childhood was spent in the barren area of northern Finland. He and his brother Samuel were taught privately by their father and then they went to Uleåborg (Oulu) grammar school (Uleåborg trivialskola). After the Russo-Swedish War (1741–1743), the boys studied privately in Tornio and entered The Royal Academy of Åbo in 1745. They also studied at Uppsala University. Anders studied mathematics, natural sciences, Latin and philosophy. In 1746 the father Jacob and family moved to Gamlakarleby (Kokkola).
In 1753, after graduation, Anders was appointed preacher of the Chapel of the dependent parish of Nedervetil (today, part of Kronoby) in Ostrobothnia. He was married in 1755 to Beata Magdalena Mellberg, daughter of a merchant from Jakobstad. The couple was childless.
While in Nedervetil he was active in many projects such as the clearing of the marshes, experimenting with new breeds of animals and plants, and adopting new methods of cultivation of potatoes and tobacco. His aim was to enlighten the peasants by example. Chydenius practiced medicine and became known by inoculating ordinary people against smallpox, an early form of vaccination he had promoted together with his father already in the 1760s. He also performed cataract and other eye operations and prepared medicines for patients who sought him out. His medical work continued throughout his life: when dysentery spread during the war in 1790, he established a temporary municipal hospital in Gamlakarleby which he led with success.
The 1765–1766 Riksdag of the Estates
Some of his first writings were about practical matters such as the moss overgrowing the meadows, and improvements in the design of horse carriages. Then he moved on to social questions and became known as a writer and speaker. He was sent to the Diet in 1765 to obtain free trading rights for the towns of Ostrobothnia. The cities of Gamlakarleby, Vasa (Vaasa), Björneborg (Pori) and Uleåborg received navigational rights which helped with their later development as well as helping all of Ostrobothnia. At that time, the tar which should have brought prosperity to his town and the coast had to be sold abroad through Stockholm, which made most of the profits. Largely due to Chydenius' efforts, Stockholm's monopoly was broken and from 1765, the towns gained freedom to sell and ship tar directly to foreign customers.
Chydenius participated actively in the Diet, and published several articles of criticism which caused a great stir. One of the results of his activities in the Diet was a stricter parliamentary control of the government budget.
He considered that one of his greatest achievements was the establishment of freedom of the press. A memorial on press freedom was brought before the Diet and Chydenius was elected to the committee handling the matter, whose work he in practice led during the winter of 1765–1766. The conservative majority on the committee attended meetings irregularly, allowing press freedom's supporters to almost single-handedly prepare the legislation. In the autumn of 1766 the three non-noble estates approved the proposal, and Sweden gained what was at the time the world's most liberal press freedom law — even though Chydenius had by then already been expelled from the Diet.
Alongside his press freedom work, Chydenius led the efforts of the appropriations committee (bevillningsdeputationen) to transfer control of state finances from the Secret Committee to the full assembly of estates. The Secret Committee had kept state finances firmly in its grip throughout the Age of Liberty, and was seen by radicals as an unacceptably aristocratic body in which the peasant estate had no representation despite bearing the heaviest tax burden. The committee used a form of strike — refusing to propose any taxes until the estates received detailed accounts of the budget deficit — and ultimately forced the Secret Committee to concede in May 1766, transferring financial oversight to the full plenum of estates and giving peasants the same right as other estates to monitor the use of public funds.
His radical activities caused him to be expelled from the Diet in 1766 — ostensibly for criticising the Cap administration's monetary policies, but in practice as punishment for his decisive role in establishing freedom of the press and transferring parliamentary control of state finances away from the aristocratic Secret Committee.
In 1770 he was appointed rector of Gamlakarleby where he concentrated on parish work. He maintained his own orchestra, and rehearsed with them. They gave concerts in the rectory's reception hall. His father lived in the parsonage at Gamlakarleby from 1746 to 1766, and Anders lived there from 1770 to 1803.
Following Gustav III's coup d'état in 1772, which ended parliamentary rule for another century, Chydenius initially approached the new regime with cautious optimism. His attitude toward Gustav III remained ambivalent throughout: he could not accept the king's severe restrictions on freedom of the press, but supported certain other reforms. He contributed to the legalisation of Jewish and Catholic immigration into Sweden, drafting the memorial through which Gustav III pushed through limited religious freedom for foreigners. As a reward, Chydenius and some other supportive clergymen were awarded the doctorate in theology — a gesture his opponents within the clergy viewed with suspicion. Ultimately, the king's increasingly autocratic position brought Chydenius out of favour, and he largely withdrew from national politics.
Between 1778 and 1779 Anders Chydenius once again participated in the Diet, at which the position of hired hands was brought up. He championed the rights of the servant class. At the suggestion of King Gustavus III, he introduced a bill whereby foreigners were also granted limited rights to practice their own religion. He participated in the Diet again in 1793 and was active as a writer covering the development of agriculture, the burning of saltpeter, smallpox, and the settlement of Lapland. One of his main tasks during his latter years was the supervision of building an extension to the old parish church. In 1796 he became a member of the Swedish society Pro Fide et Christianismo, founded to promote Christian education, along with his nephew Jakob Tengström. He died in 1803.
Chydenius focused his liberal writings on attacking the mercantilism, mercantilist conquest politics, conservatism, protectionism and privilege that were prevalent at the time. In his view, state offices should not be for sale and the state should not impose any restrictions or privileges on any act. He criticised the clergy, nobility, civil servants and other privileged people, saying that they lived off the work of peasants, seeking to turn the debate on the status of peasants into a debate on the status of the privileged. The prevailing view was that peasants and workers had to be kept poor to prevent them from idling. Chydenius showed that, on the contrary, workers were not idlers who should be forced to make the state rich, but vital individuals who, free to pursue their own happiness, would also benefit others.