The eighteenth century is sometimes referred to as the Age of Sentiment. Emotions were attributed great importance, both as driving forces for human behaviour, and as a moral compass. They were also important in political rule. This also pertains to Sweden and the reign of Gustav III. Gustav (1746–1792) became king in 1771. One year later, in 1772, he staged a coup d’état, reintroducing a strong royal power after almost half a century of parliamentary rule. Two decades later he was assassinated by political opponents. 

This dissertation analyses ideas of government and human nature that were actualized in this late eighteenth-century context. More specifically, it examines discussions about technologies of government and subject formation in relation to three royal projects, launched in different periods of the reign of Gustav III: the Order of Vasa (1772), the National Dress (1778), and the Swedish Academy (1786). In the analysis, I am inspired by Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality. I particularly draw on Foucault’s description of a historically specific breakthrough – starting in the mid-eighteenth century ­– for a type of exercise of power that can be called liberal. I also draw on the research fields of History of Emotions and National Identity. 

In the discussions surrounding the three projects, one can see expressions of a type of logic of government that I, based on Foucauldian theory, call liberal. By this I mean that the population was regarded as constituted by subjects whose self-interested driving forces in the form of emotions and desires could be put into play – activated and channelled by the state in order to achieve various objectives. As long as these goals were perceived as beneficial for the society, the inherent morality of people’s desires was considered of less importance. However, other and older ideas of the best way of governing self-interested emotions and desires, such as what I call virtue-oriented politics of emotion, were also at play, interfering with the new, “liberal” ideas in various ways. 

In claiming that Gustav III’s politics of emotions can to some extent be characterized as liberal, I do not imply that the king had a liberal worldview or that he believed that society should be structured in an egalitarian manner. However, this dissertation argues that Gustav III and some of the people surrounding him experimented with government according to a liberal logic. I claim that the king made use of enlightenment ideas not only as inspiration for reforms or as means of branding himself as an enlightened monarch, but also as tools for theorizing about effective governance of the population. This shift in focus complicates the picture of the emergence of liberal government in Sweden. My examples show that liberal government may sometimes be preferred purely on the basis of the idea that it is effective, and on that basis even an eighteenth-century sovereign could experiment with it. This dissertation thus contributes to a more complex picture of the rule of Gustav III, as well as to a refined understanding of the history of liberal government.