Swedish Pomerania - Integration in The Eleventh Hour

Integration in The Eleventh Hour

By royal proclamation on 26 June 1806, the Constitution of Pomerania was declared to have been suspended and abolished. The Swedish Instruments of Government of 1772, the Act of Union and Security of 1789, and the Law of 1734 were declared to have taken precedence and were to be implemented following 1 September 1808. The reason for perpetrating this royally sanctioned coup d'état was that the estates, despite a royal prohibition, had taken to the courts to appeal against royal statutes, specifically the statute of 30 April 1806 regarding the raising of a Pomeranian army. In the new order, King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden attempted to introduce a government divided into departments. Swedish church law was introduced. The country was divided into four hundreds (Härad) containing parishes (Socken) complying with the Swedish model of administration. The Estates of Pomerania could only be called regarding questions that specifically concerned Pomerania and Rügen. The new order of the Landtag was modelled on the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates and a meeting according to the new order also took place in August 1806, which declared its loyalty to the king and hailed him as their ruler. In the wake of this revolution, a number of social reforms were implemented and planned; the most important was the abolishment of serfdom by a royal statute on 4 July 1806.

Also in 1806, Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden started constructing another major port city in Pomerania, Gustavia. Yet already in 1807, French forces occupied the site.