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Working paper title: Networks of nation-building: Evidence from the Fennoman movement

By: Teppo Lindfors, Jaakko Meriläinen, and Matti Mitrunen

Abstract

After Finland’s transition from Swedish to Russian rule in 1809, a segment of the remaining Swedish-speaking elite spearheaded the Fennoman movement to promote the Finnish language and identity.Using newly compiled biographical data and historical student registers, we construct elite networksto study the anatomy of this elite-led national awakening. We document four findings. (i) Themost central elite families were more likely to adopt nationalist behavior, consistent with effortsto preserve influence under the new order. (ii) Nationalist adoption diffused through networklinks, propagating from more- to less-central actors, and increased with proximity to the leadingFennoman, J. V. Snellman. Using the timing of Finnish Literature Society membership, we establishthat having a directly connected contact (an adjacent node) who had previously joined increasedan individual’s probability of joining by 1 percentage point. (iii) At the local level, a difference-in-differences design shows that municipalities with more Fennoman elites, as well as greater initial elitecentrality and proximity to J. V. Snellman, experienced a sharper shift toward Finnish-languagegiven names among Swedish speakers in the mid-1800s. The more exposed municipalities also hadhigher nationalist party vote shares and nationalist newspaper subscriptions and more pronouncedfinnicization of names. (iv) Elite-led national unity later translated into stronger demand forinstitutional change, as municipalities with stronger Fennoman presence exhibited more strikes inthe early 1900s leading up to democratization and Finnish independence. These findings showhow a national awakening can spread through elite networks to the broader population, and thatinfluential elites’ choices about nation-building can have lasting consequences for national cohesionand institutional development.