Prisoners of war (POWs) are an extraordinary group of wartime migrants, in the sense that they are defined as enemies of the community. Even so, archival evidence from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries includes striking accounts of POWs who settled permanently in communities where they were held captive. I Want to Stay studies three towns forced to receive POWs during the Great Northern War (1700–1721), analysing how the POWs’ social position was negotiated in these communities. Based on a wide range of sources, the thesis investigates how war captivity was organized on the local level, but also reconstructs the movements and activities of individual POWs to reveal how these people became integrated into the social order of the towns. Underlining how these communities became deeply involved in the administration of war captivity, the thesis shows how the treatment of POWs became intertwined with the wider challenges facing the three towns in a time of war and epidemics. I Want to Stay provides important new perspectives on the nature and dynamics of war captivity in the early modern era. More than this, it offers a unique insight into how three local communities negotiated their boundaries towards the outside world in the face of mounting political, social and economic pressure. This is a doctoral thesis in History at Stockholm University, Sweden [2023.
