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In the years following the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden was still recovering from the loss of Finland in 1809. The country had set on a path to rebuild itself and reshape its national identity, but the new geopolitical circumstances had not yet established any far-reaching thoughts on neutrality. There is not much information about what Swedish officers thought of Sweden's new position. However, there exists several speeches and texts by officers at the time, preserved in the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences' documentations, which reveal their thoughts on the concept of war and its significance for the Swedish nation. This material could provide an insight into the perceptions of high-ranking Swedish officers and members of the academy about the concept of war, along with their own views on post-Napoleonic Sweden.

The purpose of this dissertation is to gain a better understanding of the Swedish officer corps’ perceptions of war from 1815 to 1845. The research question it seeks to answer is what perceptions of war Swedish officers had in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, which will be answered with the premise that attitudes to war among European militaries changed after the wars. The dissertation will apply theoretical frameworks about belief systems and typologies that classify attitudes to war and peace, in addition to using text analysis as a methodological tool, to analyze and interpret the source material. The results reveal that Swedish officers seemed to have a mainly defense-oriented attitude towards war during this period, where they wanted Sweden to avoid war, but not take its peace for granted. They called for certain actions, such as prioritizing the national defense, reforming the defense system, and making Sweden as a nation more ready for war. These results correspond to previous research and show that Swedish officers immediately adopted the war-skeptical attitudes shared by their European counterparts after the Napoleonic Wars.