Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden)
ministry of the Swedish Government
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Swedish: Utrikesdepartementet, UD) is a ministry in the Government of Sweden responsible for policies related to foreign policy, democracy, human rights, international development cooperation and foreign trade.
The ministry is currently headed by the minister for foreign affairs, Maria Malmer Stenergard of the Moderate Party.
History
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was added in 1791, when Gustav III established the King's Cabinet for Foreign Correspondence. The organization that was formally named the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1840 was then created in practice.
It is possible to speak of a foreign administration to the function as soon as we can discern a Swedish central state administration, and from the end of the 13th century. Under Gustav Vasa, the chancellery developed into the body that handled and expedited government matters. With Gustav II Adolf's reforms in the 1620s, a specialization was carried out within the chancellery so that foreign affairs were distributed among secretaries according to country.
The head of the chancellery was the chancellor. In a way, he can be described as foreign minister. More famous holders of this position are Axel Oxenstierna and Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden)” as ministry of the Swedish Government. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as ministry of the Swedish Government. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q776570. VIAF identifies the subject as 197644585. The Library of Congress control number is n79145775. Authority coordinates are 59.329, 18.068. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1791 and 1840.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden) primary sources, Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden) archive and Ministry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden)”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.