Fostering Fortitude

Abstract

This article analyzes “National Defense Courses” textbooks that were used to disseminate defense information to the political, social, and administrative elite in Finland. Textbooks from 1967 to 2018 provide qualitative historicaland sociological data, showing how Finland has prepared for war and other security contingencies for the past five decades. The main shift in fostering the population’s allegiance to the state has gone from addressing the management of political heterodoxy as a patriotic endeavor to one of cultivating apolitical resilience in the face of adversity. Both patriotism and resilience appear in the texts as forms of civic piety, in which people’s individual preferences give way to collective interests.