The Fennoman nationalist movement had demanded that Swedish be replaced by Finnish in public administration, courts, and schools.
[1] The ideas of the "Svecomans" were an important part of the public debate of the 1870s and 1880s that was evoked by the reinstatement of the Diet of Finland, which now convened every third year.
Finland had been a part of Sweden from the early Middle Ages until the Finnish War of 1808–1809, when it was ceded to Russia and made a Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire.
The Svecomans promoted the idea that Finland harbours two peoples, or nations, speaking different languages, with different cultures, and originating from separate parts of the country.
The language strife between Fennomans and Svecomans in these decades also mirrored more general political divisions: The feeling of unity between the Swedish-speaking rural population and the (remains of the) Swedish-speaking elite is the lasting legacy of the Svecoman movement, and this became the core idea of the Swedish People's Party, which was founded after the introduction of equal and common suffrage in 1906.