The navy was originally assembled as the Hohenzollern rulers of Brandenburg began to increase in importance and to desire the prestige and security of having a suitable naval defence force. During the 17th century, the navy was of great use in numerous battles in the Baltic Sea, and it also served the interests of Brandenburg's colonies in Africa (specifically the Brandenburger Gold Coast) and the Caribbean. The navy also protected Brandenburg's involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, as the Brandenburger Gold Coast was used to transport between 17,000 and 30,000 enslaved Africans to the Americas between 1682 and 1721.[2][3] By the year 1680, the Brandenburg Navy had almost thirty active warships. These ships were used primarily to secure control over hostile trade routes and maritime trading, as blockades and to provide naval defence, and to also provide reinforcement on various military operations, which would frequently involve engagements with unfriendly warships.
In 1682, Frederick William, the prince-elector of Brandenburg, who was intensely involved in the navy's affairs, secured the navy a base at Greetsiel, but they shifted to Emden a year later.
Frederick William died in 1688, and his descendants took no interest in the Brandenburg Navy. Frederick III and his grandson Frederick the Great recognized that they could never compete directly with the great maritime powers and concentrated instead on building the best army in Europe while maintaining good relations with naval powers such as Denmark and the Netherlands. The overseas colonies were eventually sold to the Dutch in 1721. In 1701, Frederick was crowned King in Prussia, marking a shift from Brandenburg to Prussia as the most important Hohenzollern realm. The Brandenburg Navy was consequently merged into the Prussian Navy that year.
Ulrich van der Heyden: Rote Adler an Afrikas Küste. Die brandenburgisch-preußische Kolonie Großfriedrichsburg in Westafrika. Berlin: Selignow-Verlag 2001, ISBN3-933889-04-9
Werner Rahn: Deutsche Marinen im Wandel: Vom Symbol nationaler Einheit zum Instrument internationaler Sicherheit, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, München 2005, ISBN3-486-57674-7
Frederick William was Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, thus ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia, from 1640 until his death in 1688. A member of the House of Hohenzollern, he is popularly known as "the Great Elector" because of his military and political achievements. Frederick William was a staunch pillar of the Calvinist faith, associated with the rising commercial class. He saw the importance of trade and promoted it vigorously. His shrewd domestic reforms gave Prussia a strong position in the post-Westphalian political order of Northern-Central Europe, setting Prussia up for elevation from duchy to kingdom, achieved under his son and successor.
Frederick William I, known as the Soldier King, was King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 till his death in 1740, as well as Prince of Neuchâtel.
The House of Hohenzollern is a formerly royal German dynasty whose members were variously princes, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzollern, Brandenburg, Prussia, the German Empire, and Romania. The family came from the area around the town of Hechingen in Swabia during the late 11th century and took their name from Hohenzollern Castle. The first ancestors of the Hohenzollerns were mentioned in 1061.
Frederick I, of the Hohenzollern dynasty, was Elector of Brandenburg (1688–1713) and Duke of Prussia in personal union (Brandenburg-Prussia). The latter function he upgraded to royalty, becoming the first King in Prussia (1701–1713). From 1707 he was in personal union the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchâtel.
Brandenburg-Prussia is the historiographic denomination for the early modern realm of the Brandenburgian Royal dynasty of the House of Hohenzollern between 1618 and 1701. Based in the Electorate of Brandenburg, the main branch of the Hohenzollern intermarried with the branch ruling the Duchy of Prussia, and secured succession upon the latter's extinction in the male line in 1618.
The Kingdom of Prussia constituted the German state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918. It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1866 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Its capital was Berlin.
Prussia was a German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. The Knights had to relocate their headquarters to Mergentheim, but still kept their land in Livonia until 1561; they lost all their land by the Napoleonic Wars.
King in Prussia was a title used by the Prussian kings from 1701 to 1772. Subsequently, they used the title King of Prussia.
The Treaty of Bromberg or Treaty of Bydgoszcz was a treaty between John II Casimir of Poland and Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia that was ratified at Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) on 6 November 1657. The treaty had several agreements, including the Treaty of Wehlau, signed on 19 September 1657 by the Brandenburg–Prussian and Polish–Lithuanian envoys in Wehlau. Thus, the Treaty of Bromberg is sometimes referred to as treaty of Wehlau-Bromberg or Treaty of Wehlau and Bromberg.
The Prussian Navy, officially the Royal Prussian Navy, was the naval force of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1701 to 1867.
The Duchy of Magdeburg was a province of the Margraviate of Brandenburg from 1680 to 1701 and a province of the German Kingdom of Prussia from 1701 to 1807. It replaced the Archbishopric of Magdeburg after its secularization by Brandenburg, giving to the Elector another influential seat to the Reichstag’s College of Princes. The duchy's capitals were Magdeburg and Halle, while Burg was another important town. Dissolved during the Napoleonic Wars in 1807, its territory was made part of the Province of Saxony in 1815.
The Treaty of Labiau was a treaty signed between Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg and Charles X Gustav of Sweden on 10 November (O.S.) / 20 November (N.S.) 1656 in Labiau. With several concessions, the most important being the elevation of Frederick William I from a Swedish vassal to a full sovereign in the Duchy of Prussia and in Ermland, Charles X Gustav strove to "buy Frederick William's support" in the ongoing Second Northern War.
The Brandenburger Gold Coast, later Prussian Gold Coast, was a colony of Brandenburg-Prussia, later the Kingdom of Prussia, on the Gold Coast. The Brandenburg colony existed from 1682 to 1701, after which it became a Prussian colony from 1701 to 1721. In 1721, King Frederick William I of Prussia sold it for 7,200 ducats and 12 slaves to the Dutch West India Company.
The state of Prussia had its origins in the separate lands of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and of the Duchy of Prussia. The Margraviate of Brandenburg developed from the medieval Northern March of the Holy Roman Empire, passing to the House of Hohenzollern in 1415. The Duchy of Prussia originated in 1525 when Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a member of a cadet branch of the Hohenzollern house, secularized the eastern lands of the Teutonic Knights as a Polish fief. Prince-elector John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, inherited the Duchy of Prussia in 1618, thus uniting Brandenburg and Prussia under one ruler in a personal union; the Elector's state became known as Brandenburg-Prussia. The Kingdom of Prussia formed when Elector Frederick III assumed the title of Frederick I, King in Prussia, on 18 January 1701.
The Margraviate of Brandenburg was a major Principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1815 that, after inheriting the Duchy of Prussia in 1618, grew rapidly in importance and came to play a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe.
The Brandenburg colony of St. Thomas consisted of a leased part of the Danish island of St. Thomas to the Brandenburg-Prussia margraviate of the Holy Roman Empire from 1685 to 1754.
Philip William, Prince in Prussia was a Prussian Prince, was the first owner of the Prussian secundogeniture of Brandenburg-Schwedt and was governor of Magdeburg from 1692 to 1711.
The German Emperors after 1873 had a variety of titles and coats of arms, which in various compositions became the officially used titles and coats of arms. The title and coat of arms were last fixed in 1873, but the titles did not necessarily mean that the area was really dominated, and sometimes even several princes bore the same title.
When the German Empire came into existence in 1871, none of its constituent states had any overseas colonies. Only after the Berlin Conference in 1884 did Germany begin to acquire new overseas possessions, but it had a much longer relationship with colonialism dating back to the 1520s. Before the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, various German states established chartered companies to set up trading posts; in some instances they also sought direct territorial and administrative control over these. After 1806, attempts at securing possession of territories overseas were abandoned; instead, private trading companies took the lead in the Pacific while joint-stock companies and colonial associations initiated projects elsewhere, although many never progressed beyond the planning stage.
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