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Livonia is a historical region on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. It is named after the Livonians, who lived on the shores of present-day Latvia.
The Dominions of Sweden or Svenska besittningar were territories that historically came under control of the Swedish Crown, but never became fully integrated with Sweden. This generally meant that they were ruled by Governors-General under the Swedish monarch, but within certain limits retained their own established political systems, essentially their diets. Finland was not a dominion, but an integrated part of Sweden. The dominions had no representation in the Swedish Riksdag as stipulated by the 1634 Instrument of Government paragraph 46: "No one, who is not living inside the separate and old borders of Sweden and Finland, have anything to say at Riksdags and other meetings..."
During the 17th century, despite having scarcely more than 1 million inhabitants, Sweden emerged to have greater foreign influence, after winning wars against Denmark–Norway, the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Its contributions during the Thirty Years' War under Gustavus Adolphus helped determine the political, as well as the religious, balance of power in Europe.
In Swedish and Finnish history, the Age of Liberty was a period that saw parliamentary governance, increasing civil rights and the decline of the Swedish Empire that began with Charles XII's death in 1718 and ended with Gustav III's self-coup in 1772. This shift of power from monarch to parliament was a direct effect of the Great Northern War.
Swedish Pomerania was a dominion under the Swedish Crown from 1630 to 1815 on what is now the Baltic coast of Germany and Poland. Following the Polish War and the Thirty Years' War, Sweden held extensive control over the lands on the southern Baltic coast, including Pomerania and parts of Livonia and Prussia.
Swedish Livonia was a dominion of the Swedish Empire from 1629 until 1721. The territory, which constituted the southern part of modern Estonia and the northern part of modern Latvia, represented the conquest of the major part of the Polish-Lithuanian Duchy of Livonia during the 1600–1629 Polish-Swedish War. Parts of Livonia and the city of Riga were under Swedish control as early as 1621 and the situation was formalized in the Truce of Altmark 1629, but the whole territory was not ceded formally until the Treaty of Oliva in 1660. The minority part of the Wenden Voivodeship retained by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was renamed the Inflanty Voivodeship, which today corresponds to the Latgale region of Latvia.
The Treaty or Peace of Oliva of 23 April (OS)/3 May (NS) 1660 was one of the peace treaties ending the Second Northern War (1655-1660). The Treaty of Oliva, the Treaty of Copenhagen in the same year, and the Treaty of Cardis in the following year marked the high point of the Swedish Empire.
A personal union is the combination of two or more states that have the same monarch while their boundaries, laws, and interests remain distinct. A real union, by contrast, would involve the constituent states being to some extent interlinked, such as by sharing some limited governmental institutions. Unlike the personal union, in a federation and a unitary state, a central (federal) government spanning all member states exists, with the degree of self-governance distinguishing the two. The ruler in a personal union does not need to be a hereditary monarch.
The Baltic governorates, originally the Ostsee governorates, was a collective name for the administrative units of the Russian Empire set up in the territories of Swedish Estonia, Swedish Livonia (1721) and, afterwards, of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (1795).
The State of the Teutonic Order, also called Deutschordensstaat or Ordensstaat, was a medieval Crusader state, located in Central Europe along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea. It was formed by the knights of the Teutonic Order during the 13th century Northern Crusades in the region of Prussia. The Livonian Brothers of the Sword merged in 1237 with the Teutonic Order of Prussia and became known as its branch, the Livonian Order, while their state became a part of the Teutonic Order State. At its greatest territorial extent, in the early 15th century, it encompassed Chełmno Land, Courland, Gotland, Livonia, Neumark, Pomerelia, Prussia and Samogitia, i.e. territories nowadays located in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Sweden.
The Livonian War (1558–1583) was the Russian invasion of Old Livonia, and the prolonged series of military conflicts that followed, in which Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia (Muscovy) unsuccessfully fought for control of the region. The Tsardom of Russia (Muscovy) faced a varying coalition of the Dano-Norwegian Realm, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland.
The Treaty of Stettin of 13 December 1570, ended the Northern Seven Years' War fought between Sweden and Denmark with its internally fragmented alliance of Lübeck and Poland. It also settled Swedish, Danish, and Holy Roman Imperial claims regarding the Livonian War. Unfavourable for Sweden, the treaty assured Danish hegemony in Northern Europe for a short period. Yet, because of its inconclusiveness, it did not prevent further warfare between Denmark-Norway and Sweden, which ended only in the 1720s.
The siege of Stralsund was a battle during the Great Northern War. The Swedish Empire defended her Swedish Pomeranian port of Stralsund against a coalition of Denmark-Norway, the Electorate of Saxony and the Tsardom of Russia, which was joined by the Kingdom of Prussia during the siege.
The Livonian crusade refers to the various military Christianisation campaigns in medieval Livonia – in what is now Latvia and Estonia – during the Papal-sanctioned Northern Crusades in the 12–13th century. The Livonian crusade was conducted mostly by the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Denmark. It ended with the creation of Terra Mariana and the Danish duchy of Estonia. The lands on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea were one of the last parts of Europe to be Christianised.
The Peace of Travendal was a peace treaty concluded at the outset of the Great Northern War on 18 August 1700 between the Swedish Empire, Denmark–Norway and Holstein-Gottorp in Traventhal. Denmark had to return Holstein-Gottorp to its duke, a Swedish ally, and to leave the anti-Swedish alliance. The Danes only reentered the war after Sweden's major defeat in the Battle of Poltava, 1709, having used the time to reform their army. The treaty was guaranteed by France, the Holy Roman Empire, the United Provinces (Netherlands) and Great Britain.
The Swedish Empire was a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries. The beginning of the empire is usually taken as the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, who ascended the throne in 1611, and its end as the loss of territories in 1721 following the Great Northern War.
With the Capitulation of Estonia and Livonia in 1710 the Swedish dominions Estonia and Livonia were integrated into the Russian Empire following their conquest during the Great Northern War. The Livonian nobility and the city of Riga capitulated on 4 July (O.S.) / 15 July 1710 (N.S.), Pernau (Pärnu) in August, and the Estonian nobility and the city of Reval (Tallinn) on 29 September (O.S.) / 10 October (N.S.). Russia left the local institutions in place and confirmed the traditional privileges of the German nobles and burghers as was established in Privilegium Sigismundi Augusti, especially with respect to the Protestant faith. The land reform of the so-called reduction which had been introduced by the Swedish king Charles XI, and transformed many serfs to subjects of the Crown, was reversed.
Concluded on 9 October 1709, the Treaty of Thorn was an agreement signed in Thorn (Toruń) between Augustus the Strong of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and his counterpart, Peter the Great the Tsar of Russia. Through this agreement, the two parties revived an alliance from an earlier treaty between them in 1699, which their common rival Charles XII of Sweden had dismantled through the 1706 Treaty of Altranstädt. In the 1709 treaty, the two parties agreed to restore the Polish crown to Augustus among various other provisions with different implications for both parties and their respective nations. A close examination of the background to the agreement as well as the terms, implementation, and implications of the Treaty of Thorn underscores its significance in marking the Tsar’s and Russia’s ascendance into a powerful regional player in northeastern Europe.
The Treaty of Vilnius or Vilna was concluded on 28 November 1561, during the Livonian War, between the Livonian Confederation and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Vilnius. With the treaty, the non-Danish and non-Swedish part of Livonia, with the exception of the Free imperial city of Riga, subjected itself to the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Sigismund II Augustus with the Pacta subiectionis . In turn, Sigismund granted protection from the Tsardom of Russia and confirmed the Livonian estates' traditional privileges, laid out in the Privilegium Sigismundi Augusti.
Terra Mariana was the official name for Medieval Livonia or Old Livonia. It was formed in the aftermath of the Livonian Crusade, and its territories were composed of present-day Estonia and Latvia. It was established on 2 February 1207, as a principality of the Holy Roman Empire, but lost this status in 1215 when Pope Innocent III proclaimed it as directly subject to the Holy See.
References
- ↑ Nicklas, Thomas; Schnettger, Matthias (2007). Politik und Sprache im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (in German). Mainz: Von Zabern. p. 140. ISBN 978-3-8053-3596-6.
- ↑ Wilson, David Harris, ed. (1971). The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606–1607. New York: Octagon Books. p. 258. ISBN 978-0-374-98636-0.
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