Personal union in the context of "Russian Partition"

A political union is a type of political entity which is composed of, or created from, smaller polities or the process which achieves this. These smaller polities are usually called federated states and federal territories in a federal government; they are called prefectures, regions, or provinces in the case of a centralised government. This form of government may be created through voluntary and mutual cession and is described as unionism by its constituent members and proponents. In other cases, it may arise from political unification, characterised by coercion and conquest. The unification of separate states which, in the past, had together constituted a single entity is known as reunification. Unlike a personal union or real union, the individual constituent entities may have devolution of powers but are subordinate to a central government or coordinated in some sort of organization. In a federalised system, the constituent entities usually have internal autonomy, for example in the setup of police departments, and share power with the federal government, for whom external sovereignty, military forces, and foreign affairs are usually reserved. The union is recognised internationally as a single political entity. A political union may also be called a legislative union or state union.A union may be effected in many forms, broadly categorized as:

• Incorporating union
• Incorporating annexation
• Federal union
• Federative annexation
• Mixed unions

The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic (Polish: I Rzeczpospolita), was a federative real union between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, existing from 1569 to 1795. This state was among the largest, most populated countries of 16th- to 18th-century Europe. At its peak in the early 17th century, the Commonwealth spanned approximately 1,000,000 km (390,000 sq mi) and supported a multi-ethnic population of around 12 million as of 1618. The official languages of the Commonwealth were Polish and Latin, with Catholicism as the state religion.

The Union of Lublin established the Commonwealth as a single entity on 1 July 1569. The two nations had previously been in a personal union since the Krewo Agreement of 1385 (Polish–Lithuanian union) and the subsequent marriage of Queen Jadwiga of Poland to Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania, who was crowned as Władysław II Jagiełło, jure uxoris King of Poland. Their descendant, Sigismund II Augustus, enforced the merger to strengthen frontiers of his dominion and maintain unity. As he remained childless, his death in 1572 marked the end of the Jagiellonian dynasty. It introduced an elective monarchy, whereupon members of domestic noble families or external dynasties were elected to the throne for life.

Real union is a union of two or more states, which share some state institutions in contrast to personal unions; however, they are not as unified as states in a political union. It is a development from personal union and has historically been limited to monarchies.

Unlike personal unions, real unions almost exclusively led to a reduction of sovereignty for the politically weaker constituent. That was the case with Lithuania and Norway, which came under the influence of stronger neighbors, Poland and Denmark respectively, with which each of them had shared a personal union previously.

The Kingdom of France is the historiographical name or umbrella term given to various political entities of France in the medieval and early modern period. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe from the High Middle Ages to 1848 during its dissolution. It was also an early colonial power, with colonies in Asia and Africa, and the largest being New France in North America geographically centred on the Great Lakes.

The Kingdom of France was descended directly from the western Frankish realm of the Carolingian Empire, which was ceded to Charles the Bald with the Treaty of Verdun (843). A branch of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule until 987, when Hugh Capet was elected king and founded the Capetian dynasty. The territory remained known as Francia and its ruler as rex Francorum ('king of the Franks') well into the High Middle Ages. The first king calling himself rex Francie ('King of France') was Philip II, in 1190, and officially from 1204. From then, France was continuously ruled by the Capetians and their cadet lines under the Valois and Bourbon until the monarchy was abolished in 1792 during the French Revolution. The Kingdom of France was also ruled in personal union with the Kingdom of Navarre over two time periods, 1284–1328 and 1572–1620, after which the institutions of Navarre were abolished and it was fully annexed by France (though the King of France continued to use the title "King of Navarre" through the end of the monarchy).

The Kingdom of England was a sovereign state on the island of Great Britain from the 10th century, when it was unified from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, until 1 May 1707, when it united with Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, which would later become the United Kingdom. The Kingdom of England was among the most powerful states in Europe during the medieval and early modern periods.

Beginning in the year 886 Alfred the Great reoccupied London from the Danish Vikings and after this event he declared himself King of the Anglo-Saxons, until his death in 899. During the early tenth century, the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were united by Alfred's descendants Edward the Elder (reigned 899–924) and Æthelstan (reigned 924–939) to form the Kingdom of the English. In 927, Æthelstan conquered the last remaining Viking kingdom, York, making him the first Anglo-Saxon ruler of the whole of England. In 1016, the kingdom became part of the North Sea Empire of Cnut the Great, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway. The Norman Conquest in 1066 led to the transfer of the English capital city and chief royal residence from the Anglo-Saxon one at Winchester to Westminster, and the City of London quickly established itself as England's largest and principal commercial centre.

Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria from 1519 to 1556, King of Spain (as Charles I) from 1516 to 1556, King of Sicily and Naples from 1516 to 1554, and also Lord of the Netherlands and titular Duke of Burgundy (as Charles II) from 1506 to 1555. He was heir to and then head of the rising House of Habsburg. His dominions in Europe included the Holy Roman Empire, extending from Germany to northern Italy with rule over the Austrian hereditary lands and Burgundian Low Countries, and Spain with its possessions of the southern Italian kingdoms of Sicily, Naples, and Sardinia. In the Americas, he oversaw the continuation of Spanish colonization and a short-lived German colonization. The personal union of the European and American territories he ruled was the first collection of realms labelled "the empire on which the sun never sets".

Charles was born in Flanders to Habsburg Archduke Philip the Handsome, son of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and Mary of Burgundy, and Joanna of Castile, younger child of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. Heir of his grandparents, Charles inherited his family dominions at a young age. After his father's death in 1506, he inherited the Habsburg Netherlands in the Low Countries. In 1516 he became King of Spain as co-monarch of Castile and Aragon with his mother. Spain's possessions included the Castilian colonies of the West Indies and the Spanish Main, as well as Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia. At the death of his grandfather Maximilian in 1519, he inherited the Austrian hereditary lands and was elected as Holy Roman Emperor. He adopted the Imperial name of Charles V as his main title, and styled himself as a new Charlemagne.

The Kingdom of Great Britain, officially Great Britain, was a sovereign state in Western Europe from 1707 to the end of 1800. The state was created by the 1706 Treaty of Union and ratified by the Acts of Union 1707, which united the Kingdom of England (including Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland to form a single kingdom encompassing the whole island of Great Britain and its outlying islands, with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The unitary state was governed by a single parliament at the Palace of Westminster, but the distinct legal systems—English law and Scots law—remained in use, as did distinct educational systems and religious institutions, namely the Church of England and the Church of Scotland remaining as the national churches of England and Scotland respectively.

The formerly separate kingdoms had been in personal union since the Union of the Crowns in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became King of England and King of Ireland. Since the reign of James, who had been the first to refer to himself as "king of Great Britain", a political union between the two mainland British kingdoms had been repeatedly attempted and aborted by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. Queen Anne (r. 1702–1714) did not produce a clear Protestant heir and endangered the line of succession, with the laws of succession differing in the two kingdoms and threatening a return to the throne of Scotland of the Roman Catholic House of Stuart, exiled in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

The term Kingdom of Sardinia denotes the Savoyard state from 1720 to 1861. From 1720 to 1847, only the island of Sardinia proper was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, while the other mainland possessions (principally the Duchy of Savoy, Principality of Piedmont, County of Nice, Duchy of Genoa, and others) were held by the House of Savoy in their own right, hence forming a composite monarchy and a personal union, which was formally referred to as the "States of His Majesty the King of Sardinia". This situation was changed by the Perfect Fusion act of 1847, which created a unitary kingdom. Regardless, historians often use "Sardinia" as a synecdoche to designate the whole Savoyard state from 1720. Due to the fact that Piedmont was the seat of power and prominent part of the entity, the state is also referred to as Sardinia–Piedmont or Piedmont–Sardinia, and sometimes erroneously as the Kingdom of Piedmont.

Before becoming a possession of the House of Savoy, the medieval Kingdom of Sardinia had been part of the Crown of Aragon and then of the burgeoning Spanish Empire. With the Treaty of The Hague (1720), the island of Sardinia and its title of kingdom were ceded by the Habsburg and Bourbon claimants to the Spanish throne to the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II. The Savoyards united it with their historical possessions on the Italian peninsula, and the kingdom came to be progressively identified with the peninsular states, which included, besides Savoy and Aosta, dynastic possessions like the Principality of Piedmont and the County of Nice, over both of which the Savoyards had been exercising their control since the 13th century and 1388, respectively.

The Acts of Union refer to two acts of Parliament, one by the Parliament of Scotland in March 1707, followed shortly thereafter by an equivalent act of the Parliament of England. They put into effect the international Treaty of Union agreed on 22 July 1706, which politically joined the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into a single "political state" named Great Britain, with Queen Anne as its sovereign. The English and Scottish acts of ratification took effect on 1 May 1707, creating the new kingdom, with its parliament based in the Palace of Westminster.

The two countries had shared a monarch since the "personal" Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his cousin Elizabeth I to become (in addition) 'James I of England', styled James VI and I. Attempts had been made to try to unite the two separate countries, in 1606, 1667, and in 1689 (following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and subsequent deposition of James II of England by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange), but it was not until the early 18th century that both nations via separate groups of English and Scots Royal Commissioners and their respective political establishments, came to support the idea of an international "Treaty of political, monetary and trade Union", albeit for different reasons.

The Acts of Union 1800 (Irish: Achtanna an Aontais 1800) were parallel acts of the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland which united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland (previously in personal union) to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The acts came into force between 31 December 1800 and 1 January 1801, and the merged Parliament of the United Kingdom had its first meeting on 22 January 1801.

Provisions of the acts remain in force, with amendments and some Articles repealed, in the United Kingdom, but they have been repealed in their entirety in the Republic of Ireland.

Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Italy to the west. Its capital and largest city, Zagreb, forms one of the country's primary subdivisions, with twenty counties. Other major urban centers include Split, Rijeka and Osijek. The country spans 56,594 square kilometres (21,851 square miles), and has a population of nearly 3.9 million.

The Croats arrived in modern-day Croatia, then part of Roman Illyria, in the late 6th century. In the 7th century, they organized the territory into two duchies. Croatia was first internationally recognized as independent on 7 June 879 during the reign of Duke Branimir. Tomislav became the first king by 925, elevating Croatia to the status of a kingdom. During the succession crisis after the Trpimirović dynasty ended, Croatia entered a personal union with Hungary in 1102. In 1527, faced with Ottoman conquest, the Croatian Parliament elected Ferdinand I of Austria to the Croatian throne. In October 1918, the State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs, independent from the Habsburg Empire, was proclaimed in Zagreb, and in December 1918, it merged into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, most of Croatia was incorporated into a Nazi-installed puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia. A resistance movement led to the creation of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, which after the war became a founding member and constituent of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On 25 June 1991, Croatia declared independence, and the War of Independence was successfully fought over the next four years.

The Italian invasion of Albania was a brief military campaign which was launched by Italy against Albania in 1939. The conflict was a result of the imperialistic policies of the Italian prime minister and dictator Benito Mussolini. Albania was rapidly occupied, its ruler King Zog I went into exile in the neighboring Kingdom of Greece, and the country was made a part of the Italian Empire as a protectorate in personal union with the Italian Crown.

The Kingdom of Romania (Romanian: Regatul României) was a constitutional monarchy that existed from 25 March [O.S. 13 March] 1881 with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King Carol I (thus beginning the Romanian royal family), until 1947 with the abdication of King Michael I and the Romanian parliament's proclamation of the Romanian People's Republic.

From 1859 to 1877, Romania evolved from a personal union of two principalities: (Moldavia and Wallachia) called the Unification of Moldavia and Wallachia also known as "The Little Union" under a single prince to an autonomous principality with a Hohenzollern monarchy. The country gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire during the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War (known locally as the Romanian War of Independence), after which it was forced to cede the southern part of Bessarabia in exchange for Northern Dobruja. The kingdom's territory during the reign of King Carol I, between 13 (O.S.) / 25 March 1881 and 27 September (O.S.) / 10 October 1914 is sometimes referred to as the Romanian Old Kingdom, to distinguish it from "Greater Romania", which included the provinces that became part of the state after World War I (Bessarabia, Banat, Bukovina, and Transylvania).

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjacent islands, principally in the archipelagos of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles. In 2022, the country's population was about 5.4 million. Its capital city is Edinburgh, whilst Glasgow is the largest city and the most populous of the cities of Scotland. To the south-east, Scotland has its only land border, which is 96 miles (154 km) long and shared with England; the country is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the north-east and east, and the Irish Sea to the south. The legislature, the Scottish Parliament, elects 129 members to represent 73 constituencies across the country. The Scottish Government is the executive arm of the devolved government, headed by the first minister, who chairs the cabinet and is responsible for government policy and international engagement.

The Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the 9th century. In 1603, James VI succeeded to the thrones of England and Ireland, forming a personal union of the three kingdoms. On 1 May 1707, Scotland and England combined to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain, with the Parliament of Scotland subsumed into the Parliament of Great Britain. In 1999, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, and has devolved authority over many areas of domestic policy. The country has its own distinct legal system, education system and religious history, which have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity. Scottish English and Scots are the most widely spoken languages in the country, existing on a dialect continuum with each other. Scottish Gaelic speakers can be found all over Scotland, but the language is largely spoken natively by communities within the Hebrides; Gaelic speakers now constitute less than 2% of the total population, although state-sponsored revitalisation attempts have led to a growing community of second language speakers.

Oslo is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of 709,037 in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022, and the metropolitan area had an estimated population of 1,546,706 in 2021.

During the Viking Age, the area was part of Viken. Oslo was founded as a city at the end of the Viking Age in 1040 under the name Ánslo, and established as a kaupstad or trading place in 1048 by Harald Hardrada. The city was elevated to a bishopric in 1070 and a capital under Haakon V of Norway around the year 1300. Personal unions with Denmark from 1397 to 1523 and again from 1536 to 1814 reduced its influence. After being destroyed by a fire in 1624, during the reign of King Christian IV, a new city was built closer to Akershus Fortress and named Christiania in honour of the king. It became a municipality (formannskapsdistrikt) on 1 January 1838. The city functioned as the capital of Norway during the 1814–1905 union between Sweden and Norway. From 1877, the city's name was spelled Kristiania in government usage, a spelling that was adopted by the municipal authorities in 1897, although 'Christiania' was also used. In 1925, the city, after incorporating the village retaining its former name, was renamed 'Oslo'. In 1948, Oslo merged with Aker, a municipality which surrounded the capital and which was 27 times larger, thus creating the modern, much larger Oslo municipality.

Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and the Russian semi-exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest, with a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Lithuania covers an area of 65,300 km (25,200 sq mi), and has a population of 2.9 million. Its capital and largest city is Vilnius; other major cities include Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Panevėžys. Lithuanians are the titular nation, belong to the ethnolinguistic group of Balts, and speak Lithuanian.

For millennia, the southeastern shores of the Baltic Sea were inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s, Lithuanian lands were united for the first time by Mindaugas, who formed the Kingdom of Lithuania on 6 July 1253. Subsequent expansion and consolidation resulted in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which by the 14th century was the largest country in Europe. In 1386, the grand duchy entered into a de facto personal union with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. The two realms were united into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, forming one of the largest and most prosperous states in Europe. The commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighbouring countries gradually dismantled it between 1772 and 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory.

The Electorate of Bavaria (German: Kurfürstentum Bayern) was a quasi-independent hereditary electorate of the Holy Roman Empire from 1623 to 1806, when it was succeeded by the Kingdom of Bavaria.

The Wittelsbach dynasty which ruled the Duchy of Bavaria was the younger branch of the family which also ruled the Electoral Palatinate. The head of the elder branch was one of the seven prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire according to the Golden Bull of 1356, but Bavaria was excluded from the electoral dignity. In 1621, Frederick V, Elector Palatine was put under the imperial ban for his role in the Bohemian Revolt against Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, and the electoral dignity and territory of the Upper Palatinate was conferred upon his loyal cousin, Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria. Although the Peace of Westphalia would create a new electoral title for Frederick V's son, with the exception of a brief period during the War of the Spanish Succession, Maximilian's descendants would continue to hold the original electoral dignity until the extinction of his line in 1777. At that point the two lines were joined in personal union until the end of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1805, after the Peace of Pressburg, the then-elector, Maximilian Joseph, raised himself to the dignity of King of Bavaria, and the Holy Roman Empire was abolished the following year.

The Union of Lublin (Polish: Unia lubelska; Lithuanian: Liublino unija) was signed on 1 July 1569 in Lublin, Poland, and created a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest countries in Europe at the time. It replaced the personal union of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with a real union and an elective monarchy, as Sigismund II Augustus, the last of the Jagiellons, remained childless after three marriages. In addition, the autonomy of Royal Prussia was largely abandoned. The Duchy of Livonia, tied to Lithuania in real union since the Union of Grodno (1566), became a Polish–Lithuanian condominium.

The Commonwealth was ruled by a single elected monarch who carried out the duties of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and governed with a common Senate and parliament (the Sejm). The Union is seen by some as an evolutionary stage in the Polish–Lithuanian alliance and personal union, necessitated also by Lithuania's dangerous position in wars with Russia.

The Jagiellonian (US: /ˌjɑːɡjəˈloʊniən/ YAH-gyə-LOH-nee-ən) or Jagellonian dynasty (US: /ˌjɑːɡəˈ-/ YAH-gə-; Lithuanian: Jogailaičių dinastija; Polish: dynastia jagiellońska), otherwise the Jagiellon dynasty (Polish: dynastia Jagiellonów), the House of Jagiellon (Polish: Dom Jagiellonów), or simply the Jagiellons (Lithuanian: Jogailaičiai; Polish: Jagiellonowie; Latin: Iagellonidae), was the name assumed by a cadet branch of the Lithuanian ducal dynasty of Gediminids upon reception by Jogaila, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, of baptism as Ladislaus in 1386, which paved the way to his ensuing marriage to the Queen Regnant Hedwig of Poland, resulting in his ascension to the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland as Ladislaus II Jagiełło (initially ruling jure uxoris jointly with Jadwiga until her death), and the effective promotion of his branch to a royal dynasty. The Jagiellons were polyglots and per historical evidence Casimir IV Jagiellon and his son Saint Casimir possibly were the last Jagiellons who spoke in their patrilineal ancestors' Lithuanian language; however, even the last patrilineal Jagiellonian monarch Sigismund II Augustus maintained two separate and equally lavish Lithuanian-speaking and Polish-speaking royal courts in Lithuania's capital Vilnius. The Jagiellons reigned in several European countries between the 14th and 16th centuries. Members of the dynasty were Kings of Poland (1386–1572), Grand Dukes of Lithuania (1377–1392 and 1440–1572), Kings of Hungary (1440–1444 and 1490–1526), and Kings of Bohemia and imperial electors (1471–1526).

The personal union between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (converted in 1569 with the Treaty of Lublin into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) is the reason for the common appellation "Poland–Lithuania" in discussions about the area from the Late Middle Ages onward. One Jagiellon, Ladislaus III of Poland, briefly ruled both Poland and Hungary (1440–1444), and two others ruled both Bohemia and Hungary (1490–1526) and then continued in the distaff line as a branch of the House of Habsburg.