Swedish Estonia in the context of "Swedish Livonia"

The Treaty of Nystad, or the Treaty of Uusikaupunki, was the last peace treaty of the Great Northern War of 1700–1721. It was concluded between the Tsardom of Russia and the Swedish Empire on 10 September [O.S. 30 August] 1721 in the then Swedish town of Nystad (Uusikaupunki, in the south-west of present-day Finland). Sweden had settled with the other parties in Stockholm (1719 and 1720) and in Frederiksborg (1720).

During the war Peter I of Russia had occupied all Swedish possessions on the eastern Baltic coast: Swedish Ingria (where he began to build the soon-to-be Russian capital of St. Petersburg in 1703), Swedish Estonia and Swedish Livonia (which had capitulated in 1710), and Finland.

The Livonian War (1558–1583) concerned control of Old Livonia (in the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia). The Tsardom of Russia faced a varying coalition of the Dano-Norwegian Realm, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the Union (later Commonwealth) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland.

From 1558 to 1578, Russia dominated the region with early military successes at Dorpat (Tartu) and Narva. The Russian dissolution of the Livonian Confederation brought Poland–Lithuania into the conflict, and Sweden and Denmark-Norway intervened between 1559 and 1561. Swedish Estonia was established despite constant invasion from Russia, and Frederick II of Denmark-Norway bought the old Bishopric of Ösel–Wiek, which he placed under the control of his brother Magnus of Holstein. Magnus attempted to expand his Livonian holdings to establish the Russian vassal state, the Kingdom of Livonia, which nominally existed until his defection in 1576.

The uniformity policy was the concept of implementing Swedish law to the dominions of Sweden during the latter's time as an empire. It is symbolized by the slogan unus rex, una lex et grex unus ("one king, one law, one people") possibly coined by Johan Skytte, governor-general in Swedish Estonia, Ingria and Livonia. However, the phrase is also found in the debates on the possible union of Scotland and England in 1607, when Sir Edwyn Sandys noted King James VI & I's view that for a perfect union there should be unus rex, unus grex, una lex.

Most notably, the uniformity policy aimed at abolishing serfdom then common in Estonia, Livonia and the Swedish dominions in the Holy Roman Empire (Ingermanland naturally had a free peasantry). It was implemented in Livonia against the will of the local Baltic German nobles, which led many of them, under the leadership of Johann Patkul, to side with Peter the Great and the Russian Empire during the Great Northern War. The Estonian and Pomeranian peasants remained serfs: Estonia had voluntarily submitted to Sweden and thus had been given leeway in keeping the traditional local law code, while Swedish Pomerania had retained its traditional law code when, on behalf of the then ruling Swedish high nobility, the Peace of Westphalia granted it to the King of Sweden while remaining part of the Holy Roman Empire, and not in a formal cession which would have resulted in the implementation of Swedish law. Swedish law was thus only introduced to Swedish Pomerania after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and then by a coup d'etat organized by King Gustav IV Adolf.

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, later, of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (1795).
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