Livonia

Livonia, German Livland, lands on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, north of Lithuania; the name was originally applied by Germans in the 12th century to the area inhabited by the Livs, a Finno-Ugric people whose settlements centred on the mouths of the Western Dvina and Gauja rivers, but eventually it was used to refer to nearly all of modern Latvia and Estonia. During the 13th century greater Livonia, which was inhabited by several Baltic and Finnish tribes, was conquered and Christianized by the Order of the Brothers of the Sword (founded 1202; after 1237, the Order of Teutonic Knights of Livonia). The conquered territory was organized into the Livonian confederation, which consisted of ecclesiastical states, free towns, and regions ruled directly by the knights. After 1419, when the various political elements combined to form a common legislative diet, the Knights and their vassals emerged as the dominant estate. They prospered, in particular by supplying grain for the Baltic Sea trade, but they were not politically united among themselves; and mutual suspicion and conflicting interests prevented them from overcoming their rivalry with the other estates (i.e., the bishops and the autonomous cities). By the middle of the 16th century the problems of religious disunity resulting from the spread of Protestantism and of peasant discontent had also become acute in Livonia.

When Russia invaded the area (beginning the Livonian War, 1558–83) in an effort to prevent Poland-Lithuania from gaining dominance over it, the Livonian Knights were unable to defend themselves. They disbanded their order and dismembered Livonia (Union of Wilno, 1561). Lithuania incorporated the knights’ territory north of the Western Dvina River (i.e., Livonia proper); Courland, the area south of the Western Dvina, became a Polish fief. Sweden, which also had acquired an interest in the area, seized northern Estonia. This territorial distribution remained in effect until 1621, when Sweden took the cities of Riga and Jelgava (Mitau, the capital of Courland) and subsequently won all Estonia as well as northern Latvia (i.e., the region of Vidzeme or Livonia) from the Polish-Lithuanian state (Truce of Altmark, 1629).

Sweden retained these territories for almost a century, defending them from both Poland (Polish-Swedish War, 1654–60) and Russia (Russo-Swedish War, 1654–61). In 1721, however, after the Great Northern War, Sweden ceded them to Russia (Treaty of Nystad), which also, as a result of the partitions of Poland, annexed Latgale (1772)—the southeastern section of Livonia that had been retained by Poland in 1629—and Courland (1795). Historic Livonia was then divided into three governments within the Russian Empire: Estonia (i.e., the northern part of ethnic Estonia), Livonia (i.e., the southern part of ethnic Estonia and northern Latvia), and Courland. After the October Revolution in Russia (1917), Latvia and Estonia proclaimed their independence; they were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, though under German occupation from 1941 to 1944.