Treaty of Nystad
The Treaty of Nystad 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 in the then Swedish town of Nystad. Sweden had settled with the other parties in Stockholm and in Frederiksborg.
During the war Peter I of Russia had occupied all Swedish possessions on the eastern Baltic coast: Swedish Ingria, Swedish Estonia and Swedish Livonia, and Finland.
In Nystad, King Frederick I of Sweden formally recognized the transfer of Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and Southeast Finland to Russia in exchange for two million silver thaler, while Russia returned the bulk of Finland to Swedish rule.
The Treaty enshrined the rights of the German Baltic nobility within Estonia and Livonia to maintain their financial system, their existing customs border, their self-government, their Lutheran religion, and the German language; this special position in the Russian Empire was reconfirmed by all Russian Tsars from Peter the Great to Alexander II.
Nystad manifested the decisive shift in the European balance of power which the war had brought about: the Swedish imperial era had ended; Sweden entered the Age of Liberty, while Russia had emerged as a new empire.Legacy
In pre-1917 Saint Petersburg, in the Vyborgsky district one of the thoroughfares was named after the Nystad treaty. The district also houses a church commemorating the first Russian victory in the Great Northern war, the Battle of Poltava – St. Sampsonius' Cathedral.
