Treaty of Nystad

Treaty of Nystad

Treaty effects: pre-war Sweden in yellow, Russia in green, Russian gains indicated by lines.
Signed	10 September [O.S. 30 August] 1721
Location	Nystad, Sweden (Present-day Uusikaupunki, Finland)
Original signatories	Sweden Russia

The obverse of an Fe- medal 1721 by the Danish medallist Anton Schultz. "Treaty of Nystad to end the Great Northern War by Peter the Great"

The reverse of the medal

The Treaty of Nystad (Russian: Ништадтский мир; Finnish: Uudenkaupungin rauha; Swedish: Freden i Nystad; Estonian: Uusikaupunki rahu) 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 (Finnish: 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.

In Nystad, King Frederick I of Sweden formally recognized the transfer of Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and Southeast Finland (Kexholms län and part of Karelian Isthmus) to Russia in exchange for two million silver thaler, while Russia returned the bulk of Finland to Swedish rule.^[1][2] The most of the transferred part of Swedish Finland (except Vyborg) were historically part of the Novgorod Republic and the Tsardom of Russia and were conquered by Sweden during the Livonian War in the second half of the 16th century.

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 (reigned 1682-1725) to Alexander II^[3] (reigned 1855-1881).

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.