Don Quijote
Banned
Importantly,is Peter dead?
Apparently he did march into battle at Poltava as an infantryman of the Novgorod regiment, so if this is true, but the Swedes do better, there is a high chance he will be killed.
Importantly,is Peter dead?
I would guess that Finland, Estonia and Latvia would still be Swedish today. (They almost became so OTL in the 1920-1940 period, but the Swedish cabinet decided otherwise.)
In the interwar period there were some suggestions made by Estonians and Latvians of closer collaborations with their other small neighbors, especially Sweden, but this was rejected by these neighbors, so nothing came of it, and all of them except Sweden fell victim to WW2.What? I've never heard of this.
It would be reasonable to assume that he and his top commanders had retreated to analyse the events and achieve better the next time around. On the other hand, if the battle is such a disaster as postulated, anything could have happened, so he could have been killed or captured.Importantly,is Peter dead?
The lesser part then, might be the Estonian, Latvian and Finnish immigrants living in Sweden in the post-1945 era, for we seem to have been assimilated as far as I have experienced, although larger groups in some places perhaps have been able to retain something of their own languages and peculiarities.There is absolutely nothing wrong in being Swedish - for those who want to be Swedish. Post-1920 Balts and Finns, for the most part, do not belong into that category.
The lesser part then, might be the Estonian, Latvian and Finnish immigrants living in Sweden in the post-1945 era, for we seem to have been assimilated as far as I have experienced, although larger groups in some places perhaps have been able to retain something of their own languages and peculiarities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_FinnsIn the 16th and the 17th century large groups of Savonians moved from Finland to Dalecarlia, Bergslagen and other provinces where their slash and burn cultivation was suitable. This was part of an effort of the Swedish king Gustav Vasa, and his successors, to expand agriculture to these uninhabited parts of the country which were later on known as "Finn woods" (Finnskogar).
In the 1600s, there were plans to set up a new region Järle län that would have contained most of the skogsfinnar. It should be noted that in Sweden at this time, all legislation and official journals were also published in Finnish. Bank-notes were issued in Swedish and Finnish etc. After 1809, and the loss of the eastern part of Sweden (Finland) to Russia, the Swedish church planned a Finnish-speaking bishopric with Filipstad as seat. However, after the mid-1800s cultural imperialism and nationalism lead to new policies of assimilation and Swedification of the Finnish-speaking population. These efforts peaked from the end of the 1800s and until the 1950s. Finnish speakers remain only along the border with Finland in the far North, and as domestic migrants due to unemployment in the North.
By the end of the 18th century, a large part of the descendants of the Forest Finns had become culturally assimilated into the Swedish mainstream population. During the previous two centuries, various laws and regulations had been passed to speed up the "Swedification" process to the Forest Finns, including total banning of the use of Finnish language.
During the reign of Christina, Queen of Sweden, a proclamation of 1646 called for the burning of houses of all those Finns who did not want to learn Swedish in the area of Sweden Proper. Reading books written in Finnish led in some cases to imprisonment still in the 18th century.
Wikipedia has some conflicting information that pertains to this topic:
Or just to survive.These immigrants moved to Sweden to live and work there.
The Norwegians did have a non-Swedish identity to start with, and the 1800s was the nationalistic era, and there was nothing uniting in the union except having the same king. There were two separate states developing separately, while having some pressure to have the same foreign policy and trade. The historical Norwegian lands taken in 1645 and 1658 are still in Sweden.The Finns and Baltics make together the majority of the population of this union state, even if one would include the Swedish-speaking Finns and Estonians as "Swedes". Clearly this is an essentially different situation from integrating/assimilating what amounts to a small number of Finns and Baltics in Sweden, among a predominately Swedish-speaking, culturally Swedish population. Let us again remember that the Finns, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians will remain absolute local majorities in their own regions.
This is the problem in saying that such a (unlikely) Baltic Union as described here would become a "Sweden writ large" and its population would become "Swedish". Sweden never was a France, a Britain or even a Russia, in that its core population would have been big enough to easily integrate/assimilate the minorities (local majorities!) in Finland and the Baltic areas as "Swedes". It is the demographics, man.![]()
I would say that a "Union of Northern Kingdoms and Principalities" or "the League of the Baltic", or something like that, with Sweden as its leading nation, would arguably be possible as a joint nation around the northern Baltic Sea with various PODs in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. But more areas and people it includes, the less it can be "Sweden", that is a unitary Swedish state with its people being "simply" subjects of the Swedish crown. For such a joint nation to hold together, Stockholm would need to allow the minority groups at least some say in their own matters to keep them sated and to stop the other powers around the area to break up this union.
In other words, maybe such a union could be built, if the process is started early enough, in a TL that is at least somewhat a Russia-screw. But if the Swedish, in a post-imperial hubris, then try to run it as a continuation of the Swedish Empire, it will crash and burn pretty damn quick, due to both internal and external factors.
Remember that IOTL the Swedish did have a union in the 19th century, with a people linguistically and culturally closer to themselves than the Finns and the Baltics. But that union did break up in 1905 because the Norwegians wanted a nation of their own. Even the Norwagians had several important rights and devolved political say in their own affairs. Because of national aspirations of their own, and a disagreement over how the union should function, I understand, the Norwegians finally broke away on their own. I think it is an illustrative example of what eventually might happen to a Sweden that retained Finland and/or the Baltics, and that break-up would be the more problematic, more bitter and violent the more the Swedish would try to prevent it with political oppression or military action.
Anyway, if we have a larger Sweden, is it so implausible that the population could be content? Austria-Hungary was strong until WW1, and Switzerland still exists. Now Sweden might be more monolithic, but does it have to be so?
A continuation of the Swedish Empire? Apart from the Danish provinces, newly taken lands still had their local governments in power, did they not? It was the smaller later Sweden that centralised power, such as in Pomerania by Gustavus IV.
No, you just misinterpret the tone of my comments as implying something more than I write. We are not disagreeing, just discussing, and for my part I have not really touched on that particular topic in my vague shallow comments on something that might have been.For some reason you can concede this when we speak of Norway, but reject the idea of a national awakening in Finland for the same token which I find curious.
For the nth time - a Sweden that includes Finland has two options. One: aim to suppress nascent Finnish nationalism and try to make the Finns linguistic and cultural Swedes. Two: accept Finnish nationalism and give the Finns political and cultural rights as a nation within a federal state, or at least as an autonomous unit. In both options, Sweden can well retain Finland into the 20th century, but in both options, it also runs a big risk of the Finns trying to eventually break away as an independent state. In the first option it might happen through a violent insurrection and war, as a result of a backlash to Swedish oppression. In the second option independence could be seen as the natural end result of the rise of Finnish cultural and political autonomy - somewhat like after the OTL period of autonomy under Russia.
No, you just misinterpret the tone of my comments as implying something more than I write. We are not disagreeing, just discussing, and for my part I have not really touched on that particular topic in my vague shallow comments on something that might have been.
If we say something about that, I think it is said that standard Finnish was based on eastern dialects, since they were considered more pure. If the Swedish government would support the creation of a Finnish standard language around 1800, might that mean that a more western Finnish, somewhat more influenced by Swedish, or at least by the more western dialects would have come around (however that looks)?
As we have seen, the Swedish actions have been both for and against the other languages of the realm, so any policy is plausible here, and both ways have been successful or failures in other countries, in respect to holding the realm together.
If Norway had been ceded to Sweden in 1658 instead of Scania, then every comment I have encountered (not very many, but anyway) seems to agree that Norway would then have gotten itself a Swedish identity, which the Norwegians feel is a very scary thought.
Belgium has something of this Swedish/Finnish problem in the relation between Flemish and Valloons, and they have yet to solve it.
The problem might not be as precise as it can look now, since in the 1700s most people spoke their to others incomprehensible dialect, and used "härräsäj" (lordly language) when communicating with outsiders. In rump-Sweden OTL most dialects were killed off by the regime, just as it killed the minority tongues, and the state became almost entirely monolingual.
When speaking of that, perhaps a cantonisation of the realm might lead the way to a third option - divide and conquer. If Swedes and Finns and Estonians and everyone else are governed in small units, these units could be used (by the wicked) to enhance local peculiarities, so there will be no nationwide standard Finnish, instead you get a number of local Finnishes, which at least might delay large-scale unified separatism until traveling gets easier and the economy needs a wider audience for newspapers and literature.
Taking the rest of Latvia more or less happened OTL, but is there some mention in any source about Charles XII having a wish to annex Russian Karelia, or Kola, or any other Russian territory?I see Courland and Polish Livonia annexed into Sweden. Far Karelia and Kola from Russia, with Archangelsk, Pskov and Novogorod held as guarantees of a very large war indemnity.
Sweden's enemies could do so, and this is the most obvious place for Swedish expansion - close by, the same creed, almost the same language (hm, Sorbs live there as well), and reasonably well populated.As for taking parts of Saxony, I would say against it. Don't mess in the Empire if you can avoid it.
In that case I would rather use August's unreliability, and make an alliance with him against Russia after Narva 1700. Then we could have two offensive forces in 1701, north and south of the Düna river, making some progress, and then a general peace in 1702 with Russia ceding a few border towns to each of the opponents.The proper way to fight the Great Nordic War is probably to realise that Poland-Lithuania will never be a reliable ally and is in decline. Strike a deal with the Emperor or ignore him, and cross into Saxony 1702 or 1703, after the Battle of Kliszow. Meet up with the German garrisons, force August to abdicate his Polish throne and keep a garrison in Saxony as a guarantee until Sweden is at peace, and turn aganst the Russians in 1704.
Peter should be much less prepared then.