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The Finnish War was a conflict which was fought between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire between the spring of 1808 and the autumn of 1809. Broadly speaking it formed part of the wider Napoleonic Wars which were engulfing Europe in the 1800s and 1810s, as Tsar Alexander I of Russia undertook the war in part because of his alliance with France, Sweden being allied with Britain against the French in their perennial wars with one another. The war was a resounding success for the Russians, who first conquered Finland, a constituent part of the Swedish kingdom with several centuries, before proceeding over the frozen Gulf of Bothnia and descending on central Sweden towards Stockholm. The war resulted in major political changes in Sweden as they responded to the bruising defeat. More significantly, Finland was ceded to Russia as part of the peace terms and was formed into the Grand Duchy of Finland, which was ruled by the Russian imperial family, the Romanovs, as a separate political entity down to 1917. Russian rule would see some parts of what is now north-western Russia ceded to Russia and a concerted program of Russification undertaken in Finland, with some lasting cultural and social impacts.[1]
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Finnish War chronology of events
Finland had an unusual position within Scandinavia in ancient and medieval times. Ethnically and culturally the Finns were substantially different to the Swedes and other Norse peoples of the peninsula. For instance, the Finns speak Finnish, a Finno-Ugric language, while all other Norse peoples speak North Germanic languages, which are of a different language family. Additionally, while the Norwegians, Swedes and Danes adopted Christianity through a semi-voluntary process in the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, the Finns were much more forcibly converted through Swedish military activity and aggressive proselytizing in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was also around this time that the rulers of Sweden conquered Finland, beginning a period of six and a half centuries of Swedish rule.[2]
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In late medieval and early modern times Finland was understood to include parts of what is now north-western Russia around Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega, as well as Karelia and the eastern side of the Gulf of Finland where St Petersburg lies. These lands became a source of conflict between the Kingdom of Sweden and an emergent Russia in the seventeenth century as the Russians became determined to acquire a port on the Baltic Sea, eventually achieving this during the Great Northern War (1700–1721).[3] The border conflicts continued thereafter and so when Tsar Alexander I allied with the Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, through the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, he soon turned his eyes towards Finland, as Sweden had fractious relations with France throughout the Napoleonic Wars. In February 1808 the Russians invaded Finland in what would become known as the Finnish War.[4]
The military campaign which followed lasted for a year and a half and was one of the few wars Russia has fought in over the centuries where its immense size as a great nation was reflected in its military performance. The Russians quickly overran Finland, capturing Helsinki in early March and then consolidating their control over the country in the summer. Then they waited for winter. When it came a large Russian force advanced over the frozen Gulf of Bothnia into northern Sweden before turning south towards Stockholm. At the same time the war led to immense political instability in Sweden itself and the overthrow of King Gustav IV in favor of his uncle who became King Charles XIII. Thereafter, despite efforts by Sweden’s sometime ally Britain to come to its aid, the Swedes were comprehensively defeated. Through the Treaty of Fredrikshamn of September 1809 Finland was ceded to Russia and was turned into the Grand Duchy of Finland. Tsar Alexander and his successors would rule this as a separate entity from Russia for the next century. Finland’s political independence would only finally be achieved in 1917 as a result of the Russian Revolution, ending eight centuries of foreign rule.[1]
Extent of migration after the Finnish War
There was some migration attendant on the Finnish War. Inevitably thousands of Russians ended up moving to Finland to work as administrators and officials over the course of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, some border regions between the Grand Duchy and the Russian Empire were incorporated more fully into Russia and experienced a form of informal colonization. Recent studies have also suggested that Russian rule acted as a spur to Finnish missionary activity abroad in the nineteenth century and that were it not for the manner in which Russian rule opened Finland up to European society as a whole that missions such as those undertaken by a group of Finns to Namibia in Africa in the 1870s might never have occurred.[5]
Demographic impact of the Finnish War
The demographic impact of the Finnish War was felt most keenly in the border regions between Finland and Russia and in the city of Helsinki. Officials arrived periodically to the Finnish capital in the nineteenth century, with a particular influx in the 1880s, 1890s and 1900s as Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicholas II engaged in concerted policies of Russification in the Grand Duchy. These were broadly unsuccessful, but efforts to enforce the Russian language and other aspects of Russian culture and politics necessarily required Russian officials on the ground in Helsinki. Thus, although the numbers are relatively small, some people in Finland today will ultimately be able to trace their ancestry back to Russians who may have settled here in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries.[6]
Explore more about the Finnish War
- Finland, Baptisms, 1657-1890 record collection on MyHeritage
- Finland Church Census and Pre-Confirmation Books, 1657-1915 record collection on MyHeritage
- Finland, Marriages, 1682-1892 record collection on MyHeritage
- Finland Burials, 1725-1909 record collection on MyHeritage
- Russians immigrating to the United States record collection on MyHeritage
- Research Finns – Finnish not required; Internet is! at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Union's Last War: The Russian-Swedish War of 1808-09
- ↑ Medieval Scandinavia: The Finnish Peoples. Medievalists.net
- ↑ Great Northern War. Great Northern War. WorldHistory
- ↑ Lasse Laaksonen, ‘The Finnish War in the Context of the Napoleonic Wars’, in International Congress of Military History: Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (Porto, 2011), pp. 253–261.
- ↑ Raita Merivirta, Leila Koivunen and Timo Särkkä, ‘Finns in the Colonial World’, in Raita Merivirta, Leila Koivunen and Timo Särkkä (eds), Finnish Colonial Encounters: From Anti-Imperialism to Cultural Colonialism and Complicity (New York, 2021), pp. 1–38.
- ↑ Osmo Jussila, ‘The Historical Background of the February Manifesto of 1899’, in Journal of Baltic Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2/3: Special Issue – Finland and the Baltic Provinces in the Russian Empire (Summer – Fall, 1984), pp. 141–147.