Nystad > Uusikaupunki Western Finland Finland

The Treaty of Nystad, the last peace treaty of the Great Northern War, is concluded between the Tsardom of Russia and the Swedish Empire on September 10 [O.S. August 30] 1721 in the Swedish town of Nystad (Finnish: Uusikaupunki), Sweden having already settled with the other parties in Stockholm and Frederiksborg.

During the war, Peter I of Russia had occupied all Swedish possessions on the eastern Baltic coast: Swedish Ingria, where the soon to be new Russian capital of St. Petersburg had been established in 1703, Swedish Estonia and Swedish Livonia, which had capitulated in 1710, and Finland.

By the Peace of 1721, Russia receives the territories of Estonia, Livonia and Ingria (the southeastern part of Finland with Viipuri), as well as much of Karelia in exchange for two million silver thaler, while the bulk of Finland is returned to Sweden.

Peter replaces King Frederick I of Sweden as ruler of the conquered provinces.

The treaty enshrines the rights of the Baltic-German nobility within Estonia and Livonia to maintain their financial system, existing customs border, self-government, Lutheran religion, and the German language; this special position in the Russian Empire will be reconfirmed by all Russian Tsars from Peter the Great to Alexander II.

Nystad manifests the decisive shift in the European balance of power which the war had brought about: the Swedish imperial era is over; Sweden enters the Age of Liberty, while Russia has emerged as a new empire. (Sweden's dissatisfaction with the result will lead to its fruitless attempts in the coming decades at recovering the lost territories.)