Kingdom of Finland (1742)
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Kingdom of Finland Suomen kuningaskunta (Finnish) | |||||||||
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| 1742–1743 | |||||||||
 Coat of arms
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Monarch | | ||||||||
• 1742 | Elizabeth | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Established | 1742 | ||||||||
• Russo-Swedish War | 1743 | ||||||||
• Disestablished | 1743 | ||||||||
| Time zone | Eastern European Time | ||||||||
| ISO 3166 code | FI | ||||||||
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| Today part of | Finland Russia | ||||||||
The attempt to create a Kingdom of Finland in 1742 is a little-known chapter in the history of
Currently
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Duke Charles Peter of Holstein-Gottorp was the closest living relative (grand-nephew) and the natural heir of the recently deceased, childless Queen
It has been described of Charles Peter of Gottorp that he identified himself with his Swedish heritage and that even afterwards, living in St. Petersburg, would have liked to make his own environment and lands to resemble Scandinavia. In the imperial court of St. Petersburg, he grew up in a specifically "Holsteinian" separate sub-culture.
When the Russian counter-offensive started in March 1742,
By July 1742, Russia had occupied all of Finland, meeting almost no resistance[1] at all due to ineffective Swedish military command and forces, and that month a group of Finnish peasants pleaded with the Russians to make the duke the King of Sweden.
Diet Lantdag of Turku
General
Known representatives that showed up in the city were e.g.
According to Sjöström (pp 540–541) Keith summoned the Diet of Finland to convene in October 1742 at Turku, Finland. This Diet soon proclaimed duke Kaarle Petteri Ulrik as King of Finland.
At the same time, the
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Events were however developing at a fast pace. Russian troops had taken over Finland with much ease, and Elizabeth decided to make Duke Charles Peter her own heir to the Imperial throne, as she was without an heir apparent herself. The Swedish parliament was unaware of this, and when their envoy arrived in Saint Petersburg, it was too late. The underage Charles Peter's succession rights to Sweden were renounced on his behalf.
New negotiations were thus opened, and Elizabeth agreed to restore the greater part of Finland if her cousin,
According to Sjöström (pp 540–541) the Swedes managed to repossess much of Finland in the Treaty of Turku. Elisabeth and Kaarle Petteri Ulrik kept the Finnish lands east of the River Kymi. Those lands were later known as “Old Finland”.
Long unaware of the procedures elsewhere, the Finnish delegation was still only preparing for its trip to Saint Petersburg, when the word of Elizabeth's new mood reached them. Russians effectively stopped the process there, and the Diet lantdag representatives left for their homes. Most probably the duke never got to know about his election to the ephemeral throne of Finland.
In late 1742, general Keith was succeeded in the leadership of civil administration of Finland (based at Turku) by the new Governor-General, Johannes Balthasar von Campenhausen.
Aftermath
Disappointment in the results of the Turku Diet lantdag generated some plans to rebel against the Russian occupation, but no actions came of these sentiments.
In general, the events of the Turku Diet lantdag in 1742 had no consequences after the Russian occupation ended the following year. Elizabeth's new candidate was elected as the next King of Sweden, and some Finnish territory was ceded to Russia. However, the events clearly resemble what happened seventy years later in the Finnish War, which ended up with the Finnish estates gathering in the Diet of Porvoo and swearing their oaths of loyalty to the Russian Emperor Alexander I as the Grand Duke of Finland. Alexander was the grandson of the Duke Charles Peter.
Sjöström (pp 540–541) mentions that those lands of “Old Finland” were in a sense the surviving continuation of the Kingdom of Finland from 1742.
Häkkinen and Sippu (pages 84–85) mention that still in the 1790s, certain farmers of the villages of Liikkala, Mämmälä and Ruotila in Old Finland, lodged a claim in court where they pleaded certain provisions of the 1742 Manifest of Empress Elisabeth among other points of law to support their position in that lawsuit. This implies that the 1742 manifest and the "statehood" of the ephemeral 1742 kingdom were still regarded as part of the fundamental rights in the Russian-held Old Finland.
According to biographical account collected by Dr. Paaskoski (pages 101–102), Johannes Balthasar von Campenhausen (1689-1758) was between 1742 and 1744 the Governor-General of (the occupied) Finland and as successor of James Keith, held the position of leader of civil administration of Finland, firstly at Turku. As consequence of the
According to Sjöström (pp 540–541), from 1743 to 1917, Old Finland (and other territories with which it merged), was governed as a separate territory with its own administration, law system, governance and constitution, in many aspects similar to the principalities of Germany. The hereditary monarchical ruler of these territories was always a member of the family of the dukes of
The sovereigns apparently displayed their claim to the Kingdom in a heraldic way: Since 1788, the Arms of Old Finland (
See also
- Walhalla-orden
- Monarchy of Finland
- Anjala conspiracy
- Kingdom of Finland (1918)
References
- ^ ISBN 951-35-2493-0.
- Sjöström (2011), "Y-DNA and records of medieval land inheritance in Rolandh and Tepponen lineages of Vehkalahti, Finland", Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, volume 3 issue 6 (July 2011) pages 527..563
- Veli Häkkinen and Seppo Sippu (2000), "Mämmälän kylän talot ja suvut", Vammala 2000.
- Jyrki Paaskoski (2003), biography of baron Johannes Balthasar von Campenhausen (1689-1758), entry in Suomen Kansallisbiografia, part 2 (National Encyclopedia of Biography of Finland), 2003, pages 101–102.