The Great Northern War

School 2086

Bausman Elizabeth

Natalia Evgenievna Borodina

The economy of war

The reason I have chosen this subject is because I just love history, because, really, I just think that history is so great, it’s just so much fun; a whole lot of dates to remember, tons of dead people you can read about, war, manslaughter, famines too, also my dad has a degree in history — what’s not to like, I mean, come on, honestly, how could I NOT have chosen this subject?? Oh and I totally like economy too, obviously. So does my dad btw, we think it’s really cool, it runs in the family.

The Great Northern War (1700-1721) was the inevitable result of tense relations between Sweden under Karl XII and Russia in the XVIII century.

Before the above mentioned war, Russia was facing different problems of internal politics - the royal siblings’ Peter and Sophie’s quarrels over the throne, minor revolts and such; so there was really not much place for neither economic developments nor regressions or whatnot, and not much could honestly be said about this nor about Peter himself. Peter's enemy however - Karl XII - was already a powerful figure, who had made small conquests at the time and had fully established his place in the world.

The war itself ultimately started with Peter the Great attacking - or, expressed in a more honourable way - making military actions to free the Russian lands which were at the time being held by Sweden. What he did exactly, was engage in small minor battles, eventually freeing the Crimean army and leading his troops to the North, where he repeatedly lost in numerous battles against Karl XII (and lost over 150 000 people), at least until 1707.

After his numerous losses, Peter started to heavily reconsider his knowledge in war and military actions and strategy, and, eventually, he decided to throw himself into the deep study of military knowledge, attacks, strategy and tactics. Meanwhile Karl XII had conquered all of Poland, north Germany (more specifically Westphalia) and was already making plans and arrangements to attack Russia itself.

By the time Karl had accomplished all of that, Peter had already provided his country with heavy army reforms, which were exactly: dividing his army into several categories and inviting army generals from across the seas from countries like Germany and Denmark. After finding out about Peter providing himself with foreign army generals, Karl XII became outraged and completely destroyed Denmark, ultimately conquering it completely and as a whole.

At the same time as this was happening, Peter thought his actions through and made a peace pact with Turkey - which Karl on the other side was hoping would help him by attacking Russia alongside with him, making it easier to conquer Russia for him - by giving it some territories of Crimea. After this, Karl had no choice but to finally attack Russia on his own.

The following military actions took place in Poltava (now part of Ukraine), and after rather intense battles and fights, in 1709 Peter the Great and the Russian army absolutely completely destroyed Karl XII’s armies. Karl, in defeat and humiliation retreated, but Peter had no plans to stop there, and so continued to hew off territories that were already conquered by Karl, adding a ton of territory like Livonia, Estonia, Finland, Lapland, Riga, etc. to Russia’s territorial possessions (all of which we eventually given back, though).

That way, Peter provided Russia a whole and completely open way to the Baltic.

After the war, the biggest (and most significant) pro of the entire military/political situation was that all of this has lead to a rather powerful economic progress boost in Russia.

It included:

1. By that time, Russia already had one of the most powerful fleets in the world( the second best after the British);

2. Absolute open access to all international relationships;

3. Under Peter I Kamchatka and Finland were added to Russia’s territorial possessions;

4. Back in the war’s times - sometime in 1719 - Peter the Ist set and validated a manufacturing board; as well as the mountain mining board, setting that way a new industry chain in Russia (which didn’t exactly reflect on the country in the most positive way, as it had quite a lot of cons: mostly because the lack of labor force caused slavery to strengthen - which obviously means the increase of serfdom. Serfhood at the time was however the ultimate 'other side of the medal' in the economy; which anyway was terrible still, peasants had to work far too much but were little paid or not paid at all, yet they had to pay large taxes, and in the end were all forced into slavery. )

5. Nevertheless, large 9 steel mills and 7 smelters were constructed, and Russia broke in to the 2nd place of the worlds’ most efficient metal output country(1st place going to Germany)

6. In 1724, in the city of Nerchensk, the great Nerchensk’s Silver Combine was constructed;

7. A large shipbuilding industry was placed in the Baltic;

8. There was a great revolution in education, lots of schools and universities were formed, and education became open for all;

9. The constructions of many new towns began across Russia - Nizhny Tagil, Ekaterinburg, Tomsk, and etc;

10. Following the example of western countries, Russia started it’s first ever banking system( Government Exchequer).

A number of social changes appeared in Russia after The Northern War as well, since actually during the war Peter has visited and thus been influenced by many foreign countries.

Such influence resulted in providing Russian citizens with open-for-all education, numerous western mores and a lot of other crazy stuff basically; like the infamous “Beard Tax” story, jesus christ; Hairless necks and faces were all the rage in the Western World, so the Czar initially ordered that all of his subjects (excluding clergy and peasants) must lose their face fuzz. So dedicated was Peter to his cause that he even instructed police officials to personally shave those who refused to comply. Sounds funny looking at it like this from the side, but facial hair was no laughing matter to Pyotr Alekseyvich. Aside from that Peter worked a lot on improving city construction development (building St Petersburg and so on) and thus made the people’s lives of his country far better than they have been at the time(despite killing over 300 000 people whilst building St Petersburg, but that doesn’t really matter, just fyi kind of) so, yeah, XVII - XVIII century was like, real fun I guess. And so, I bring my ‘article’ to an end.

The End.