Why did the Swedish Empire Collapse?

Why did The Swedish Empire collapse?

Marvelous empire after marvelous empire has spread its grasps across the globe over the centuries of society’s existence; some more memorable than others, but all nonetheless once-powerful and highly relevant in their time. Across the European continent, many fantastic imperial powers have left their footprints on their own soil and abroad. But, one European empire that tends to deserve more credit than it’s often given was the mighty empire of Sweden…

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♦Music by Epidemic Sound

♦Sources :

Kirby, David. "Imperial Sweden – Image and Self-Image".
Lisk, Jill. The Struggle for Supremacy in the Baltic 1600 - 1725.
Kent, Neil. A Concise History of Sweden.

♦Script & Research :
Skylar Gordon

#History #Sweden #Documentary

[tigertankerer]

Fun fact about Carolus Gustavus: his war of 1655, called in Poland "deluge" brought more destruction to Poland than WWII.

[DosSanterino]

The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was in a very difficult situation when Swedish invasion happened. Plenty of conflicts in near past, present then war with Russia, cossack uprisings supported by a Tsar and other factors which did not help Poland with defending their land. In Polish history we call this event "Potop" which translates to flood because Swedes were like destructive power, like a wave that flooded the country. It's mind-blowing how much Poland was plundered and how many people died. Loss of 40% of the population and tons of cultural goods, many of which have not been given back to this day. Swedish soldiers looted everything they found valuable, paintings, jewerly, mirrors, cutlery, vases, from churches vanished whole altars, organs, chandeliers. Bigger stuff like fountains, sculptures, bells, furnitures, or smaller like hide, clothes, tents, chairs. Invaders even scraped the gold off the slats. It was ironic that most of these gains went to Protestant churches, the whole war was symbolic. The Reformation showed superiority over Catholicism. Many major Polish cities looked like hell, Warsaw especially. Poland was a "cultural desert", even the occupation of Germany during the Second World War was not as severe as the Swedish one. To this day, stolen treasures and objects are found in Polish rivers and the Baltic Sea.

[AverytheCubanAmerican]

The Swedish Empire still exists, it's called IKEA

[winnienguyen]

The Swedish Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were two awesome great powers of the 17th century that not many people really know about like England, France, or Spain.

[grmreaer]

Very simple... an agrarian-raised army, conscripting more and more men, will eventually deplete the ability to feed the domestic population. The Nobility of Sweden had imperial ambitions, but not the surplus of people the other empires could muster.

[SSK-mpcz]

The most important mistake that Sweden did under the great power era was the choice to not integrate the southern eastern half of the country. Livonia Estonia and Ingria was never integrated mostly of the reason of serfdom. In the old Sweden and nowadays Finland serfdom never exsisted but it did in the baltics and the Swedish nobilty wanted to take advantage of that. So this important provinces did never became cores of Sweden in the same way as later earned provinces as Halland or Jämtland as an exampel. Ingria was conqured in 1617 and Jämtland in 1645. Livonia in 1629 and Halland was fully conqured 1658. Karl XI did try to integrate all of the eastern provinces especially Livonia or Livland in Swedish but he died to early to conplete it

[In_Our_Timeline]

Ikea will bring back the swedish empire and even make it more stronger

[Draktand]

If you’re wondering why a semi-absolute monarchy went over so well with the people, it’s because the internal power dynamics was a three way power struggle between the commoners, the nobility, and the crown.

Basically, the crown had to either be allied to the nobility or the commoners for their government to be stable, and an absolute monarchy meant less power vested in the nobility, meaning the crown needed to appeal to the commoners, making absolute monarchy more appealing to the commoners, since the nobility was often viewed as corrupt.

Sweden has always been a champion for personal freedoms, even when it wasn’t a democracy, and I hope that our nation continues this trends set by our rich history, whether we stay a democracy or not in he future.
Either way, the Swedish people have a bright future ahead of us, and we’ll continue to champion these ideals for the forseeable future.

[SupremeLeaderKimJong-un]

Rebuilding the Swedish Empire will have some assembly required

[LightxHeaven]

I should point out that the reasons for Christina's abdication are very complex. She never was comfortable with being a ruler and struggled a lot with finding herself an identity, which is not strange considering she was a woman who received a man's education. A highly fascinating woman that deserves her own exposition.

[sampohonkala]

One obvious reason for the empire to fall was the population: back in 1650 the population of Finland was about 450 000 people and Sweden about 1, 1 million. The population of the Polish - Lithuanian commonwealth at that time was about 11 million, Russia about 10 million. So, even though practically the entire male population of Sweden were involved with the military (which is still the case in Finland), they had a hard time competing and fighting several nations that were like ten times bigger. We cannot blame them for not trying, though.

[depekthegreat]

Sweden is one of my favourite respective countries ever but I am extremely so sad that their empire crumbled in a short period of time due to the many mistakes in organising the political and economical sectors respectively well!!!More so, some of the kings and queen themselves did not have a good communication skill among themselves to strengthen the empire for an extremely so long period of time which led to the respective neighbouring kingdoms to conquer many parts of the empire, good friends!!!Sweden is now being developed massively from the political till economical sectors which must have been done during the 16th century of Swedish Empire and ever this country must be massively developed even more, good friends!!!LONG LIVE SWEDEN!!!🇸🇪

[giorgijioshvili]

"A time of Religion and war
the legends tell a tale of a lion
this beast in a shape of a man
with a dream to rule the sea and land"

[ThoriberoCaroli]

I wouldn't say the problems started with Christina. Nor that she misspent more money than anyone else. She spent it on culture and science, which perhaps one can argue was not so wise in a military kingdom, but is something we usually applaud in other parts of history. And her spending was nothing compared to that of the regency during Charles XI. Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie knew how to party...

Rather the empire had from the start suffered from a structural problem in the form of manpower shortage. Gustavus Adolphus and later Charles XI had military inventions and tactics which allowed Sweden to punch above its weight class. But Sweden was always poor in population and poor in money compared to its neighbours and other powers. It was really only a matter of time before a long enough conflict knocked out enough Swedish soldiers, and then the military would never be able to recover from it. Which was exactly what happened at Poltava...

[HighPeakMapping]

It’s a good day when Knowledgia uploads

[eksiarvamus]

Sweden also controlled Saaremaa island in Estonia for more than 50 years.

[In_Our_Timeline]

And today Sweden is well know for it health Care, PewDiePie and hating Denmark but it is interesting to learn about the unique history of Sweden truly a great country

[ompwa]

You forgot that Kristina was a catholic. Which made her even more hated by the people since the thirty years war was still fresh in their memories

[ΠαναγιώτηςΚαλλίνικος-λω]

When you said that the reign of Christina brought in fresh skepticism (9:05), it reminded me her relation (correspondence) with Descartes

[husar]

Fun fact: Queen Christina abdicated because of here faith, she converted from protestantism to catholicism and moved to Rome.