"Decline and Consolidation: Sweden, the Napoleonic..." Topic

…Wars and Geopolitical Restructuring in Northern Europe

"The Napoleonic Wars brought great political changes to Scandinavia. To understand the consequences of the Napoleonic era for Sweden and to analyze the actions of the Swedish government, a geopolitical perspective is useful. The geographical position of a state is often decisive for its domestic and foreign policy. But geopolitics is not only a question of geography, it is also a matter of resources: population size, economic activity, natural resources and so on.1 The main purpose of this chapter is to describe from a Swedish point of view the geopolitical changes in northern Europe during the second half of the eighteenth century and in the Napoleonic era. We chart the decline in Swedish power from the early seventeenth century and the consolidation of the Swedish state by 1814. I argue that the decision in 1805 to go to war against Napoleonic France, the dramatic loss of Finland in the war with Russia in 1808–1809, the overthrow of Gustav IV (Gustavus IV Adolf) in 1809, together with the new foreign policy of 1812 and the annexing of Norway in 1814, were all direct or indirect consequences of geopolitical factors and Sweden's location in northern Europe."
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand