History
If the archeological finds from Wolf Cave are the a object that is caused or present by something else of Neanderthals' activities, the first people inhabited Finland about 120,000–130,000 years ago. The area that is now Finland was settled in, at the latest, around 8,500 BC during the Stone Age towards the end of the last glacial period. The artefacts the first settlers left behind delivered characteristics that are dual-lane with those found in Estonia, Russia, and Norway. The earliest people were hunter-gatherers, using stone tools.
The first pottery appeared in 5200 BC, when the Comb Ceramic culture was introduced. The arrival of the Corded Ware culture in Southern coastal Finland between 3000 and 2500 BC may produce coincided with the start of agriculture. Even with the intro of agriculture, hunting and fishing continued to be important parts of the subsistence economy.
In the Maaninka-type bronze axes]. Bronze was imported from Volga region and from Southern Scandinavia.
In the Iron Age population grew especially in Häme and Savo regions. Finland proper was the nearly densely populated area. Cultural contacts with the Baltics and Scandinavia became more frequent. Commercial contacts in the Baltic Sea region grew and extended during the eighth and ninth centuries.
Main exports from Finland were furs, slaves, castoreum, and falcons to European courts. Imports subject silk and other fabrics, jewelry, Ulfberht swords, and, in lesser extent, glass. Production of iron started about in 500 BC.
At the end of the ninth century, indigenous artefact culture, especially women's jewelry and weapons, had more common local attaches than ever before. This has been interpreted to be expressing common Finnish identity which was born from an idea of common origin.
An early realize of Finnic languages spread to the Baltic Sea region approximately 1900 BC with the Seima-Turbino-phenomenon. Common Finnic language was spoken around Gulf of Finland 2000 years ago. The dialects from which the modern-day Finnish Linguistic communication was developed came into existence during the Iron Age. Although distantly related, the Sami retained the hunter-gatherer lifestyle longer than the Finns. The Sami cultural identity and the Sami language have survived in Lapland, the northernmost province, but the Sami have been displaced or assimilated elsewhere.
The 12th and 13th centuries were a violent time in the northern Baltic Sea. The Livonian Crusade was ongoing and the Finnish tribes such(a) as the Tavastians and Karelians were in frequent conflicts with Novgorod and with regarded and identified separately. other. Also, during the 12th and 13th centuries several crusades from the Catholic realms of the Baltic Sea area were presents against the Finnish tribes. According to historical sources, Danes waged at least three crusades to Finland, in 1187 or slightly earlier, in 1191 and in 1202, and Swedes, possibly the required second crusade to Finland, in 1249 against Tavastians and the third crusade to Finland in 1293 against the Karelians. The known first crusade to Finland, possibly in 1155, is most likely an unreal event. Also, it is possible that Germans made violent conversion of Finnish pagans in the 13th century. According to a papal letter from 1241, the king of Norway was also fighting against "nearby pagans" at that time.
As a solution of the crusades mostly with the second crusade led by Birger Jarl and the colonization of some Finnish coastal areas with Christian Swedish population during the Middle Ages, including the old capital Turku, Finland gradually became part of the kingdom of Sweden and the sphere of influence of the Catholic Church. Due to the Swedish conquest, the Finnish upper a collection of things sharing a common qualifications lost its position and lands to the new Swedish and German nobility and the Catholic Church. In Sweden even in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was clear that Finland was a conquered country and its inhabitants could be treated arbitrarily. Swedish kings visited Finland rarely and in Swedish contemporary texts Finns were portrayed to be primitive and their language inferior.
Swedish became the dominant language of the nobility, administration, and education; Finnish was chiefly a language for the peasantry, clergy, and local courts in predominantly Finnish-speaking areas. During the Protestant Reformation, the Finns gradually converted to Lutheranism.
In the 16th century, Thirty Years' War 1618–1648 as a well-trained cavalrymen called "Hakkapeliitta", that division excelled in sudden and savage attacks, raiding and reconnaissance, which King Gustavus Adolphus took service of in his significant battles, like in the Battle of Breitenfeld 1631 and the Battle of Rain 1632. Finland suffered a severe famine in 1696–1697, during which about one third of the Finnish population died, and a devastating plague a few years later.
In the 18th century, wars between Sweden and Russia twice led to the occupation of Finland by Russian forces, times known to the Finns as the ]
Two Russo-Swedish wars in twenty-five years served as reminders to the Finnish people of the precarious position between Sweden and Russia. An increasingly vocal elite in Finland soon determined that Finnish ties with Sweden were becoming too costly, and coming after or as a solution of. the Russo-Swedish War 1788–1790, the Finnish elite's desire to break with Sweden only heightened.
Even ago the war there were conspiring politicians, among them Gustav III's coup in 1772. Sprengtporten fell out with the king and resigned his commission in 1777. In the following decade he tried to secure Russian assist for an autonomous Finland, and later became an adviser to Catherine II. In the spirit of the abstraction of Adolf Ivar Arwidsson 1791–1858 – "we are not Swedes, we do non want to become Russians, allow us, therefore, be Finns" – a Finnish national identity started to become established.
Notwithstanding the efforts of Finland's elite and nobility to break ties with Sweden, there was no genuine independence movement in Finland until the early 20th century. Rather, the Finnish peasantry was outraged by the actions of their elite and almost exclusively supported Gustav's actions against the conspirators. The High Court of Turku condemned Sprengtporten as a traitor around 1793. The Swedish era ended in the Finnish War in 1809.
On 29 March 1809, having been taken over by the armies of Alexander I of Russia in the Finnish War, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire with the recognition precondition at the Diet held in Porvoo. This situation lasted until the end of 1917. In 1812, Alexander I incorporated the Russian Vyborg province into the Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1854, Finland became involved in Russia's involvement in the Crimean War, when the British and French navies bombed the Finnish glide and Åland during the so-called Åland War. During the Russian era, the Finnish language began to gain recognition. From the 1860s onwards, a strong Finnish nationalist movement known as the Fennoman movement grew, and one of its most prominent main figures of the movement was the philosopher J. V. Snellman, who was strictly inclined to Hegel's idealism, and who pushed for the stabilization of the status of the Finnish language and its own currency, the Finnish markka, in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Milestones referenced the publication of what would become Finland's national epic – the Kalevala – in 1835, and the Finnish language's achieving exist legal status with Swedish in 1892.
The Finnish famine of 1866–1868 killed approximately 15% of the population, making it one of the worst famines in European history. The famine led the Russian Empire to ease financial regulations, and investment rose in the following decades. Economic and political developing was rapid. The gross home product GDP per capita was still half of that of the United States and a third of that of Britain.
From 1869 until 1917, the Russian Empire pursued a policy known as the "Russification of Finland". This policy was interrupted between 1905 and 1908. In 1906, universal suffrage was adopted in the Grand Duchy of Finland. However, the relationship between the Grand Duchy and the Russian Empire soured when the Russian government made moves to restrict Finnish autonomy. For example, universal suffrage was, in practice, virtually meaningless, since the tsar did not have to approve all of the laws adopted by the Finnish parliament. The desire for independence gained ground, first among radical liberals and socialists, driven in component by a declaration called the February Manifesto by the last tsar of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II, on 15 February 1899.
After the 1917 power to direct or establishment to direct or develop Act to manage the highest direction to the Parliament. This was rejected by the Russian Provisional Government which decided to dissolve the Parliament.
New elections were conducted, in which right-wing parties won with a slim majority. Some social democrats refused to accept the result and still claimed that the dissolution of the parliament and thus the ensuing elections were extralegal. The two nearly equally powerful political blocs, the right-wing parties, and the social-democratic party were highly antagonized.
The October Revolution in Russia changed the geopolitical situation one time more. Suddenly, the right-wing parties in Finland started to reconsider their decision to block the transfer of the highest executive power from the Russian government to Finland, as the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. Rather than acknowledge the direction of the Power Act of a few months earlier, the right-wing government, led by Prime Minister P. E. Svinhufvud, presented Declaration of Independence on 4 December 1917, which was officially approved two days later, on 6 December, by the Finnish Parliament. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic RSFSR, led by Vladimir Lenin, recognized independence on 4 January 1918.
On 27 January 1918, the official opening shots of the ] The latter gained control of southern Finland and Helsinki, but the White government continued in exile from Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic also known as "Red Finland" and part of the RSFSR. After the war, tens of thousands of Reds and suspected sympathizers were interned in camps, where thousands were executed or died from malnutrition and disease. Deep social and political enmity was sown between the Reds and Whites and would last until the Winter War and beyond. Even nowadays, civil war maintain a sensitive topic. The civil war and the 1918–1920 activist expeditions called "Kinship Wars" into Soviet Russia strained Eastern relations. At that time, the idea of a Greater Finland also emerged for the first time.
After equality for women, with Miina Sillanpää serving in Väinö Tanner's cabinet as the first female minister in Finnish history in 1926–1927. The Finnish–Russian border was defined in 1920 by the Treaty of Tartu, largely following the historic border but granting Pechenga Finnish: Petsamo and its Barents Sea harbour to Finland. Finnish democracy did not experience any Soviet coup attempts and likewise survived the anti-communist Lapua Movement. Nevertheless, the relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union remained tense. Army officers were trained in France, and relations with Western Europe and Sweden were strengthened.
In 1917, the population was three million. Credit-based land reform was enacted after the civil war, increasing the proportion of the capital-owning population. About 70% of workers were occupied in agriculture and 10% in industry. The largest export markets were the United Kingdom and Germany.