Ingermanland

Russia’s acquisition of Ingria and Livonia (and later of Kurland) brought into the empire a new national and political minority: the German elites—urban bourgeoisie and landowning nobility—with their corporate privileges, harsh exploitation of native (Estonian and Latvian) servile peasantry, and Western culture and administrative practices. Eventually these elites…

…Zemlya or, more commonly, as Ingermanland or Ingria, the region came under the control of Novgorod, but it long remained thinly populated. In the 15th century the area passed with Novgorod into the possession of the grand princes of Moscow. Sweden annexed Ingria in 1617 and established fortresses along the…