Riga History of Riga Museum
A guide to the History of Riga! Visit Get-Packing.com for Riga History and read up-to-date information, reviews and articles on Riga art and museums...
The knights of Livonia - a German military religious order in the early thirteenth century, first established Riga as a trading post. It became an important handicraft centre, and its location made it an intermediary in trade between Russia and Europe.
After the reformation in 1522, the power of the church was gone, and the area known as Livonia was swallowed up first by Poland (in 1581) and then by Sweden 40 years later, and Riga was given a status of self government which was to last less than 90 years.
Russian Tsar Peter 1st captured Riga in 1710 and as part of the Russian Empire, the importance of Riga as a port grew and grew throughout the 18th and 19th century .
The economy of the city developed as industry grew, and as the third largest city in Russia was a strong hold of the Social Democratic party that organised the 1905 revolution.
In 1918, Latvia declared independence from Russia, and the new country's capital was Riga, although this status lasted only until 1940, when Russian troops pushing toward Germany incorporated the country into the USSR.
In the early 1990s, a gentle revolution of public opinion against government from Moscow in the Baltics saw the three states, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia break away, and declare independence. Despite fears of reprisals from the crumbling Soviet Union, the breakaways were peaceful, and the three countries modernised, and Latvia became a full member of the European Union in May 2004.
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