Conquest and the Law in Swedish Livonia (ca. 1630-1710): A Case of Legal Pluralism in Early Modern Europe

Now available in Open Access thanks to the support of the University of Helsinki. In Conquest and the Law in Swedish Livonia (ca. 1630-1710), Heikki Pihlajamäki offers an exciting account of the law and judiciary in seventeenth-century Livonia. Immediately after Sweden conquered the province in the 1620s, a reorganization of the Livonian judiciary began. Its legal order became largely modelled after Swedish law, which differed in important ways from its Livonian counterpart. While Livonian legal tradition was firmly anchored in the European ius commune, the conquerors' law was, by nature, not founded in legal learning. The volume convincingly demonstrates how the differences in legal cultures decisively affected the way Livonian judicial and procedural systems were shaped. Based on archival sources, the study presents an important contribution to the comparative legal history of the early modern period.