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The Northern Crusades or Baltic Crusades were crusades undertaken by the Christian kings of Denmark, Poland and Sweden, the German Livonian and Teutonic military orders, and their allies against the pagan peoples of Northern Europe around the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. Swedish and German Catholic campaigns against Russian Eastern Orthodox Christians are also sometimes considered part of the Northern Crusades.〔 Some of these wars were called crusades during the Middle Ages, but others, including most of the Swedish ones, were first dubbed crusades by 19th-century romantic nationalist historians. The east Baltic world was transformed by military conquest: first the Livs, Latgallians and Estonians, then the Semigallians, Curonians, Prussians and the Finns underwent defeat, baptism, military occupation and sometimes extermination by groups of Danes, Germans and Swedes. ==Background== The official starting point for the Northern Crusades was Pope Celestine III's call in 1193; but the Christian kingdoms of Scandinavia, Poland and the Holy Roman Empire had begun moving to subjugate their pagan neighbors even earlier. The non-Christian people who were objects of the campaigns at various dates included: * the Polabian Wends, Sorbs, and Obotrites between the Elbe and Oder rivers (by the Saxons, Danes, and Poles, beginning with the Wendish Crusade in 1147) * the peoples of (present-day) Finland in 1154 (Southwest Finland; disputed), 1249? (Tavastia) and 1293 (Karelia) (Swedish Crusades, although Christianization had started earlier), * Livonians, Latgallians, Selonians, and Estonians (by the Germans and Danes, 1193–1227), * Semigallians and Curonians (1219–1290), * Old Prussians, * Lithuanians and Samogitians (by the Germans, unsuccessfully, 1236–1316). Armed conflict between the Baltic Finns, Balts and Slavs who dwelt by the Baltic shores and their Saxon and Danish neighbors to the north and south had been common for several centuries before the crusade. The previous battles had largely been caused by attempts to destroy castles and sea trade routes and gain economic advantage in the region, and the crusade basically continued this pattern of conflict, albeit now inspired and prescribed by the Pope and undertaken by Papal knights and armed monks. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Northern Crusades」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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