Geography
From the 14th century, in old texts (until the 16th/17th c.) and in Latin, the terms Prut(h)enia and Prut(h)enic refer not only to the original settlement area of the extinct Old Prussians (Prusowie, see: Prussia) along the Baltic Coast east of the Vistula River, but also to the adjacent lands of the former Samboride dukes of Pomerelia, which the Teutonic Knights had acquired from Poland in the 1343 Treaty of Kalisz and added to their Order's State.
Polish Prussia established in 1466 included these western parts of Teutonic Prussia, i.e. the Pomerelian lands with the port of Gdańsk (Gdańsk Pomerania), as well as Chełmno Land (Kulmerland) with Michałowo Land and Toruń in the south, but also the area around Malbork and Elbląg and the epicopal lands of Warmia. The former Pomerelian Lauenburg and Bütow Land in the far west was held by the Pomeranian dukes as a Polish fief.
Royal Prussia is distinguished from later Ducal Prussia, the remaining parts of Prussia around Königsberg (Królewiec), which was a fiefdom under Polish suzerainty, first held by the Teutonic Knights, from 1525 by secular dukes of the Hohenzollern dynasty. From 1618 this "East Prussian" part was held in personal union by the Electors of Brandenburg (Brandenburg-Prussia) and in 1657 reached full sovereignty from the Polish Crown according to the Treaty of Wehlau.
Read more about this topic: Royal Prussia
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)