ABSTRACT
The lands that surrounded the Baltic Sea brought together some of the most thickly tangled threads of seventeenth-century history. It was through the Baltic that eastern Europe had its main economic links with the west. The exchange of surplus grain from the great estates of Poland for southern manufactures and produce had made Baltic ports the most desirable of territorial prizes and gave to the Dutch and the English a special interest in Baltic politics. As forest products began to rise in importance at the expense of grain, and Russian markets became more accessible, the tsars were increasingly concerned too. The Empire had nearly four hundred miles of Baltic shore; and the Habsburgs soon found to their cost that Scandinavian politics were anything but remote from theirs. Poland as a Catholic power brought the religious alignment into Baltic affairs, and even linked them with the Danube and the ebb and flow of Turkish pressure.
