Riga was the second largest city in the Swedish Empire at the time. Together with other Baltic Sea dominions, Livonia served to secure the Swedish dominium maris baltici. In contrast to Swedish Estonia, which had submitted to Swedish rule voluntarily in 1561 and where traditional local laws remained largely untouched, the uniformity policy was applied in Swedish Livonia under Karl XI of Sweden: serfdom was abolished, peasants were offered education as well as military, administrative or ecclesiastical careers, and nobles had to transfer domains to the king in the Great Reduction.
Gustav II Adolf the Great (Gustavs II Ādolfs Lielais) (1611 – 1632)
Christina (Kristīna) (1632 – 1654)
House of Palatinate-Zweibrücken
Charles X Gustav (Kārlis X Gustavs) (1654 –1660)
Charles XI (Kārlis XI) (1660 – 1697)Charles XII (Kārlis XII) (1697 – 1718)Ulrika Eleonora (Ulrika Elenora) (1719 – 1720)
House of Hesse
Frederick I (Frederiks I) (1720 – 1751)
Andrejs Plakans, A Concise History of the Baltic States, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 105ff
Further reading
Heikki Pihlajamäki. Conquest and the Law in Swedish Livonia, ca. 1630–1710: A Case of Legal Pluralism in Early Modern Europe. Northern World Series. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2017