In my dotage I've yet to figure out how to scan a map into my computer and attach it to a post on the Forum, but I'll try to post the Cambridge Atlas maps here if I can solve the puzzle. They are larger and have more area names than those posted by Molobo, and clearly show Pomerania as a part of Prussia prior to the 1772 partition.The Peace of Westphalia brought large additions to Brandenburg.
Pomerania, according to an agreement between Brandenburg and the Dukes of Pomerania, should have come in to Brandenburg in 1637. But Sweden was in occupation, and in 1648 Brandenburg could get only East Pomerania--and this without Stettin and a two-mile strip on the east of the Oder, which she ceded to Sweden in 1653. Ample compensation however was given her in the bishoprics of Cammin, Halberstadt, and Minden, the archbishopric of Magdeburg which she was to recieve on the death of the existing Administrator, and various other places of less importance. Later acquisitions were Lauenburg and Bütow in Pomerania, 1657, and, by the Peace of St Germain, 1679, the rip along the Oder, sundered to Sweden in 1653, except Damm and Gollnow. In 1679 Schwiebus was taken in satisfaction of the Silesian claims, but was restored in 16 and the claims were reasserted. The archbishopric of Magdeburg was acquired in 1680, and Burg in 1687.
In the great wars at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Kings of Prussia, for such the Electors of Brandenburg became in 1701, fought to secure their possessions on the Rhine and to extend their dominions on the Baltic. At Utrecht Prussia received Upper Gelders,whence she could watch Austria in the Netherlands. This, with Mörs and Lingen obtained in 1702 on the extinction of the Nassau-Dillenburg family, and Tecklenburg, obtained in 1707, went to increase her Rhineland territories. Neufchâtel also was obtained in 1707, and Prussia's possession of it was recognised at Utrecht and was maintained till 1857; but it was a distant, detached possession, and never became a centre of expansion. The Peace of Stockholm in 1720 gave Prussia a part of Swedish Pomerania, including Stettin and district, the islands of Usedom and Wollin, and Datum and Gollnow. This territory, lying between the Oder and the Peene, secured to her control of one of the
great commercial highways of northern Germany.
The various acquisitions which the Hohenzollerns had made, while they brought extensive territories under their rule, were so scattered that they needed to be linked up and consolidated, if Prussia was ever to form a strong State. To Frederick the Great the configuration of his kingdom was intolerable. He desired Saxony, West Prussia, and Swedish Pomerania. He gamed Silesia, which he seized in 1740, and which Austria finally yielded at the Peace of Hubertusburg in 1763, together
with Schwiebus and Glatz, though not Jägerndorf in the form in which Prussia had claimed it; East Friesland, in 1744, which brought Prussia to the North Sea; a part of Poland--West Prussia, Ermeland, Kolmerand and the Netze district, but not Danzig and Thorn--in 1772; and the county of Mansfeld in 1780. The Franconian possessions, Ansbach and Baireuth, came to Prussia in 1791; and in 1793 she acquired South Prusia together with Danzig--long the object of desire--and Thorn; in 1795 New East Prussia, and New Silesia with Serry. These extensive acquisitions from Poland linked up the Prussian
territories and rounded them off, and, while they diminished the length of her frontiers added to their strength. West Prussia united East Prussia and Brandenburg; South Prussia, Silesia and Prussia; while New East Prussia improved the eastern frontier. The last addition brought Prussia to her extreme eastern limits, and coincided with losses on the
Rhine at the Peace of Basel, of which we shall speak later.
Thus was built up, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the strangely shaped kingdom of Prussia, which stretched its great length across northern Germany from the Rhine to the Memel, with outposts in the Netherlands, Franconia, and on the Swiss frontier.
Regards, Kaschner
