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Article: Bavaria
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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BAVARIA
BAVARIA.
The duchy of Bavaria, which became a prince-electorate in 1623, was one of the larger and more important territories of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1801 it covered about 590 square miles and had about 880,000 inhabitants. Unlike other territories, Bavaria was a nation rather than merely a random territorial unit. The Bavarian people had emerged in a process of ethnogenesis during the reign of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great (c. 453
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526; ruled 474/493
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526) in the former Roman province of Noricum. From 1180 until it became a republic in 1918, it was ruled by the local Wittelsbach dynasty. After a period of dynastic divisions and succession wars ...