Page "History of Latvia" Paragraph 1

In the early medieval period, the region's peoples resisted Christianisation and became subject to attack in the Northern Crusades.

Today's capital, Riga, founded in 1201 by Teutonic colonists at the mouth of the Daugava, became a strategic base in a papally-sanctioned conquest of the area by the Livonian Brothers of the Sword.

It was to be the first major city of the southern Baltic and, after 1282, a principal trading centre in the Hanseatic League.

By the 16th century Germanic dominance in the region was increasingly challenged by other powers.