Founded in 1550 as a rival to the Hanseatic city of
Reval (today: Tallinn) by King Gustav I of Sweden, the
town of Helsinki struggled in its infancy. The fledgling
settlement was plagued by poverty, wars, and diseases.
For a long time it remained a small coastal town, overshadowed
by the more thriving trade centers in the Baltic region.
The construction of the Sveaborg (In Finnish Viapori,
today also Suomenlinna) naval fortress helped improve
its status, but it was not until Russia defeated Sweden
in the Finnish War and annexed Finland as the autonomous
Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 that Helsinki began to
develop into a major city.
In order to reduce Swedish influence in Finland, Czar
Alexander I of Russia moved the capital from Turku,
which had close ties to Sweden, to Helsinki. The Royal
Academy of Turku, back then the only university in the
country, was relocated to Helsinki in 1827 and eventually
became the modern University of Helsinki. The move consolidated
the city's new role, and the following decades saw unprecedented
growth and development for the city, creating the prerequisites
for the birth of the modern world class capital in the
20th century. This transformation is highly apparent
in the downtown core, which was rebuilt in neoclassical
style to resemble St. Petersburg. As elsewhere, technological
advancements such as railroads and industrialization
were a key factor behind the growth.
In the 1918 Finnish Civil War, Helsinki fell to the
Red Guard on January 28th, the first day of the war.
The Red side gained contol of the whole of southern
Finland after minor hostilities. The Senate was relocated
to Vaasa, although some senators and officials remained
in hiding in the capital. After the tide of war turned
against the Red forces, German troops fighting on the
side of the Finnish White Guard recaptured Helsinki
in April 1918. Unlike Tampere, Helsinki suffered relatively
little damage in the war. After the White victory many
former Red soldiers and collaborators were confined
in prison camps across the country. The largest camp,
having approximately 13,300 prisoners, was located on
the former naval fortress island of Suomenlinna in Helsinki.
Although the civil war left a considerable scar on the
society, the standard of living in the country and the
city began to improve in the following decade. Renowned
architects such as Eliel Saarinen created utopistic
plans for Helsinki, but they were never realized to
full extent.
In the aerial bombings of the Winter War (1939-40)
and the Continuation War (1941-44) Helsinki was attacked
by Soviet bombers. The most intense air raids took place
in the spring of 1944, when over two thousand Soviet
planes dropped some 16,000 bombs in and around the city.
However, due to successful air defense the city was
spared from the large-scale destruction that many other
cities in Europe under bombings of similar scale suffered.
Only a small number of bombs hit populated areas.
Despite the tumultous first half of the 20th century,
Helsinki continued to develop steadily. The rapid urbanization
of the 1970s, which occurred relatively late in the
European context, tripled the population in the metropolitan
area, making the Helsinki metropolitan area one of the
fastest growing urban centers in the European Union
in the 1990s. The relatively sparse population density
of Helsinki and its peculiar structure have often been
attributed to the lateness of the urbanisation.
