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German traders and missionaries began settling on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea during the thirteenth century and eventually became the exclusive nobility in the region. The Germans ruled over the native Estonian and Latvian peasants and converted them first to Catholicism and then, after the Protestant Reformation, to Lutheranism. They were responsible for establishing merchant and artisan guilds in urban areas and feudal manors in rural areas. The Baltic Germans retained their privileged status even after Sweden decisively conquered the region during the 1620s....
