Cossack Hetmanate

The Cossack Hetmanate (Ukrainian: Гетьма́нщина, romanized: Hetmanshchyna; see other names), officially the Zaporozhian Host (Ruthenian: Войско Zапорожскоε;; Ukrainian: Військо Запорозьке, romanized: Viisko Zaporozke; Latin: Exercitus Zaporoviensis), was a stratocraticstate established by Registered Cossacks in Dnieper Ukraine. Its territory was located mostly in the region of Central Ukraine, as well as in parts of Belarus and southwestern Russia, and at different points it also incorporated the territories of Zaporozhian Sich to the south. The Hetmanate existed between 1648 and 1764, although its administrative-judicial system persisted until 1781.

The Hetmanate was legally recognized in the eastern territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by the Treaty of Zboriv, signed on August 18, 1649 by Bohdan Khmelnytsky (Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host) and Adam Kysil (representing Crown Forces), as a result of the Khmelnytsky Uprising. Establishment of vassal relations with the Tsardom of Moscow in the Treaty of Pereiaslav of 1654 is considered a benchmark of the Cossack Hetmanate in Soviet, Ukrainian, and Russian historiography. The second Pereiaslav Council in 1659 restricted the independence of the Hetmanate, and from the Russian side there were attempts to declare agreements reached with Yurii Khmelnytsky in 1659 as nothing more than the "former Bohdan's agreements" of 1654. The 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo, conducted without any representation from the Cossack Hetmanate, established the borders between the Polish and Russian states, dividing the Hetmanate in half along the Dnieper and putting the Zaporozhian Sich under a formal joint Russian-Polish administration.

After a failed attempt to break the union with Russia by Ivan Mazepa in 1708, the whole area was included into the Kiev Governorate, and Cossack autonomy was severely restricted. Catherine II of Russia officially abolished the position of Hetman in 1764, and from 1764 to 1781, the Cossack Hetmanate was incorporated as the Little Russia Governorate headed by Pyotr Rumyantsev, with the last remnants of the Hetmanate's administrative system abolished in 1781. Despite the state's eventual disbandment, it produced a lasting historical legacy, with descendants of the Hetmanate's ruling class pioneering the Ukrainian national revival during the 19th century.