Dominions of Sweden German principalities, the Swedish kings in their roles as princes and dukes, or "Reichsfürsten", of the Holy Roman Empire took part in the German diets from 1648 until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Following the Thirty Years' War, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 assigned to Sweden the two bishoprics of Bremen-Verden, with the exclave of Wildeshausen. All of them were ceded to Hanover in the peace treaty of 1719. By the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 Sweden received Swedish Pomerania, situated along the German Baltic Sea coast. The whole Duchy of Pomerania was under Swedish
Piracy in the Caribbean problems at home to turn much attention to their New World colonies. The non-Spanish colonies were growing and expanding across the Caribbean, fueled by a great increase in immigration as people fled from the chaos and lack of economic opportunity in Europe. While most of these new immigrants settled into the West Indies' expanding plantation economy, others took to the life of the buccaneer. Meanwhile, the Dutch, at last independent of Spain when the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ended their own Eighty Years War (1568–1648) with the Habsburgs, made a fortune carrying the European trade goods needed by these new