Cossack Hetmanate

The Cossack Hetmanate (Ukrainian: Гетьма́нщина, romanized: Hetmanshchyna; see other names), officially the Zaporozhian Host (Ukrainian: Військо Запорозьке, romanized: Viisko Zaporozke; Latin: Exercitus Zaporoviensis), was a Ukrainian Cossack state. Its territory was located mostly in central Ukraine, as well as in parts of Belarus and southwestern Russia. It existed between 1649 and 1764, although its administrative-judicial system persisted until 1781.

The Hetmanate was founded 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 Khmelnytsky Uprising. Establishment of vassal relations with the Tsardom of Russia 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 institute of the 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.