Hanover (historical region)

Hanover (historical region), (German, Hannover) historic region in north-west Germany, now part of Lower Saxony State. Hanover was originally a principality and an electorate—a territory whose prince was entitled to participate in the election of the emperor—of the Holy Roman Empire, before becoming a kingdom of Germany and later a province of Prussia. It extended from the Harz Mountains on the south to the North Sea, and from the Netherlands on the west to Prussian Saxony, Brandenburg, and Brunswick in the east. The city of Hanover was the capital.

Hanover was established as a kingdom in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna. It had been officially known prior to that time as the electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (formed 1692) but was popularly called by the name of its capital city. Ernest Augustus, the first elector of Hanover, married Sophia, granddaughter of King James I, of England. In 1714 their son, George Louis, elector of Hanover, became King George I of Great Britain. For nearly 125 years thereafter, both Hanover and Great Britain were ruled by the same sovereign. In 1803 the electorate was occupied by the French, and Napoleon incorporated part of it into the new kingdom of Westphalia in 1807. In 1810 the remainder was added, but later that year Napoleon withdrew a portion of the territory and united it with France. The electorate was restored to King George III of Great Britain in 1813 and was made a kingdom in 1815. After the Seven Weeks' War (1866), Hanover was made a province of the Prussian Kingdom (Germany from 1871). With the formal liquidation of the state of Prussia in 1946 it became part of the new state of Lower Saxony.