Previously, the Reval Governorate existed during Peter I's reign and was confirmed by the Treaty of Nystad, which ceded territory from Sweden to the newly established Russian Empire.

Until the late 19th century the governorate was administered independently by the local Baltic German nobility through a feudal Regional Council.

The Treaty of Plussa forced Russia to cede to Sweden possessions along the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, including northern Livonia and Ingria.

Seeking to regain lost territories, in 1701, Tsar Peter I and his allies invaded Sweden, beginning the Great Northern War.

During the reign of the Swedish kings, there was a tendency towards granting more autonomy to the peasantry, but under the Russian tsars, there was a shift towards tighter regulation.

[11] The prominent figure in the period was Carl Robert Jakobson from the neighbouring Governorate of Livonia; he opposed the Baltic German dominance and took an anti-clerical position on the Lutheran Church.

[14] Also in this era, poet Lydia Koidula had been a prominent figure in the advocation of Estonian literature; she wrote her most important work, Emajõe ööbik [et] (The Nightingale of Emajõgi), which was published in 1867.

[16] According to the 1897 census, 96.9 per cent of Estonians, 10 years and older, could read and write, making the northern Baltic area the most literate region of the empire.

The new law enfranchised men 25 years of age and over, which was divided into three curiae according to the city taxes they paid, replacing the medieval estate-based system that had excluded Estonians from participation in the municipal government.

[26] The Russian Orthodoxy came unexpectedly into the Baltic area in the 1840s, causing the struggle between the Orthodox and the Lutheran churches, which had attended since the Northern Crusades, for the allegiance of Estonians.

In 1886, Shakhovskoy suggested to the procurator of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, that Orthodoxy was the quickest way to unite the Estonians into the "great Russian family".

[28][29] Furthermore, in 1885, Alexander III reinstated that children of mixed Lutheran-Orthodox marriages be only baptised as Orthodox, and the reconverts to Lutheranism were again considered members of the state church.

[31] With the rise of the liberation movement in Russia, all-Empire questions began to impinge on Estonian life, as well as a new generation emerged in Estonia.

The crucial point in social and political thought was the appearance of journalistic voices for the lower class, engaging in the fade of loyalty to the crown.

[33] Many intellectuals emerged in the post-Russification era; among them were Jaan Tõnisson, who represented a renewal of the moderate political orientation, and Konstantin Päts, the editor of Teataja in Reval.

[33] In 1905, the massacre on Bloody Sunday became the final straw that brought about the revolution, whose impulse had spread into the rural area of the Baltic region; the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party organised activity in Estonia, with its counterpart formed in August.

[41][42] Konstantin Päts and Jaan Teemant, the radical leader, fled to Finland and then to Western Europe; both had reasons to fear for their freedom.

About 100,000 men, nearly 10 percent of the Estonian population, were mobilised into the Russian Imperial Army; their extent of casualties is little known, and no reliable sources are available.

[46] By the time the Russian Empire was crumbling, the Estonian desire for unification of the Estonian-speaking area, especially the entire Estonia and northern Livonia, had come into focus.

Following the February Revolution in Russia, the Russian Provisional Government was proclaimed, and the clash on the Eastern Front was still ongoing.

Seeing this moment as an opportunity to fulfil what they had wanted, Jaan Tõnisson and his moderate politicians lobbied the provisional government for changes in the northern Baltic area.

Although permission of principle for the formation of national military units was granted in April, the Minister of War Alexander Kerensky restricted the establishment of a single regiment due to pressure from the Soviets.

[51] After the successful October Revolution in Petrograd, the Estonian Military Revolutionary Committee, led by Viktor Kingissepp, took power from the provisional government's commissar.

There are about 80 islands in the governorate, of which Dagö (known in modern times as Hiiumaa) was the largest, with an area of 989 square kilometres (382 sq mi).