The first army officer school in Finland, then part of Sweden, was Haapaniemen sotakoulu [fi], which was founded by Georg Magnus Sprengtporten in 1780 in Kuopio and relocated to Rantasalmi in 1781. Initially, it was established to train officers for the Savo Brigade of the Swedish Army, but soon it began to recruit cadets from all of Finland. The school continued operation even after the Finnish War in 1809, where Finland was ceded to the Russian Empire. However, in 1818, a fire broke out in the building, and the school was moved to Hamina to become the Hamina Cadet School.
The Hamina Cadet School was trained officers for the Russian Empire. It was abolished on July 24, 1903[1] under the influence of various orders given during the first period of repression of Finland by the Russian Empire.
After independence, the Finnish officer training was always divided among three schools until 1992: initial education at the Kadettikoulu ("Cadet School", abbreviated KADK,[2] founded in 1919), General Staff Officer Training at the Sotakorkeakoulu ("War College", founded in 1924), as well as continuous training at the Taistelukoulu ("Battle School", founded in 1927). From the beginning of 1993, all of these schools were merged into the National Defence University, one of the largest colleges of higher education for officer education.
In 2001, the Maanpuolustusopisto (a military junior college) in Lappeenranta was decommissioned, but the school was immediately repurposed to provide freshman and army training for the National Defence University, as the Army Academy (Finnish: Maasotakoulu, "Land Warfare School").
