| Chapter 1: | A Brief Account of Formative Historical Events That Shaped Social and Agrarian Relations Until the Mid-Eighteenth Century in Livonia |
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As mentioned previously, one of the decisive factors that would have long-enduring consequences for this region was the establishment of a permanent cultural, social, and political gulf between the dominant German-speaking, ruling-class elite and the subjugated and disenfranchised indigenous populations made up of loosely defined tribal confederations in the thirteenth century. At no time did the “Germanization” of the indigenous Latvian, Estonian, and Liv populations seem a realistic, feasible, or achievable outcome. This is a point that the advocates of agrarian and social reform in Livonia in the eighteenth century had recognized and utilized to full polemical effect in their analysis of indigenous and German relations as well as in their arguments for agrarian and social reform. As we shall see in chapter 3, the more radical reform proponents—such as Jannau, Snell, and Merkel—portrayed the German Baltic crusades as a murderous and greed-motivated land grab. The interest in agrarian and social reform also resulted in a reevaluation of Livonian history, especially the investigation of the agrarian outcome and constitution that emerged after the German conquest in the thirteenth century.
The Rise and Demise of the Livonian Crusader State and the Agrarian Outcome
The Livonian agrarian and social constitution was a product of the Baltic crusade in Livonia. Comparisons with the German crusades against the Prussians or Prussi reveal that one of the most significant differences between the crusades in Prussia and those in Livonia was the direct access to Prussia by German crusaders and colonists over land.60 (The Prussi were an ancient Baltic-speaking people, linguistically and culturally related to the Lithuanians and Latvians, who inhabited territory between the Wisla and lower Niemen Rivers.) In this sense, the Livonian crusade essentially remained an “incomplete” German colonization of the Baltic lands of Latvia and Estonia. Livonia could be accessed most safely and directly by sea. Over land, the hostile Lithuanian frontier was impassable for the German crusading orders. The inaccessibility of this land route necessitated an alternative access and entry point to Livonia and the inland river trading routes.