| 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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This is important for an understanding of the factors shaping the strategies of argumentation in the agrarian and social reform discourse presented by the authors Jannau, Friebe, Snell, and Merkel in chapter 3—factors that contributed to the “nationalization” of the Latvians at the end of the eighteenth century. The following investigation demonstrates the complexity of the historical, political, legal, cultural, linguistic, and social factors and issues that shaped the social and political relations and the agrarian constitution of this region. This analysis is necessary in order to contextualize the development of the practical and theoretical applications of philosophical ideas that, in the spirit of Aufklärung, sought to improve the cultural and social conditions and rights and status of the Latvian peasantry. Eighteenth-century ideas with an anthropological and historical focus found particularly fertile ground in Livonia and were instructive in the formation of ideas that “nationalized” social identity and political and economic issues through careful—and, at times, polemical—consideration of cultural, linguistic, and historical factors, as evidenced in the works of the 1780s and 1790s.
Livonia and the Latvians
The island-protected Gulf of Riga dominates the coastal landscape along the Baltic Sea and is the repository of numerous river outflows in present-day Latvia. The most important river is, however, the Daugava—Düna in German—for strategic and trade reasons. Much of Latvia’s coastline has retained its pristine natural condition, remaining for long stretches of time undeveloped and protected. The Daugava River was the preferred trading route of the first German trade ships and traders who sought to access and open up the trading opportunities of the interior and the East. In the twelfth century, Riga was a small Liv fishing village, situated close to the mouth of the Daugava River. The mouth of this river was strategically significant for both military and trading purposes. In the early thirteenth century, it played an important role in the Baltic crusades—initially as a hub for military operations against the northern Baltic heathens, and later as an administrative and missionary center and the launching point in the partial German colonization of the Baltic region comprising modern-day Latvia and, eventually, Estonia.