The Nationalization of Latvians and the Issue of Serfdom: The Bal ...

Arthur Poelchau’s research on the publishing activities of the Hartknochs in the Baltic region outlines all the works published in Mitau and then in Riga from 1762 until 1804.¹³ From this research, it can be established that the unbroken publishing relationship between Johann Friedrich Hartknoch and Hupel commenced in 1771. Hupel’s importance as a driving force in the literary and publishing activities in the Baltic region—where he acted as coordinator, compiler, author, and editor continuously from the 1770s until the 1790s—cannot be overstated. The main primary sources examined, however, are the works by the aforementioned writers Jannau, Friebe, Snell, and Merkel.

Other little-known primary sources such as that of Andreas Meyer—whose work of 1777, Briefe eines jungen Reisenden durch Liefland, included accounts, observations, and impressions of the conditions of the Latvians in Livonia in the 1770s—are considered and examined as a counterbalance to the observations and claims made by advocates of the agrarian and social reform discourse in the 1780s and 1790s. Meyer’s accounts of the conditions of the Latvians resonate strongly and concur with the accounts rendered by the authors of the primary sources evaluated.

Jannau’s works—Geschichte der Sklaverey und Charakter der Bauern in Lief- und Ehstland: Ein Beytrag zur Verbesserung der Leibeigenschaft Genaueste Berechnung eines Haaken¹⁴ in 1786 and Geschichte von Lief- und Ehstland pragmatisch vorgetragen part one in 1793 and part two in 1796—form an important part of his literary contribution to the reform discourse in Livonia. Friebe’s works on the agrarian and social issues in Livonia were published in Hupel’s Nordische Miscellaneen. The works Etwas über Leibeigenschaft und Freiheit, sonderlich in Hinsicht auf Liefland of 1788 and Erster Anfang zur Kultur der liefländischen Bauern of 1789 are analyzed. His contribution, while important and pragmatic, was not as radical and vehement in his analysis and criticism of the nature of agrarian and social relations in Livonia. Snell’s analysis of the Livonian agrarian constitution and the conditions of the Latvian and Estonian serfs forms a part of a broader work titled Beschreibung der russischen Provinzen an der Ostsee, of Jena, 1794.