| 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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The forced conversions and hostile, violent relations implied that the systemic integration and assimilation of the indigenous populations was unlikely to occur, especially when considered in conjunction with the “celibate or endogamous nature” of the Germans in Livonia and Estonia.53
Historical aspects of the colonization of Livonia and the legal implications and consequences this process entailed for the development of agrarian relations and the agrarian constitution require further analysis for an understanding of agrarian and social relations and the Livonian agrarian and reform discourse of the second half of the eighteenth century. This is a necessary step to contextualize the importance of agrarian and social relations—and of a revisionist strain in the historical writing of this time—as issues central to the Aufklärung in Livonia. The nature of colonization in Livonia was characterized by complex ethnic and political circumstances. It was, at best, an uneasy symbiotic relationship that developed—and was characterized by—at times precarious, yet always forceful, German control over the subjugated native populations. Initially, a major objective of the Baltic crusade was to convert the tribes of Baltic heathens to Christianity. Jannau, in his work Geschichte der Sklaverey und Charakter der Bauern in Lief- und Ehstland of 1786, describes the German perception of the heathen Latvians in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries revealed through his research of chronicles:
The chronicles did not, however, register the contradictory and violent nature of a predominantly German invasionary crusading force that introduced militarized Christianity to the Baltic region. Thus the secondary objective of colonization quickly developed in tandem with the Christianizing mission. Bishop Albert55 played a pivotal role in mobilizing crusaders to this cause in Germany, preaching crusade to convert the northern Baltic heathens.