| 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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Christianization of the Baltic Lands
From the outset, operations to Christianize and colonize the northern Baltic lands were predominantly military and exploitative in nature and thus for the most part borne out by German religious military orders.51 However, Herder’s negative assessment of the German crusades and Christianization of the Baltic peoples marked a significant shift in the critical assessment of the published literary assessment of the historical record in Livonia and Prussia in the late eighteenth century. This theme was continued and expanded in the works of Jannau, Friebe, Snell, and Merkel in the 1780s and 1790s whereby the Christianization and crusades in the Baltics were portrayed as extremely negative and exploitative.
The enduring military nature of colonization in Livonia would be instrumental in shaping the agrarian constitution there. To paraphrase Christoph Schmidt, the colonization of Livonia remained on a military footing for a long time, which subsequently left an indelible mark on the legal history of the land.52 In the case of Livonia, colonization could also be equated with the spread of the German interpretation and adaptation of Latin civilization associated with the Roman Catholic faith. This process had a long-lasting influence on the cultural orientation of the Baltic region to the traditions of western European—and, in particular, German cultural and social values. Eric Christiansen identifies these points and emphasizes the attempts of the German crusaders to reproduce “utterly German” cultural innovations based on western European models in Livonia and Prussia. The nature of the German military crusading orders, merchants, and colonists had an enduring impact on the way they interacted with indigenous populations in Livonia and Prussia as well as with neighboring Poles and Russians from the twelfth century onwards. In Livonia and Estonia, the Germans set themselves aside from the indigenous Latvian and Estonian populations. This aloofness and exclusivity was indicative of both social relations and the social hierarchy.