Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Jüri Kivimäe
University of Toronto
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● What kind of practical use might be made of the concept of colonialism in the discourse
of Livonian history?
● Would this idea require the reevaluation of existing historiography and/or new research
on Livonian history altogether?
● Would the rethinking and rewriting of Livonian history result in a new, scholarly valid
explanation in terms of modern strategies of history-writing, or are we ‘re-inventing the
wheel’, while the seemingly new ideas quite often belie forgotten old ones?
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membership of the Hanseatic League, and there was actually constant communication
between Livonia and the Mutterland/Vaterland or Germany.
The first generation of Baltic professional historians of the 1920s and 1930s, whether
Estonians or Latvians, preferred to treat the phenomenon of colonization in the context of
crusades, conquest and violent Christianization. They criticized the German migratory
expansion eastwards, the so-called Drang nach Osten (Ostsiedlung) and Kulturträgertum as well as
the ‘German yoke.’ Furthermore, during the interwar period the powerful historical cliché of
the ‘700 years of slavery’ was firmly anchored in collective memory and remained a
component of anti-German sentiments of radical national groupings. Professor Hans
Kruus, the founder of the Estonian school of national history, tended to use the concept of
‘colonialism’ in his works in the 1930s (e.g. L’Esprit du Moyen Âge estonien, 1938); however, he
made no concessions to Baltic German ideology. Thus the general concept of national
history in confrontation with the old Baltic German historiography is deeply, even
genetically rooted in national resistance to the Germans throughout the centuries of
Estonian and Latvian history.
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quest for cultural compromise or exchange seems to encompass the whole range of daily
communication between the colonized and the colonizers i.e. the Germans. Thus—or all
the more so—the conceptual framework of colonialism should be tested and verified in case
studies.
Medieval colonialism has striking analogies with nineteenth-century European
colonialism. But even some evident similarities between medieval and nineteenth-century or
twentieth-century colonialism should not be interpreted as the continuation of an old and
traditional Eurocentric ideology of expansion. It seems to me that we should understand
and deconstruct medieval colonialism as Ding an sich (thing-in-itself), find out its leading ideas
and principles and avoid transplanting explanatory models taken from modern history into
the ‘silent past’—the Middle Ages.
One also has to emphasize another increasingly popular but contested concept—
Europeanization,—which is sometimes used with the same connotations as colonization.
Surprisingly this term has no single precise or stable meaning (Olsen 2002). The most
general definition suggests European integration in all possible aspects—political, legal,
economic, cultural, and confessional. In his exemplary book The Making of Europe Roger
Bartlett writes of ‘the Europeanization of Europe’ (Bartlett 1993). Furthermore, a group of
scholars from Nordic countries worked for years on an international research project with
the acronym CCC—‘Culture Clash or Compromise? The Importance of Regional Strategies
in the Europeanization of the Baltic Rim Region 1100–1400 AD’. As the research group
leader Nils Blomkvist, asserted, this project investigated the great changes taking place on
the Baltic Rim from 1100 to 1400 which transformed the people living there into Europeans.
In the context of this project some leading Estonian archeologists such as Evald Tõnisson
formulated survey articles entitled “Estland und die Europäisierung: 11.-12. Jahrhundert”
etc. Both Blomkvist and Tõnisson argued that the beginning of Europeanization can be
traced back prior to the German-Danish conquest of the Baltic territories in the early
thirteenth century. These points both to a possible conclusion and a question: could
medieval colonization be conceived as a component of a general process of
Europeanization?
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CONFERENCE “LANDSCAPES AND SOCIETIES
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‘Colonists’ and the native peoples of Livonia
At this juncture it is indispensable to present some demographic evidence and
estimates for the region called Livonia. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, i.e. on the
eve of conquest the total number of native Latvians, Livs or the Livic/Livish people, and
Estonians had attained c. 265,000-308,000 people; the total population of Livonia by the
mid-sixteenth century was approximately 650,000–675,000, incl. the German ruling class as
minority, comprising c. 5–7% of total population. However, this knowledge is based on
estimations and interpolations only, because little exact data are available from medieval
sources. Thus the general multiethnic composition of the Livonian population included the
Letts or Latvians, Estonians, Livs, Germans, Finns, Swedes, Votes, Russians etc. The basic
divide was created by social order and not by the principle of ethnicity. Middle Low
German usus called all Latvians, Estonians, and Livs the ‘non-Germans’ (vndudesche,
Undeutsche), because the indigenous population belonged almost entirely to the peasantry,
which made up the lowest estate of the feudal hierarchy. The most specific demographic
feature, as well as the most important circumstance of Livonian history is that these
territories were never settled by German peasants, because the eastbound migratory
movement of German peasants was blocked in the thirteenth century by the Lithuanian
frontier (the few attempts at late immigration of German peasants failed). Rather, the
immigration of Germans to Livonia was enabled primarily through the maritime connection.
Under these circumstances the German immigrants to Livonia found themselves in a
precarious situation: in the thirteenth century the new colony in Riga and Reval brought
together the visitors (frequentantes) and the settlers (manentes) from Germany. The fluctuation
of the German population continued throughout the Middle Ages and beyond (Heinz von
zur Mühlen, 1985). Balthasar Russow’s ironic comment in his Chronicle of Livonia (1578)
perhaps reflects the real situation; he wrote that Livonia was such a land that all those who
came there from Germany and other countries, and who came to know the region and the
good life in it, were moved to say: “Livland-Blivland, Livonia, a place to stay.” These above-
named specific features require further investigation, but they had a clear impact on the
distinctive colonial character of Medieval Livonia.
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CONFERENCE “LANDSCAPES AND SOCIETIES
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Colonizing the landscape
Apart from the social and political history of Livonia, one has to pay serious
attention to the less investigated aspect of colonization—the ‘new landscape’ (Bartlett 1993).
The obvious growth of population during the Middle Ages clearly indicates ongoing internal
colonization in terms of the founding of new settlements (villages), occupying formerly
unsettled, less settled, or even deserted regions like coastal areas etc. This process can be
viewed in the aftermath of the Ostsiedlung as analyzed by Roger Bartlett, Charles Higounet, or
Jan M. Piskorski. The interpretation in these works may vary but their approach is still
inclined to the traditional field of Siedlungsgeschichte. During the thirteenth century the
migratory process and colonizing procedures of Livonia were quite obviously different. Paul
Johansen, a prolific Danish-Baltic medievalist, introduced the methodology of Rudolf
Kötzschke’s school of Siedlungsgeschichte (and Landesgeschichtsforschung) into rural history of
Estonia and Latvia. His seminal work Siedlung und Agrarwesen der Esten im Mittelalter (1925)
later led him to the conclusion that the structure and typology of the Estonian and Latvian
rural landscape (particularly the villages) remained basically stable for centuries. One must
also not forget the exception—the Swedish migration to the Western coast of Estonia in the
fourteenth century, which also used locatores, the so-called pathfinders, middlemen or
entrepreneurs as known from the works of Higounet and Bartlett.
The socio-economic interpretation of landscape as delineated by the discipline of
Siedlungsgeschichte tends to investigate only the cultural (or cultivated, civilized) landscape
(Kulturlandschaft). The dichotomy of medieval landscape also includes the marshes, enormous
forested areas, or—to use the medieval term—the wilderness. The frontier between the
cultural landscape and the wilderness (the world of wild animals, monsters etc.) was
ambiguous. Epidemic diseases like the Black Death, famine and climatic change (the impact
of the Little Ice Age) left behind deserted villages and areas (Wüstungen), thus increasing the
power of wilderness. The long lasting struggles to recapture the cultivated lands from the
wilderness offer an interesting observation—the single-peasant farms located outside of
villages and often in the forest, at the frontier to the wilderness were initially called mois/mõis
in Estonian and muiža in Latvian. In modern Estonian and Latvian usage these words
designate the manor, or manorial estate (Gutshof).
Livonian medieval texts do not explicitly identify the forest (Latin silva) with the
wilderness. The forest had great significance in old Estonian, Livish and Latvian folk
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religion—forests and groves were home of various forest or tutelary spirits and demons.
Henry’s Chronicle of Livonia narrates a unique story of how the Catholic priests baptized
(1220) three villages within Vironia (North-East Estonia), where there was a mountain
(obviously Ebavere) and a most lovely forest, in which, the natives say, the great god of the
Oeselians, called Tharapita, was born and from which he flew to Oesel (Saaremaa). The
chronicler went on to write that “The other priest went and cut down the images and
likenesses which had been made there of their gods, and the natives wondered greatly that
blood did not flow …” There is more evidence on sacred forests, groves, trees, stones etc.
in medieval sources. As Philippe Buc puts it, the conversion of objects may clearly be seen
in Henry’s chronicle and in some other primary sources, but we may also interpret these
procedures—the destruction of the sacred places of the natives – as a kind of colonizing the
landscape.
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CONFERENCE “LANDSCAPES AND SOCIETIES
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towns on the village landscape of Livonia signalled something new—a new socioeconomic
and visual quality. Roger Bartlett has examined the nature and typology of the colonial town.
The fact that the three oldest Livonian towns—Riga, Tallinn and Tartu, bridgeheads of
colonial settlement, were manifestations of the needs of an eastward-expanding German
long-distance trade can be clearly be seen in their planning. These future Hanseatic towns
were designed in terms of a complex of marketplace, city community/parish, and church (or
churches). Either do we need to emphasize unduly that the construction techniques of the
developing colonial society preferred granite, limestone, or brick, and bound stone
constructions together with lime mortar. When considering the urbanization of medieval
Livonia in general, it is striking that the establishment of urban centres and places furnished
with German town charters fits largely in the period 1200–1350. The next round of
documents of urbanization falls into the second half of the sixteenth century. Even though
it is impossible to trace all the intermediate stages of town-building in this period of a
century and a half, the pace of urbanization is extremely swift, requiring extraordinarily large
material resources as well as an incredible amount of human labour power. However, at
least by the middle of the fourteenth century, it is possible to attest to the accomplishment in
Livonia of Vito Fumagalli’s vision: the sharp contrast between a stone city, with its multiple-
storied skyscrapers, and the background of a low-lying, village landscape.
The completing of the building of fortified locations or, conversely, the
abandonment of old fortified locations are in turn closely bound with processes of
urbanization. Archeologists have shown that many pre-conquest or conquest era forts (e.g.
Varbola, in Harjumaa, Estonia) remained in use as temporary settlements throughout the
thirteenth century, perhaps for even longer. However, only the (perhaps strategically) most
important fort hills, such as Rakvere, Viljandi, and Turaida—were elaborated in the
subsequent period into full stone fortifications.
The establishment of a network of Christian parish churches in Livonia was no less
significant. Dating the building of medieval churches is extremely complicated: the vision of
stone churches with tall steeples actually seems somewhat premature, as many churches were
first built as wooden chapels, and elaborating them into stone buildings could take centuries.
Nevertheless, architectural historians date the building of many churches in the thirteenth
century, and this can only further justify our amazement at the speed with which the new
colony was being covered by buildings. As we view this new religious landscape, let us not
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forget the establishment of monasteries outside city walls in the thirteenth century, such as
Cistercian monasteries in Dünamünde (later Padise), and Kärkna (Valkena/Falkenau).
With the addition of manor buildings to this general picture, we could regard the
medieval civilizing of the landscape as complete. Unfortunately the process of enfiefment is
not in exact chronological correspondence with the establishment of permanent manor
buildings. The foundation and permanent settlement of many manorial centres was a long
process fraught with shifts and changes along the way. It has been suggested that vassals
first founded small stone forts for themselves in the vicinity of a hostile landscape of
villages. The construction of massive stone manor buildings is the achievement of later
centuries. Despite the uncertainty of dating, it is still possible to conclude that the significant
civilizing of the landscape of Livonia had its beginnings in the thirteenth century, and
actually continued until the end of the Middle Ages.
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CONFERENCE “LANDSCAPES AND SOCIETIES
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we are indeed grateful to Henry for passing on to us the legacy of a thirteenth century
onomastic database.
In 1929 Paul Johansen devoted a special study to German toponyms in Estonia, and
continued working on this subject in a 1951 study of folk etymology and toponymics. What
emerges from these studies is that intentional Germanization of toponyms by means of
translation is rare in Livonia. For example, the Latvian Gulbana, today Gulbene, was
translated and became Schwaneburg. As another example, Henry translated the Estonian
Otepää into Latin as Caput ursi, but what remained in use was the German-language
adaptation, Odenpäh.
However, during subsequent centuries, many place names were partially transformed
into German. Those German toponyms in Livonia with the endings -beck, -wolde, -holt, and -
husen are good illustrative examples. Of course, Germans who migrated in from northern
Germany, or particularly from Westphalia, brought along their own toponymic traditions,
which they also partially implemented as they familiarized themselves with their new
landscape. But change also took place in the opposite direction. Estonian and Livonian
place names ending with -kulle (village) or -vere, remained in continuous usage, though they
lost their last letter, resulting in Koskull, Patkull, Lemskull, or Kostiffer, Ebbafer, Pantifer, etc.
The result of language-mixing for place names is clearly apparent, but when looking
at the medieval colonial landscape one must also take into account the simultaneous
application of different systems of toponyms in what, after all, was a multilingual society.
Since written texts in Latvian and Estonian do not make their appearance until the end of
the medieval period, we mostly know place names as they were written down in German,
and this likewise reflecting the changes that took place in the course of colonizing the
landscape.
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This long-lasting project first necessitates the principle of ad fontes: one has to reread the
essential primary sources and to learn to listen to texts along with their silences. Hopefully,
combining the concept of colonization within the new research agenda of Europeanization
in the case of Medieval Livonia is an exciting idea that will stimulate both practical and
theoretical (comparative) research.
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