Kasekamp - A History of the Baltic States

A History of the Baltic States

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This series of compact, readable and informative national histories is designed to appeal to anyone wishing to gain a broad understanding of a countrys history.

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A History of the Low CountriesPaul Arblaster

A History of ItalyClaudia Baldoli

A History of RussiaRoger Bartlett

A History of Spain (2nd edn)Simon Barton

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A History of IsraelAhron Bregman

A History of IrelandMike Cronin

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A History of the Pacific IslandsSteven Roger Fischer

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Andres Kasekamp

Andres Kasekamp 2010

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First published 2010 by
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ISBN-13: 9780230019409 hardback
ISBN-13: 9780230019416 paperback

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This book provides a concise survey of developments on the territory comprising the present-day countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from the end of the last ice age to the present; it is not just the histories of the three independent republics in the narrow sense (191840; 1991) as might be inferred from the title, nor is it only that of the ethnic Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians. As will become apparent, it was not preordained that these three countries together would today be commonly known as the Baltic states. They are not the Baltic States with a capital S, as in the United States, nor the lazy shorthand Baltics, patterned after the Balkans.

Although often referred to as tiny, the territory of the smallest Baltic state, Estonia, is 45,227 sq. km., slightly larger than many of the old European states such as Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Compared to these countries, however, the Baltic states are sparsely populated. Estonia is the smallest continental European country to maintain a national system of higher education and state administration in its own indigenous language.

Baltic is not a term originally used by the peoples living along the coast of what is now known as the Baltic Sea, even though an etymological connection is often claimed with the Latvian and Lithuanian stem balt, denoting white or swamp.

The Baltic languages, like the Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages, are a branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Latvians and Lithuanians speak related Baltic languages, whereas Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language which is most closely related to Finnish. Linguistically, therefore, Latvian and Lithuanian are closer to most European languages (such as English or French) than they are to neighbouring Estonian. However, when cultural patterns are examined, a different picture emerges: as a result of long centuries of common institutions under the German ruling elite, the Latvians and the Estonians are the most similar. Prior to the twentieth century, the Lithuanians had more in common with the Poles than with the Latvians.

The meaning of the term Baltic has transformed over time. In the early twentieth century, a Balt did not refer to an ethnic Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian. The name was consciously brought into use in the mid-nineteenth century as a term of self-identification by the German ruling elite of the three Russian provinces of Estland, Livland and Courland, collectively known as the Ostseeprovinzen of the Russian Empire. In 1918 the Baltic Germans almost succeeded in uniting the three provinces into a Baltic duchy under the German Kaiser. Only after World War I did the term Baltic states come into use. Even then, it was a fluid term, at times encompassing other states which had emerged from the collapse of tsarist Russia. Finland was frequently included among the Baltic states, but Finland and the Baltic states diverged as a consequence of World War II and she subsequently managed to rebrand herself as a Nordic country. As republics of the USSR, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were referred to in Russian as a common region known as Pribaltika. Their shared experience within the Soviet system, and their close cooperation in achieving their independence from it, solidified their common Baltic identity. After the end of the Cold War, a wider Baltic Sea regional identity, including all the Baltic littoral countries (heralded by the establishment of the Council of Baltic Sea States in 1992), began to evolve. This tendency was greatly strengthened by the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, after which all of the states around the Baltic Sea, with the exception of Russia, belonged to the EU.