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- Chapter I. An Historic Survey of the Cultural Conditions of the Baltic Lands
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Chapter I.
An historic Survey of the Cultural Conditions
of the Baltic Lands.
The beginnig of the history of the Baltic States resembles early
English history in so far as the Saxon founders of the English heptarchy
were of the same racial origin as those of Livonia. Up to the present
the Estonians, natives of Estonia and Livonia, call the people of
Teutonic descent inhabiting the Provinces, „Saxons". Looking through the
historic vista of the past, the English Saxons may be reminded that
there is a close relationship between themselves and the Baltic Saxons,
although centuries of a different fate have, to a certain extent, obscured
the remembrance of the tie between the people of these happy islands
and those of the severely tried Baltic shores. Since their foundation by
the Saxons, both countries have been over-run by various invaders, but
neither actually lost touch with the other. Two illustrations of this fact
may be quoted: King James I of England gave the island of Tobago,
one of the Lesser Antilles, as a present to his godchild, James Duke of
Courland, of the Kettler Dynasty; then again, many British families
such as Hill, Scott, Jacobs, Addison, Magnus, Miller, Proctor,
Armitstead, Gregg, Gordon, Bruce, Keith and others emmigrated to the Baltic
lands and intermarried with the local nobility and bourgeoisie.
In prehistoric times Finnish — Mongolic tribes occupied the territory
stretching from the Caspian and Ural seas to the shores of the Baltic.
In the times of early Russian history, Slavonic tribes which had their
habitation west of the tribes of the Mongolic race, succeeded in subduing
them and subsequently intermingling with them, thereby making a wide
breach in their previous uninterrupted chain running from south to
north. In the south the Kalmucks, Kirghiz, Tcheremis and other tribes
in the north, Finns in Finland, the Estonians (who up to the present
time populate Estonia and the northern half of Livonia), the Lives
(who held the southern part of Livonia) and the Coures (inhabiting
Courland) were not slavonized. But the Lives and the Coures fell a
prey to the Letts, who together with the Lithuanians, pushed forward
from the south and occupied the territory which afterwards formed the
principality of Lithuania, Courland, and the southern part of Livonia.
The last descendants of the Lives could some fifty years ago still be
found in the west of Livland, and of the Coures in the west of
Courland, but both tribes must nowadays be considered as allmost extinct.
The reason why the Letts fought their way towards the Baltic shores
was the necessity for having an outlet to the sea.
In the twelfth century, German adventure brought about a new
change in the fate of the Baltic shores, by sending colonists from the
north of Germany, chiefly from Bremen, Lübeck, Hamburg, Hanover
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