Estonia: To the Nineteenth Century

To the Nineteenth Century

The Estonians settled in their present territory before the Christian era. They were mentioned (1st cent. a.d.) by Tacitus, who called them Aesti. In the 13th cent. the Danes and the German order of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword formed an alliance to conquer the pagan Estonian tribes. The Danes founded Reval (now Tallinn) in 1219 and introduced Christianity and Western European culture to Estonia. While Denmark took the northern part of Estonia, the knights occupied the southern portion. In 1346 the Danes sold their territory to the order, and Estonia remained under the rule of the knights and the Hanseatic merchants until the order's dissolution in 1561.

Northern Estonia then passed to Sweden; the rest was briefly held by Poland but was transferred to the Swedes by the Treaty of Altmark (1629), which ended the first Polish-Swedish war. The lot of the Estonian peasants, who had been reduced to virtual serfdom under German landowners, improved somewhat under Swedish rule; but Peter I of Russia conquered Livonia in 1710, and Russian possession was confirmed by the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. Despite some land reforms, the German nobles—the Baltic barons—retained their sway over the Estonian peasantry until the eve of the 1917 Russian Revolution. German burghers controlled most of the urban wealth.

Industrialization proceeded apace during the 19th cent.; the republic became heavily interlaced with railroads, and the port of Tallinn grew in importance. Estonian national consciousness began to stir in the mid-19th cent. but was countered by Russification, which in turn spurred rebellion and considerable emigration (notably to the United States and Canada).

Sections in this article:

Introduction
The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
To the Nineteenth Century
Government
Economy
Land and People
Bibliography

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