A Concise History of the Baltic States

by Andrejs Plakans

• ISBN13: 9780521541558
• ISBN10: 0521541557
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Baltic region is frequently neglected in broader histories of Europe and its international significance can be obscured by separate treatments of the various Baltic states. With this wide-ranging survey, Andrejs Plakans presents the first integrated history of three Baltic peoples - Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians - and draws out the common threads to show how it has been shaped by their location in a strategically desirable corner of Europe. Subordinated in turn by Baltic German landholders, the Polish nobility and gentry, and then by Russian and Soviet administrators, the three nations have nevertheless kept a their distinctive identities - significantly retaining three separate languages in an ethnically diverse region. The book traces the countries' evolution from their ninth-century tribal beginnings to their present status as three thriving and separate nation states, focusing particularly on the region's complex twentieth-century history, which culminated in the eventual re-establishment of national sovereignty after 1991.

Author Biography

Andrejs Plakans is Professor Emeritus at the Department of History, Iowa State University. His previous publications include The Latvians: A Short History (1995) and Historical Dictionary of Latvia (second edition, 2008).

Table of Contents

List of plates	p. x
List of maps	p. xii
Preface	p. xiii
The peoples of the eastern Baltic littoral	p. 1
The new order, 1200-1500	p. 33
The new order reconfigured, 1500-1710	p. 77
Installing hegemony: the littoral and tsarist Russia, 1710-1800	p. 125
Reforming and controlling the Baltic littoral, 1800-1855	p. 170
Five decades of transformations, 1855-1905	p. 215
Statehood in troubled times, 1905-1940	p. 266
The return of empires, 1940-1991	p. 336
Reentering Europe, 1991-	p. 402
Suggested readings	p. 449
Index	p. 458
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