German Speaking Latvia and Scandinavian Speaking Estonia and Finland

Valdemar II

Banned
I was looking at Wikipeadia and falled over this on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germanic_languages

Languages with considerable Germanic Influence

Romansh
Ladin
Friulian
Estonian
Finnish
Latvian

And it got me thinking how could we end up with a complete integration of the three bolded countries into Germanic speaking Europe and what would the effect be?

I don't think it's going to be that hard, Latvia is the easies you just need a few German free peasants in the countryside, the cities was already German. Finland is also relative easy if Sweden had keeped it to 1900 at least, I think we would have a majority Swedish-speaking Finland, Estonia is hard it shifted hand more often than the others, the Germanic minority was split between a Swedish population at the coast and on islands and a German urban population.

The best solution could be a later black death, it would mean a continued emigration from Germany and Scandinavia to these East Baltic countries, at least until the plague does come.
 

Susano

Banned
What would that bring? Youll have German speaking nobility in any case, and Prussia expanding north wont change the language of the common people. Now, a victorious German (Teutonic) Order that continues to use settlers from Germany, that might do the trick.

Of course, a surviving Order would make the case of Estonia intersting. Even with the Order it was Danish for a time, but an Order powerful enough to win against internal rebells and Poles might also be powerful enough to chase the Danes out. Especially as the Danes at that time were the opponents of the Order's traditional allies, the Hanseatic League...

And intersting list of influenced languages. Ive heard SLovenian to be considerably Germanic (German, that is) influenced as well...
 

rcduggan

If the Teutonic Order survived longer, their colonization of Latvia would have continued, possibly Germanizing the country. Maybe the order loses a war with Sweden / Denmark and as a result they are forced to cede Estonia. In the ensuing centuries Sweden colonizes both Finland and Estonia, leading to a Germanic population.
 

abas

rcduggan said:
If the Teutonic Order survived longer, their colonization of Latvia would have continued, possibly Germanizing the country. Maybe the order loses a war with Sweden / Denmark and as a result they are forced to cede Estonia. In the ensuing centuries Sweden colonizes both Finland and Estonia, leading to a Germanic population.
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But in OTL Sweden rule of Finland did not led to Germanization (or must it be called Swedization?) and in Latvia the ruling force was local Germans, so IMO the surviving of the Order would not affect situation a lot.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
abas said:
But in OTL Sweden rule of Finland did not led to Germanization (or must it be called Swedization?) and in Latvia the ruling force was local Germans, so IMO the surviving of the Order would not affect situation a lot.
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In fact it did led to Swedization by 1800 a quater of Finlands population was Swedish speaking which was same precent as English speaker in Ireland and Wales. If Sweden had keeped Finland a century more the Swedish speakers would likely be in majority.
 

Moobles

Well if you want to do a case-study on a similar situation look at Bohemia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanization#Countermeasures). It was in personal union with the Austrian Emperor but it managed to maintain a Czech identity throughout what could be argued as being a 400-year "German occupation"- albeit, with significant German colonization of the hinterland around the region which we all are familiar with of course.

The problem with Latvia and with German colonization of regions such as this in general is that most of the time the Germans simply wanted to use the produce of the region and control a specific city or town. The Old Prussians were assimulated because the Teutonic Order directly advocated assimulating the peoples as part of their crusades against the pagans. In places like Lithuania and Latvia however Germanization programs were not begun. Kurland (or Courland) is a great example of a part of Latvia that represented how the Germans controlled the region; the area, under the influence of the Germans, had an almost purely Germanic nobility but a huge peasant class that did not speak German at all. No German government ever pursued a policy of forced Germanization in any of these regimes except for some weird half-assed attempts in Bohemia. Most of the time, if there were any local nobility they were simply expected to learn German to communicate with the rest of the nobility, and their language was left to themselves otherwise. Language and ethnicity was not a high priority of the order post-1350ish and it was more religion and crusading that mattered to them.

If you wanted to Germanize Latvia or Swedenize Estonia you'd need to first have a ruler who really wanted to Germanize/Swedenize them badly. Someone like a Frederick II who actively pursued a policy of Germanization could possibly influence the poor serfs and peasants in the region to begin speaking German- but it wouldn't be an overnight process. German colonization is possible, but large scale colonization might not be likely due to the fracturing of German states up until the later 1800s.

I don't think it'd be possible to fully "Germanize" the region however unless there was a significant amount of support by the nobility and huge social support (like with the Teutonic Knights). I mean you'd have to instutitionalize German and make it so that it would no longer be benifical for peasants to speak their own native languages, and they wait several generations for the whole thing to roll over. I think the Welsh and Irish are perhaps good examples of what might happen; the languages might be reduced but nationalistic tendancies, especially in such a far corner of the German realm, would create a situation where the population would want to relearn those languages. Like in Finland, where much of the population understood Swedish to a degree and many were fluent in it, but all of them prefered Finnish at home (perhaps in a forgone time there may have been reduced Finnish speaking over time had they not been with the Russians- but it'd still be there).
 

Susano

Banned
Moobles said:
Well if you want to do a case-study on a similar situation look at Bohemia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanization#Countermeasures). It was in personal union with the Austrian Emperor but it managed to maintain a Czech identity throughout what could be argued as being a 400-year "German occupation"- albeit, with significant German colonization of the hinterland around the region which we all are familiar with of course.
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Ehem. First of all Bohemia was not "German occupied". Rather it had been part of the German Kingdom (and hence later of the Holy Roman Empire of German Natiom) ever since the German Kingdom formed. As such, I would also rather use the term it was Austrian - of course, it came to the Habsburgs per personal union, but that was the norm on the European continent. Only on the British Isles where parlaiments wre stong did they make much of a distinction between personal unions and absorbtions. And the Habsburgs did eventually centralise their domains. So, in conclusion, you have a rather... biased formulation.

As for the rest of your post, wtf are you are talking about? "The Germans" did not want a single thing. The history of German Eastern Settlement is quite diverse, with different aims and methods in different phases and regions. Keep in mind that the entirety of the land east of the Elbe was initially slavic settled, and then German settled and assimilated. Most of the time, there was no focused Germanisation programm at all, and assimilation simply happened as a byproduct of German settlers immigration. And the Germans on their part were mostly brought in not for national moptives, either, but to have a loyal population class - after all, the east-elbian lands were fo rcenturies "border lands", and there were slavic uprisings now and then. Also, settlement was closely connetced to the christianisation of the region, and hence settlers also provided for that.

That were the main motives in German Eastern Settlement. The details varied: In the East Elbian territories, the slavic population simply got swamped by German settlers, in Prussia there was not much assimilation, rather, sad to say, the Old Prussians were more or less exterminated. And in Livonia, Courland, Estonia there was German settlement, but not so much that it effected the previous population there.

The key difference would hence be to have that third phase be either more like the first, or like the second. For some reasons, the Sword Brothers (the Order that christianised these lands before it got absorbed into the German [Teutonic] Order) seemed to have been superbly efficient in Christianising them, so there was apparently no great need for either settlers or exterminating the population. If we hanwave away teh Sword Brothers, and have the heavy-handed German (Teutonic) Order also take over Christianisation of those parts... it would be ugly, but it would probably fulfll the PoD Challenge.
 

Moobles

It was in personal union with the Austrian Emperor but it managed to maintain a Czech identity throughout what could be argued as being a 400-year "German occupation"
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I put it in quotations because I thought it was dodgy at the least. Bohemia came into the HRE somewhat contreversially (being forced into tribute) and there were many rebellions over time against Germanization and German rule, although not as hardcore as you might say in other places. They did have several indigenous dynasties and were one of the most autonomous bodies within the HRE. Of course, their geographic position would naturally push them towards being within the HRE, so perhaps German occupation is a bit harsh, but at the same time I'm not sure the Czechs were always completely happy being ruled by foreign powers speaking languages they couldn't understand, so it'd depend on who you talk to- hence my quotations and not full out "GERMANS OCCUPIED THE CZECHS VIVA LA REPUBLIQUE TCÈQUE".

"The Germans" did not want a single thing
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Yes I'm sure most Germans were preoccupied with other things at the time, so I'd have to agree with you. I suppose I should've specified "historical members of the HRE whose demography would be most often identified as German" but I didn't.

More or less I'm not sure why you'd blow up on me. I marginally agree with everything you posted and I think you bring up a great point about the Livonian Order not needing to settle the region due to the success of their christianization.
 

Susano

Banned
Well, as said, you did sound a bit biased to me. If that was not your intent, then I apologise.

As for Bohemia, I dosagree that it was specifically autonomous. Specifcially prestigeous, as the only Kingdom within the Kingdom, yes, of course, but it started out much like the German tribal duchies, with the only difference being that that Duchy was Slavic. Had history gone different, even Bavaria could have gained the kingdom status, and there were two Kings of Swabia as well (though more as a courtesy title). But, those are details.

You misundertsood me about the second point. What I objected to was that you made it appear as if German East Settlement was one focused development, when it realyl was a longdrawn affairs where aims and mechanics differed. Thats what I meant.
 

Moobles

Good to hear ^^- I was worried I was going to get beaten up on my second day on the forums by someone who knows alot more about German history then myself >_< which would've been dreadful.

I totally agree East German settlement was not a black-and-white process and there were a multitude of very important factors which shaped the whole set of events.
 

Cyreidel

Valdemar II said:
I was looking at Wikipeadia and falled over this on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germanic_languages

Languages with considerable Germanic Influence

Romansh
Ladin
Friulian
Estonian
Finnish
Latvian

And it got me thinking how could we end up with a complete integration of the three bolded countries into Germanic speaking Europe and what would the effect be?

I don't think it's going to be that hard, Latvia is the easies you just need a few German free peasants in the countryside, the cities was already German. Finland is also relative easy if Sweden had keeped it to 1900 at least, I think we would have a majority Swedish-speaking Finland, Estonia is hard it shifted hand more often than the others, the Germanic minority was split between a Swedish population at the coast and on islands and a German urban population.

The best solution could be a later black death, it would mean a continued emigration from Germany and Scandinavia to these East Baltic countries, at least until the plague does come.
Click to expand...

Well, first of all, there were quite a few German free peasants, but why didn't the Latvians and Estonians become Germanized? Revolts. In the TO days there were many, many revolts. The TO didn't really have complete control of the countryside until the 1420's-1450's, before that, there were quite large daily revolts, and incursions from Semigallian refugees from Lithuania (1/5ths of Semigallians left Semigallia after the TO took it.), so, yeah, it would be quite hard to start Germanizing early on.

Also, how could you Germanize those languages, when they didn't exsist. Latvian, as a language, only started forming in the 15th century or so, before that, there were 4 Baltic and one Finno-Uguric language in the area, corresponding to the tribes. Something along those lines was with Estonia, except their languages were more akin to dialects.
 

abas

Susano said:
The key difference would hence be to have that third phase be either more like the first, or like the second. For some reasons, the Sword Brothers (the Order that christianised these lands before it got absorbed into the German [Teutonic] Order) seemed to have been superbly efficient in Christianising them, so there was apparently no great need for either settlers or exterminating the population. If we hanwave away teh Sword Brothers, and have the heavy-handed German (Teutonic) Order also take over Christianisation of those parts... it would be ugly, but it would probably fulfll the PoD Challenge.
Click to expand...
They weren't efficient, there just weren't enough settlers, they only settled in towns or as vassals of bishops (and there were main difference from Prussia)
 

Susano

Banned
abas said:
They weren't efficient, there just weren't enough settlers, they only settled in towns or as vassals of bishops (and there were main difference from Prussia)
Click to expand...

Yeah, well, but somehow they managed to christianise the rgeion nontheless, which was the main aim...
 
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