AHC: Have the Teutonic Knights Successfully Germanize Latvia and Estonia

CaliGuy

Banned
AHC: Come up with a realistic way to have the Teutonic Knights successfully Germanize Latvia and Estonia just like they did with East Prussia in our TL.
 
The first thing that comes to mind (outside the scope of the Monastic Orders) is no Thirty years War, which leads to massive German immigration to Prussia, Courtland etc.
By this time both orders had secularized into duchies as vassals of the PLC.
 
Extremely, extremely hard.

Livonia was much less attractive to German settlers than Prussia. In addition, the Livonian Order was much weaker and isolated from the rest of the Holy Roman Empire, and had much more enemies to deal with, not just Poland and Lithuania.

The existence of a German Livonian state in of itself is a big question when you get to the 16th and 17th centuries, especially since the grain-reliant Russia and Poland/Lithuania relied on the port of Riga to export goods and preferred to hold the city, and thus the region, directly. Not to mention fully Germanizing it.

The first thing that comes to mind (outside the scope of the Monastic Orders) is no Thirty years War, which leads to massive German immigration to Prussia, Courtland etc.
By this time both orders had secularized into duchies as vassals of the PLC.
I can see this with Prussia, but Livonia no longer existed as an independent or even a vassal state at the time.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Extremely, extremely hard.

Livonia was much less attractive to German settlers than Prussia. In addition, the Livonian Order was much weaker and isolated from the rest of the Holy Roman Empire, and had much more enemies to deal with, not just Poland and Lithuania.

The existence of a German Livonian state in of itself is a big question when you get to the 16th and 17th centuries, especially since the grain-reliant Russia and Poland/Lithuania relied on the port of Riga to export goods and preferred to hold the city, and thus the region, directly. Not to mention fully Germanizing it.

I can see this with Prussia, but Livonia no longer existed as an independent or even a vassal state at the time.
Out of curiosity--did Livonia's (and Courland's, and Estonia's) distance make it much less attractive to German settlers than Prussia?
 
Out of curiosity--did Livonia's (and Courland's, and Estonia's) distance make it much less attractive to German settlers than Prussia?
Distance, hostile locals, somewhat different climate and many nearby enemies like the Scandinavians, Russia/Novgorod and Lithuania all played a part.

I'm not an expert, though.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Distance, hostile locals, somewhat different climate and many nearby enemies like the Scandinavians, Russia/Novgorod and Lithuania all played a part.

I'm not an expert, though.
Weren't the Baltic Prussians also hostile to German rule, though? Or were they so subdued that their hostility was no longer relevant?
 
Weren't the Baltic Prussians also hostile to German rule, though? Or were they so subdued that their hostility was no longer relevant?

The Baltic Prussians were rapidly assimilated. Why? The Geopolitical situations of the time. Baltic Prussia was "conquered" in what some scholars call the Baltic Crusades with the direct purpose of evangelizing the populace: making them Christian. To my knowledge however, this wasn't the case in Livonia. While evangelizing the natives served as a casus belli, the religious monastic order(the Teutons) also saw it as an expansion oppurtunity and not just the victim for their next pseudo-crusade. This meant that converting the populace-- which has the additional side effect of that it might help assimilate them into the German culture-- of Livonia was of less importance. Orthodoxy also took hold thanks to its proximity to the Russian states and its distance from the Catholic Heartland and Orthodox Christians were significantly harder to convert to Catholicism than the Baltic Pagans. Distance made immigration from Germany harder, a different enviroment made immigration unattractive and geopolitical circumstances were generally unfavorable in regards to "Germanizing" the Baltic; and as the Teutons changed so to did their motives.
 
Now wouldn't the Livonian Order enjoying as great success as the Teutonic Order really help? What you're wanting is basically to screw Russian states and Lithuania and an early conversion to Catholicism. You'll probably also need more German migration there. Could you have Livonia be secularised and inherited by a German state? And then presumably, find a way to make it attractive to German settlers. I don't think they'll do as good of a job as they did in Prussia, but they'll definitely marginalise the natives in more ways than just politically and make a majority German state within a few centuries.

But the problem is the Russians, though. The place was often a warzone between Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and the Scandinavians for quite a long time. That doesn't encourage the stability needed to attract German settlers.

The Baltic Prussians were rapidly assimilated. Why? The Geopolitical situations of the time. Baltic Prussia was "conquered" in what some scholars call the Baltic Crusades with the direct purpose of evangelizing the populace: making them Christian. To my knowledge however, this wasn't the case in Livonia. While evangelizing the natives served as a casus belli, the religious monastic order(the Teutons) also saw it as an expansion oppurtunity and not just the victim for their next pseudo-crusade. This meant that converting the populace-- which has the additional side effect of that it might help assimilate them into the German culture-- of Livonia was of less importance. Orthodoxy also took hold thanks to its proximity to the Russian states and its distance from the Catholic Heartland and Orthodox Christians were significantly harder to convert to Catholicism than the Baltic Pagans. Distance made immigration from Germany harder, a different enviroment made immigration unattractive and geopolitical circumstances were generally unfavorable in regards to "Germanizing" the Baltic; and as the Teutons changed so to did their motives.

What the Christian powers got in the end was still a place (Estonia + Latvia) which was at least 10% ethnic German in much of the 19th century as well as one which had a religious mix of Catholics and Protestants similar to Germany itself.

But are you certain that that's the reason why the area was so hard to Germanise? I mean, the Estonians/Latvians weren't really Orthodox, and I don't think your geographic reasons really would limit immigration.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Now wouldn't the Livonian Order enjoying as great success as the Teutonic Order really help? What you're wanting is basically to screw Russian states and Lithuania and an early conversion to Catholicism. You'll probably also need more German migration there. Could you have Livonia be secularised and inherited by a German state? And then presumably, find a way to make it attractive to German settlers. I don't think they'll do as good of a job as they did in Prussia, but they'll definitely marginalise the natives in more ways than just politically and make a majority German state within a few centuries.

But the problem is the Russians, though. The place was often a warzone between Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and the Scandinavians for quite a long time. That doesn't encourage the stability needed to attract German settlers.
Question--while this wouldn't fit my AHC here, could you have the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth allow large-scale ethnic German immigration to areas such as Courland in order to make these areas more populous?
 
Question--while this wouldn't fit my AHC here, could you have the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth allow large-scale ethnic German immigration to areas such as Courland in order to make these areas more populous?

Wouldn't that be the Duchy of Courland's decision and not the Commonwealth's?
 
Another point, if we want to Germanise all of Estonia, what about the northern part perpetually under Danish and later Swedish rule? According to the Russian Empire census, the proportion of Germans in Estland governate was less than half that of Livland and Courland.

The first thing that comes to mind (outside the scope of the Monastic Orders) is no Thirty years War, which leads to massive German immigration to Prussia, Courtland etc.
By this time both orders had secularized into duchies as vassals of the PLC.

That's definitely a good start, but what might make large numbers of them to go the Baltic instead of other potential draws in the east?
 
The Teutonic Knights made extensive use of mercenaries. They could offer them land. The downside for the Teutonic knights is that free peasants produce less revenue for the overlord than serfs.
 
Where the Teutonic Knights failed for all the reasons you state, the German Empire tried to accomplish this same goal with Baltic Duchy.

Which didn't even get off the ground. It would be far less successful in any case, since the genie of nationalism had already been let out of the box. I think that post-1800 is probably too late to successfully assimilate the Baltic, or if it is assimilated, it'll be speaking Russian instead.
 
Which didn't even get off the ground. It would be far less successful in any case, since the genie of nationalism had already been let out of the box. I think that post-1800 is probably too late to successfully assimilate the Baltic, or if it is assimilated, it'll be speaking Russian instead.

I think the German Empire and Hitler would disagree with you. The German empire intended the Mitteleuropa Plan to exist for all eternity. After they failed the Nazis came along and intended to do the same thing only to exterminate every who they liked to then Germanize. Either way, if the Germans won.... (thank god they did not) they would have succeeded.
 
Mitteleuropa was different than steady deportations and murders of the people involved. Mitteleuropa at worst wouldn't be any worse than the Tsarist autocracy. Did that destroy Baltic culture? And Hitler would've only succeeded because the Nazis destroyed everything in their path. It shouldn't count for Germanising the place when you've killed or deported almost every non-German adult and the children are raised by Germans to be German.
 
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