In Search for Alternatives to German Domination: The Construction of the Maritime Past in Latvian and Lithuanian National Historiography

Abstract

In the first half of the 20th century, all the states that emerged on the east coast of the Baltic gained access to the sea. Each tried to utilise this to strengthen their economies, but contemporaries had different views on their potential to do so. One example is that the Latvians were labelled as a maritime nation, while the Lithuanians were portrayed as a “continental” nation. This is sometimes still the case today. The research presented in this article shows that despite this judgement, the need to create images of the maritime past of the Latvian and Lithuanian nations manifested in both cases through the historiography that influenced modern national identities. The article focuses on the different representations of the maritime past used by the Latvian and Lithuanian national movements in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century and examines the origins of these representations as well as the contexts in which they were instrumentalised. The research shows that although the images were different, Lithuanian and Latvian historians used similar strategies to create and disseminate them. These included retrospective identification with mediaeval and early modern societies and attempts to use images of the maritime past to find alternatives to German domination in the region.