Cartographic Politics in the Baltic: Rittikh and Sili?? Perspectives
Paragraph 1
In 1873 Alexander Fedorovich Rittikh, one of the Russian Empire’s most eminent cartographers, published two maps of the Baltic provinces depicting the ethnographic and religious composition of the region’s inhabitants. Rittikh’s maps painted a vivid portrait of a multi-ethnic and confessionally diverse imperial borderlands. Yet, behind the veneer of scientific objectivity, the maps were also a politically motivated attempt to use cartography to legitimise Russian imperial rule over the region.
Paragraph 2
The three Baltic provinces of Estland, Livland and Kurland, which correspond to present-day Estonia and Latvia, had been incorporated into the Russian Empire over the 18th century. They continued, however, to be regarded as a distinct region within the empire, characterised by a degree of autonomy over local governance, special laws, German-speaking elites, Estonian- and Latvian-speaking peasantry, majority Lutheran faith and a manorial economy system. Over the course of the 19th century, the particularities of imperial rule in the Baltic, the ‘Baltic Question’, sparked debates among intellectuals about how to justify Russian imperial rule over non-Russian populations and the relationship between the empire and emerging ideas around a distinctive Russian national culture. One view held that the Baltic provinces were perceived by some as culturally part of ‘the West’ and used to present Russia as a truly European empire. Conversely, the ethnolinguistic and religious diversity of the borderlands was perceived by others as an extension of ‘the West’ into Russia’s borders and a potential threat to the development of Russia’s unique national culture.
Paragraph 3
Rittikh’s peers in the Geographical Society held his maps in high esteem. Readers in the Baltic provinces, however, reacted with condemnation. Critiques slated his poor scientific research practices and subjective interpretation of statistical data. In the text accompanying the maps, Rittikh argued for the close historical and cultural contacts between Estonians, Latvians and Russians. Germans, by contrast, were cast as foreign colonisers who had violently occupied the region since the 12th century. Rittikh’s politicisation of language and claims about the deep-rooted kinship of the Baltic provinces with the Russian sphere of influence are echoed in Kremlin discourse about these territories being part of Russia’s ‘near abroad’. Moreover, Rittikh was also one of the first to term the Baltic provinces pribaltiskii krai ‘border territory by the Baltic Sea’. This appropriated the Baltics as an integral, natural part of the Russian state…
Paragraph 4
Influential though Rittikh’s maps were for shaping perceptions of the Baltic provinces, his was not the only voice. By the late 19th century, Estonian and Latvian mapmakers, thanks to high literacy rates and growing opportunities for social advancement, began to produce maps that challenged this imperialist outlook. One such mapmaker was Mat?ss Sili?š, a schoolteacher and publisher of popular calendars, who began regularly creating Latvian-language maps in Riga in the 1890s for mass audiences. While Mat?ss did not go so far as to advocate Latvian independence, his maps consolidated the idea of a distinctive and vibrant Latvian territory within the Russian Empire. They signified a radical departure from seeing the Baltics only through the lens of Russian or German possessions or sphere of influence. These maps demonstrated how ethnographic cartography was not only a tool of imperial legitimation in the Baltic provinces but could also be a powerful means of expressing the political claims for Estonian and Latvian self-determination by the early 20th century.
