The Development of the Market System in the Baltic Republics
From the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, Estonia and Latvia were autonomous parts of the Russian Empire. Only in the last four decades before World War I were they politically integrated into the Russian Empire. Even then, culturally, the dominant German minority maintained a Western, "European" orientation in the Baltic provinces of Estonia, Kurland, and Livonia, and the memory of the Hanseatic tradition lingered (economically speaking) in these lands as well. After 1795, Lithuania was more completely integrated into the Russian Empire. The peasants in Latvia and Estonia were emancipated between 1816 and 1819, more than 40 years before the peasants were