[Das Baltikum: Geschichte einer europäischen Region. Bd. 2, Vom Beginn der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gründung der modernen Staaten]

ENVolume II of the three-volume "Das Baltikum. Geschichte einer europäischen Region" covers a long chronological period, from 1500 to 1918. According to the book’s authors, who come from different research institutions in Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Austria, Lithuania and the United States, this great epoch is marked by the emergence of monarchical state compounds and their eventual demise, new turns in economic and social history, and new concepts of space, time and things. As such, the book’s structure is noted for its coordination of chronological and problematic approaches. The first chapters are devoted to the period up to 1721/1795 when the Baltic region was a component of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later of Danish and Swedish state compounds. There are separate analyses of the region’s history when it became part of the Russian Empire (1710/95 to 1917/1918), assessing the region’s situation during the First World War and trying to identify the position of the Baltic region in the political and socio-economic life of northern Europe. When talking about the ‘short 18th century’ and the ‘long 19th century’, the book’s authors pay more attention to socio-economic, and in part cultural, history than to political history. The authors of these chapters are united in their goal to clarify and demonstrate how the modern person, civil society and the institutions expressing this society were formed. [...].