Latvia’s name remembers the Latgalian tribe among four Balts
The Republic of Latvia sits between Estonia and Lithuania on the Baltic, edged by Russia and Belarus. Independent since 18 November 1918 after imperial collapse, its name descends from the Latgalians—one of four Baltic tribes that seeded modern Latvians.
Proto-Baltic settlers arrived around 3000 BCE and traded amber as far as Rome and Byzantium; by the twelfth century lands such as Jersika and Tālava dotted the map. Papal missionaries sailed up the Daugava late in that century, but locals resisted conversion, and by the early thirteenth century German crusaders ruled much of the territory, their numbers swelling after the Crusader States in the Middle East fell.
After the Livonian War of 1558–1583, northern Latvia and southern Estonia passed to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Gotthard Kettler, the last master of the Livonian Order, became Duke of Courland. Following the Polish–Swedish War, Vidzeme went to Sweden and Riga became the largest city in the Swedish Empire. Western Latvia turned Lutheran, and Curonians, Semigallians, Selonians, Livs, and northern Latgalians merged into one people speaking Latvian.
The Great Northern War killed up to 40 per cent of Latvians through famine and plague, and half of Riga died of plague in 1710–1711; the 1721 Treaty of Nystad gave Vidzeme to Russia. Serfs were freed in Courland in 1817 and Vidzeme in 1819, but without land, and only later reforms let peasants buy farms while many moved to cities for schooling and factory work.
The First World War devastated the country. The Russian Revolution and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk opened a vacuum, and independence was proclaimed on 18 November 1918. By spring 1919 three rival governments competed, including Kārlis Ulmanis’s provisional cabinet and a Soviet regime. Today Latvia belongs to the EU, the eurozone, and NATO, and ranks around 39th on the Human Development Index.
Source: Latvia
