Authors

Anti Selart¹;  ¹ University of Tartu, Estonia

Discussion

The existing historical generalizations of the Baltic Sea area history in the Middle Ages, the Hanseatic League, and the East-Central Europe focus on integrating factors on the “surface” like trade, art, or ecclesiastical structures, or they present a “sum” of regional histories. An integrated history focusing on social history and identity development is largely missing.Typically, the medieval research in Europe, especially of its regional aspects, is still based on modern borders. Most notably, the latter have a continuous impact on research due to the territory-based source publications, typically initiated in the 19th c. (e.g. the territorial Diplomatarii and Urkundenbücher). Even more importantly, the ideological and methodical basis of these publications relies on the historical and political ideas of the past. This issue creates the “path dependence” of the historical research of the medieval past, which is still influential today. The “visibility” of historical phenomena in written sources and the timing and manner in which they became apparent have heavily influenced the construction of historical regions. The written sources quite well document the emergence and development of formal institutions (e.g. church administration). They do not, however, explicitly describe the “deep structures” of society and economy. These structures in historical regions (as defined in the research tradition) were probably more similar to each other as presented in the research literature.The “regions of research” can be based on (late) mediaeval and modern territories or administrative units, or they can be defined by research tradition. In the latter case, they are already constructed using general ideas of common features. A typical case in this sense is the “East Central Europe” (Ostmitteleuropa) which, in its most extended interpretation, includes the regions from Balkan to the Baltic. Other examples include the “Baltic Sea area” (Ostseeraum), and “North-Eastern Europe”. The regional divisions created by research are not predicated on mediaeval shared identity. Still, they can create new identity groups today when the original academic research ideas are disseminated by media, schoolbooks, etc. The mediaeval “longue durée” processes in the Baltic Sea area, like Christianisation, the adaption of (Low) German as the language of the social elite and vernacular written communication, the development of manorial economy and serfdom, the emergence of urban life, etc., were, with few exceptions common phenomena of the whole region. The developments were partly asynchronous. Still, the overall picture of society in 1500 was similar enough to allow for discussing the whole region as a common historical space.