International Law and Justice Working Papers - IILJ
International Law and Justice Working Papers - IILJ
International Law and Justice Working Papers - IILJ
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
the colonies needed to realize that a new politics <strong>and</strong> attitude were necessary. The native peoples<br />
had to be included more in the government but in the first place, the German Baltic provinces<br />
Estonia, Livonia <strong>and</strong> Curonia had to realize that there was no alternative to unification: “Then<br />
but also only then will a new time of development break out <strong>and</strong> the work of colonization be<br />
continued in a worthy manner. (…) Should old Livonia st<strong>and</strong> up anew, the old Livonians have to<br />
transform into new ones, the special notions Livonians, Estonians <strong>and</strong> Curonians have to<br />
disappear in front of a uniting meaning of the name: the Baltic Germans.” 111<br />
But unity with whom exactly? If the essence of the Baltic provinces was their German<br />
uniqueness <strong>and</strong> their national self-determination, what was to be done with the overwhelming<br />
majority of the population, the non-German native population, the Estonians <strong>and</strong> the Latvians?<br />
If national self-determination was the guiding principle, should the native Estonians <strong>and</strong> Latvians<br />
also have somehow counted? Although Bulmerincq recognized the need for institutional reform<br />
<strong>and</strong> wider inclusion of the native peoples, this inclusion had to be undertaken under the German<br />
Baltic leadership. In the view of Bulmerincq, this was dictated by the inherent cultural-historical<br />
superiority of the Germans over the native peoples – in essence a typically colonialist argument<br />
that was otherwise usually employed by Europeans outside Europe. 112<br />
The political-intellectual race over the identity of the Baltic provinces had started. After<br />
Bulmerincq published his views, the conflict escalated even further with the outbreak of the socalled<br />
Broschyrenstreit. The Russian publicist Juri Samarin (1819-1876) published in 1868 a<br />
polemical booklet in which he claimed that it was the highest time to subject the Baltic provinces<br />
111 P. 19.<br />
112 See the work of Anthony Anghie on colonialism <strong>and</strong> international law in the 19 th <strong>and</strong> 20 th centuries.