UNIFICATION VS. LOCAL AUTONOMY: EVOLUTION OF LAW IN BALTIC PROVINCES UNDER RULE OF THE GREAT POWERS IN 16TH – 19TH CENTURY

Valdis Bluzma, Dr. hist. Professor /Turiba University

Abstract The impact of policies pursued by the neighbouring great powers on the evolution of law in the Baltic provinces in the 16th – 19th centuries is a little-studied topic of legal history. Although a number of studies of Estonian, Latvian, Finnish, German, Russian, English, and American scholars have been published in recent decades that touch upon various aspects of this topic, there is still no general analysis of the factors that caused the transition of policy of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Kingdom of Sweden and Russian Empire from the principle of preserving the administrative and legal autonomy of the Baltic provinces to a gradual unification of their administrative and legal system. The comparison of legal policy of these great powers in Baltic provinces facilitate the better understanding of the common features and differences of legal policies implemented by these states in Baltic region. The author concludes that the promises made by rulers of the great powers to observe and protect previous laws of newly acquired Baltic provinces slowed down the further development of these territories in the field of law, which became especially clear in the 19th century, when the Russian government began to extend the force of its modern laws to the Baltic governorates. The new national states, which were founded in 1918 in place of the former Baltic governorates – Latvia and Estonia – were not bound by the promises to respect the previous law and were able to abolish the privileges of Baltic German nobility and modernize law by eliminating territorial particularism.
Keywords: Baltic provinces, administrative autonomy, legal autonomy, local law, unification of law, majesty clause