"Adapting to Modernity" is a study of the response of the Baltic German nobility to the economic, social, and political challenges of modernization. The Baltic German nobility was a narrow caste that ruled the native people of the area that is today Latvia and Estonia from the thirteenth century through the end of World War One, finding for themselves a special place under successive rulers and empires. The book also presents a study of the practice and policies of Russian imperialism in the most European region of the Russian Empire. It examines how this particular colonial society functioned in the larger framework of Russia's imperial structure and responded to the challenges posed by the Empire's shift from a transnational ecumenical imperialism to one based on a narrow Russian ethnic and cultural imperialism. In the process the work explains how a tiny colonial class within the Empire maintained its hold over a far larger native population and how it developed the practices and traditions that allowed it to preserve its privileged position, how the image of family both reflected and supported the colonial nobility's self-image and ruling position. |