Despite its historical and political destiny with its neighboring countries in the south – Lithaun and Latvia – the Estonian people have always been characterized by their independent spirit and culture. The people belong to the Finnish-Hungarian family of nations and have therefore had closer cultural and linguistic contacts with the Finns in the north than with the Indo-European Balts in the south.
According to thesciencetutor, the present Estonia has been inhabited for over 6,000 years. Around the year 400 AD, life as a semi-nomad (fishing and hunting) began to be supplanted by the agricultural form. At the same time, sailing in the Baltic Sea increased and trade with the neighboring peoples became increasingly extensive. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Estonian small finds established a joint army and were thus able to defeat the first Russian attempts at invasion.
German, Danish, Swedish and Russian control
When Germans, Danes and Russians invaded the area in the 13th century, the Estonians had established a federation of states characterized by a highly developed social level and an extensive autonomy that made them strong against the invading powers.
In the 13th century, a German Crusader order that had emerged as early as the 12th century conquered the southern part of Estonia and the northern part of Lithaun, established the kingdom of Livonia and Christianized its residents. In the first half of the 16th century, the Reformation invaded Estonia via the German merchants and landlords.
The northern part of Estonia remained under Danish control. In 1558-83 Russia carried out a large number of offensive against Livonia, which was already divided from 1561 into smaller chunks. In 1569 the area was conquered by Poland and converted into a kingdom, which in 1660 was transferred to Sweden. During the Nordic wars (1700-1721), Russia conquered Livonia from Sweden, which first regained its territory with the Nystad Treaty.
In 1772, Russia took over the Polish part of Livonia as part of the division of Poland between Russia and Sweden. Finally, in 1783, the old Lebanese kingdom was made a Russian province. The Czar ruled with the German nobility province. The nobility ruled most of the land while the peasants were alive.
The abolition of the quality of life in Russia in 1804 and the conquest of ownership of own land reinforced the national feeling among the Estonians. In the second half of the 19th century, the Society of Estonian Authors worked for the development of Estonian literature and culture, and was thus able to hold back the Czar’s Russification campaigns.
In 1904, nationalist esters took control of Tallinn and displaced the ruling Baltic-German citizenship. When the czar was overthrown during the February Revolution of 1917, a demonstration in Petrograd of 40,000 Estonians forced the Provisional Government to give the country autonomy. With the Bolshevik Revolution in October of that year, Estonia retained its autonomy.
