Historia Bałtyku

History of the Baltics

The history of the Baltics has been written from many perspectives: political, economic, cultural. The Baltic region has been a space of effective exchange for centuries. Since the prehistoric times, it has been a melting pot of communities belonging to various language groups: Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, and Finnish. It was only in the Middle Ages, or in some cases even in the modern period, that national communities and states started to form in the area. The Baltic region has been, therefore, a site of close-knit cooperation in all aspects of social and cultural life. The history of the Baltic Sea basin shows that it was initially a region defined by commercial activity and cultural exchange, and only much later did politics come to be a factor delimiting a particular area. The imperial ambitions of the local rulers converted the Baltic region into a scene of constantly intensifying competition. The old Hanseatic structures came to serve as models for new transformations. The culture of the newly established Baltic states was torn between forming national identity and drawing inspiration from the past. The author has carried out a thorough analysis of the conceptualisation of the Baltic world, assigning great significance to the Dutch-Flemish region with its particular economic and cultural landscape. He has managed to capture the phenomenon of the Baltic region’s territorial expansion to the north and the east. The publication rounds off the research carried out by the author over the last three decades.