EESTI VARAUUSAJA UURIMINE 21. SAJANDIL
ESTONIAN EARLY MODERN RESEARCH IN THE TWENTY­FIRST CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The early modern period as a separate historical period has been recognised in Estonian historiography only in the last twenty five years or so. Some German and English works on Estonian history talked about the early modern centuries before the 1990s. Broadly speaking, the early modern period spans three centuries (1500‒1800), although the Russian-Livonian War (1558) has long dominated Estonian historiography as the beginning of modern times. Thus, the early modern period in its many facets still needs a more thorough discussion in the context of Estonian history, although this goes beyond the framework of the present essay. Instead, it discusses the main developments in history writing on the sixteenth‒eighteenth centuries during the most recent two decades (2000‒2020). Thirty years ago historical research, as with the Estonian science and humanities in general, found itself in a situation where ideological pressure had disappeared, borders had opened up and opportunities increased. Initially, it was faced with the need to deal with the so-called blank spaces of history and to reorient. At a time when many historians went into politics, business, or were lost to the profession in other areas, those who remained loyal to history research found themselves in the midst of postcolonial chaos and restructuring. The winds of postmodernism blew through the Western world, and one discipline after another went into a ‘turn’. It must be emphasised, however, that the better part of Estonian history writing had also tried to be up-to-date and creative during the Soviet period. In the 1970s and 1980s, climate history, history of mentalities and everyday life as well as impulses from the Annales School, sociology, semiotics, interdisciplinarity, longue durée and mathematical methods did not pass the history students of the University of Tartu. The study of the early modern centuries ‒ especially the Swedish rule period of the seventeenth century ‒ has a long tradition in Estonian historical writing from the very birth of national historiography. This has provided a strong basis to study early modern history right up to today. The generational change that began in the 1990s can be seen in three multivolume general histories (History of Estonia, Estonian Art History and History of Tallinn); milestones that summarised the research results of the last half century but at the same time offered an opportunity to the new generation to leave their mark in such monumental publications. These volumes also mark the end of the transition period of history writing that started after the collapse of the Soviet system.

• Details
• Contents