The Duchy of Courland, centered in the peninsula that forms the southern rim
of the Gulf of Riga, on the other hand, was an autonomous Duchy created by
Grand Master of Livonian Knights Gotthard Kettler in 1561 when he secularized
the Order. The Duchy remained an autonomous part of the Commonwealth of
Poland-Lithuania thereafter. Ruled by the Kettler family, often in tension with
Courland’s German nobility, the Duchyflourished from shipbuilding, trade, and
manufacturing; in the seventeenth century it even established short-lived colonies
in Africa and the West Indies. Its primarily Latvian peasantry was enserfed. In the
eighteenth century Courland, like the Commonwealth itself, fell increasingly under
Russian control. Peter I married his niece Anna Ioannovna to the Duke of
Courland in 1710; widowed in 1711, she governed Courland until she became
Russia’s Empress (ruled 1730–40), in both settings ruling with a coterie of Cour-
land Germans. As Empress, Anna generously patronized the Duchy and when the
Kettler line died out in 1737, she installed her favorite, Ernst Biron, as Duke. The
Duchy’s court at Mitau/Jelgava became a lively outpost of St. Petersburg culture,
ornamented by Francesco Rastrelli’s court architecture. The Duchy came into the
Russian empire in 1795 when the last Duke abdicated in the face of the third
partition; Russian administrative reforms and district divisions were immediately
introduced, but local German nobles were appointed to regional offices, maintain-
ing de facto much of the status quo for the short period until Paul I’s reversal of
Catherinian reforms in 1796. In 1801 Courland peasants were officially exempted
from conscription, reflecting the wide variety of treatment of ethnic groups and
borderland peasants across the empire.
PARTITIONS OF POLAND: POLES,
LITHUANIANS, AND JEWS
Three partitions destroyed the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania as a sovereign
state. Of the three partitioning powers (Russia, Austria, and Prussia), the Russian
empire received the most land. More than 460,000 square kilometers and over
7.5 million Ukrainians, Belarus’ans, Lithuanians, Latvians, Poles, and Jews joined
the Russian empire from 1772 to 1795, presenting tremendous challenges for
imperial governance.
In 1772 in thefirst partition a vertical swath of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
was taken, including the towns of Polotsk, Vitebsk, Mstislav, and Gomel’, as well as
Inflanty, a total of 1.3 million people, primarily Belarus’an-speaking peasants but
also townsmen, some Jews, and Polish nobles. The poll tax and recruitment were
imposed on Belarus’an peasants and townsmen and Jews immediately (1773), but
much of the status quo for the upper classes was affirmed. Polish noble privileges,
local noble assemblies (sejmiki), the Grand Duchy lawcode, urban self-government
(often according to Magdeburg Law), and serfdom were affirmed. Noble privileges
such as the right to distill and sell vodka were confirmed. These lands were
integrated into the gubernii of Pskov (moved to Polotsk 1777), Vitebsk, and
Mogilev, with district-level governors and local land courts for civil and land
Western Borderlands in the Eighteenth Century 121