Rūdolfs Blaumanis,the Dreyfus Affair and the Anglo-Boer War: Colonial difference and identity construction in fin-de-siècle Latvian society

Abstract

This article offers an insight into the social and cultural scene in Latvia at the end of the nineteenth century. The territory of this Baltic state was then still part of the Russian Empire, divided among several of its provinces. However, this was also a period when the cultural aspirations of the rising Latvian middle class were represented by the gradual attempts to raise the self-esteem of the entire local population. The article focuses on the role that Latvian writer Rūdolfs Blaumanis (1863–1908) played in encouraging Latvians to understand themselves as a self-confident people during the fin-de-siècle period. The first part examines articles published by Blaumanis in the Latvian press during 1899 and 1900 in which he deals with the explosive political issues of the time, namely the Dreyfus Affair in France and the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa. These case studies are then followed by theoretical considerations. Taking into account the political and social contexts in which these texts were written, the way Blaumanis approaches these topics is interpreted as an attempt at self-positioning and identity construction of the local population while also creating an early form of counter-colonial narrative.