COURLAND, LIVONIA AND ESTHONIABritish Foreign Office, 1920

What was Latvia right before WWI broke out? Before the devastation of H.G. Wells'-named "war to end all wars" and subsequent war of independence↗? When Latvia's capital Rīga was the third largest trade port in the Russian empire and a manufacturing powerhouse?

Principal exports from major Latvian and Estonian ports, 1913, facsimile

From the top: Эстляндская губернии, Estlyandskaya guberniya; Лифляндская губерния, Liflyandskaya guberniya; and Курляндская губерния, Kurlandskaya guberniya.

The British Foreign Office↗ prepared the equivalent of a comprehensive CIA World Fact Book↗ for Courland, Livonia, and Estonia in preparation for the 1919 Paris Peace Talks↗. The handbook features chapters on geography, history, politics, and economy. Statistics offer a detailed portrait of Latvia at its economic zenith under the Russian empire since it features statistics from 1913, the year before World War I erupted on July 28, 1914.

The handbook was part of a series focused on central Europe, the Baltics, the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and more. More than 160 were prepared, featuring both country profiles and topics such as President Wilson's policies and a history of Islam.

Notes for the reader

• Historical Livonia↗ encompassed all of today's Estonia and Latvia less Courland (Kurzeme) and Semigallia (Zemgale). The handbook discusses the Baltic Governorates↗ of the Russian empire, Esthonia being today's northern Estonia, Livonia being today's southern Estonia including the port of Pärnu and Latvia's Vidzeme and Latgale. The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia↗ (founded 1561) was an autonomous duchy under Polish-Lithuanian suzerainty at the time it was incorporated into the Russian empire in the Third Partition of Poland↗ (1795), hence today's Latvia spans multiple historical governorates.

Esthonia coat of arms1

Livonia coat of arms2

Courland coat of arms3

• Regarding import/export statistics, the ports besides Rīga are known by their modern names as Liepāja (Libau), Ventspils (Windau), Pärnu (Pernau), and Tallinn (Reval, also appearing as Revel in older English sources, as here).
• Regarding economic statistics, one British pound of 1913 is worth approximately £150 today (2025). Thus the total of £3,863,639 in eggs exported from Riga, Libau, and Windau in 1913 is worth over £500M today.

• Courland, Livonia and Esthonia↗, Handbook No. 50
• Russian Poland, Lithuania and White Russia↗, Handbook No. 44

• The Handbooks prepared under the direction of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office↗↗de article at German Wikipedia describes the series and includes a fairly complete though not comprehensive list of publications.

In the spring of 1917 the Foreign Office, in connexion with the preparation which they were making for the work of the Peace Conference, established a special section whose duty it should be to provide the British Delegates to the Peace Conference with information in the most convenient form — geographical, economic, historical, social, religious, and political — respecting the different countries, districts, islands, &c., with which they might have to deal. In addition, volumes were prepared on certain general subjects, mostly of an historical nature, concerning which it appeared that a special study would be useful.

The historical information was compiled by trained writers on historical subjects, who (in most cases) gave their services without any remuneration. For the geographical sections valuable assistance was given by the Intelligence Division (Naval Staff) of the Admiralty ; and for the economic sections, by the War Trade Intelligence Department, which had been established by the Foreign Office. Of the maps accompanying the series, some were prepared by the above-mentioned department of the Admiralty, but the bulk of them were the work of the Geographical Section of the General Staff (Military Intelligence Division) of the War Office.

Now that the Conference has nearly completed its task, the Foreign Office, in response to numerous inquiries and requests, has decided to issue the books for public use, believing that they will be useful to students of history, politics, economics, and foreign affairs, to publicists generally and to business men and travellers. It is hardly necessary to say that some of the subjects dealt with in the series have not in fact come under discussion at the Peace Conference ; but, as the books treating of them contain valuable information, it has been thought advisable to include them.

G. W. PROTHERO↗,
General Editor and formerly
Director of the Historical Section.