Mediaeval Livonia's border in the south

This paper deals with the probability that Livonia's eastern border in the south was further east than generally assumed. It will also be shown that early Polish Livonia (Latgola) was divided into five districts, not the customary four, and that the old border river Sareja was part of a transport route hitherto unnoticed in scholarly proceedings. The generally accepted opinion is that in the Middle Ages Livonia's eastern border in the south was formed by the river Nidreica (officially Indra or Indrica), a 26-km-long right tributary of the Daugava. This opinion is supported by early maps, starting with that of Radziwift (post-1595), which goes to the extraordinary trouble of labeling the river with a legend spelling out its border status: flu. Livoniae terminus (see Fig. 1). Maps following Blaeu (1614) are unanimous in showing flv. as a border river.1 The earliest document that suggests that the river Indrica is the border (although not in so many words) is the 1599 cadastre of the Crown Domain of Rēzekne. From 1600 on, the eastern border of Livonia (now minus Kurland and Estland) in the south is not subject to dispute. After that date, Polish Livonia (Inflanty Polskie, more or less coextensive with present day Latgola) accelerates on a course of development that eventually sets it apart from the rest of Livonia. In 1677 it acquires the semi-exalted status of Principality of Livonia (Ksicstwo Inflanckie) within the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth. After Latgola came under Muscovite rule (in 1772, during the First Partition), Nidreica continued as the southeastern boundary of the newly rechristened Daugava Province (Dvinskaja provincija). Latgola lost its administrative identity just five years later (in 1777), and Nidreica became the eastern boundary of the District (uezd) of Daugavpils (then Dyneburg or Dvinsk). In 1861, out of purely administrative considerations, the border of the District of Daugavpils was moved to the east, about half

Ancient history · Political science · European Linguistics and Anthropology · Historical and Archaeological Studies · History · Medieval European History and Architecture