Empire and Eduards Volters

Eduards Volters was a Latvian linguist, renowned early ethnographer, and archeologist with the Russian Imperial Geographical Society. He studied the Lithuanians and Latvians in the Northwest Krai of the Russian Empire and Lithuania from 1882 to 1941. As Volters began his research at a time when the printing of Lithuanian and Latgalian publications in the Latin alphabet was forbidden, this book aims to uncover his role as one of the founders of literate Lithuanian and Latvian communities. This study compares various historical and theoretical contexts in anthropology and decolonization to reveal how Volters reconciled his ethnographic work within the political goals of the empire.