Authors

Discussion

During the seventeenth century, the dukes of Courland faced the dilemma of vast expansionist neighbours in the Eastern Baltic threatening to encroach on their already diminished sovereignty. This threat was paired with a lack of domestic ducal power in comparison to the nobility, favoured by the system of their Polish-Lithuanian suzerain. As a consequence, the dukes looked beyond the Baltic to win influential foreign backers in the West, but also to expand their own personal prestige outside of the Baltic region. This paper will briefly investigate the British role in this process of reaching out of the Baltic, with particular focus directed at Duke Jakob’s (reigned 1642-1682), attempts to become a minor colonial power in the Caribbean and Western Africa. The investigation will offer an insight into the diverse channels of early modern foreign affairs communication and ask whether Courland’s attempts at an Atlantic relationship with Britain compromised Britain’s goodwill towards Courland in the Baltic.