Although Estonian national consciousness spread in the course of the 19th century, some degree of ethnic awareness in the literate middle class preceded this development. By the 18th century the self-denomination
eestlane (Estonian) along with the older
maarahvas (country folk) spread among Estonians in the then
provinces of Estonia and Livonia of the
Russian Empire.
The Bible was translated in 1739, and the number of books and brochures published in Estonian increased from 18 in the 1750s to 54 in the 1790s. By the end of the 18th century more than half of the country's rural adult male population was able to read, and the literacy rate in urban areas was already significantly higher. The first university-educated intellectuals identifying themselves as
Estonians, including
Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798–1850),
Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822) and
Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882), came to prominence in the 1820s. The ruling elite had remained predominantly
German in language and culture since the conquest of the early 13th century.
Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850), a
Baltic German Estophile, was the first author to treat the Estonians explicitly as a nationality equal to others; he became a source of inspiration for the Estonian national movement, modelled on Baltic German cultural world before the middle of the 19th century. However, in the middle of the century the Estonians, with such leaders as
Carl Robert Jakobson (1841–1882),
Jakob Hurt (1839–1907) and
Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819–1890), became more ambitious in their political demands and started leaning towards the
Finns as a
successful model of national movement and, to some extent, the neighbouring
Young Latvian national movement. Significant accomplishments were the publication of the national epic,
Kalevipoeg, in 1862, and the organization of the first national song festival in 1869. By the end of the 1860s the Estonians became unwilling to remain reconciled with German cultural and political hegemony. Before the attempts at
Russification in the 1880s–1890s their view of
Imperial Russia remained positive. The cities became Estonicized quickly, and in 1897 ethnic Estonians comprised two-thirds of the total Estonian urban population. Estonian gains were minimal, but the tense stability that prevailed between 1905 and 1917 allowed Estonians to advance the aspiration of national statehood. Following the
February Revolution of 1917 Estonian lands were for the first time united in one administrative unit, the
autonomous Governorate of Estonia. After the
Bolshevik takeover of power in Russia in 1917, and the following successful
German invasion further into
Soviet Russia, Estonia declared itself an independent nation on 24 February 1918. The terms "national awakening", "era of new awakening", or similar, have more recently been applied sometimes also to the period of Estonian history around 1987 and 1988 (also known as the beginning of the
Singing Revolution). == See also ==