Europeans in surprisingly valiant struggle initially (8)
I believe the answer is:
latvians
'europeans' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'surprisingly valiant struggle initially' is the wordplay.
'surprisingly' is an anagram indicator (a surprising ordering of the letters).
'initially' says to take the initial letters.
The initial letter of 'struggle' is 's'.
'valiant' anagrammed gives 'latvian'.
'latvian'+'s'='LATVIANS'
'in' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for latvians that I've seen before include "Europeans" , "Citizens of Riga as nationals" , "Inhabitants of Riga, perhaps" , "They come from Riga, say" , "Natives of Riga, say" .)