Citizenship and Identity in a Multinational Commonwealth

Poland-Lithuania in Context, 1550-1772
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-90-04-16983-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 46, 312 Seiten, Format (B × H): 169 mm x 247 mm, Gewicht: 692 g

Reihe: Studies in Central European Histories

This volume seeks to address the doubts harboured by the West about the ability of East Central European states to build modern democracies and tolerant societies after the expansion of the European Union eastwards. The tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is thereby often overlooked in favour of the nationalist romanticism and xenophobia of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which arose from the specific context of the partitions of 1772-95. Yet citizenship in a multinational context was a central theme of the political debate in early modern Poland-Lithuania. For many contemporary religious and national conflicts, this Commonwealth cannot be a direct model for imitation, but may serve as a source of inspiration due to the creative solutions and compromises it negotiated while integrating many faiths and ethnicities.

Contributors are James B. Collins, Karin Friedrich, Gershon David Hundert, Joanna Kostylo, Krzysztof Lazarski, Allan I. Macinnes, Barbara M. Pendzich, Felicia Rosu, Barbara Skinner, and Arturas Vasiliauskas.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Friedrich, Karin

Pendzich, Barbara

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Staatsbürgerkunde, Staatsbürgerschaft, Zivilgesellschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Note on Geographic Names
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors

Introduction, Karin Friedrich

PART I. INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION: CITIZENSHIP IN THE POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH
1. Monarch versus Citizens, and the Law under Stefan Batory: the Legal Reform of 1578, Felicia Rosu
2. Citizenship in the Periphery: Royal Prussia and the Union of Lublin 1569, Karin Friedrich
3. The Practice of Citizenship among the Lithuanian Nobility during the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century, Arturas Vasiliauskas
4. Civic Resistance and Cohesion in the Towns of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the Polish-Muscovite War of 1654-1667, Barbara M. Pendzich

PART II. THE COMMONWEALTH OF MANY NATIONS AND FAITHS
5. Identity Formation in the Early Modern Polish Commonwealth, Gershon Hundert
6. Political and Religious Tensions in the Late Eighteenth-Century Ruthenian-Russian Borderlands, Barbara Skinner
7. Commonwealth of All Faiths: Republican Myth and the Italian Diaspora in Sixteenth-Century Poland-Lithuania, Joanna Kostylo

PART III. NOTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP: THE EUROPEAN COMPARATIVE DIMENSION
8. ‘County Republicans’ and the Concept of Active Citizenship in Sixteenth-Century Poland and France, James B. Collins
9. Comparative Commonwealths: Poland and Scotland in the Seventeenth Century, Allan Macinnes
10. Freedom, State and ‘National Unity’ in Lord Acton's Thought, Krzysztof Lazarski

Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Karin Friedrich, Ph.D. (Georgetown University, 1995), Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Aberdeen. Author of The Other Prussia. Poland, Prussia and Liberty 1569-1772 (CUP 2000).

Barbara Pendzich, Ph.D. (Georgetown University,1998), doctorate on the reaction of various social groups in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the Polish-Muscovite war of 1654.