A Republic of Nobles: Studies in Polish History to 1864

Portada
J. K. Fedorowicz, Maria Bogucka, Henry Samsonowicz
CUP Archive, 12 d’ag. 1982 - 293 pàgines
Poland continues to be a puzzle for the West, partly because its history remains unfamiliar. Recently, however, the country has produced a number of excellent historians whose work is highly esteemed by specialists but has not yet penetrated to the general reader. The present collection of studies by thirteen of Poland's leading historians will acquaint the layman with the basic issues of Poland's historical evolution, and offer specialists radical reinterpretations of some of those issues. It is intended both as an overview of recent trends in Polish historiography and as a summary of Polish history from its origins to the mid-nineteenth century. Historically, Poland represented the great exception to the emergence of centralized bureaucracy in Europe. The Polish Commonwealth became a fully elective monarchy which extended the franchise and citizenship rights to almost 10 per cent of its population, thereby making the state a unique example of gentry democracy. The nobility played a role in Polish history unlike that of any comparable class everywhere in Europe, and this unique phenomenon serves as a thread unifying the various themes in these studies of a 'republic of nobles.' -- from dust jacket.
 

Continguts

Poland and the cultural geography of medieval Europe
10
the thirteenthcentury breakthrough in Polish
28
Polish politics and society under the Jagiellonian monarchy
49
Sixteenthcentury Poland and the turning point in European
70
an essay
91
The structure of power in the Commonwealth of the sixteenth
109
Polish towns between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries
135
The arts and social prestige in Poland between the sixteenth
153
The Polish art of war in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
179
The fate of Polish Protestantism in the seventeenth century
198
The international position of Poland in the seventeenth
218
The place of the Enlightenment in Polish social history
239
The direction of political change in the era of national insurrection
258
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