Butterwick , Richard The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733–1795: Light and Flame (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 765 Theresa, the vampire craze of the early eighteenth century, to Franz Joseph’s electric cigar lighter. Rady enlivens the text with telling anecdotes and effective quotations that humanize his subjects and help create a work that holds the reader’s attention. That reader would do well to have some familiarity with general European history, not only because the Habsburg dynasty is so intimately involved in so much of it, but also because Rady has chosen to keep his focus on the dynasty and its representatives. As a result, the major challenges and influences the Habsburgs faced — whether the Protestant Reformation, the Thirty Years War, the Enlightenment, the rise of modern nationalism, or something else — receive attention primarily insofar as the Habsburgs had to cope with them. That said, Rady creates a fascinating series of portraits reminiscent of the Heraldic Wall of St George’s Church in Wiener Neustadt mentioned in the text, or the panoply of portraits of illustrious ancestors on the walls of a castle gallery. In their cumulative impact, these portraits provide an insightful panorama of European and even global history as refracted through the prism of this famous dynasty. The family’s legacy may still be noticed throughout much of Europe, Central and South America, the Philippines and even Taiwan, but it is perhaps most strongly present in Central Europe. There the horrors of the twentieth century have tended to cast a nostalgic glow over memories of the Habsburg centuries, since what came after was so much worse. It may be damning with faint praise that Rady’s final evaluation of the Habsburgs, viewed in the shadow of the depressing developments of recent decades in Central Europe, is to agree with a Hungarian colleague, that ‘a Habsburg would have done no worse’ (p. 329). History Department Hugh L. Agnew George Washington University Butterwick, Richard. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733–1795: Light and Flame. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2020. xxiii + 482 pp. Maps. Glossary. Gazetteer. Notes. Further reading. Index.£30.00. Richard Butterwick’s The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: 1733–1795 offers an important new narrative synthesis of eighteenth-century Polish history, which notably integrates into the story Butterwick’s own recent research on religion and politics, published in 2012 as The Polish Revolution and the Catholic Church, 1788–1792. The current volume could have been styled as ‘The End of the Commonwealth’ or ‘The Age of Stanisław August’, as the SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 766 reign of Poland’s last king occupies some three-quarters of the book, and roughly half the book is dedicated to the short but politically crucial period from the opening of the Four-Year Sejm in 1788 to the Kościuszko insurrection in 1794 and the final partition of Poland in 1795. Politics and religion lie at the centre of Butterwick’s discussion, and the tensions between monarchism and republicanism are traced through the period with particular attention to the problem of their reconciliation in the Constitution of 3 May 1791. The analysis of the Four-Year Sejm stresses ‘the turn from hard-line noble republicanism towards limited parliamentary monarchy’ (p. 208). While the intervention and domination of foreign powers is obviously crucial for the period of the partitions, Butterwick studies the complex political functioning of the Stanislavian state as important in its own right, in spite of compromised sovereignty and imminent collapse. He probes the efforts of Stanisław August to reform the Polish state, while also exploring other dimensions of the reign: from the avoidance of national costume at the coronation, to the manifestations of the king’s artistic and architectural vision, to the humiliating circumstances of his abdication in the context of the final partition. Butterwick follows not only the parliamentary convocation of the Sejm at regular intervals during this period, but also the more intricate concerns of the ‘sejmiki’, the local dietines — important institutions of Polish-Lithuanian republicanism — that preceded and chose representatives for the Sejm. He offers interesting insight into the opposition to Stanisław August, following figures such as the Grand Hetman Franciszek Branicki whose strategic advocacy of republicanism against the crown also intersected with his Russian connection as...