Eighteenth-Century Poland Research Articles

Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade Across Languages, Cultures, and Media ed. by Jakub Lipski, and: Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years ed. by Andreas K. E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley

Reviewed by: Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade Across Languages, Cultures, and Media ed. by Jakub Lipski, and: Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years ed. by Andreas K. E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley Andrew O'Malley Jakub Lipski, ed., Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade Across Languages, Cultures, and Media (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell Univ. Press, 2020). Pp. 212. $34.95 paper, $120.00 cloth. Andreas K. E. Mueller and Glynis Ridley, eds., Robinson Crusoe after 300 Years (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell Univ. Press) 2021. Pp. 234; 22 b/w and 7 color illus. $42.50 paper, $150.00 cloth. The 2019 tricentenary of the publication of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (and of its sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe) has understandably seen renewed interest in Defoe's most famous literary creation. As has often been noted, it is hard to overstate the extent of Robinson Crusoe's cultural impact; so embedded in the popular psyche are aspects of the story that the image of a person on a desert island, or of a footprint in the sand, universally evokes it. Two recent volumes of essays from Bucknell University Press offer convincing reminders of Crusoe's remarkable, transmedial legacy and continued cultural relevance. Rewriting Crusoe: The Robinsonade Across Languages, Cultures, and Media, edited by Jakub Lipski, concerns itself primarily, as the title suggests, with the protean genre to which Defoe's novel quickly gave rise: "Our main concern here then is studying the Robinsonade as a genre in a constant state of becoming, transcending, as it were, any formal restrictions one might impose on it" (1). Examples of this genre began appearing within a few years of Robinson Crusoe's initial publication; the term itself was coined by the German author, Johann Gottfried Schnabel, to describe his own island shipwreck narrative, Die Insel Felsenburg (1731). Since that time, the island castaway narrative has been adapted to virtually every imaginable category of reader, and has migrated across an incredibly wide range of media: theatrical productions, film, comic books, toys, games, and innumerable commercial enterprises and consumer goods. The collection's first of [End Page 313] four sections, "Exploring and Transcending the Genre," appropriately offers two very strong essays that bookend the literary Robinsonade's history to date. Rivka Swenson's chapter looks back to one of the earliest and most successful examples of the genre, Peter Longueville's The Hermit (1727), and is followed by Patrick Gill's study of recent postmodern examples. Swenson's revisiting of Longueville's entertaining, imaginative but understudied novel persuasively considers its repeatedly referenced eating, food preparation, and pickling—"the act of preserving and transforming" (12)—as a metaphor for narrative world-building practices in the period's fiction. Noting insightfully that Robinson Crusoe serves as "the perfect sandbox setting" (24), offering endless narrative possibilities, Gill's study considers the original novel with Muriel Spark's Robinson (1958), J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986), and Yann Martel's Life of Pi (2001) using the philosophical thought experiment of the "counterfactual" to explore the poetics of the genre. Chapters in the second section, "National Contexts," turn to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century expansion of the Robinsonade into other European national literatures. Przemysław Uściński, in his nuanced study of The Female American (1767), attempts to complicate the colonial legacy of the Robinsonade by invoking Homi Bhabha's idea of a "third space" that troubles "the fixity of any cultural identity" (50). Employing, unusually for an eighteenth-century Robinsonade, a "biracial female missionary as proxy for colonialist power," The Female American raises but ultimately sidesteps "historically urgent questions about justice, agency, and accountability" (50). Editor Jakub Lipski provides a fascinating account of Robinson Crusoe's reception and its role in the rise to prominence of the novel in the literary culture of eighteenth-century Poland. While I was aware that Robinson Crusoe was translated fairly quickly into many European languages (and eventually into virtually every written language, even Esperanto), Lipski's intriguing history of how both its Polish translation and Ignacy Krasicki's Defoeinspired The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom helped change national literary tastes was a revelation to me. The remaining two chapters...

Enlightenment and Linseed Oil: Conflicts over Fasting Rigour in Eighteenth-Century Poland–Lithuania

Enlightenment and Linseed Oil: Conflicts over Fasting Rigour in Eighteenth-Century Poland–Lithuania

Famines in the manorial economy of eighteenth-century Poland

AbstractOn the basis of eight available terriers of a large royal estate of Niepołomice in southern Poland and of the vital records of two parishes located on its area, all dating from the early eighteenth century, this article examines the effect of famines on the economic situation of both feudal lords and their peasant tenants. The restrictive framework of the second serfdom in Poland did not prevent two severe mortality crises at the time triggered by crop failures. The key hazards caused by the famines for demesne economy were shortages of corvée labour and peasant-owned draught animals. While the famine mortality that affected the peasants reported as farmers in the terriers was not high, the famines were conducive to peasant impoverishment and reshuffled groups of various financial statuses.

The Motif of the ‘Bloodbath of Toruń’ in Voltairean Writings Concerning the Dissident Question of 1767/68 and the First Partition of Poland

The ‘Tumult of Toruń’ of 1724, which resulted in the sentencing to death of the mayor and a dozen or so townsmen (the so-called ‘bloodbath’ or ‘bloody court’), brought about a veritable deluge of publications. It has become widely accepted in literature that these writings fundamentally impacted the development in Western public opinion of the notion that eighteenth-century Poland was an intolerant country. In 1767–71, Voltaire placed his pen at the service of the Russian empress, and his propaganda texts provided support for the diplomatic and military offensive of the court of Saint Petersburg in Poland. One of the more significant themes that appeared in the papers commissioned by the Russians and also in the philosopher’s correspondence was that of the ‘Tumult of Toruń’ of July 1724 and the death sentences that were passed against the city’s mayor and a dozen or so townspeople.

The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska

Reviewed by: The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska April Spisak Jasinska, Alicia The Midnight Girls. Sourcebooks Fire, 2021 [352p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781728210018 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781728210025 $17.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 9-12 In this folkloric fantasy, two girls vying for the literal heart of a prince (as in, they each want to be the first to rip it out and present it to their respective mentors) discover that they could be much more powerful and happy if they were friends and even lovers rather than enemies. Karnawał is in full swing, and Zosia and Marynka are both pretending to want to be part of the festivities, faking giggles and trying to get near the prince along with other eligible girls—though of course Zosia and Marynka are a bit different in their ablity to magically transform and enact violence in an instant. The alternating narration allows for nuanced characterization, as Marynka, driven to please the cruel and demanding Red Jaga who imbued her with her powers, focuses all of her actions on avoiding punishment, [End Page 97] while the much more ambitious Zosia recklessly and forcefully moves through life ready to grab anything she can take for herself. Where they converge, and the true strength of this novel, is love. Each sees something in the other that is both healing and challenging to their own damage and world views, and their romance is steamy and believable. Inspired by eighteenth-century Poland, the setting makes an intriguing backdrop to the story of two girls who discover that true power rests in alliances, whether witchy or romantic. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

From rediscovered “niche” to “mainstream” – Glyceria fluitans as a candidate grain for manufacturing premium food products

From rediscovered “niche” to “mainstream” – <i>Glyceria fluitans</i> as a candidate grain for manufacturing premium food products

„Mimo tak wielkiej płci naszej zalety, my rządzim światem, a nami kobiety”. Męski i kobiecy punkt widzenia w poezji oświeceniowej

“Despite such great virtues of our sex, we rule the world but we are ruled by women.” The male and female points of view in Enlightenment poetryThe article, the title of which includes Ignacy Krasicki’s aphorism “Despite such great virtues of our sex, we rule the world but we are ruled by women.”, deals with a different — from the one assumed by the traditional Enlightenment poetics — view on poetry, seen not only from the male, but also from the female point of view. As part of apreliminary investigation of Enlightenment writings from agender perspective, the author discusses two poems presenting very different views on literary oeuvres of women.The analysed texts constitute acontribution to the discussion about the place of women’s poet­ry in the deeply patriarchal society of eighteenth-century Poland. Anna Chreptowicz’s piece shows that awoman, in addition to being a wife and amother — an image firmly rooted in the Church and society — is also capable of writing poetry. She also stands up to the patriarchal moral system of her time, asystem that favoured male superiority and domination, as is expressed in the piece by her opponent in the discussion, Andrzej Chreptowicz.Both eighteenth-century texts presented here demonstrate that in such apatriarchal society, in which writers were predominantly men, there was nevertheless room for poetry written by women, who sought to the change the perception of the world, hitherto seen only from the perspective of patriarchal domination. Anna Chreptowicz’s poem is one of the first attempts in Poland to oppose such patriarchal views.

Poland and Lithuania, 1385–1569

Research Article| October 01 2017 Poland and Lithuania, 1385–1569 Robert Frost, The Oxford History of Poland-Lithuania. Volume I: The Making of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, 1385–1569, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015), 528 pp. ISBN 978-0198208693. Barbara Skinner Barbara Skinner Indiana State University Barbara Skinner is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Indiana State University. Her monograph, The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (Northern Illinois University Press, 2009), investigates the religious dynamics and tensions in Ukrainians and Belarus over the eighteenth century and during the partitions of Poland, with an eye on shifting cultural and political influences. She is currently working on the sequel to that work, taking the narrative through 1855, and she continues to publish related articles on confessional history in Russia and the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including in Slavic Review, Russian Review, and Kyiv’ska Akademiia. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Polish Review (2017) 62 (3): 91–98. https://doi.org/10.5406/polishreview.62.3.0091 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Barbara Skinner; Poland and Lithuania, 1385–1569. The Polish Review 1 October 2017; 62 (3): 91–98. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/polishreview.62.3.0091 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe Polish Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Jędrzej Kitowicz and his Description of Eighteenth-Century Polish Culture: An Introduction and Three Translated Excerpts

Abstract Father Jędrzej Kitowicz (1728–1804) bequeathed to posterity two major works, Opis obyczajów za panowania Augusta III (Description of Customs During the Reign of August III) and Pamiętniki czyli historia polska (Memoirs, or a History of Poland), the first being a colorful depiction of customs during the middle of the eighteenth century under the reign of the last elected Saxon king, August III (reigned 1734–1763). Despite his Description’s indubitable literary merits, not to mention its sheer entertainment value, Kitowicz is barely known today except among Polish eighteenth-century historians and specialists in earlier Polish writing, and is rarely given more than a short paragraph or footnote in surveys of the country’s literature and culture. After a brief recounting of Father Kitowicz’s life, and a similarly brief literary appreciation of his work, three translated excerpts from the Description are appended, aimed at bringing this keen-eyed observer of his times, without a doubt one of eighteenth-century Poland’s greatest humorists, to the notice of an English-speaking readership.

A stem-family society without the stem-family ideology? The case of eighteenth-century Poland

This paper mobilizes historical census microdata and quantitative methods to answer a seemingly qualitative question of whether the stem-family organization, profoundly described in sociological and anthropological literature, existed in historical western Poland. The paper’s narrative takes a threefold argumentation format, each step relying on different methodologies. First, using household registers data and basic tools of historical demography we come to the point where a conjectural hypothesis of stem-family prevalence in the territories in question seems to be necessarily rejected. However, the vivid prevalence of the stem family is brought back to the fore in the second step, when empirical data are combined with more sophisticated statistical tools (computer microsimulation of kin sets). Finally, the latter observation is problematized in light of the historical contextual information, which altogether makes the incidence of stem-family organization in the region unthinkable given the existing socio-cultural and political-economic framework. We close with a contemplation of the limits of quantitative approaches to concerns over historical family systems, and with a discussion of the extent to which – given this apparent conundrum – our findings may illuminate existing models of historical family systems.

Cultural Paradigm and Popular Canon. The Discourse on Nation in Nineteenth-Century Music of Slavic Mitteleuropa

The national identity of Slavic Mitteleuropa is examined by means of a new approach to different cultural paradigms, namely the historical events out of which the popular canon in music flourished at the end of eighteenth-century Poland and in nineteenth-century Bohemia, Slovenia and Croatia. This phenomenon must be analysed within a framework in which cosmopolitism and nationalism co-existed in a mix of functional and autonomous music, superseding the boundaries of subordination, adaptation and autonomy.

Mecenat muzyczny Radziwiłłów w XVIII wieku – od Karola Stanisława do Karola Stanisława „Panie Kochanku” Radziwiłła

Support for musical and theatrical activities by the Nesvizh line of the Radziwill family in the eighteenth century merits attention because of the innovative solutions and high artistic level of the music production. Within the context of royal court theatre, the princes created thriving cultural centres within their residences. For example, the first stages and free-standing theatre buildings were built (Slutsk, Biała), one of the first Polish operas was played at the court of Karol Stanisław (1784), and the first professional ballet group consisting solely of Polish dancers was developed in Slutsk (1756). The princes acquired musical instruments that were both modern and of good quality (by contemporary standards) for their courts. We can also observe that significant eff ort was made by the princes to attract good performers, though the same eff ort was not made to recruit worldfamous composers. Less positive observations of patronage of the arts by the Radziwill family would include the low level of support provided to the careers of the artists, as well as the failure to amass a collection of quality music that would provide evidence of the patrons’ refi ned tastes. The Radziwill family failed to create centres of music to do justice to the courts’ size and the ambitions that the royal families professed to have. Their courts’ attempts lagged far behind the ambitious cultural projects realised by the fi nest aristocratic centres in Western Europe. It is clear that the main reasons for this stem from the family’s intellectual shallowness in the eighteenthcentury, though another reason could be the lack of tradition and social acceptance in Poland at the time for the nobility to engage in musical aff airs. Despite this the continuity of the Radziwill family’s patronage of the arts is worth noting, because there are few similar examples in eighteenth-century Poland. We know of interesting and comparable artistic projects within the courts of J.K. Branicki, M.K. Ogiński or A. Tyzenhauz, but these activities had no successors, while the continuity of musical patronage observed within the courts of Rzewuski, Lubomirski or Sapieha families, did not have the scale of the Radziwill eff orts.

Residence Patterns and Demographic Constraints

This article provides an account of how demographic conditions have shaped co-coresidence patterns in historic Eastern Europe. Census microdata from eighteenth-century Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine are confronted with the computer microsimulation of kin sets to show how the combined effects of fertility, marriage, and mortality influenced the availability of kin for coresidence. The enactment of demographic constraints on residential chances is illustrated by exploring two issues central to historical demographic interest: leaving home and intergenerational coresidence. This article closes with an agenda for comparative studies of historical household systems that takes demographic constraints on coresidence more seriously into account.

BARBARA SKINNER. The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

The use of a military metaphor in the title of this book is quite apt for a study of a region whose cultural identity was shaped by its borderland position between the realms of Eastern and Western Christianity, whose rivalry led to the emergence of the Uniate Church, which is Eastern in rite and Catholic in doctrine. Barbara Skinner fills a gap in the literature by focusing on the eighteenth century, the period when the Uniate Church emerged as a confessional identity shared by some four million Ruthenians. Skinner describes the emergence of the Uniate faith following the Union of Brest in 1595–1596 as a result of the Reformation, which created new divisions not only within Western Christendom but also within the Eastern Church. The upheavals between 1648 and 1721 and the Russian presence in Right-bank Ukraine destabilized religious identities, as parishes changed their affiliation from Uniate to Orthodox and back several times. Despite their original intention to keep the Eastern rite, the Uniates eventually parted with the iconostasis, worshiped the new saints, started to use confessional booths, organs, and altar bells, and edited liturgical books to conform with the practice and doctrine of Rome. The Uniate clergy that received Catholic training promoted moral teaching that conformed with Western social values and differed from Orthodox theology. By the Synod of Zamość in 1720, the Uniate Church had managed to forge a distinct confessional identity.

The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. By Barbara Skinner. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009. 270 pp. $42.00 cloth.

The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. By Barbara Skinner. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009. 270 pp. $42.00 cloth. - Volume 80 Issue 4

‘In the Land of their Enemies’? The Duality of Jewish Life in Eighteenth-Century Poland

‘In the Land of their Enemies’? The Duality of Jewish Life in Eighteenth-Century Poland

Political Ideas among the Polish Nobility in the Eighteenth Century (To 1788)

THTvE SLAVONC1\1C AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW Volume 82, Number I January 2004 Political Ideas Among the Polish Nobility in the Eighteenth Century (to I 788) JERZY LUKOWSKI REPORTING on the collapse of yet another Polish Parliament in the autumn of 1729, the English minister George Woodwardobserved:'I am glad I was here in time to see the hurlyburly,for I do believe there is nothing in ye whole worldlikeit [.. .] 'Tiscertainwe hada mostextraordinary sceneat Grodno,whichI shall rememberas long as I live. Travellers maytalk,but thosethathavenot seen a PolishDyet can'thavean ideaof it;I do believeit to be beyond anythingin the world.One may very well say that confusionis there expressed tothelife.' In a sermon preached three years later, in September 1732, at the inaugurationof the Sejm, canon StanislawSienie'nskiclearlyagreed 'it to be beyond anythingin the world',though froma somewhatdifferent perspective.He compared the parliamentto the Holy Trinity,likening the king,Augustus11(i 697- I733), to God the Father,the lower house, or Chamber of Envoys, to God the Son and the upper house, the Senate, to the Holy Spirit. The breakdownof the previous two Sejmy only served to inspire the good canon's magniloquent rhetoric, as he enhanced his analogy by calling on the Crucifixionand the Resurrection .2 The Polish godhead remained stubbornlyentombed. The Sejm Jerzy Lukowski is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern History at the University of Birmingham. ' Woodward to George Tilson, undersecretary of state at the Northern Office, i and 28 September 1729. Public Record Office, State Papers 88/35 [unpaginated]. 2 St B. N. Sienieniski, Dzie1ona wuyobrateniey podobieuistwo BOGA, SgymKorony Polskiey.... WVarsaw,1733 [unpaginated]. A similar analogy was made by W. WCgierski, Classicum JI4Holnosci Po/skiej wQ ruinieOjczyzny.. ., n. pl., 1703 [unpaginated]. 2 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POLISH POLITICAL IDEAS ended amid procedural wrangles even before debates had properly begun. Eighteenth-century Poland was an object of bewilderment, if not contempt, to outside observers. The French philosophe and natural scientist,Charlesde LaCondamine(I 701-74), summedupaswellas anyone the prevailingview, when he asserted,in I760, 'Le gouvernement de Pologne, sa constitution, sa maniere de faire les 6lections, de tenir les Dietes, est si absurdequ'elle ne peut subsister'.3On the other hand, the loudly and continuouslyvoiced rhetoricof the Polishnobility about citizen rights and responsibilities,their mistrustof royal power, their attachment to liberty and equality could also be used to criticize the seemingly inexorable trend to ever-growing monarchic power in continental Europe, as the marquis de Jaucourt did in his article 'Pologne' in the Engcjclop&die.4 But overall, European opinion was hostile, agreeing with Montesquieu that 'the independence of each individual is the purpose of the laws of Poland, and what resultsfrom this is the oppression of all'.5There was to be no shortage of feeling that the Poles had largely brought the First Partition of I772 on themselves. They could certainly not complain of any lack of advice, particularly from the French, on how to repair their numerous deficiencies. As for warnings that the Polish-Lithuanian state was doomed to collapse and partition, these were almost as old as the Commonwealth itself.6 The valuesespousedby Poland'spoliticalculturehad to be palatable to a broad majorityof (at any one time) between 15o,ooo and 200,000 adult males of the Polish nobility, the szlachta (there were also some extremely powerful and influential females whom it was wise not to Quoted in J. Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatoweski et l'Europedes Lumieres,Paris, I95>2 (hereafter, Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski), p. 84. 4 'Pologne', Enc)clopedie ouDictionnaire raisonnee dessciences, desarts,etdesmetiers f. . AIls en ordre etpubliepar.A/.Diderot[.. . et lM. d'Alembert, 17 vols, Paris, 175 I -65, 12, pp. 924--25. 3 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, TheSpiritoftheLaws,trans. and ed. A. M. Cohler, B. C. Miller and H. S. Stone, Cambridge, I989, p. I56. See also the comments by J. A. Gierowski, 'Rozklad panistwowosci szlacheckiej wvczasach saskich', in T. Chynczewska -Hennel et al. (eds), Alifdzy wschodem a zachodem.Reczpospolita XVI-XVIII w. Studia ofiarowane Zbignieewowi 4dojcikowi w siedemdziesiqt(l roczniciurodzin, WVarsaw, 1993, p. i88. 6 'Tout emissaire des lumieres en Pologne croirait manquer a sa vocation, s'il n'apportait avec lui son plan pour l'abolition du...

Jewish conversions to Catholicism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Weakened by the religious challenges of the Protestant Reformation, the early modern Catholic Church sought "stability and reassurance."1 One way it did so was through "tales of individual Jewish conversions," which went hand in hand with aggressive conversionary efforts. In Rome, these efforts began in the sixteenth century, through the burning of the Talmud and through the pressure exerted by ghetto life. In 1584, Gregory XIII ordered Roman Jews to submit to forced preaching.2 This process repeated itself in the mid-eighteenth century, especially under Pope Benedict XIV. But the motives this time were different. Rather than battling disintegrating Catholic unity, as it did in the sixteenth century, the eighteenth century papacy was responding to religious and political chal lenges that accompanied the rise of anti-clericalism, secularism, and demands for religious tolerance.3 Similar, albeit perhaps more subtle, attempts to con vert Jews, complemented by tales and polemics decrying Jewish error and telling of conversionary miracles, were also known in late seventeenth and eighteenth century Poland. Yet contrastingly, the eighteenth century Polish Church and its clergy were reacting to stimuli similar to those the Church in Rome had reacted to over a century and a half before. As in so many other areas of "modernization," in the matter of policy, and attitudes, toward Jews, Poland once again lagged behind, its Church still embroiled in pre-modern religious and political conflicts and still responding to the aftershocks of early modern religious crises and wars, including those involving Protestants, Muslims and the Eastern Orthodox.4 Seeking to buttress itself and to enhance its weakened authority, and perhaps even more its weakened prestige in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Polish clergy resorted to mission and to glorifying narrative of the kind that would show, as was so often said in sixteenth century Rome, that truly, there was only "one flock and one pastor."5 Battling non-Catholics and unruly secular leadership created a sense of purpose. More importantly, it reassured. Admittedly, neither efforts to convert Jews in Poland, nor the results, were spectacular. Still, materials from numerous Church archives point to a steady, if limited, influx of converts to Catholicism not only from Judaism, but also

Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Poland: The Constitution of 3 May 1791, edited by Samuel Fiszman

<i>Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Poland: The Constitution of 3 May 1791</i>, edited by Samuel Fiszman

Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Poland: The Constitution of 3 May 1791

In the late 18th century, Poland was one of three countries, along with the United States and France, to adopt a constitution. Although short lived, the Polish Constitution of 3 May 1791 was acknowledged as a milestone by republican thinkers in Europe and America. This volume is the first attempt in English to provide a comprehensive view of Poland in the Age of Enlightenment at a time of political and social reform and cultural revival. Spanning a number of disciplines and perspectives, the 22 chapters in this book were commissioned from scholars from Poland, the United States, England, and Germany. Handsomely produced, the book is enriched by hundreds of contemporary illustrations, engravings, and maps. In addition to its focus on the Constitution of 3 May 1791 and the Polish movement for political reform, the book documents the history of Polish parliamentarism and the connection between the American, Polish, and French ideas of a democratic state at the end of the 18th century.