Performative Politics and Civic Dilemmas in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

In the modern, post-Enlightenment state, the private pursuit of wealth supposedly exists in harmony with civic duties, but the classical republican theory that served as the chief frame of reference for citizens of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth held that private interests undermine concern for the common good. Wealthy political actors had to carefully represent their actions as patriotic and selfless concern for the general welfare in order to retain the political capital and respect necessary to remain in public life. Whether lobbying for lucrative sinecures, farming out revenues to Jewish intermediaries, or conducting private diplomacy with foreign rulers, nobles had to present their actions as fulfilling the common good, serving the body politic, or supporting the Catholic Church. Earlier generations of scholars assumed the existence of a non-personal state and tended to evaluate the so-called magnates’ actions as selfish and potentially treasonous from this perspective. The Commonwealth, though, was not a state but a decentralized body politic with a non-hierarchical constellation of authorities, and the assumption of a state leads to a misreading of the motivations and pressures faced by historical actors. These three papers attempt to understand the dilemmas confronted by wealthy, politically-active nobles within the socio-political and intellectual context of pre-modern Europe.

Sub Unit

• Early Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, to 1800

Chair

• Andrzej S. Kaminski, Georgetown U

Papers

• Who Deserved the Republic’s Bread?: Defining the Border between Public and Private in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - Robert Ian Frost, U of Aberdeen (UK)

• Entrepreneurs, Guarantors of Religious Peace, and Pious Catholics: The Town Lords of Rzeszów during the 17th and 18th Centuries - Yvonne Kleinmann, Martin Luther U of Halle-Wittenberg (Germany)

• Princeps Inter Pares: The Radziwiłłs and their 'Principality of Nieśwież' Between the Polish Nobility and the Russian Empire - Curtis G. Murphy, Nazarbayev U (Kazakhstan)

Discussant

• Karin Friedrich, U of Aberdeen (UK)