Category Archives: democracy

by Joel | 13 August 2025 · 3:03 am

U.S. Aid for Ireland, 1847

From The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America, by Edward Laxton (St. Martins, 2024), Kindle pp. 54-56:

No fewer than 5,000 crossings are estimated to have carried the million Irish Famine emigrants westwards over the Atlantic. Yet a single passage in the opposite direction has achieved great significance historically. This was the voyage of the Jamestown, a well-armed man-of-war and one of only six sloops in the American navy, transformed overnight into a merchant vessel on a mission of mercy.

The winter months of 1846 right through to the following spring were bitterly cold, with unusually heavy snowfalls, and the full extent of the suffering in Ireland, especially during the early months of 1847, was never fully or widely appreciated around the world, especially in England where the plight of the Irish achieved neither recognition nor sympathy. The greatest help came from the United States: the recent emigrant arrivals carried the news with them and each one had a personal story which bore testimony to the hopeless situation in every corner of their homeland. Months before the first of the coffin ships sailed, a wave of relief organizations and meetings broke across America. Ships from Newark, Philadelphia and New York sailed before the spring arrived for Cork, Londonderry and Limerick, carrying some clothing but mostly food.

The Quakers Society of Friends were the first large-scale organizers of relief for Ireland, and when the American Vice-President chaired a huge public meeting in Washington on February 9th, they urged that every city, town and village should hold a meeting so that a large national contribution might be raised and forwarded with all practicable dispatch to the scenes of the suffering. Just before that meeting, the government in London announced they would pay the freight charges on all donations of foodstuffs to Ireland.

Washington matched this by stating that no tolls would be charged on roads or canals for goods on their way to Ireland, and several independent railway companies promised to carry suitably labelled packages for free. Cash came in from all sides, including a noteworthy contribution of US $170 dollars from the Choctaw Indian Tribe. Suddenly, available shipping for the eastern crossing of the Atlantic became scarce, and another crowded February meeting, this time in Boston, heard that Congress had been petitioned that one of the ships of war now lying in Boston Harbour, be released to sail for Ireland freighted with provisions.

Reaction in the capital was swift. We need to remember that at this time America was heavily engaged in war against Mexico. Congress voted on March 8th that the USS Jamestown in Boston and the USS Macedonian in New York be released from service, their armaments removed and assigned to the Irish Relief Committee in each city who would arrange for a civilian captain and crew to sail these ships to Ireland with relief supplies.

Three weeks later, the Jamestown set sail. The sloop, which was 157 feet long, 1,000 tons and normally carried 22 guns, was now commanded by Captain Robert Bennet Forbes, a well-known Bostonian. By May 16th he was back home, fully a month before the Macedonian, a frigate of 1,700 tons with 44 guns and buffeted by all sorts of political problems, could leave New York.

Loading had begun in Boston on St Patrick’s Day; the Labourers’ Aid Society composed almost entirely of native Irishmen, stowed all the cargo without drawing pay. If the departure of the Jamestown was seen as such a triumph in America, imagine how she was greeted as she dropped anchor after a voyage of only 15 days in the harbour of Cove, close to Cork City.

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Filed under Britain, democracy, disease, food, labor, Mexico, migration, military, nationalism, U.S.

by Joel | 8 August 2025 · 6:27 am

I came across two striking Polish acronyms in the last chapter of the history book I just finished reading: Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014).

ZSRR = Związek Socjalistycznych Republik Radzieckich, lit. Union of Socialist Republics Soviet (abbr. Związek Radziecki, Union Soviet),
also ZSRS = Związek Socjalistycznych Republik Sowieckich (abbr. Związek Sowiecki, Union Soviet)

ZOMO = Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej, lit. Motorized Reserves of the Militia of Citizens. These were the troops who broke up large public demonstrations against the regime from the 1950s through the 1980s. They were disbanded in September 1989, after the election of June 4, 1989, a day of glory in Poland (and of infamy in China).

Another linguistic tidbit from the last chapter (p. 630) is Nie ma wolności bez Solidarności! lit. Not have freedom without Solidarity!

The Far Outliers will be heading for Poland next month.

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by Joel | 5 August 2025 · 7:53 am

Piecing Poland Back Together, 1920s

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 553-555:

The first task facing the new state was to recover from the devastation of the war, which had been enormous. Much of the infrastructure of the country had to be rebuilt from scratch. Industry needed to be developed, as there was huge unemployment. And agriculture, which had been disrupted and ravaged by the war, needed to be put back on its feet. The country was impoverished; it was also experiencing a food crisis. To boot, some four hundred thousand Poles had died fighting in the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian armies during World War I, which meant a depletion of the best patriotic forces.

Another enormous challenge concerned the knitting together of disparate pieces of territory and peoples who had experience of very different imperial regimes—different legal systems, educational systems, forms of national and local governance, and the like. The enormity of the physical task of bringing together the previously partitioned lands, after 123 years of belonging to states other than Poland, was reflected in the network of railways. The railways all led to the imperial hubs, thus being a centrifugal not a unifying force. New railway branches had to be added to facilitate travel to the capital of Warsaw as well as to cross the breadth and length of the state. Even today one still notes a particular denseness of railway lines in the west (the former Germany), light coverage in the east, and the south best served by the Galician west–east line connecting Kraków with Lviv and beyond.

Those businesses that were able to resume operation relatively quickly now faced a different domestic market. No longer were they able to export to Berlin, Vienna, or Saint Petersburg. And if they had relied in part on inputs available elsewhere in those empires, they would need to find new suppliers within the borders of the new state. The country experienced a painful bout of hyperinflation in 1923: at one point, one U.S. dollar was worth 20 million Polish marks. The replacement of the mark by the zloty in the spring of 1924 and the concomitant currency correction essentially wiped out the savings of the country’s middle class. This did not augur well for the economic well-being of the citizens of the young Polish state.

As the history of partition suggests, not all Polish citizens were equally prepared for national independence. Regionalism became pronounced, as inhabitants felt they had more in common with those who came from their partitioned zone than with those from other partitioned zones. Few had any real experience of self-rule, making Galicians the most likely candidates to move to the new capital, Warsaw, to help run the new government. This in turn rendered Lviv, the former capital of Galicia, a remote provincial backwater. At the same time, there must have been a clash of cultures in the new Polish capital. The earlier inhabitants of Warsaw (as we have seen) had a very unpleasant experience in the elections to the Russian State Duma. Would these experiences carry over to Polish politics in an ostensibly Polish state?

Indeed, few Poles knew what to expect from the new Poland. In a novel by Stefan Żeromski, The Spring to Come, the reality of life in a state experiencing growing pains is brought to life. A Polish industrialist in what was then the Russian imperial port of Baku tries to interest his son (the main protagonist of the novel), who had lived his entire life outside of the homeland, in moving to Poland. The father weaves a beautiful story of Poland as a land of glass houses and does convince his son to try his luck in the new Poland. However, this useful fiction of glass houses—a place of perfection, a promised land—proved but a bubble that soon would burst. There were no glass houses. Rather, the reality of life in the young state proved challenging at best.

Of course, no one in 1924 knew what a normal nation-state was to look like, let alone how to create one in this heterogeneous part of the world. There were various ideas as to Poland’s future shape as well. Various political camps had their own visions and mobilized their constituencies to fight to turn them into reality. The Roman Catholic clergy most decidedly had its own ideas of the role the church was to play in Polish life. Peasants sought improved conditions for farming, as well as greater access to land—something that was more easily accomplished by expropriating non-Poles than by doing the same to Polish nobles.

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by Joel | 2 August 2025 · 8:57 am

Rebuilding a Polish Nation in Galicia

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 504-507:

Unlike the Hohenzollerns of Prussia/Germany or the Romanovs of Russia, the Habsburgs were Roman Catholic monarchs—and this is an important distinction. Furthermore, Habsburg piety was proverbial. All this meant that there should have been more common ground between the Poles and Austrians. At the same time, the Habsburgs had historically been the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (defunct as of 1806) and thus had a special relationship to the Germans of the rest of Europe.

As in all the partitions, the treatment of the new subjects was uneven. In the beginning, the Austrian authorities sought to civilize what they considered to be a backward land. Later, under the oppressive influence of Metternich, they sought to constrain what they thought was a revolutionary people—as witnessed in the debacle of the peasant jacquerie of 1846. (The incorporation of the Free City of Kraków into Galicia set the relatively thriving medieval capital of Poland back decades.) Metternich had seen fit to equate Polonism with revolution. Doubtless the new ruler of the Austrian Empire, Franz Joseph, felt similarly.

Only after a period of absolutism and Germanization did the tone change. This was brought about by several Austrian military defeats. The loss to the French in 1859 led to reforms at home that ultimately resulted in constitutional rule in Austria as of the early 1860s. Notably for the Poles, they were allotted their own provincial Seym as early as 1861.

The defeat of Austria by Prussia in 1866 was even more significant. The defeat forced the Habsburgs to reach a new modus vivendi with the Hungarians, who had been chafing under Habsburg rule particularly since the end of their failed revolution of 1848–1849. In 1867, the two parties reached the famous compromise that led to the establishment of the Dual Monarchy. Henceforth, the country would be known as Austria-Hungary.

That the Habsburgs had been compelled to make concessions to one of their subject peoples was a fact not lost on the Poles. Already the failure of the January Insurrection under Russian rule led some important Galicians to reconsider their approach to the Habsburg monarchy. A new and influential group known as the Kraków Conservatives resolved to be loyal to the Habsburgs. Although initially skeptical, after several years the Polish elites of Galicia were won over to this idea. Even the defeat of Austria at the hands of Prussia did not shake their belief in the monarchy.

…

These developments led to a third, and most fruitful, phase for the Galician Poles. Unlike the disgruntled Czechs of Bohemia, Poles decided to participate in the Reichsrat or imperial council, a two-chambered parliament in Vienna. Polish elites sought to recast Galicia as a conciliatory, conservative, loyal province. All this boded well for the position of Poles within the Habsburg Empire. Indeed, during the Dual Monarchy, a number of Poles actually came to hold important posts in the imperial government, including that of prime minister.

Given a degree of autonomy, Galicia became a haven for the Poles—a place where Poles could be Poles while still being loyal to the Habsburg dynasty. This dual identity was facilitated by Article 19 of the Fundamental Laws, which specified that each people within the monarchy had the right to cultivate its own nationality and language. Poles, and especially the democrats who vied with the conservatives for influence within the province, availed themselves of this opportunity in various ways, including the celebrating of a series of national figures and historic anniversaries. Among the most noteworthy were the solemn reburial of the poet Adam Mickiewicz in the Wawel crypts in 1890 and the five-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald in 1910, also celebrated in Kraków. The Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski had commissioned a massive monument commemorating that great medieval battle. These large public celebrations helped to bring Poles from all three partitioned lands closer together.

Thus, in the last third of the nineteenth century, the best place to be a Pole—certainly if one wanted to be politically active—and unlike in the Prussian or German lands, politically active in Polish—was Galicia. One could breathe Polish air there—or, as was also remarked, the very stones spoke Polish. To be sure, in Vienna (in the Reichsrat) Poles used German for their interpellations. However, back in the province, in the Galician Seym, the Polish language ruled (although it should be noted that Ruthenian interpellations during the proceedings were written down, phonetically, in Latin—not Cyrillic—script). Polish nonetheless became the language of government, the language of schooling.

Galician Poles had a high degree of autonomy—all of which allowed them to school themselves in the art of governance, to work in the bureaucracy, to develop scholarly institutes and universities where Polish would be the language of instruction, and the like. They lived in a country in which they had parliamentary representation and the rule of law. This, combined with the rights of nationalities, suggests that, as of the last third of the nineteenth century, one might think of Galicia as the closest thing to a Piedmont that the Poles had (Piedmont, meaning the Italian province that initiated Italian unification in the 1860s). Could these advantages within Galicia, thus, help propel the Poles to their own unification?

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by Joel | 29 July 2025 · 5:59 am

Kościuszko in Poland

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 404-407:

The last third of the eighteenth century had initiated an increasingly painful spiral of action and reaction. Catherine’s trampling of Polish religious sensibilities led to the Confederation of Bar, which in turn resulted in the first partition. That shock propelled Poles to contemplate the series of reforms that culminated in the Constitution of May 3, 1791. The reaction to this was the Targowica Confederation and the second partition. Despite the Russian terror and intimidation, however, not all Poles were resigned to this fate.

One of these Poles was Tadeusz Kościuszko. Hailing from the region of Polesie (in the vicinity of today’s Belarus), Kościuszko was one of the poor but deserving young noblemen who received an education from the reform-minded Piarists, as well as at the Knights’ School in Warsaw. After a brief period spent in France (where he studied further) and elsewhere in western Europe, Kościuszko headed across the Atlantic in 1776. The Pole offered his services to George Washington and the Continental Congress. Kościuszko’s arrival was timely, and his services were both needed and appreciated by the Americans fighting for their independence. The Pole was given a commission and put to great use his skill as both a military engineer and a field commander. Among other things, Kościuszko fortified and defended places such as Philadelphia, Saratoga, and West Point, thus enabling these locations to withstand British attack. For his contributions to the American victory, the Polish nobleman was given United States citizenship and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the U.S. Army before returning home in 1784.

Having secured a position in the Polish army as of 1789, he fought on the side of King Stanisław in August 1792. However, upon learning the summer of 1793 that the king had acceded to the Targowica Confederation, General Kościuszko resigned his commission and left the country. France awarded him honorary citizenship. While in emigration, he was prevailed upon to return to rump Poland to lead a national insurrection.

With his eye-opening experience in America as well as Poland, Kościuszko was the right person for the job. He was convinced that the Poles had to fight a new type of war, one in which the entire citizenry rose to defend their country. In other words, he sought to mobilize the entire population of Poland—all estates, all regions. The challenge of getting burghers and peasants as well as nobles to join the fight did not escape Kościuszko. He admitted himself, “we must awaken love of our country among those who hitherto have not even known that they have a country.”

Kościuszko, thus, was a man with a mission. Although given dictatorial powers to lead the national rising, the general was not one to abuse them. This is seen from the oath he gave in Kraków on March 24, 1794, when he took control of the rising that would bear his name. Kościuszko swore he would use the dictatorial powers invested in him “only for the defense of the integrity of the frontiers, the gaining of sovereignty for the nation, and the establishment of universal freedom.” He truly was an anti-magnate.

The all-powerful military commander set about gaining support from all sectors of society. An important source of manpower had to be the numerous peasantry. While in Kraków, Kościuszko conscripted local peasants, who—given their lack of other weapons—turned their scythes into bayonets and joined the battle for Polish freedom. (A lack of arms and ammunition was a big problem for the insurrectionists.) Fighting alongside what remained of the Polish army, such peasants—it was hoped—would be the mainstay of Kościuszko’s insurrectionary forces. Having over the course of several weeks assembled an army of some four thousand regular troops and two thousand peasant scythe men, Kościuszko set north to engage the Russians in battle.

The two forces met near the village of Racławice on April 4. The Russian army was in for a surprise. The first battle of the Kościuszko Insurrection would look like nothing the Russians had ever fought. The Polish military commander employed tactics inspired by his experience in America. While the regular troops engaged the Russians, the fearless peasant scythe men raced out from behind them and toward the Russian cannons. They captured a dozen cannon and caused disarray and dismay among the Russians, who hastily retreated—if not before taking heavy losses. The Russians also left behind much-needed ammunition and arms.

Kościuszko’s secret weapon—the Polish peasant—proved decisive at the battle of Racławice. After the battle, the military commander famously ennobled several peasant scythe men, the most notable of whom was Bartosz Głowacki, for their bravery. Kościuszko also donned the traditional peasant cloak as a sign of recognition of what this new and vital part of the nation had achieved. Still, for numerous reasons this did not result in an influx of peasant scythe men. The following month, Kościuszko would issue a proclamation at Połaniec that gave the peasants personal freedom and reduced their labor dues for the duration of the insurrection. Like the potent image of peasant scythe men defending their country, the picturesque symbolism of a nobleman in peasant garb was but a first step in breaking down the barriers that had separated the two estates.

Kościuszko embraced the peasant out of conviction, not out of convenience. This, after all, was the man who had freed his own peasants upon his return to Poland and later would bequeath the property and money he had in the United States to free as many American slaves as was possible, charging his friend Thomas Jefferson to execute this, his last will and testament. Not for nothing did Jefferson famously call Kościuszko “the purest son of liberty.”

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by Joel | 28 July 2025 · 6:07 am

Poland’s Constitution of 1791

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 390-391:

The Constitution of 3 May 1791 was a portentous achievement. The shock of the partition of 1772 had led various inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Both Nations to conclude that reform was imperative. Long leery of change, the nation nonetheless had to change its priorities. As the reformer Stanisław Staszic observed and the Constitution’s preamble gently echoed, the fate of the nation had to take precedence over the Golden Freedoms; its continued existence should trump any considerations of individual comfort.

With Russia—and the Russian army—preoccupied elsewhere in 1788, the Commonwealth was able to avail itself of an unprecedented window of opportunity. The Great Seym not only provided stimulating years of dogged discussion of the country’s fate. It also enabled reform-minded national activists to flesh out a new framework—the framework that was pushed through that fateful May day in 1791.

The May 3 Constitution as Enlightenment, Polish Style

Presented as an emergency measure, Europe’s first constitution was craftily constructed. The tone of urgency that sounded in the Seym on May 3 was echoed in the preamble of the document, which declared that the new constitution was the only way to provide “for the general welfare, for the establishment [ugruntowania] of liberty, [and] for the salvation of our Fatherland and its borders.” Comprised of eleven articles, the Constitution first enumerated the country’s social framework, before elucidating the new shape of the government. In the process, centuries of native tradition were laced with innovations redolent of the Enlightenment, with elements based on the French, English, and American examples.

The innovations were seen above all in the altered nature of the government. While the will of the people was declared to provide all authority, there was no talk of a classical republic, as there had been in the sixteenth century. Rather, the focus was on the modern three powers of government: the legislative, judicial, and executive. (In this it was not unlike the U.S. Constitution, promulgated only several years earlier.) Set to meet every other year, the traditional bicameral Seym remained the locus of legislative authority. However, it would rely upon majority vote: the liberum veto and confederations were outlawed.

No less radical from the Sarmatian perspective were changes concerning the “supreme executive authority,” that of the king. There would be no more royal elections viritim. The monarchy was to become hereditary, not in the (non-existent) family of Stanisław August Poniatowski but in the Saxon Wettin dynasty. Furthermore, the king would have a small royal council (the so-called guardians of the laws)—essentially a cabinet of ministers—to aid with the execution of the laws as well as countersign the king’s actions. The competency of individual members of the royal council would extend to education, the police (here understood more as a ministry of the interior), war (defense), and the treasury; and each of these realms would have its own commission in the Seym. The new form of government was, in essence, a modern constitutional monarchy.

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by Joel | 18 July 2025 · 4:42 pm

Poland’s Last Royal Election, 1764

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 366-367:

[T]he outcome of Polish elections in the eighteenth century had hardly been a matter of domestic choice. The second Wettin himself owed his election to the heavy hand of the foreign coalition that saw fit to back him.

In this regard, the election of 1764 would be similar to the election of 1734. Russian troops would once again facilitate the promotion of the candidate favored by Tsarina Catherine II. The tsarina’s interference in Commonwealth affairs would come at a higher price this time, despite the fact that the other candidates put forward—the aged Hetman Branicki and an underage Wettin—were hardly attractive. Still, Catherine would have to finance the purchase of votes so as to overcome the opposition of the republicans. Taking no chances, August Czartoryski organized an armed confederation that, disallowing the use of the liberum veto, would guide the Convocation Seym to completion and even introduce some reforms. Ultimately these developments caused the leaders of the opposition, including Branicki, to flee the country.

Who was Catherine’s candidate? Like the candidate advanced by the magnate-led republicans, he was a Piast, if one with a rather unusual major qualification. Stanisław Poniatowski was the son and namesake of the recently deceased former leader of the Family. Yet his claim to fame was not solely—or even primarily—because he was related to the rich, powerful, and influential Czartoryski brothers, his uncles, who had allied themselves with Russia to secure the succession. Rather, Poniatowski attained the crown thanks to what turned out to be a happy accident: when he was in Saint Petersburg in the years 1756–1758, he had been the lover of the young wife of Grand Duke Peter—Catherine, herself.

Nearly a decade later, Catherine saw him as the perfect pawn in her game of controlling what happened in her increasingly impotent and unruly neighbor: any reforming to be done was to come at her instigation. She envisaged the Commonwealth of Both Nations [Poland and Lithuania] as a vassal state, a well-run vassal state. The tsarina’s selection of Poniatowski was supported by Friedrich II, who nonetheless preferred to keep the Commonwealth the way it was, weak and ineffectual. It was thought that Poniatowski, who incidentally had no wealth of his own (after his father’s death he was supported by his cousins) and who held only the amusing title of Lithuanian Master of the Pantry, would be a malleable and subservient Piast.

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by Joel | 17 July 2025 · 12:52 pm

Poland’s Silver Age Ends

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 329-330:

The seventeenth century had proven a mixed bag for the Commonwealth. It began on a relatively high note, with the reign of Zygmunt III Vasa that ushered in the so-called Silver Age. Mid-century, however, the Commonwealth nearly imploded, wracked by devastating invasions, civil war, and the loss of left-bank Ukraine. The country’s recovery from the [Swedish] Deluge, although noteworthy, was only partial. The nobility clung ever more tightly to its cherished Golden Freedoms and rejected anything that smacked of political reform, particularly if it might lead to a strengthening of the monarch’s position within the country. Even the triumphant, world-historical victory of Sobieski and his forces at Vienna—the high point of the century—did more for Western Christendom than for the Commonwealth itself.

The final election of the seventeenth century did not lead to the confirmation of a new Piast (or native Sarmatian) dynasty. Despite his efforts, King Jan III Sobieski proved unable to secure for his sons the Polish succession. To the contrary, the election of 1697 would mark a reversal of recent policy, which since the Deluge had given preference to candidates of noble Piast heritage. From the vantage point of hindsight, an interesting pattern emerges. Consider the elections both preceding and following the triplet of Vasa reigns. The first two elections, limited to foreign candidates, put one regrettable (Valois) and one memorable (Batory) candidate on the Polish throne. The anti-foreign backlash following the abdication of Jan Kazimierz Vasa (which marked the end of the Polish Vasa dynasty) put two Piasts (native candidates) on the Polish throne: once again, one regrettable (Wiśniowiecki) and one memorable (Sobieski) candidate.

Despite the fact that Sobieski not only had significant military victories under his belt but also had fathered sons who could contend for the throne, the electoral pendulum swung once again—out of their reach….

This clear rejection of the Sobieski heir—and, by extension, all candidates of Polish/Sarmatian noble descent—opened the doors wide to foreign involvement. This time, the results of the election ended up demonstrating to what extent the Commonwealth elections could be used in the power struggle between the various major European players.

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by Joel | 13 July 2025 · 6:40 am

Polish-Lithuanian Noble Mythmaking

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 269-271:

Men like Żółkiewski, who put national interests and faithful service above private gains, were becoming more rare. Nobles—especially the wealthy magnates—had few reasons to put up with what they saw as unreasonableness on the part of the king. Instead, they embraced a new idea that would knit the diverse Commonwealth nobility even closer together.

This represented an adjustment to the myth of Sarmatian origin. Already in the sixteenth century, Kromer and others had concluded that the inhabitants of Poland-Lithuania were descended from this ancient warrior people. Increasingly, this origin myth was limited to the Commonwealth’s nobility, however. The divisions between the estates solidified and became firmer—as the nobles maintained that, while they themselves were descended from the Sarmatians, the country’s commoners were not and thus were inferior in status. Already a brotherhood of privilege, the noble nation (the diversity of religious faiths and ethnic origins notwithstanding) came to be seen as a brotherhood of blood.

Sarmatian descent was seen as a distinction of another kind—a sign that the noble nation was a chosen nation, one destined for greatness. This sense of Sarmatian uniqueness had three components: economic, cultural, and political. First, that the Commonwealth was the Granary of Europe had been made amply clear to the owners of manorial estates, who in the period of peace that ensued in the 1620s promptly settled back into that still lucrative occupation. Their mission was to feed Europe, to help it thrive and, in the process, to help themselves thrive.

Second, their battlefield encounters with the infidel—here, understood as the Muscovites to the east as well as the Tatars and Ottomans to the south—had bolstered their vision of the Commonwealth as being the Bulwark of Christianity (antemurale Christianitatis)—a vision that the Baroque Church was all too happy to reinforce. This aspect of the Sarmatian myth was expanded to depict the nation as being under God’s special protection. Despite this fervent Catholicism, Commonwealth nobles increasingly embraced Eastern elements of dress and adornment. Witness the trend of having shaved heads—or heads with just a wisp of hair, just like the Moslem warriors they repeatedly fought. Thus, while the Commonwealth nobles defended Western values, their encounter with the East also shaped their identity—if only superficially.

Third, the sense that the Commonwealth’s mixed form of government, which provided the nobility with their cherished Golden Freedoms, was seen as infinitely superior to absolutist rule elsewhere. The myth of Sarmatian descent, thus, gave the nobles a sense of superiority, even invincibility, vis-à-vis the rest of Europe.

Sarmatian pride percolated down to even the poorest of nobles. Despite the exponential growth of magnate wealth during this period, the Sarmatian brotherhood was posited on noble equality. As the saying went, “The nobleman on his plot is equal to the palatine.” The thought that a landless noble might fancy himself as the peer of a magnate with his estates, court, and private army (practically a kinglet himself) nonetheless suggested that there was no glass ceiling: the possibility of upward mobility was always present, if not always likely. All it took was a happy accident of luck or patronage—an advantageous marriage, an appointment to a state office—and a clever nobleman could rise in stature. It was possible to become instantly wealthy if one married the heiress to a magnate family fortune that had been established as an indivisible inheritance (ordynacja). After all, even magnate families died out, to be replaced by new beneficiaries of the Commonwealth’s system. And even the magnates had to take care that their less wealthy noble clients—the men who hoped for that comfortable job, an education for their sons, and a decent marriage prospect for their daughters—retained their allegiance.

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by Joel | 11 July 2025 · 5:48 am

Electing a King of Poland, 1573

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 210-212:

The interest in the election of 1573 was palpable. This was not only an opportunity to become king of the largest country in Europe. Freed of all dynastic constraints by the death of the last Jagiellon, the nobles of the federative state could elect any ruler they chose. The playing field, thus, was as level as it might ever be. This moment in Polish history represented an unparalleled opportunity for an ambitious royal foreigner to expand, in exponential fashion, his influence in Central and Eastern Europe. Thus, instead of a military campaign, there was a political campaign to be fought. And what a campaign it was! The curiosity factor itself must have been great, given that this was the first election of its kind. To borrow a metaphor from a Polish nobleman who would participate years later in the election process, the period of interregnum was a courtship dance: the Commonwealth the attractive bride, and the candidates from various countries her suitors. Each strove to make a positive impression on the father.

The Rules of the Game

Yet the matter was not that simple. Making a good impression was not entirely under the control of any given suitor, and the choice of ruler was not a personality contest. The foreign candidates for Polish king were not even to enter the territory of the Commonwealth, let alone campaign. Nor could domestic candidates be present at the election field. This was a move introduced by Jan Zamoyski during this first election—a move that resulted in the elimination of conniving magnates from consideration. Envoys would campaign, as it were, on their behalf.

There nonetheless were various ways to make an impression—some within the control of the individual candidate, some beyond. Some candidates in 1573, such as the Habsburgs, were not above trying to buy votes—nor were some nobles above benefiting from this; “wining and dining, and making promises” would become part and parcel of Commonwealth elections. In contrast to past elections elsewhere in Europe, however, it would not suffice to win over the most influential individuals, the senators—each of whom represented powerful interests within the country as a result of the offices held—or even the parliamentarians/members of the estates. Those could be numbered in the dozens—or at most, hundreds. Here (thanks again to Zamoyski, who pushed for the king to be elected viritim [in person]), one had to make an impact on a much larger, fluid assembly comprised for the most part of rank-and-file nobles. These were nobles who cared to exercise the right bestowed on them and help decide who would rule the country, but who may or may not have had much experience in governance outside of the local seymiks.

In a way, the noble collectivity that convened during the interregnum resembled more a whole front porch’s worth of shotgun-wielding relatives than a genteel father. The prospect of an election drew some forty thousand nobles to the environs of Warsaw in April 1573. Astride their steeds, they assembled on and around an enormous field, resembling nothing more than the site of a medieval chivalric tourney. The central field, where the palatine and regional delegates convened, was marked off by a ditch and a stockade fence. The masses of noble electors gathered along its perimeter; information was relayed back and forth between center and periphery, allowing those gathered to hear the various reports on the candidates. A large wooden building stood at the end of the field. Its purpose was to protect from the elements the collected paper results of the electoral process.