Project Details
Description / Abstract
Building on my previous research on the Western borderlands of Poland-Lithuania, this project will use a new, transnational approach to the interaction between the political and religious cultures of the multi-national Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Brandenburg-Prussia. In particular, the book will address the relationship between religion and politics more generally, analyse the morality of political agents and the impact of ideas on political and social action.
Before the partitions of Poland at the end of eighteenth century, the German-Polish border was one of the most stable in early modern Europe, allowing for communication and an exchange of ideas and populations in both directions. Nationalist historiography of the last two centuries, however, has done much to construct a picture of intense hostility and re-project it into earlier history. Since the 1990s, German-Polish contacts across the border have intensified and much constructive work has been done by historians on all sides to escape old prejudices, though much remains to be done. My previous work on the political culture and identities of Royal Prussia, a province of the Polish crown from 1454-1772/93, on Brandenburg-Prussia (I am currently finishing a history of early modern Brandenburg-Prussia for Palgrave) and on political and religious thought in Poland-Lithuania, position me well to launch a transnational study of key political agents between the multi-national Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its western neighbours.
The pacemaker for change was an eminently mobile noble society, renowned for its tendency to cross political and religious boundaries, contributing to the transfer of ideas but also political and religious practice, thus shaping society in the borderlands as well as policies projected from the centre. An example of such a figure was the Calvinist magnate and later governor of Ducal Prussia, Boguslaw Radziwill, one of the richest men in the commonwealth with connections to several European ruling houses, whose political manoeuvring between Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and Prussia has not been analysed from this binary perspective before. On the basis of ego-documents such as his autobiography and correspondence, Radziwill's role will be explored within the context of a multi-confessional society and the multi-polar power structures of north-eastern Europe. His role will be explored within the wider context of other border families, such as the Lutheran Goltz family, the multi-confessional and multi-lingual Przebendowski and Denhoff, who regularly crossed borders and allegiances, and owned land on both sides of the Polish-Pomeranian/ Polish-Prussian divide. Too often in the past such figures have been dealt with as traitors to their supposed national states; this study will attempt to reconstruct the complex cultural and political world they inhabited.
The book will not take a traditional international relations approach to Polish-German relations, but derives its perspectives from recent work on the history of cultural transfer and a cultural history of politics which takes account of symbolic systems on the macro-level, as well as the meaning of these on the micro-level of personal decision-making, such as the choice of political and religious allegiances. The perspective from the periphery, rather than the centre, will dominate this analysis, as the study will be firmly set into the context of the commonwealth's border provinces, where patronage networks, confessional and military pressures created often unexpected alliances. The analysis and role of these loyalties in early modern politics has gained fresh relevance for Europe in the 21st-century where - although actual border crossings seemed to have lost their former significance in a united Europe - people are keen to assert their cultural, religious and social differences and distinctions with a new sense of urgency.
Before the partitions of Poland at the end of eighteenth century, the German-Polish border was one of the most stable in early modern Europe, allowing for communication and an exchange of ideas and populations in both directions. Nationalist historiography of the last two centuries, however, has done much to construct a picture of intense hostility and re-project it into earlier history. Since the 1990s, German-Polish contacts across the border have intensified and much constructive work has been done by historians on all sides to escape old prejudices, though much remains to be done. My previous work on the political culture and identities of Royal Prussia, a province of the Polish crown from 1454-1772/93, on Brandenburg-Prussia (I am currently finishing a history of early modern Brandenburg-Prussia for Palgrave) and on political and religious thought in Poland-Lithuania, position me well to launch a transnational study of key political agents between the multi-national Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its western neighbours.
The pacemaker for change was an eminently mobile noble society, renowned for its tendency to cross political and religious boundaries, contributing to the transfer of ideas but also political and religious practice, thus shaping society in the borderlands as well as policies projected from the centre. An example of such a figure was the Calvinist magnate and later governor of Ducal Prussia, Boguslaw Radziwill, one of the richest men in the commonwealth with connections to several European ruling houses, whose political manoeuvring between Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and Prussia has not been analysed from this binary perspective before. On the basis of ego-documents such as his autobiography and correspondence, Radziwill's role will be explored within the context of a multi-confessional society and the multi-polar power structures of north-eastern Europe. His role will be explored within the wider context of other border families, such as the Lutheran Goltz family, the multi-confessional and multi-lingual Przebendowski and Denhoff, who regularly crossed borders and allegiances, and owned land on both sides of the Polish-Pomeranian/ Polish-Prussian divide. Too often in the past such figures have been dealt with as traitors to their supposed national states; this study will attempt to reconstruct the complex cultural and political world they inhabited.
The book will not take a traditional international relations approach to Polish-German relations, but derives its perspectives from recent work on the history of cultural transfer and a cultural history of politics which takes account of symbolic systems on the macro-level, as well as the meaning of these on the micro-level of personal decision-making, such as the choice of political and religious allegiances. The perspective from the periphery, rather than the centre, will dominate this analysis, as the study will be firmly set into the context of the commonwealth's border provinces, where patronage networks, confessional and military pressures created often unexpected alliances. The analysis and role of these loyalties in early modern politics has gained fresh relevance for Europe in the 21st-century where - although actual border crossings seemed to have lost their former significance in a united Europe - people are keen to assert their cultural, religious and social differences and distinctions with a new sense of urgency.
| Status | Finished |
|---|---|
| Effective start/end date | 1/09/11 → 1/03/12 |
| Links | https://gtr.ukri.org:443/projects?ref=AH%2FI002987%2F1 |