The alleged empire. The Polish-Lithuanian Republic of the 15th-17th centuries. (On the pitfalls of postcolonial discourse)
Hieronim Grala
Faculty of “Artes Liberales”
University of Warsaw
ORCID: 0000-0003-3755-2469
Published: 22/12/2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31338/ahi.2023.2.12
ABSTRACT: This article constitutes a critical approach towards the legitimacy of employing a postcolonial discourse to study the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 15th through the 17th centuries. The author indicates several phenomena that permit the negation of a thesis about the colonial character of Polish presence in Ukrainian-White Ruthenian lands, emphasising its crucial defects, both chronological (Great Duchy of Lithuania did not allow a Polish element there till 1569) and methodological, which ignore fundamental phenomena, social, economic, and of political system. The Commonwealth did not conquer Ruthenian lands; local knighthood obtained full civil rights regardless of ethnicity and confession, and elites achieved an overwhelming infl uence on the state. The population inflow to these territories had a colonising character rather than a colonial one; there is also no basis to ascertain any forms of exploitation of the provinces. The author also questions a vision of an imperial policy of the Commonwealth, especially in the context of its relations with Moscow State, indicating that from the beginning of this rivalry, it was the Polish-Lithuanian side that remained on the defensive; its possessions were constantly diminishing, and temporal territorial acquisitions constituted only revindications.
KEYWORDS: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ruthenia, colonialism, colonisation, postcolonial discourse, empire.
