Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

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The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a formal treaty of 1569 imposed upon Lithuania to replace the loose personal union of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and that of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with a single political union with an elective monarchy.

Between November 1563 and June 1564, when it seemed a Muscovite invasion was likely, the worried Lithuanians attended a Polish Diet at Warsaw where an absolute union between the two countries, which Poland had been attempting to engineer for over twenty years, was hotly debated. There was deadlock, and the Polish King, Sigismund II[1], tactfully intervened and voluntarily relinquished his hereditary title of Grand Duke to Lithuania, thus placing the two countries on a constitutional equality. On 10 January 1569 the Lithuanians were summoned to another Diet convened by Poland, in Lublin, but even then the Lithuanians were indisposed towards a union and finally walked out of the Diet, leaving two commissioners as observers only. A frustrated Sigismund then invaded the Lithuanian provinces of Volhynia and Podolia and annexed them to the Kingdom of Poland. The Lithuanians were thus forced to return to the table as, they conceded, a union was better than mutilated independence.

The union was adopted on July 1, 1569 as the Union of Lublin between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and was accordingly sealed. Only the Polish currency was permitted to be used, and all dependencies and colonies, including Livonia which had not long been occupied by Lithuania, were to belong to Poland in common.[2] Essentially Lithuania, once the greater power with a greater land mass, had been eclipsed and absorbed by her neighbour. At this last Lublin Diet the home rule of Lithuania also definitely ended; there was to be one Parliament for both states, and Warsaw was to be the new capital.

"Formally, Poland and Lithuania were to be distinct, equal components of the federation.....but Poland, which retained possession of the Lithuanian lands it had now seized, had greater representation in the Diet and became the dominant partner."[3] The Poles set about 'Polonizing' whatever they could in Lithuania, and the Union was never cordial.[4] Twenty five years passed before civil unrest brought about the great Assembly at Brzsc in Lithuania in 1595, at which the Union was finally formally announced to the Lithuanian people. There resulted considerable violence.

The new "Commonwealth" was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th and 17th-century Europe.[5][6][7][8]

The "Commonwealth"'s political system was characterized by strict checks upon monarchical power effectively making it a constitutional monarchy and federation. These checks were enacted by a dominant Polish legislature (Sejm) controlled by the Polish nobility (szlachta).[9] [10][11]

Ultimately the Commonwealth entered a period of protracted political,[12] military and economic[13] decline. Its growing weakness and constant wars led to its partitioning among its more powerful neighbors, the Austrian Empire, Prussia and the Russian Empire, during the late 18th century. Shortly before its utter demise, the Commonwealth (or more correctly Poland), inspired by the new United States of America, adopted massive political reforms and enacted a new Constitution on May 3, 1791, which has been described as the second oldest codified national constitution of modern history.[14][15][16][17]

The Commonwealth lasted 226 years until its total abolition in the Third Partition in 1795 during what the Poles call the partitions of Poland but which, in fact, were partitions of the Commonwealth.

In 1919 the Polish delegation at the Paris Peace negotiations called for all the territories in the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to be formally part of the new resurrected Poland, without any consultation whatsoever with the Lithuanians. Indeed, the Poles had the audacity to state to the western plutocratic liberal Allies that the Lithuanians were a "primitive people" and only still existed because of Polish assistance and practical help!; and, outrageously, that Poland had "never imposed upon any nation our language or religion"![18] Their request regarding Lithuania was refused.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Sigismund Augustus was born in Kraków on 1 August 1520 to Sigismund I and his wife, Bona Sforza of Milan. His paternal grandparents were Casimir IV Jagiellon, King of Poland, and Elizabeth von Habsburg of Austria. Sigismund's maternal grandparents, Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella of Aragon, daughter of King Alfonso II of Naples, both ruled the Duchy of Milan until Sforza's suspicious death in 1494.
  2. ↑ Wickham-Steed, H., Professor Phillips, Walter Alison, and Hannay, David, A History of Austria-Hungary and Poland, reproduced from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, London, 1914, pps:117-8.
  3. ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica, 2006, 'Union of Lublin'.
  4. ↑ Morfill, W.R., M.A., Russia, London, 1891, p.47.
  5. ↑ "Poland." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 20 Feb. 2009
  6. ↑ Heritage: Interactive Atlas: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Retrieved March 19, 2006: At its apogee, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth comprised some 400000 sqmi and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million. For population comparisons, see also those maps: [1], [2].
  7. ↑ Norman Davies, Europe: A History, Pimlico 1997, p. 554.
  8. ↑ Yale Richmond, From Da to Yes: Understanding the East Europeans, Intercultural Press, 1995, p. 51
  9. ↑ Maciej Janowski, Polish Liberal Thought, Central European University Press, 2001, ISBN 963-9241-18-0, Google Print: p3, p12
  10. ↑ Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-820654-2, Google print p84
  11. ↑ Aleksander Gella, Development of Class Structure in Eastern Europe: Poland and Her Southern Neighbors, SUNY Press, 1998, ISBN 0-88706-833-2, Google Print, p13
  12. ↑ Martin Van Gelderen, Quentin Skinner, Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-521-80756-5 Google Print: p54
  13. ↑ The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis, discussion and full online text of Evsey Domar (1970) "The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis", Economic History Review 30:1 (March), pp18–32
  14. ↑ "Poland." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 5 August 2009
  15. ↑ (January 1993) Constitutions of the World. Fred B. Rothman & Company. 
  16. ↑ Isaac Kramnick, Introduction, Madison, James (November 1987). The Federalist Papers. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-044495-5. 
  17. ↑ John Markoff describes the advent of modern codified national constitutions as one of the milestones of democracy, and states that "The first European country to follow the U.S. example was Poland in 1791." John Markoff, Waves of Democracy, 1996, ISBN 0-8039-9019-7, p.121.
  18. ↑ Woodward, Professor E.L., and Butler, Rohan, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, First Series, vol.iii, 1919, HMSO, London, 1949, p.352.
  • Urban, Professor William, The Teutonic Knights, London and USA, 2003, ISBN: 1-85367-535-0
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