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The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise and fall of the largest republic in Europe, which for centuries elected its kings to rule alongside parliament and avoided religious wars.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the republic that emerged from the union of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th Century. At first this was a personal union, similar to that of James I and VI in Britain, but this was formalised in 1569 into a vast republic, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Kings and princes from across Europe would compete for parliament to elect them King and Grand Duke, and the greatest power lay with the parliaments. When the system worked well, the Commonwealth was a powerhouse, and it was their leader Jan Sobieski who relieved the siege of Vienna in 1683, defeating the Ottomans. Its neighbours exploited its parliament's need for unanimity, though, and this contributed to its downfall. Austria, Russia and Prussia divided its territory between them from 1772, before the new, smaller states only emerged in the 20th Century.

The image above is Jan III Sobieski (1629-1696), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, at the Battle of Vienna 1683, by Marcello Bacciarelli (1731-1818)

With

Robert Frost
The Burnett Fletcher Chair of History at the University of Aberdeen

Katarzyna Kosior
Lecturer in Early Modern History at Northumbria University

And

Norman Davies
Professor Emeritus in History and Honorary Fellow of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

49 minutes

Last on

Thu 14 Oct 2021 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS








READING LIST

Richard Butterwick, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Light and Flame (Yale University Press, 2020)

Patrice Dabrowski, Poland: The First Thousand Years (Cornell University Press, 2014)

Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland (Oxford University Press, 1981)

Norman Davies, Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland's Present (Oxford University Press, 1984)

Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford University Press, 1996)

Karin Friedrich, The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569 –1772 (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Robert Frost, The Oxford History of Poland-Lithuania: Volume 1, The Making of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, 1385–1569 (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Katarzyna Kosior, Becoming a Queen in Early Modern Europe: East and West (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

Jerzy Lukowski, Liberty’s Folly: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century (first published 1991; Routledge, 2014)

Natalia Nowakowska (ed.), Remembering the Jagiellonians (Routledge, 2018)

Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, 1569–1999 (Yale University Press, 2004)

Adam Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland (W&N, 2020)

Adam Zamoyski, Poland: A History (William Collins, 2015)


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  • Thu 14 Oct 2021 09:00
  • Thu 14 Oct 2021 21:30

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