Object structure
Title:

The Concept of Citizenship in the Political Discourse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

Subtitle:

Acta Poloniae Historica T. 122 (2020) ; History of Socio-Political Concepts in Poland From the Eighteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Century

Creator:

Kuc-Czerep, Marta ORCID

Institutional creator:

Polska Akademia Nauk. Komitet Nauk Historycznych ; Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla ISNI

Contributor:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Publisher:

Instytut Historii PAN

Place of publishing:

Warszawa

Date issued/created:

2020

Description:

p. 51-78

Subject and Keywords:

concept of citizenship ; political discourse ; eighteenth century ; burghers ; Warsaw ; citizenship - Poland - history ; political ideas - Poland - history - 18th century ; middle class - Poland - Warsaw - history - 18th century

Abstract:

This article addresses some aspects of the functioning of the concept of ‘citizen’ in the political discourse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the latter half of the eighteenth century. In the dominant nobility’s discourse, the concept gained a strictly defined meaning: a citizen was, namely, a person entitled to wield or exercise political power in the state. In the estate society realities, it actually boiled down to mutual identification of two concepts: ‘citizen’ and ‘nobleman’. The bourgeois conception of citizenship took shape in confrontation with such understanding of the idea, formulated and propagated by Protestant townsmen – mainly by Wawrzyniec Mitzler de Kolof and Michał Gröll, book traders, printers and publishers from Saxony. They derived the meaning of ‘citizen’ from ‘resident’. In such a concept, the term extended to all the inhabitants of Poland-Lithuania – apart from the nobility, it included, also the townspeople and the peasantry. In this context, of relevance are the changes in the meaning of the German term Bürger (burgher, citizen of the state), which influenced Polish political discourse. This leads to the conclusion that the latter half of the eighteenth century saw the idea of citizenship in its modern meaning.

References:

Bardach Juliusz, ‘Czy istniało obywatelstwo w szlacheckiej Rzeczypospolitej? W związku z pracą S. Grodziskiego, Obywatelstwo w szlacheckiej Rzeczypospolitej’, Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne, xvii, 2 (1965), 261–6.
Butterwick-Pawlikowski Richard, ‘Chrześcijanin i obywatel w dyskursie politycznym drugiej połowy XVIII wieku’, in Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz and Jerzy Axer (eds), Wartości polityczne Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów. Struktury aksjologiczne i granice cywilizacyjne (Warszawa, 2017), 175–95.
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Kriegseisen Wojciech, ‘Ewangelicy wobec powstania kościuszkowskiego’, in Jerzy Kowecki (ed.), Kościuszko – powstanie 1794 r. – tradycja. Materiały z sesji naukowej w 200-lecie powstania kościuszkowskiego 15–16 kwietnia 1994 r. (Warszawa, 1997), 91–122.
Konopczyński Władysław, Polscy pisarze polityczni XVIII wieku (Kraków, 2012).
Koselleck Reinhart, Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt (München, 1959).
Koselleck Reinhart (ed.), Historische Semantik und Begriffsgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1979).

Relation:

Acta Poloniae Historica ; Acta Poloniae Historica

Volume:

122

Start page:

51

End page:

78

Resource type:

Text

Detailed Resource Type:

Article : original article

Format:

application/octet-stream

Resource Identifier:

0001-6829 ; 2450-8462 ; 10.12775/APH.2020.122.03

Source:

IH PAN, sygn. A.295/122 Podr. ; IH PAN, sygn. A.296/122 ; click here to follow the link

Language:

eng

Rights:

Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. [CC BY-ND 4.0] May be used within the scope specified in Creative Commons Attribution BY-ND 4.0 license, full text available at: ; -

Digitizing institution:

Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Institute of History PAS

Projects co-financed by:

National Programme for the Development of the Humanities

Access:

Open

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