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A Concise History of Poland
Poland is a country which sporadically hits the headlines of the Anglo-Saxon world. It has suffered the dubious distinction of being wiped off the political map in 1795 to be resurrected after the First World War only to suffer apparent annihilation during the Second, with reduction to satellite status of the Soviet Union only to emerge in the van of resistance to Soviet domination during the 1980s. Yet the history of Poland remains comparatively little known. This book offers a brief, non-specialist introduction to Polish history, from medieval times to the present day, and is the only short history of Poland available in English. It concentrates essentially on political development which, particularly for the pre-nineteenth-century period, still remains little known to English readers. The book also includes much material on relations with Germany, Russia, the Ukraine, Lithuania, and other neighbouring states.
The European Nobility in the Eighteenth Century
Jerzy Lukowski shows the pressures and tensions, both from below and from governments, which increasingly challenged traditional ruling groups in Europe during the century before the French Revolution. The position of the nobility depended on a stable world which accepted their authority; but that world was becoming fractured as a result of social and economic developments and new ideas. Lukowski explains the basic mechanisms of noble existence and examines how the European nobility sought to preserve a sense of solidarity in the midst of widespread change.
The Partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795
The Partitions of Poland were a key event in the power politics of the late ancien regime, and had major long term consequences for the balance of power in northern and eastern Europe. Over a period of twenty five years Catherine II (Russia), Frederick II (Prussia) and Maria Theresa and Joseph II (Austria) between them wiped Poland xxx; Europe's second largest countryxxx; off the political map, and Poland disappeared as a state for 120 years. Jerzy Lukowski's new account, the first comprehensive study of the topic in English since 1915, sets the Polish dimension of this story in its wider European context, illuminating the motives and attitudes of the participants and exploring its consequences. This is a major contribution to the diplomatic history of eighteenth century Europe.
A Concise History of Poland
An updated and expanded second edition covering Polish history from medieval times to the present day.
Liberty's Folly
In the closing years of the 18th century, the old Polish state paid the price of over 100 years of ungovernability in political extinction. Between 1772 and 1795 an area of Eastern Europe larger than France was divided among Russia, Prussia and Austria. At the very time that monarchial absolutism seemed to be collapsing in Western Europe, the dismemberment of the Polish "noble democracy" affirmed absolutism's triumph in the East. Bringing together Polish scholarship previously inaccessible to English-speaking readers, the author examines the economy, the society and the institutional structure of early modern Poland and analyzes her loss of national sovereignty in the light of Poland's lack of political centralization and dynastic strength. Not only does this book illuminate a much neglected area of European history, and assist those trying to make sense of Poland's heritage, it also provides much comparative material for students of early modern history in general. Furthermore no reader could fail to be struck by the parallels in the problematic relationship between Poland and Russia in the 18th century and today.
Folk Dance and the Creation of National Identities
This book is about the folk: the folk in folk dance, the folk in folklore, the folk in folk wisdom. When we see folk dance on the stage or in a tourist setting, which is the way in which many of us experience folk dance, the question arises are these the “real folk” performing their authentic dances? Or are they urban, well trained, carefully-rehearsed professional dancers who make their livelihood as representatives of a specific nation-state acting as the folk? Or something in between? This study delves more deeply into the folk, their origins, their identities in order to know the source of inspiration for ethno identity dances - dances prepared for the stage and the ballroom and for public performances from ballet, state folk dance ensembles and their amateur emulators, immigrant folk dance group performances, and tourist presentations. These dances, unlike modern dance, ballet, or most vernacular dances, always have strong ethnic references. It will also look at a gallery of choreographers and artistic directors across a wide spectrum of dance genres.
Sing, Memory: The Remarkable Story of the Man Who Saved the Music of the Nazi Camps
A Polish musician, a Jewish conductor, a secret choir, and the rescue of a trove of music from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On a cold October night in 1942, SS guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d’Arguto. Many in the group did not live to see morning, and those who survived the guards’ reprisal were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau just a few weeks later. Only one of its members survived the Holocaust. Yet their story survives, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz. An amateur musician, he was not Jewish, but struck up an unlikely friendship with d’Arguto in Sachsenhausen. D’Arguto tasked...
Mapping Europe's Borderlands
The simplest purpose of a map is a rational one: to educate, to solve a problem, to point someone in the right direction. Maps shape and communicate information, for the sake of improved orientation. But maps exist for states as well as individuals, and they need to be interpreted as expressions of power and knowledge, as Steven Seegel makes clear in his impressive and important new book. Mapping Europe’s Borderlands takes the familiar problems of state and nation building in eastern Europe and presents them through an entirely new prism, that of cartography and cartographers. Drawing from sources in eleven languages, including military, historical-pedagogical, and ethnographic maps, as we...
