For four centuries, the Polish-Lithuanian state encompassed a major
geographic region comparable to present-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus,
Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, and Romania. Governed by a
constitutional monarchy that offered the numerous nobility extensive
civil and political rights, it enjoyed unusual domestic tranquility, for
its military strength kept most enemies at bay until the mid-seventeenth
century and the country generally avoided civil wars. Selling grain and
timber to western Europe helped make it exceptionally wealthy for much
of the period.
The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386-1795 is the first account in English
devoted specifically to this important era. It takes a regional rather
than a national approach, considering the internal development of the
Ukrainian, Jewish, Lithuanian, and Prussian German nations that
coexisted with the Poles in this multinational state. Presenting Jewish
history also clarifies urban history, because Jews lived in the
unincorporated "private cities" and suburbs, which historians have
overlooked in favor of incorporated "royal cities." In the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries the private cities and suburbs often thrived
while the inner cities decayed. The book also traces the institutional
development of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland-Lithuania, one of the
few European states to escape bloody religious conflict during the
Reformation and Counter Reformation.
Both seasoned historians and general readers will appreciate the many
excellent brief biographies that advance the narrative and illuminate
the subject matter of this comprehensive and absorbing volume.
