WI: Duchy of Warsaw backstabs Nappy and remains independent

AlexG

AlexG

Banned
alexmilman said:
That’s pretty much sums it up but we also should keep in mind that the Duchy amounted to just a fraction of the “historic” Polish land claimed by the Polish patriots. They wanted a pre-partitions PLC territory including the areas with a considerable non-Polish population (German, Lithuanian, Ukrainian): nobility in, say, Lithuania and Galicia was Polish or Polonized but not necessarily the peasants. In other words, a solution capable of pleasing the Polish nobility was simply unacceptable for the 3 Great Powers.

BTW, if the earlier Polonization was OK, why not the Germanization? Actually, unlike Germanization, Polonization did result in a series of the bloody genocidal wars in the XVII century Ukraine (with the Jews caught in between and suffering losses allegedly up to 50% of their population in the region). Not that any of these trends was good but Germanization of the XIX century surely was much less bloody.

As a side note, Sweden of that period was geographically out of the way but the same can’t be said about its economic importance: it was still a major producer of iron and still, AFAIK, important to Britain. For Russia it was quite important as had been demonstrated in 1812 when alliance with Sweden allowed to redeploy the troops stationed in Finland. Not to mention Bernadotte’s personal contribution in 1813 when his actions pretty much saved Berlin and to a great degree “turned the tide” (enough to say that he got the highest Russian, Prussian and Austrian military awards). OTOH, by 1813 the Poles were nothing but the pain in “everybody’s” butt (they were too eagerly pro-Napoleonic and too brave for their own good) and their switching the sides hardly would be meaningful enough to change the attitudes: in 1813 territory of the Duchy was occupied without any noticeable trouble. The Duchy’s mobilization resources had been stretched to their limit for the campaign of 1812 and I’m not sure that economically destroyed (even before summer of 1812) territory would be able to provide a meaningful military force after the losses of 1812.
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Agreed and with regard to Sweden that's on me for not being clear: my point there was that whereas Sweden and possibly even the Kingdom of Naples under Murat could have maintained their regimes, that the interests of the Great powers was too heavily skewed against the Duchy of Warsaw to dare even hope for the same.
 

alexmilman

Yuhaoyang said:
Yes it is.
Because cultural genocide was genocide. And Prussia（especially its eastern territory) was exactly a country built upon colonization，cultural and physical genocide. For example， The Baltic Crusade was no different from new world colonism，it's not called colonism only because that term was not usually used to describe relationship between “White Europeans”.
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Just to understand what you are saying. So, following your logic, a fact that by the XVII century the Polish culture became prevailing in Lithuania and that most of the Ukrainian nobility adopted it as well also qualifies as “cultural genocide”? To think about it, by 1810 the Swedish culture was prevailing in Finland....
 

Jan Olbracht

alexmilman said:
BTW, if the earlier Polonization was OK, why not the Germanization? Actually, unlike Germanization, Polonization did result in a series of the bloody genocidal wars in the XVII century Ukraine
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There was no polonization policy in Ukraine. Nobles polonized voluntary and Cossacks' rebellion was not caused by polonization efforts (which were not existent). Ruthenian children were not beaten for praying in Ruthenian language. For nobles and magnates it was completly irrelevant what language their serfs speak and what their confession is (as long as they were good serfs).
 
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alexmilman

Jan Olbracht said:
There was no polonization policy in Ukraine. Nobles polonized voluntary and Cossacks' rebellion was not caused by polonization efforts (which were not existent). Ruthenian children were not beaten for praying in Ruthenian language. For nobles and magnates it was completly irrelevant what language their serfs speak and what their confession is (as long as they were good serfs).
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Did I say anything about it being forced? But the measures supporting the process had been in place including oppression of the Orthodox church (an item which the Cossacks had been bringing up and which, as you well know was prominent on CIIs political agenda) and using Polish as an official communication language instead of the historic “archaic-whatever”. Actually, the language of the Western Ukraine is strongly Polonized (and one of the Eastern is/was strongly Russified so you may argue things both ways 😜). Honestly, I was just using Polonization as an example of sticking the labels.
Edit: However, while the “cultural” part may be arguable the “genocidal” is hardly so - as a result of Khmelnitsky Uprising the Poles and Jews who used to live in the Eastern Ukraine had been either killed or expelled and Catholic Church abolished on the Cossack held territory. Who said that the “cultural oppressor” is not on a “receiving” side of the losses? And then you can add the Ukrainian losses caused by the Poles and Tatars and you’ll get a real mess in the terms of who did what to whom.

But perhaps I was not quite clear with the point I was making: definition of a “cultural genocide” is not something precisely defined or officially recognized. Actually, a list of the “recognized” (by whom?) cases (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide#List_of_cultural_genocides) does not go too far to the past and does not include Germanization of the Polish territories or Polonization of the PLC lands. So my point was that an arbitrary retroactive usage of the modern terminology is pretty much meaningless within a historic context and, due to a vagueness of a definition, can be applied pretty much at will thus killing any sense (besides being a convenient slogan which you can use against anything you don’t like).

Take wiki: “ As such, cultural genocide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural artifacts, such as books, artworks, and structures, as well as the suppression of cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate.” Now, following definition above and applying it retroactively and uncritically, pretty much every major change of a religion would fit the bill: the Christians and Muslims vs. the “pagans”, Buddhists, and each other, Catholics vs. Protestants, etc. All the way to forbidding the nomadic people to swim naked (as per Genghis’ Yasa).

And when we come to the suppression of the “non-conforming” activities, the sky is a limit. So, the terms like that should be used with an extreme caution not to trivialize them (or we may end up with something like “cultural genocide against Oscar Wilde” 😜).
 
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Jan Olbracht

alexmilman said:
Did I say anything about it being forced? But the measures supporting the process had been in place including oppression of the Orthodox church (an item which the Cossacks had been bringing up and which, as you well know was prominent on CIIs political agenda) and using Polish as an official communication language instead of the historic “archaic-whatever”. Actually, the language of the Western Ukraine is strongly Polonized (and one of the Eastern is/was strongly Russified so you may argue things both ways 😜). Honestly, I was just using Polonization as an example of sticking the labels.
Edit: However, while the “cultural” part may be arguable the “genocidal” is hardly so - as a result of Khmelnitsky Uprising the Poles and Jews who used to live in the Eastern Ukraine had been either killed or expelled and Catholic Church abolished on the Cossack held territory. Who said that the “cultural oppressor” is not on a “receiving” side of the losses? And then you can add the Ukrainian losses caused by the Poles and Tatars and you’ll get a real mess in the terms of who did what to whom.

But perhaps I was not quite clear with the point I was making: definition of a “cultural genocide” is not something precisely defined or officially recognized. Actually, a list of the “recognized” (by whom?) cases (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide#List_of_cultural_genocides) does not go too far to the past and does not include Germanization of the Polish territories or Polonization of the PLC lands. So my point was that an arbitrary retroactive usage of the modern terminology is pretty much meaningless within a historic context and, due to a vagueness of a definition, can be applied pretty much at will thus killing any sense (besides being a convenient slogan which you can use against anything you don’t like).

Take wiki: “ As such, cultural genocide involves the eradication and destruction of cultural artifacts, such as books, artworks, and structures, as well as the suppression of cultural activities that do not conform to the destroyer's notion of what is appropriate.” Now, following definition above and applying it retroactively and uncritically, pretty much every major change of a religion would fit the bill: the Christians and Muslims vs. the “pagans”, Buddhists, and each other, Catholics vs. Protestants, etc. All the way to forbidding the nomadic people to swim naked (as per Genghis’ Yasa).

And when we come to the suppression of the “non-conforming” activities, the sky is a limit. So, the terms like that should be used with an extreme caution not to trivialize them (or we may end up with something like “cultural genocide against Oscar Wilde” 😜).
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From POV of local magnate it was cheaper to keep Orthodoc priest than Catholic priest and lots of setttlers from Mazovia and Lesser Poland were quickly Ruthenized because when time to baptize child came Orthodox parish was only option (no Roman Catholic parish within hundreds of miles). And for western Ukraine being Polonized-it is simply dialect continuum. Same thing could be said about speakers of northeastern dialects of Polish-East Slavic influence is strog enough there that speaker of local dialect could easiy understand Russian, while speakers of standard Polish could not.
 

alexmilman

Jan Olbracht said:
From POV of local magnate it was cheaper to keep Orthodoc priest than Catholic priest and lots of setttlers from Mazovia and Lesser Poland were quickly Ruthenized because when time to baptize child came Orthodox parish was only option (no Roman Catholic parish within hundreds of miles). And for western Ukraine being Polonized-it is simply dialect continuum. Same thing could be said about speakers of northeastern dialects of Polish-East Slavic influence is strog enough there that speaker of local dialect could easiy understand Russian, while speakers of standard Polish could not.
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The Churches in the Western Ukraine were predominantly Uniat (and the same goes for a part of those on the Left Bank), which from the perspective of the “truly Orthodox”, were at least as bad as the Catholic: during one of the “diplomatic periods” of Khmelnitsky Uprising the Cossacks explicitly demanded their removal from a territory of the Hetmanate.

A story about the absent Roman Catholic churches is rather hard to believe taking into an account that by mid-XVII the local aristocrats overwhelmingly and nobility to a great degree had been Catholics. While a magnate could have a private chapel, for an ordinary noble thus would be unrealistic. Anyway, starting from the 2nd decade of the XVIII for all its Orthodox population the PLC had a single bishop, one of Belorussia, and he was not admitted to the Senate like his Catholic equivalents. Not to mention that, according to the post to which I was answering the settlers you mentioned would probably qualify as the “colonizers”. 😂

But it seems that you keep ignoring the point: an excessive “freedom” with usage of terminology.
 
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Alcatur

alexmilman said:
Did I say anything about it being forced? But the measures supporting the process had been in place including oppression of the Orthodox church (an item which the Cossacks had been bringing up and which, as you well know was prominent on CIIs political agenda) and using Polish as an official communication language instead of the historic “archaic-whatever”.
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Minor note, but until the end of XVI century latin was the official language. Only well in XVII century polish supplanted it, and it was a bit of a natural drift. First two kings elected by PLC actually didn't know polish at all. Latin as official language was still important in mid XVII century, enough that it was noted that the Cossack delegation at the signing of Treaty of Radnot in 1656 was the best versed in latin of all participants.
 

alexmilman

Alcatur said:
Minor note, but until the end of XVI century latin was the official language. Only well in XVII century polish supplanted it, and it was a bit of a natural drift. First two kings elected by PLC actually didn't know polish at all. Latin as official language was still important in mid XVII century, enough that it was noted that the Cossack delegation at the signing of Treaty of Radnot in 1656 was the best versed in latin of all participants.
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From the point of view of a devout “true Orthodox” the Latin was probably even worse, being directly associated with the Arch-Enemy, the Catholic Church. 😂😂😂😂
 
Aghasverov

Aghasverov

Alcatur said:
Minor note, but until the end of XVI century latin was the official language. Only well in XVII century polish supplanted it, and it was a bit of a natural drift. First two kings elected by PLC actually didn't know polish at all. Latin as official language was still important in mid XVII century, enough that it was noted that the Cossack delegation at the signing of Treaty of Radnot in 1656 was the best versed in latin of all participants.
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I've read that, despite their reputation, Cossacks were strangely well-educated... among the non-noble social estates of the Russian Empire, they had one of the higher literacy rates...
 

alexmilman

Aghasverov said:
I've read that, despite their reputation, Cossacks were strangely well-educated... among the non-noble social estates of the Russian Empire, they had one of the higher literacy rates...
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And those in question (leaders of the Ukrainian Cossacks of the XVII) quite often had been getting a good formal education: Bogdan Khmelnitsky attended the Jesuit college, Vygovski studied in Kiev-Bratsky (Kiev’s-Mogilevski) collegium and so did Yuri Khmelnitsky.
 
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