Talk:Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Merger with The Noble Republic

How about merging the articles Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and The Noble Republic, since they are related to essentially the same? Besides, I strongly suspect that the term "Noble Republic" is a catchy phrase from a history article, rather than a term really used in these times. Even if not, IMO the proper name of the merged article would be Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, according to the "official" name of the state. Mikkalai 20:55, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I guess the merger is possible, but it would require some careful restructuring. Or one can consider it as an expansion - advanced version of this page. Personally I prefer to add new articles then meddle with those two, they dont look very broken to me. --Piotrus 15:12, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

News: concensus on Wikipedia:WikiProject History of Poland is that Noble Republic should be dedicated to history or perhaps the discussion of PLC political system. Anyway the PLC article will be the main article for this period, with several subarticles like Noble Republic. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 12:24, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or Commonwealth of Two Nations?

Interseting fact is that the official translation is not correct. In Polish language, the exact term is Commonwealth of Two Nations (Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodow), not Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Polsko-Litweska Rzeczpospolita - I have never heard that one before!). Some redirects and a note should fix that easily, though :)

Was it part of the Commonwealth...

Polish-Lithuania If you take into account that today Estonia was created from the Estonia province and norhern part of Livland DorpatTartu, Estonia also inherited some land from the commonwealth. Province of Estonia was claimed by Poland, but I don't know if ever achieved. Cautious 11:59, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

• Sory, my bad. Indeed, for brief period 1582-1625 Lifland was under Polish rule, as well as Southern Estonia. I was looking at wrong maps.Any pieces of PLC in Germany and Chechs? BTW, what's your opinion about my proposal above?Mikkalai 16:17, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Enthusiastic. Especially, that Noble Republic is written from the perspective of the rotten end. I would prefer to construct it like this:

Glory 80 years with some threads of future failure

Deluge -crisis

Decay with underline of some successes

second half XVII century

Russian protectorate

Partition and national awakening

If take a look at the churches or castles, XVIII century with all its decay, shows some achievements. Cautious 16:24, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As far I am concerned, no part of present day Germany or Bohemia was ever part of the commonwealth. You can mention Tobago Island. Cautious 16:26, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Uhm, Tobago was a personal property of the Duke of Courland so it had only a very indirect link with the PLC. But then, why not not mention it? kpalion 16:20, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Good enough for external links?

I have a page dedicated to the Commowealth XVII century - http://www.wodzu.tonet.pl/republika_prokonsularna/En/163xCoTNRP.html

It is not yet finished, but it contains some useful info, I think. Do u think it is worth adding it in the related links section?

--Piotrus 15:08, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Political system of the PLC: a republic?

was the polish-lithuanian commonwealth a classical republic in the sense of plato and aristotle? Classical definition of republic

Um, that article is SO bad I cannot even find the DEFINITION of the republic out there :> --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:49, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Considering modern definition of the republic, I'd call it rather a parliamentary democracy with very limited voting electorate. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:49, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Not so limited, 8 to 10 % of the society is quite a high ratio as for the period in history when most nobles in Europe had no voting rights at all, not to mention common people... [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 19:44, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

The problem here is that definitions change over time. For example, the term 'democracy' was actually a rather negative description (like today the term anarchy) untill sometime in XIX century. And then there is the fact that today's people tend to think that the term democracy = state, government, capitalism and lots of other things ('all things bright and beautiful' :D). Compared to its contemprary countries, PLN was quite democratic in that today's sense of the world. Compared to today's countries, it is obviously not a shining example. As for the right term to desribe its government, I will have to do more search on that. Republic...parliamentary monarchy...ehhh, one thing is sure - it was very unique *something* :D --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:39, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Religion in the PLC

Note> I have no idea if this edit send is going to work or not

While reviewing the article on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it lists the established church as Roman Catholic.

I do not know exactly, about the status of the Roman Catholic church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the time. (In other words, was it considered to be 'established', within the Lithuanian sectors.) It was during a period of time in which there was not much religious pluralism in Europe. However, when Poland and Lithuania united, Lithuania was Eastern Orthodox. This produced conditions that resulted in many ways, in a greater level of religious pluralism within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in comparison with most of Europe at the same time.

This is mentioned in the article. I am not sure, however, of the exact status of the Roman Catholic church within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at that time. Would religious pluralism be a better categorisation of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth with respect to religion at the time? What was the reilgious status of the Lithuanian sectors?

-Editalicus

Good point. I believe it was rather pluralism until the times of counter-reformation (when with the support of Vasa dynasty, catholicism gained an upper hand in the PLC), but I am not sure how was it reflected in law. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:43, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have done some more digging and I have grown somewhat more skeptical. Perhaps the relation between Poland-Lithuania and the Eastern Orthodox church and many of the more western Protestant sects might have been closer to something like the relationship between the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic church and the Monophystites and Nestorians in the early middle ages. There were times in which Poland-Lithuania might have extended all the way to include Odessa. I will see if I can find much on Algirdas or earlier.

Editalicus 01:32, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

FAC discussion

If any, please post here IF this is not applicable on FAC own discussion page. I intend to develop this article further with subarticles for each section, but I believe it may be considered for FA in its present state. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 12:24, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tone

I feel that there may be a slightly "pro-Commonwealth" bias in this article. I am by no means an expert on the subject, my knowledge based largely on a survey course on eastern European history in the earlymodern period. However, it seems to me, that comments such as these are common:

"At a time when most European countries were headed in the direction of centralisation, absolute monarchy and religious and dynastic warfare, the Commonwealth experimented with decentralisation, federation, democracy, religious tolerance and pacifism (since Sejm usually vetoed the monarchs' war declarations, it constitutes an interesting argument in favor of the democratic peace theory)."

This seems to be quite positive toned, which is not necessarily bad. However, the article as a whole seems to gloss over the fact that the noble class dominated the state, and calling it "democratic" is fairly exaggerated. I realise that, for its time, it may have been quite democratic. HOwever, it was still dominated by a small portion of the population, AND as the main point, my understanding is that the peasants of the area had relatively fewer rights than many other areas of Europe, so an argument could be made that it was less democratic.

I am willing to be corrected on this point, but felt I should bring it up, in case it does have some merit. Peregrine981 14:27, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

I admit I find the Commonwealth very interesting and it might have resulted in some bias in the article. I did want to underline the importance of the 'noble's democracy' and while the Commonwealth was definetly not democratic by today's standards, it was quite distinct from its conetmporary countries. In the end, 10% of its population (szlachta) lived in a democracy, compared to roughly nobody in other European countries. As for the peasant situation, the return to serfdom is mentioned in the lead. Feel free to improve that and expand the article with Commonwealth faults, I'd be happy for some assistance here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 14:54, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I shall certainly do what I can. I will be out of town for a week or so starting this weekend, so I may not get a chance to do anything too soon, but I will keep an eye on things when I come back. I'm quite impressed with this article overall! As to the democracy, I suppose you could say it was democratic in a way. I was taught that the most notable aspect of the commonwealth was the weakness of the central regime as compared to the nobility, and this had its benefits and weaknesses, and one weakness was the inability to inforce "impartial" justice for non-nobles, or to introduce policy that went against their wishes... I suppose these ideas are somewhat covered in the article. Peregrine981 05:26, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Name Change?

It is important to use the most common name when titling a Wikipedia article, in part because it makes the article more likely to be found from a google search. Thus, here the article on the country whose capital is Moscow is located at "Russia" (55.7 milion hits on google), not "Russian Federation" (7.8 million hits).

In my admittedly somewhat limited experience, I've found the simpler form "Poland-Lithuania" to be considerably more common in English-language material, and the territory is usually marked as such on maps, etc.

Unfortunately, the "google test" for "Poland-Lithuania" is difficult to apply as google does not seem to distinguish between "Poland-Lithuania", "Poland, Lithuania", and "Poland/Lithuania", and from the 42,600 hits for "Poland-Lithuania", one can only estimate from the first few pages that perhaps a little more than 60%, about 26,000 pages, are referencing the Commonwealth. This is considerably more than the 14,100 hits found for "Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth". What do you think?--Pharos 06:07, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)