
Poland was shockingly liberal during the 1400s - jxub
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/poland-was-shockingly-liberal-in-the-1400s
======
dalbasal
_I tended to think Western history had been progressing toward the modern rule
of law since the Dark Ages_

History always tells you as much about its author as it does about its
subject. That narration is, a sort of british (and american) propoganda from
the British colonial era.

The way they thought of history (of "Western Civilization") was (1) The
"spark" starts in ancient greece. (2) It is handed Rome, who build inherit the
empire (3) Rome falls (ignore the eastern empire) (4) Civilization rekindles
in Italy (5) to torch passes to the British who spread it to the world.

Everything culminates in the American-British civilization, and whatever
British intellectuals thought was important about Britishness. It also plays
down Europe's (especially western Europe) relatively small part in the history
of "civilization" until relatively recently.

The narration would be totally different depending on who wrote it.

For example, think of it from a Middle Eastern perspective. Alexander's
conquests would be seen as something akin to Gengis Khan's conquest of China.
An outsider barbarian that invaded and ruled the Persian empire.

That is, Cyrus created a great persian empire. Greeks captured it, and it
continued. Rome captured it, and it continued. Then, western rome fell. But,
these were mostly barbarian territories with roman outposts. You can't compare
Roman Brtain to Roman Syria, for example. Syria was urban, literate and
civilized. Britain was a barbarian island with some roman roads and forts.
High status cultural influence (eg christianity) was imported from east to
west, not the reverse.

~~~
sandworm101
>> History always tells you as much about its author as it does about its
subject.

I know it has been popular, but that is a dangerous line of thinking these
days. It is totally fair to say that an analysis of a complex historical event
will be tainted by the views of the author(s). But such pieces aren't all
history. It is possible to generate bias-free history pieces. For instance, we
shouldn't say that every analysis of tree rings or ice cores is bias. That
makes it too easy to dismiss a valid representation historical data.

People who see bias everywhere aren't satisfied until they personally test the
ice cores. They feel free to deny climate science because everyone with eyes
on the cores is biased and untrustworthy. They also see bias in every record
of a historical event, again proclaiming them untrustworthy. Since they didn't
witness the event and all records are biased, the event either didn't happen
or is permanently beyond any accurate understanding. As with ice cores, such
people feel free to substitute their own version of history.

It is dangerous to see bias everywhere. Doing so allows us to selectively
dismiss anything and everything. We have to agree that there is such a thing
as historical truth. To do otherwise is to deny history and all the lessons it
has to teach.

~~~
DubiousPusher
The difference between science and history is that science seeks to reduce the
scope of its observations to remove bias particularly biases which are
subconscious. The ability to do this depends a great deal on the complexity of
the system. A tree trunk and pair of calipers is a pretty simple system. Once
a couple people have measured the same tree and produced simillar
measurements, we can be fairly confident in those measurements.

But the actions of say a parliament are a system with orders of magnitude more
complexity and thus we should trust almost no one's intepretation to be
unbiased. This is the cursed paradox of history. We so badly want to
understand people and societies and it is almost impossible to know we have
come to that understanding with any kind of certainty.

Side Rant: This is actually why I see psychology and sociology as dangerous.
They often have the rigor of history and cloak themselves in the airs of
science.

~~~
sandworm101
>> Once a couple people have measured the same tree and produced simillar
measurements, we can be fairly confident in those measurements.

Really? I remember a fight about a year ago over whether or not it was hot on
a particular day in DC. Half the US decided that they couldn't trust the
biased weather reporting system. The perception of constant bias in all things
meant we couldn't agree on a simple temperature record. A subset of these
people cannot trust doctors enough to take vaccines or antibiotics. A further
subset cannot even trust that the earth is round.

------
wuschel
I agree that Poland - and the east of Europe - seldomly appears in the western
history lesson narrative.

Poland was liberal for it's time, yes, albeit only for the _szlachta_ , a
large part of the population that belonged to the privileged class of
nobility. Peasants had not so much to gain access these times, especially in
the former parts of Poland that are now Ukraine.

People of Jewish faith had strong privileges in Poland in the middle ages,
which lead to the biggest diaspora in the world, a large fragmented community
that was integrated into polish society in various degrees - as can be
beautifully seen in the _Jewish Museum_ in Warsaw.

~~~
d__k
> Poland was liberal for it's time

It depends on how you define liberal. For example, Afganistan, Somalia, the
Ukraine are very liberal nowadays: weak _central_ government, weak _central_
censorship, weak currency. Instead, warlords and gangs having the same
functions – but it can be treated as liberal and democratic construction - you
can always do the same and everybody has equal rights (kind of early US).

~~~
growtofill
The most definitions include "the rule of law" (and you seem to be mistaken
"limited" for "weak"):

> "Classical liberalism" is the term used to designate the ideology advocating
> private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law,
> constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and
> international peace based on free trade. > > –
> [https://mises.org/library/what-classical-
> liberalism](https://mises.org/library/what-classical-liberalism)

The parent comment, however, argues that all the liberties were only available
to the nobility, not that it was liberal in a different sense of the word that
we use nowadays.

Comparing renaissance-age Poland to any of the modern-day countries you've
mentioned doesn't make sense to me (also, it's Ukraine, not "the Ukraine").

~~~
d__k
In ancient Greece, a great deal (or even most) of the population were slaves.
Yet, it does not prevent us from treating their system as democracy and
compare it with the modern democracies and "democracies".

~~~
growtofill
The article mentions this fact:

> Poland had the szlachta, a broad citizen-warrior class that can be thought
> of as an upper middle class. This amounted to 10% of the population. That
> might sound like a very limited form of democracy, but it is the same
> percentage of the population as voted in the famous democracy of ancient
> Athens

I'd suggest reading the article if you haven't already. It doesn't argue or
force a definition of 'liberal' or 'democratic' but describes the period of
Polish history apparently poorly highlighted in the curriculum of US schools.

------
grzaks
Polish society is still liberal. Please do not think our current government
and their actions are representative of what Poles think and support. Majority
is at the moment fighting our own government ...

~~~
imhoguy
Somehow majority choses such goverment during democratic voting.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Very far from majority. The right-wing party got 37.58% with the turnout of
50.92%. Their main argument, repeated and nauseam, was "We will gave 125€ a
month per child to everyone". It turned out partially false afterwards, but a
new tradition of buying votes for money has been born.

~~~
kingofhdds
That's how democracy works everywhere. Majority within voting part of society
decides who will rule, and it's ok because non-voting part doesn't care. Also,
every election is a fair of promises. This gov't at least partially fulfilled
theirs, no wonder their voting base is the largest.

------
vectorEQ
"I feel like my teachers lied to me. The version of Western history that I was
taught in school mostly focused on Spain and Portugal during the 1400s and
1500s, France and Germany in the 1700s and 1800s, Russia and Germany in the
1900s, and Britain during the whole era from the Dark Ages onwards"

This beginning.. points to that our history lessons are focused on resnisance
/ reformation times. the 'dark ages' is all a bunch of nonsense. if you look
at islamic / african continent, asia and other places you can find actually a
lot of history that supports the fact that also in Europe people were not in
some dark evil times... that a lot of cultures were sharing (ofc there was
also conflict all over the place..) a lot of knowlege and culture with
eachother.

our dark ages for a lot of other cultures is in the middle of their golden
ages...

like some cheesy soap series: "the rewrting of history after war by it's
victors, is a war in itself."

just imagine how often that happened. just look at all the modern activities
by governments and how they try to turn and twist things like 'their country
is best, and others are shit' (that's the general idea they will try to put on
their poplation in any case).

if you ask me they just try to hide the fact (by reforming history) to make
everyone feel seperated, and opposed. instead of remembering we can share and
grow all together.

/tinfoilhat

------
barking
I think it was the black death that effectively killed of feudalism in most of
Europe. Wages went up and peasants were in high demand so it became easier to
move. The effects of the Black death (1344) were probably being felt in 1400s
Europe to at least the extent that WW2 still impacts on us today.

~~~
jxub
Strangely, Poland was left largely unafected by the Black Death so the cause
of this social arrngement wasn't there.

The high regard for peasants in Poland contrasted with the neighboring East
Slavic countries like Russia probably because of the influence of their Mongol
rulers, but in the origin Slavic cultures were quite egalitarian and
benevolent.

~~~
wozmirek
Disagree with the high regard. As you said, it's not russian type of
servitude/slavery, but at the same time, being a Polish (well, not really
Polish - living in a land of a certain polish-slavic ruler) peasant was bad.

If the plague hit Poland, then... but that's a what-if ;) I find the
difference is really well explained by the description of the Refeudalization
process [1].

source: being Polish, currently living in Berlin

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeudalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeudalization)

~~~
jxub
There was a class of well-off peasants who had fairly comfortably lives, but
for the most part I think you're right as that part of my argument was really
hand-wavy.

------
webrobots
There was also this interesting phenomenon in 1760-1790s:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Paulava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Paulava)

This small republic inside the Union had economic freedom for peasants,
parliament and voting right, education and medical care system - way ahead of
it's time.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
This is what I imagine what would happen when a modern day progressive is sent
back in time and told to try out 21rst century ideas: it lasts until he dies.

------
pplonski86
I think Polish people are very liberal, I live in Podlaskie Voivodeship, we
have mix here of Belarusians, Lithuanians, Jews (regions of Tykocin), Tatars
(regions of Kruszyniany). Mix of religions Catholics, Orthodox, Judaism,
Muslims. It is called cultural crucible.

As one of the implications of such mix, we have very tasty food here!

I don't like all comments about government - it is always easy to complain.
Please just do you your job as good as you can and everything will be perfect.

~~~
ntlk
Where I’m from, all the LGBT people I knew emigrated, me included. Probably
because Polish people are not actually very liberal.

------
oym8
Author mentions that "Szlachta" are now portrayed as the villains of Polish
history without appearing to understand why this is the case.

The key to understanding the dysfunction of polish political system at the
time is the concept of "Liberum Veto"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto)).
Essentially any legislation passed by the Parliament ("Sejm") had to be passed
unanimously.

This resulted in nobility securing earmarks and privileges for themselves at
every turn and led to anarchy and destabilization of the political system,
which culminated in partitioning of Poland between three of its largest
neighbors for 123 years.

~~~
ajuc
Liberum veto abuse was a symptom, not the cause. The practice existed since
forever, but before late 17th century it was only used to block a particular
issue, not the whole session, and only temporarily. And it was OK.

Then in one case it was abused (technically correctly) to veto a movement to
lenghten the parliament session because consensus wasn't achieved. One guy
vetoed that, and sejm was finished without any decisions.

Then it started to be abused illegally to finish any sejm completely at any
time (even 1 day into the session which were supposed to last weeks) when even
1 nobleman vetoed. It wasn't the problem of the law, because it was illegal to
do so - it was the problem of the implementation of the law - because
influential people wanted it to be abused that way.

But the real reason was - Poland lost several important international
struggles (over Baltics vs Sweden and over part of Ukraine vs Russia), and
international economic situation changed (agricultural revolution started,
decreasing grain prices on the western markets). Additionally after series of
barely survived wars Poland lost a lot of population, so the grain production
decreased (and it was like 99% of Polish economy).

Becausse of all of that - infulential people in Poland perceived Polish
interests as unrealistic, and alligned themselves with more profitable groups
- Prussia, Germany, Catholic Church. And to further their cause they were
breaking the law by abusing liberum veto among others.

There were also patriots, of course, and they broke the law, too (3rd May
Constitution was introduced in a coup supported by Prussia basically). But in
the end Poland was already a Russian protectorate, and there was no way to fix
that as long as Russia was so much stronger. Only after WW1 it became
possible.

------
pouetpouet
Related: The Lwow School of Mathematics before before WWII
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_School_of_Mathematic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_School_of_Mathematics)

[https://culture.pl/en/article/maths-madness-and-the-
manhatta...](https://culture.pl/en/article/maths-madness-and-the-manhattan-
project-the-eccentric-lives-of-steinhaus-banach-and-ulam)

HN discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16666079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16666079)

------
dvfjsdhgfv
When you wonder why Hitler built the concentration camps for Jews in Poland,
you can find the answer in the article. For centuries and centuries Jews
chased away from Spain and other countries found a safe home in Poland. They
enjoyed freedom and were thriving until the nationalists movements started to
become pronounced everywhere in Europe in the early 20th century.

~~~
jxub
You probably ment until the rise of Nazism and the indifference of the Western
powers that be to what was going on in Germany.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
No, unfortunately a bit earlier than that. The mid-war Poland was a country in
a terrible state. Most of the population was destitute. Malnutrition was
omnipresent. People were dying of typhus, especially in poorer areas
(incidentally, it was thanks to a Pole Rudolf Weigl that a vaccine for typhus
was finally discovered.) Imagine the Jews in all this: keeping aside, strongly
refusing integration (with some notable exceptions), and, for historical
reasons, keeping to a different set of jobs than the rest of this multi-
cultural Polish society. The conflict was unavoidable. Right-wing nationalists
were convinced that Poland would be better without Jews [0], and the Catholic
Church was supporting this vision. That's why Ghetto benches [1] appeared, and
the life of Jews in the last years before the war was much more difficult than
earlier.

However, many Western, and especially American scholars, don't have a deep
understanding of these issues. They simplify it as "Poles hated Jews." It was
not so. Probably the best example is Zosia Kossak-Szczucka, presented in the
article "Anti-Semite who saved Jews" [2] As many others, she was critical of
Jews in pre-war years. And as many others, she risked her life to save them.
Most people discussing the issue of Anti-Semitism in pre-war Poland don't
understand this issue at all.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_benches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_benches)

[2] [https://polska.pl/arts/literature/zofia-kossak-szczucka-
anti...](https://polska.pl/arts/literature/zofia-kossak-szczucka-anti-semite-
who-saved-jews/)

~~~
jxub
Really solid and unbiased explanation, thanks for that.

------
Err_Eek
> The Union of Poland and Lithuania was automatically multi-cultural, __multi-
> racial __

That 's seriously stretching the definition of race tho

~~~
dreen
It's certainly multi-ethnic. Lithuanians are Balkan peoples while the Polish
are Slavic, two separate language and cultural groups. As for race the author
was most likely referring to people of Mongolian and Persian descent who were
also part of the Union.

~~~
def_true_false
> Lithuanians are Balkan peoples

Baltic.

~~~
dreen
Yep, sorry

------
psergeant
It shouldn’t be any surprise that the successor to the mighty TURBOSLAV empire
was progressive.

------
shadowtree
The Polish language is interesting as it has just a few Roman/Latin influences
and did not get reformed in modern times - unlike many other European
languages.

Poland did not exist for a long stretch of time, 1795-1918, it was partitioned
between Prussia, the Habsburg empire and Russia. Poland had provoked those
powers with a radical, modern constitution.

The Polish language was forbidden, hence only got taught in underground
schools, thereby preserving its old nature. Learning it now can drive you
crazy due its chaotic "rules".

The partition is also the cause of famous Poles having French names - Frederic
Chopin, Marie Curie.

The partition and soon to follow WW2, Holocaust and Russian occupation have
beaten a fierce paranoia and national identity into modern Poles.

~~~
ajuc
Are you Polish? Because what you wrote is mostly wrong.

Polish is probably the Slavic language with the most foreign influences, at
least compared to other western Slavic languages or Balkan languages I've
seen. Czech language is more "pure" exactly because it was reconstructed from
peasant-speak when nationalism became fashionable and educated Czechs turned
to their language.

Meanwhile Polish language was continuously used by all layers of society all
through the partitions, so it accumulated lots of foreign influences as the
fashions changed (from Latin/Italian/German/French/English). It's a
significant cultural phenomena, to the point that people in 16th century
already complained that everybody uses "makaronizm" (Italian or Latin words)
to show-off that they know foreign languages.

Polish language wasn't forbidden for majority of the territory that was
occupied, and in these parts where it was forbidden - it was only forbidden
for a period of time, not the whole time.

> The partition is also the cause of famous Poles having French names -
> Frederic Chopin, Marie Curie.

No, it's not. Chopin's father was French, and Maria Skłodowska-Curie (as she
preferred to be called, at least when she was in Poland) married a French guy
named Curie.

Also - Polish language had small reforms every few decades, but I agree it's
overdue another, big one.

~~~
shadowtree
Why did those Poles end up in France?

Maria Skłodowska, as you know, had to study in a clandestine university in
Warsaw due to the Russian occupation.

What was Russification? Germanification?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification#Poland_and_Lithu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification#Poland_and_Lithuania)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanisation_of_Poles_during_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanisation_of_Poles_during_the_Partitions)

~~~
ajuc
> Why did those Poles end up in France?

Same reason talented Poles now go to London or New York.

> What was Russification? Germanification?

Mostly futile attempts to make people speak different language than they
speak. Language was banned in some places, for some time. And they achieved
nothing - if anything, Polish Romantism movement was flourishing because of
the "forbidden fruit" effect.

------
jlebrech
then this happened
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna)

~~~
rasz
and this was before
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow_(1612)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow_\(1612\))

~~~
simula67
Care to explain ?

------
simula67
> under President Trump, who has been willing to build alliances with foreign
> powers to conspire against his own country.

Say what you want about Trump, but he loves his country

~~~
philbarr
Say what you want about Trump, he loves himself.

~~~
Aqua
Honestly, everyone loves themselves, Trump is just "a little bit" more vocal
about it than the most of us.

~~~
golergka
Are you not at all aware of the depression and similar disorders and how
prevalent they are in general population? Honestly, I think that majority of
people around me never learned to love themselves.

