Marriage, Inheritance, and Family Discord: French Elite and the Transformation of the Polish Szlachta

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dc.contributor.authorBlackburn, Christopher
dc.date.accessioned2007-05-07T19:59:03Z
dc.date.available2012-02-24T10:08:55Z
dc.date.issued2004-06
dc.description.abstractSeveral important themes permeate Monsieur Damon’s instructions to his aristocratic pupil. Most significant is not that Poland was a part of the general European Enlightenment, but that Polish enlightened thought resided primarily within “fashionable”elite circles and was ultimately based on the writings of the French philosophes. The wholesale acceptance of French culture brought a clear and conscious change to the szlachta’s traditionally Sarmatian character, while at the same time the szlachta family was unconsciously transformed by the more subtle Western notions of kinship and affective individualism, a process that culminated with the reign of the last enlightened despot—Napoleon Bonaparte.2 The mentalité of the Polish nobility was recast in the eighteenth century as its membership embraced selectively certain aspects of both the Enlightenment and ancien régime France. The piecemeal acceptance of these ideas by the traditionally Sarmatian nobility led to the evolution of an ideology resembling Enlightened Sarmatianism—one that embraced formal education, individualism, and Western appearance, which coexisted with agrarianism, anti-urbanism, and devotion to the Church.
dc.formatText
dc.format.extent19 pages
dc.format.medium1 file (.pdf)
dc.identifier.citationBlackburn, C. (2004). Marriage, inheritance, and family discord: French elite and the transformation of the Polish Szlachta. World History Review, 1(3), pp. 2-20.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10877/3106
dc.language.isoen
dc.sourceWorld History Review, Summer 2004, Vol. 1, Issue 3, Article 2.
dc.subjectMarriage
dc.subjectInheritance
dc.subjectFamily
dc.subjectFrench Elite
dc.subjectPolish Szlachta
dc.subjectHistory
dc.titleMarriage, Inheritance, and Family Discord: French Elite and the Transformation of the Polish Szlachta
dc.typeArticle

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