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The focus of this book is the unique socio-political and socio-cultural community of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the golden age of the late fifteenth to early seventeenth century. This study analyses the cultural and political impact of the values disseminated in the newly created state, such as the concept of the state itself, its governance, representation, laws, and other elements of the socio-political system.
Through theoretical and factographic arguments, this book demonstrates that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a social, political, and cultural link between geopolitical and geo-cultural spaces of the Roman West and the Byzantine East. Located at the cultural crossroads of Europe, Lithuania was an ethnically diverse, multilingual, multi-faith, multicultural national space. Nurtured by international contacts, its political system developed rapidly, influencing the formation of geopolitical and geo-cultural mentality of the whole Central Eastern European region.
“Jūratė Kiaupienė, a historian known for [her] scholarship on the Baltic region and east-central Europe, has written a comprehensive and detailed history of the political development of Lithuania from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries. [Her] description and persuasive analysis are based on a wide range of primary sources and expert use of the existing literature. … The principal contribution of this learned, richly detailed treatise lies largely in its ability to show how, over the course of two centuries, disparate political elites with diverse interests, religions, and cultures built a state. … The book should stand for some time as the most thorough account of the emergence of early modern Lithuania.”
—Martin O. Heisler, University of Maryland, Hiperboreea
Jūratė Kiaupienė was educated at the University of Vilnius, and was a senior research officer of the Institute for Lithuanian History in Vilnius and a professor of Vytautas the Great University (Kaunas). The focus of her research is the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Her publications include: “Mes Lietuva”. Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės bajorija XVI a. (viešasis ir privatus gyvenimas) (2003); The History of Lithuania before 1795 (edited, 2000); and Lietuvos istorija, vol. 4 and 5 (2009, 2013).
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part 1. The Landscape of the Grand Duchy of Lithuaniaʼs Political Culture
The Geopolitical and Geocultural Space of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
A Sociopolitical and Sociocultural Portrait of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
The Mythological Space of the Political Culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Part 2. The Makeup and Manifestation of the Political Culture of The Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Union—The Idea and Reality of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture
The State in the Political and Legal Culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
The Grand Duchy’s Culture of Parliamentarism
Part 3. “We, the Nation of Lithuania”—Uncovering the Values of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture
Bibliography