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Renowned historian Andrzej Walicki here challenges the conventional understanding of the rise of nationalism and the nation-building process in East-Central Europe.
Arguing that the views advanced by Hans Kohn and others are marred by an inadequate knowledge of Polish history and thought, Walicki examines the emerging nationalism of the eighteenth century in a comparative perspective. He shows how Poland, the largest state in East-Central Europe, developed a modem national consciousness and, in fact, a political nationalism earlier and more successfully than has generally been acknowledged.
Walicki presents his case by examining the main currents of Polish thought in the Enlightenment from Noble Republicanism to the development of the progressive constitution of May 3, 1791. A final chapter analyzes the ideas of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the leader of the Polish uprising of 1794, showing him as an ideologist of "new republicanism" and a bridge between the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. This chapter will be of particular interest to readers familiar with Kosciuszko as a hero of the American Revolution.
Walicki provides a unique perspective on Polish history and culture, influenced by both Polish and American academic worlds and intellectual traditions. The strength of the book is its focus on the role of language and the manipulation of terms such as "communism" or "liberalism" by contemporary political leaders in Poland to achieve specific emotional reactions from the public. —Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences
"The author's twin purposes are to explain how Polish elites and patriots of the eighteenth century conceived of the nation in general and of their own nation in particular, and to argue that this set of ideas was fully consonant with the thought of the Enlightenment and hence constituted a bridge to the West rather than an anticipation of the folkish nationalisms of nineteenth-century Central and Eastern Europe." —Canadian-American Slavic Studies
"Walicki argues with Hans Kohn's characterization of Polish nationalism as ethnolinguistic and, therefore, quintessentially east European in origin. Walicki demonstrates that Poles developed a thoroughly political concept of nationhood in order to maintain the integrity of the commonwealth." —Slavic Review
Andrzej Walicki was the O'Neill Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, is the author of Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism, Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland, and numerous other books.