Imperium litewskie w miedzyjednostkowych spolecznosciach systemach politycznych: studium przypadku

• Authors: Zenonas Norkus

Title variants

EN

LITHUANIAN EMPIRE INTERPERSONAL COMMUNITIES AND POLITICAL SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The paper explores the epistemic fruitfulness of the contemporary theories of modern relations for historical research about the relations between premodern polities. The application of the neorealist theory in such research is blocked by the assumption that its subject is an international system, consisting of sovereign national states. However, there were no such states (and nations) in medieval Europe and most other places in premodern times. In the article (TS) the concepts of “international system” and “international society” are replaced by the broader notions of “interpolity system” and “interpolity society”, and the distinction between “sovereign polities system/society” and “suzerain (impe rial) polity system/society”, borrowed (with modifications) from Martin Wight. They are used in the case study about the changing roles and challenges of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) as the subject of interpolity relations in XIII- -XV centuries. The second part is about the rise of GDL from the polity playing the role of the barrier (but not that of a buffer) polity, separating Central European and Eastern European interpolity systems and belonging to both of them, to the regional empire and suzerain polity of the Eastern European interpolity system by the early XVth century. However, Lithuanian hegemony in Eastern Europe lasted only for a few years. After 1430, the Eastern European interpolity system was about to transform itself from the suzerain polity system into a multipolar sovereign interpolity system of the type that consolidated in the Central and Western Europe after 1648 and survived for 300 years. However, the political leadership of GDL failed to meet the challenge to maintain an emerging multipolar balance of power in this system. Mainly due to the pursuit by Jagiellonian rulers of GDL and Poland of the dynastic politics in the Central Europe, at least three windows of opportunity to preserve this interpolity system from its annihilation by rising Moscow empire were not used. Last of them was the opportunity to re-establish the independence of Great Novgorod in 1480. These failures of the Lithuanian statesmanship sealed the fate of the Eastern European interpolity system: its disappearance in the Moscow empire. Therefore, the history of Eastern European interpolity politics in the XIII -XVIII centuries is another case proving the finding of the recent research by Stuart J. Kaufman, William C. Wohlforth, Richard Little, David Kangi, Charles Jones, Victoria Tin-bor Hui, Arthur Eckstein, Daniel Deudney and Williams Brenner: that a long-lasting balance of power in a interpolity system is rather an exception than rule, the rule being a displacement of the multipolar or bipolar balance of power interpolity systems by empires.

Keywords

EN

GRAND DUCHY OF LITHUANIA; INTERPERSONALITY

• Publisher: Księgarnia Akademicka
• Journal: Politeja : Pismo Wydziału Studiów Miedzynarodowych i Politycznych Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
• Year: 2011
• Issue: 2(16)
• Pages: 129-154

Contributors

author

Zenonas Norkus