The Fall of Poland
Charles Lemos at MYDD has me reconsidering my position on the role of Poland’s odd political institutions in its disappearance as a state at the end of the 18th century. Lemos’ point is that while the fix may have been in for geographic and strategic reasons by the time of the Partitions of Poland, the Liberum Veto played a big role in Poland’s decline in the mid-17th Century, the series of events that set the stage for the later extinguishment of the state:
It is true that Poland’s geography, not just its location but the fact that the country is a flat hard to defend plain, made it ripe for invasion. Nonetheless, Poland had historically been able to fend off successive foreign invaders including the Mongols (three times), the Teutonic Knights, and the Russians without much difficulty before 1650. The country, however, had a harder time throwing off the Swedes. This was due to the introduction of the Liberum Veto in 1652 just three years before the start of the seven decade on and off war with Sweden. [...]
Based on the assumption that all members of the Polish nobility were absolutely equal politically, the Liberum Veto meant, in practice, that every bill introduced into the Sejm had to be passed unanimously. The political system found itself in a prolonged crisis that prevented Poland from developing a fiscal-military state, the model that allowed other European countries to wage war and defend themselves. The paralysis that enveloped the Polish state made it easy prey for rising powers who had developed centralized fiscal-militarty states to take advantage of Poland’s weakness.
Obviously, I’m not really well-versed in these events but that seems cogent enough to me. The story of Sweden’s 17th century moment in the sun as a great power is pretty interesting. I’ve read C.V. Wedgewood’s old book on The Thirty Years War but don’t know of much else on the subject that’s accessible.
36 Responses to “The Fall of Poland”
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February 9th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
There is a book directly on topic by Brian Downing The Military Revolution and Political Change.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Military-Revolution-Political-Change-Democracy/dp/0691024758/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265738248&sr=8-1
February 9th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
And, of course, the most accessible, and probably thorough, history of Poland in English is:
God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 2: 1795 to the Present by Norman Davies
God’s Playground: A History of Poland, Vol. 1: The Origins to 1795 by Norman Davies
February 9th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
I’m actually reading C.V. Wedgwood’s book right now (by the way, I recommend everything she ever wrote to anybody). And what struck me was that the Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War is arguably a better analogy to our current dysfunction (insofar as historical analogies are ever useful) than the Polish example. A constitution filled with veto points, mis-aligned incentives, and overlapping areas of responsibility defined by norms rather than laws. A governmental structure designed long before as a compromise to unite a bunch of quasi-independent groups into a single political unit. It all ultimately led to a “nation” that was incapable of acting to confront problems, but was, almost inevitably, torn apart by individual actors whose personal incentives did not match those of the nation. The key difference is that, in the HRE, the various actors within the state also tended to be allied more or less formally with foreign powers (both civil and religious), so when we collapse, we’ll simply collapse into poverty and irrelevance, and not spend 30 years letting other people fight their wars on our soil. What a relief!
February 9th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Northern Shores: A history of the Baltic Sea and its peoples by Alan Palmer, is a very readable history of the whole region.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Hmm, the Sejm is kind of akin to a Senator’s hold on legislation or nominees.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
I enjoyed the Wedgwood book, and I’ve started a new title on the 30-Years War that I just picked out of the library. Peter Wilson’s The Thirty Year War, which I’ve linked via amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-War-Europes-Tragedy/dp/0674036344/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265740038&sr=8-5
I’ll let folks know if this is anything worth reading.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
What’s important, and worth saying every single time about this point in Polish history is that Prussia and Russia, two of the partitioners of Poland (Austria, the other is different) were just as open to invasion as Poland was – it goes both ways. The real difference is Poland was impossible to rule.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
You’re seeing a similar dynamic playing out in California. The prop 13-induced 67% threshold required for raising taxes effectively provides fiscal conservatives with de facto veto power over all kind of government initiatives. With prop 13 and a constitutionally mandated balanced budget provision, the state government has zero ways to raise revenue. So with the fiscal meltdown, we’re seeing what can only be characterized as the gutting of the state’s educational system – K-12 and higher ed. The state basically is no longer functioning, and now we’re seeing individual cities starting to slip underwater. Vallejo is cutting their police force from 158 to 89 – and their doing it in the midst of an alarmingly violent crime wave. This is only going to get worse. Looks like we’re finally going to get that smaller government conservatives are always dreaming about.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
The Poles never fought the Mongols off. The Mongols quit and went home.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Right. And Sweden, by comparison, was an absolute monarchy. A similar scenario played out in Denmark, which led nearly to the annihilation of Denmark as a separate country. The Danish kings (Christian IV and Frederick III) had to fight several massive wars against Sweden without direct control of the country as a whole.
February 9th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Re: The Mongols quit and went home.
Didn’t they have a political custom of going home whenever a Great Khan died so they could help choose a successor? I seem to recall something like that.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Some Poles asked Rousseau to propose a new constitution for them. The one he came up with was pretty sensible, casting doubt upon what you usually hear in Political Philosophy 101 about Rousseau’s inherent extremism.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
I had seriously thought that I was the only person to ever have read The Thirty Year’s War. It’s one of my favourite books of all time, not least because she is such a wonderful writer. The final paragraphs are deeply moving, and could be applied to so much of modern conflict:
“After the expenditure of so much human life to so little purpose, men might have grasped the essential futility of putting the beliefs of the mind to the judgment of the sword. Instead, they rejected religion as an object to fight for and found others.
“As there was no compulsion towards a conflict which, in despite of the apparent bitterness of the parties, took so long to engage and needed so much assiduous blowing to fan the flame, so no right was vindicated by its ragged end. The war solved no problem. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its causes, devious in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict. The overwhelming majority . . . wanted no war; powerless and voiceless, there was no need even to persuade them that they did. The decision was made without thought of them. Yet of those who, one by one, let themselves be drawn into the conflict, few were irresponsible and nearly all were genuinely anxious for an ultimate and better peace. Almost all . . .were actuated by fear rather than by lust of conflict or passion of faith. They wanted peace and they fought for thirty years to be sure of it.
“They did not learn then, and have not since, that war breeds only war.”
February 9th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
It’s not just about politics and government. Don’t forget—the Swedes had superior weapons and tactics and beat the Catholic Germans as well as the Poles. Max Boot has a nice chapter on this in “War Made New.” The first two-thirds of his book is fantastic.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Another problem with the Noble Democracy (as Davies calls it) of the Sjem, which Citizens United also touches on, is that the unanimity requirement made it easy for the foreign powers to prevent action. Simply bribing a Sjem member to block any action detrimental to the power would paralyze the abaility of the Polish state to respond.
Thus, not only was institutional paralysis built in, but it was ridiculously easy for other powers to corrupt the system in their own interest.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
I just like that it was called “exploding the diet”
February 9th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Matt:
There’s a great new book on the 30 years war (I read Wedgewood earlier as well). It’s called “The Thirty Years War” (natch) by Peter H. Wilson.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
That’s the way I read it. A couple of Ghengis’ grandsons were in nominal command of the expedition to eastern europe (A general called Subeidi Bahadour was actually in charge) and they had to head home to compete in the succession. The Poles and Hungarians and sundry others congratulated themselves on their victory and didn’t mention the part about losing all the battles. (I was recently disappointed that the King Wencelas of Bohemia who managed to at least take the field against Subeidi and return with his army intact was a different one than the Good one in the song)
February 9th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
I thought Sweden’s big imperialist moment was Charles XII.
February 9th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Geoffrey Parker’s book (The Thirty Years’ War) is also very good.
February 9th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
I think Mr. Lemos’ thesis has validity, but Poland’s rapid disappearance in the 17th and 18th Century had far more to do with Germany (then Prussia) and Russia’s territorial expansion. Poland – and Lithuania, a country more or less in the same boat – was doomed by geography. Russia and Germany were and are far larger, far more dynamic nations with far more people and resources. They also had inferiority complexes that caused them to seek out land empires (and access to the sea). Poland – even if they’d had it together, and they didn’t – never had a chance. In the game of life, sometimes you’re simply born to lose.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
I’ve had that Wedgwood book sitting on my shelf for a while now, just staring at me. I’ll go read it now.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
The other European country with no “fiscal miliatary staate” England turned out quite good, precisly due to the lack of such, which allowed the development off a more democratic government, at least responsive to the interests of the bourgeoisie. That helped Englands rise a lot.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Russia and Germany were and are far larger, far more dynamic nations with far more people and resources.
Way, way to tenditious. “Germany” didn’t exist during the age of Poland’s decline, and did not exist as a nation until 1871. Prussia didn’t become a major power until long after Poland fell into decline. Russian, likewise, became a power by feeding on Poland as it’s government rotted away.
In the 17th Century Germany, not Poland, was the doormat of Europe, and something like a quarter of its population was slaughtered by foreign armies during the 30 Years War.
Russia, likewise, didn’t exist as a modern state until the late 17th Century. It was large, but disorganized, backward, and impoverished. The only reason it was called “Russia” was because the Princes of Muscovy, former tax-collectors for the Mongols, had beat up the other backward Russian principalities and basically invented the title.
Two monarchies, the Romanovs of Russia and the Hohenzollern of Brandenburg-Prussia in Germany, built modern states out of the feudal debris of their respective European backwaters in the 17th and 18th Centuries, while Poland’s monarchy and government fossilzed. It didn’t have to happen that way, The Poles, Swedes, Hapsburgs, and Ottomans all had their own chance to become the great modern power in Eastern Europe, and they all bungled the opportunity.
The ultimate point being, modern nation states are created, and there is nothing inevitable about that process.
February 9th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Midland @24:
“The Poles, Swedes, Hapsburgs, and Ottomans all had their own chance to become the great modern power(s) in Eastern Europe, and they all bungled the opportunity.”
Look at what those countries had individually visa-vis their neighbors/rivals and you see why they failed to last as ‘great’ states or empires. Sweden had a small population and was hemmed in by powerful, aggressive neighbors. The Hapsburgs and Ottomans were centrally weak regimes sitting on top of ethnically divergent populations without cultural or religious glue to hold them together. Poland sat between two emerging powers looking to expand at their expense. So, the ethnic makeup of a state (closely linked to geography) and geography itself doomed these would be powers.
‘Germany’ didn’t officially form until 1870 but after 1648, Brandenburg Prussia was a highly centralized, rapidly developing power – well governed with a strong military. They easily gobbled up their weaker German neighbors and then worked on gobbling up Poland. Russia was a backward state until recently (some would claim it still is) but that didn’t stop it from expanding like mad. Although always less than the sum of its parts, it had a LOT of parts.
Poland had a brief window of opportunity and I think Mr. Lemos tries to explain why they couldn’t build on their mid 1600’s success. But the briefness of that window is the primary reason they were doomed. In 1650, Poland looked like a good bet for future success. Frederick of Germany and Peter of Russia later and that was all over. Demographics and geography, the distribution of resources, access to the sea – these things have far more to do with the rise/fall, success/failure of nations than anything else.
February 9th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Not inevitable, but very likely without the specific creating polit enterpreneur. Without Prussia someone else most likely would have stepped in. In Germanies case that could have been a tipping pont towards, a bigger solution including Austria. Or maybe not, Prussias supirior military and public adminstration was not the only factor that spoke against such a solution. The protestant catholic divide mattered a lot for example. Many people all over Europe where pushing for nation staates because they saw how the already developed nation staates became more and more prosperous and powerfull compared to the decentraliced regions with traditional nobleman rule. Nation staates were created, but not without any basis. German language differed as much within what became Germany as towards Dutch, but Dutch today is still far more similar to German than any other language. So a complete alternate realiy where Austria would have built a nation staate from their empire that was so extreme diverse from a lingual standpoint alone is a rather unlikely alternative for example. Yes modern nation staates were constructed from a situation where similarities were much smaller.
February 9th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Someone else has made the point that the Poles did not fight off the Mongols. As for the Teutonic Knights, there were plenty of border skirmishes, but the Knights never made a concerted attempt to conquer the country. Poland was Roman Catholic, so the Knights could hardly claim a Crusade as they could against the pagan Balts or the Orthodox Russians in Novgorod.
Russia never invaded Poland in the medieval period.
The Poles did have some trouble with the Turks on their southern border, but ultimately the Ottomans were overextended and could not push any further into Europe.
February 9th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
This was a big part of the divide that kept any unified “Germany” arising in that area for a long time. You had areas like Bavaria and the like in southern Germany that were heavily Catholic and highly suspicious of the protestant northern German areas like Prussia and the Rhineland.
Plus, the Prussians got lucky in some regards. They got the Rhineland and Westphalia after the Congress of Vienna, which vastly strengthened them vis a vis Austria (Vienna was the traditional center of power for the German-speaking world, seeing as it was the capital for the Hapsburg and predecessor Holy Roman Empire).
February 9th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
James Michener’s Poland is a terrific and comprehensive explanation of Polish history, culture, attitude in largely fiction form. I’ve been told some people prefer learning these things in less-than-700 page increments…..so its not for everybody.
Lots of the European nations played their part in keeping Poland very loosely united. France, Germany, others basically sponsored nobles, and in a poor country that was a primary source of income. Lack of strong central nationalism also meant some of the nobles culturally identified more closely with influential neighbors like Austria.
Their geography was impossible, but they made it even more difficult on themselves. United only when the threats were standing on their doorstep ala the mongols.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:04 am
I think Matt may be right after all. Russia, given its shear size was going to become a great power sooner or later. Germany is more complicated. But even without a centralized state, it was still a powerful civilization. Central Europe between the Rhine and Oder rivers is a highly fertile, very densely populated region. Even the Romans could not conquer it. Nor could France, which were far more centralized and cohesive than Poland ever was. Lack of political unity was a serious obstacle for the Germans but hardly a permanent one.
February 10th, 2010 at 4:53 am
On Sweden Michael Roberts has written a good dozen books and is generally regarded as the authority on its century as a great power – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Roberts_%28historian%29 has a list.
Geoffrey Parker’s brilliant books on the early modern Military Revolution also puts Sweden’s rise and fall in a wider political, economic, social and technological context.
While I love CV Wedgewood’s book on the Thirty Years War it is like Runciman’s great History of the Crusades very dated now and I would only recommend it for providing a masterly narrative account of who fought who and who won – when you want to move on to detailed scholarly analyses of the whys and hows you need someone like Parker or Roberts.
Would also second God’s Playground as the most authoritative scholarly history – reading it properly may take several weeks out of your life though and if you want a more Wedgewood-like popular narrative in one volume then you’d be better with Adam Zamoyski’s The Polish Way.
February 10th, 2010 at 5:13 am
A big misconception:
The Thirty Years War body count went from three quarters of the population down to a between a quarter and a third when Wedgewood wrote in the thirties to maybe a fifth in Parker in the eighties.
As there is very little hard demographic data to work on all of these figures are pure guesstimates.
It also needs to be remembered that vastly more of these deaths occurred from disease and famine than from violence – and although having ill-disciplined armies rampaging about greaty helped in the spread of both, great epidemics and famines would have happened anyway.
There was also a very strong ideological element in the early over-estimates – German nationalists of both the Left and Right needed to establish a dominating narrative that without unity Germany would be constantly invaded and its people slaughtered or enslaved.
In point of fact barring the huge aberration of 1618-1648 the German territories of the Holy Roman Empire were probably one of the most peaceful places in Europe to live through most of the middle ages and early modern era.
February 10th, 2010 at 5:33 am
Another important aspect of Poland’s decline was its sheer heterogeneity – religiously divided between Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Jews and even Muslims and ethnically between Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Russians and dozens of smaller minorities, measures like the Liberum Veto and an ever-weaker elective monarchy were at least partially designed to block the sort of internecine conflicts that had turned the rest of Europe into battlegrounds.
If there was no strong centralised dynastic state then logically there was no point trying to capture it in order to assert the total dominance of your faith or faction.
Of course in reality the military weakness of C17 Poland led not just to the Swedes being able to rampage around the country at will but also to the hugely bloody Cossack revolt of Bogdan Khmelnitsky with its pogroms and massacres.
And geography is overrated – Prussia is even more cursed in that respect than Poland being on the same flat sandy plain without the advantage of being so large as to passively thwart the primitive military logistics of would-be conquerors – but still eventually ended up a great power.
February 10th, 2010 at 6:01 am
N: ‘Sweden had a small population and was hemmed in by powerful, aggressive neighbors’.
Only up to a point – Sweden indeed had a small population but in fact the ranks of its armies were largely filled with German, Scottish and other mercenaries.
And who were these powerful, aggressive neighbours?
Denmark was a perennial enemy but hardly powerful.
The Holy Roman Empire was a ramshackle mess that descended into bloody chaos when an ambitious Habsburg emperor attempted to some degree of religious and political unity.
C17 Poland while territorially imposing was politically and militarily feeble.
England, Spain, France, Holland and the Ottoman Empire were too far away to effectively project power that far north.
Russia only became truly powerful and aggressive under Peter the Great – who nevertheless got humiliatingly trounced by the Swedes at Narva and even with massive numerical superiority needed a great deal of luck to win in the Poltava campaign.
Prussia did indeed become powerful and aggressive – but only after the complete collapse of Sweden (during the Seven Years War Sweden’s army was so weak that Frederick II contemptuously never even bothered to occupy Swedish Pomerania as it constituted no conceivable threat) created a power vacuum for them to occupy.
February 10th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Citino’s The German way of war : from the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich is a nice little short history on “Prussian” militarism and how it came about as a response to eastern Germany being used as a battlefield for the armies of the other European powers, including Poland.
Again, all the reasons people give for Germany becoming a great power apply to to eastern Europe, as well. Even Prussia was never a major power until Frederick the Great stole Silesia from the Hapsburg. By then, Poland was already disintegrating.
February 10th, 2010 at 10:14 am
The use of a liberum veto was a symptom of Poland’s decline, not a cause (read about its first use, by a representative in the Sejm, Sicinski). The surrounding, predatory powers at a certain point in Poland’s decline were able to buy vetoes and, worse, the election of monarchs (Poland was a quasi-constitutional electoral monarchy for most of its pre-partition history) after the middle of the seventeenth century.