In Search of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

In English, the largest state of early modern east-central Europe is usually called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish and Lithuanian versions mean the Republic of the Two Nations (implicitly – Polish and Lithuanian), but this is a relatively recent usage among historians. This elusively named polit, conventionally dated 1569-1795, is often judged by the fact…



Parliamentary Culture in Early Modern Europe

Representative assemblies were common in late medieval Europe. Though they varied tremendously in their organization, customs, and functions, they shared a transnational inheritance of ideas and methods that added up to a common European tradition. The political and constitutional significance of individual institutions has been exhaustively documented, but little has been done to investigate them…