Britain and Poland-Lithuania: Contact and Comparison from the Middle Ages to 1795(37 Northern World)

In twenty-four papers scholars from Europe and North America examine various aspects of the economies, politics and culture of Britain and Poland-Lithuania from the Middle Ages down to the Third Partition. The similarities between the two seemingly different regions are as surprising as the long-standing connections between the British Isles and East Central Europe. Commercial ties were complemented by migration and by cultural exchange with writers, philosophers and artists in both regions taking an interest in the other. In sections devoted to religion and toleration, trade, diasporas, political theory, and stereotypes among others the authors present a new and unexpected history of the relationship between two states which politically up to 1795 went in opposite directions. Contributors are: Richard Butterwick, Nils Hybel, Wendy Childs, Maryanne Kowaleski, Stanka Kuzmova, Sarah Layfield, Richard D Oram, Emilia Jamroziak, Piotr Guzowski, Derek Keene, Tomasz Gromelski, Pawel Rutkowski, Benedict Wagner-Rundell, John Fudge, Brian Levack, Beata Cieszynska, Waldemar Kowalski, Arthur H. Williamson, M.St. Almut Hillebrand, Peter Paul Bajer, Róisín Healy, Dariusz Rolnik, Jan Wolenski, Aleksandra Koutny-Jones.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Maps List of Abbreviations A note on Proper Names Preface: Richard W. Unger Foreword 1. Richard Butterwick: Taking Stock – Looking Forward Part I - The Middle Ages Contacts: 2. Nils Hybel: Early Commercial Contacts between England, Prussia and Poland 3. Wendy Childs: England’s Contacts with Poland-Lithuania in the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries 4. Maryanne Kowaleski: Polish Ships in English Waters in the Later Middle Ages Comparisons: religion, society, and culture: 5. Stanka Kuzmova: Preaching on Martyr-Bishops in the Later Middle Ages: Saint Stanislaus of Kraków and Saint Thomas Becket 6. Sarah Layfield: The Papacy and the Nations of Scotland and Poland, c.1250-1334 7. Richard D Oram: Holy Frontiersmen? Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-century Monastic Colonisation and Socio-Economic Change in Poland and Scotland 8. Emilia Jamroziak: Border Communities between Violence and Opportunities: Scotland and Pomerania Compared 9. Piotr Guzowski: Polish and English Peasants in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods: a comparative view 10. Derek Keene: England and Poland: medieval metropolises compared Part II: The Early Modern Period Polity, Diplomacy and War: 11. Tomasz Gromelski: The Social and Political Values of the Polish and English Gentry in the Late Sixteenth Century 12. Pawe» Rutkowski: Poland and Britain against the Ottoman Turks: Jerzy Ossolinski=s Embassy to King James I in 1621 13. Benedict Wagner-Rundell: Liberty, Virtue and the Chosen People: British and Polish Republicanism in the Early Eighteenth Century Religion and Toleration: 14. John Fudge: Corollaries of Commerce between England and Danzig [Gdansk] in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Romance, Heresy, Employment, and Epidemic 15. Brian Levack: Witch-hunting in Poland and England: similarities and differences 16. Beata Cieszynska: Polish Religious Persecution as a Topic in British Writing in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century Diasporas: 17. Waldemar Kowalski: Cracow Citizenship and the Local Scots, 1509-1655 18. Arthur H. Williamson: The “Nation Epidemical”: Scoto-Britannus to Scoto-Polonus 19. M. St. Almut Hillebrand: Britain and Grańsk (Danzig) in the Eighteenth Century as a Case Study for Cultural Transfer B the interdependence of the ‘bourgeois public’ and the social activities of British residents in Gdansk in a period of enlightened ‘Anglophilia’ Impressions and Stereotypes: 20. Peter Paul Bajer: Scotsmen and the Polish nobility from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century 21. Róisín Healy: The View from the Margins: Ireland and Poland-Lithuania, 1698-1798 22. Dariusz Rolnik: The picture of England and Englishmen in Polish memoirs during the Reign of Stanislaus August ( 1764-1795 ) Ideas and Art: 23. Jan Wolenski: Polish-English (British) Philosophical Contacts and Comparisons from the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century 24. Aleksandra Koutny-Jones: Echoes of the East: Glimpses of the ‘Orient” in British and Polish-Lithuanian Portraiture of the Eighteenth Century Bibliography

About the Author :
Richard W. Unger, Ph.D.(1971) in Economic History, Yale University, is Professor at the University of British Columbia. He has published extensively on the history of shipping and beer production and consumption in the Middle Ages and the Renaissan

Review :
"...It is not possible here to do full justice to such a rich and wide-ranging collection, but it affords considerable intellectual pleasure and is to be highly recommended." Jolanta Choinska-Mika (University of Warsaw), Slavonic and East European Review (vol. 89, no. 1, January 2011).