The Great Immigration Scots In Cracow And Little Poland Circa 1500 1660

In The Great Immigration Waldemar Kowalski provides an analysis of urbanized Scots in Little Poland from the 1570s to the 1660s, including their commercial activities and the networks they built in their host communities, particularly in Cracow.

As a medical, economic, spiritual and demographic crisis, plague affected practically every aspect of an early modern community whether on a local, regional or national scale. Its study therefore affords opportunities for the reassessment of many aspects of the pre-modern world. This book examines the incidence and effects of plague in an early modern Scottish community by analysing civic, medical and social responses to epidemics in the north-east port of Aberdeen, focusing on the period 1500–1650. While Aberdeen’s experience of plague was in many ways similar to that of other towns throughout Europe, certain idiosyncrasies in the city make it a particularly interesting case study, which challenges several assumptions about early modern mentalities.

This collection of essays charts the rise to prominence of the Ten Commandments in religious and artistic developments in the culture of late-medieval Western Europe (13th-15th centuries). Contributions include discussions of catechetical texts as well as literary writings.

An essential new history of Central Europe, the contested lands so often at the heart of world history Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central European powers warred with their neighbors, the region developed its own cohesive identity and produced tremendous accomplishments in politics, society, and culture. Central Europeans launched the Reformation and Romanticism, developed the philosophy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and advanced some of the twentieth century’s most important artistic movements. Drawing on a lifetime of research and scholarship, The Middle Kingdoms tells as never before the captivating story of two thousand years of Central Europe’s history and its enduring significance in world affairs.

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was one of the largest and most linguistically, ethnically and religiously diverse polities in late medieval and early modern Europe. In the mid-1380s the Grand Duchy of Lithuania entered into a long process of union with the Kingdom of Poland. Since the destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, the history and memory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have been much contested among its successor nations. This volume aims to excavate a level below their largely incompatible narratives. Instead, in an encounter with freshly discovered or long neglected sources, the authors of this book seek new understanding of the Grand Duchy, its citizens and inhabitants in "microhistories." Emphasizing urban and rural spaces, families, communities, networks, and travels, this book presents fresh research by established and emerging scholars.

In the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries a considerable number of Scots migrated to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Some sojourned there for some time, while others stayed permanently and exercised commercial business and crafts. The migration stopped in the eighteenth century, and the Scots who remained in Poland seem to have lost their ethnic identity. This book offers an examination and assessment of this migration: numbers of migrants; patterns of settlement; laws regulating Scottish presence in Poland-Lithuania; their commercial, academic, religious and military activities; their social advancement into the Polish nobility; their assimilation and then the eventual disappearance as a distinct ethnic group in Poland-Lithuania.

This collection of essays explores more than five centuries of Scottish-Polish interactions. It focuses on the two main moments of contact: the early modern experiences of Scottish pedlars, merchants, mercenaries and diplomats in the Polish-Lithuanian commonA--wealth and the Polish presence in Scotland during the twentieth and early twenty-first century. The latter period includes the Polish military presence in Scotland during World War II and the new Polish migration to Scotland after Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004. The book will be of interest to students and researchers who focus on the boom subject of early modern Scottish emigration to the European continent, and also to more general readers outside the scholarly community. It will be of value to the Polish community in Scotland and to anyone interested in the joint history of these two countries.

This book offers an in-depth history of Calvinism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1548-1648. It traces the development of polity, liturgy, piety and church discipline. Bem questions the prevailing narrative of decline post 1570 and argues that the three Reformed Churches in fact continued to develop and flourish until the 1630s.