The alleged empire. The Polish-Lithuanian Republic of the 15th-17th centuries. (On the pitfalls of postcolonial discourse)
Journal: Anuario Histórico Ibérico Anuário Histórico Ibérico
Year: 2023

This article constitutes a critical approach towards the legitimacy of employing a postcolonial discourse to study the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 15th through the 17th centuries. The author indicates several phenomena that permit the negation of a thesis about the colonial character of Polish presence in Ukrainian-White Ruthenian lands, emphasising its crucial defects, both chronological (Great Duchy of Lithuania did not allow a Polish element there till 1569) and metho