page_title: History of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1648)
section_title: Cossacks and Cossack rebellions
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1648) / Cossacks and Cossack rebellions
caption_attribution_description: Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów w 1635 r.; województwo kijowskie Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1635; Kijów Voivodeship
context_page_description: The history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1648) covers a period in the history of Poland and Lithuania, before their joint state was subjected to devastating wars in the middle of the 17th century. The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a more closely unified federal state, replacing the previously existing personal union of the two countries. The Union was largely run by the Polish and increasingly Polonized Lithuanian and Ruthenian nobility, through the system of the central parliament and local assemblies, but from 1573 led by elected kings. The formal rule of the proportionally more numerous than in other European countries nobility constituted a sophisticated early democratic system, in contrast to the absolute monarchies prevalent at that time in the rest of Europe.
  The Polish–Lithuanian Union had become an influential player in Europe and a vital cultural entity, spreading Western culture eastward. In the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a huge state in central-eastern Europe, with an area approaching one million square kilometers.
context_section_description: There weren't very many Cossacks in the mid 16th century in the south-eastern borderlands of Lithuania and Poland yet, but the first companies of Cossack light cavalry had become incorporated into the Polish armed forces already around that time. During the reign of Sigismund III Vasa, the Cossack problem was beginning to play its role as Rzeczpospolita's preeminent internal challenge of the 17th century.
  Conscious and planned colonization of the fertile, but underdeveloped region was pioneered in the 1580s and 1590s by the Ruthenian dukes of Volhynia. Of the Poles, only Jan Zamoyski, who penetrated the Bracław area, was economically active by the end of the 16th century. There and in the Kiev area Polish fortunes also began to develop, often through intermarriage with Ruthenian clans. In 1630, the great Ukrainian latifundia were dominated by Ruthenian families, such as the Ostrogski, Zbaraski and Zasławski. At the outset of the great civil war of 1648, the Polish settlers comprised barely 10% of the middle and petty nobility, for example in the well-researched Bracław Voivodeship and Kiev Voivodeship. The early Cossack rebellions were, therefore, instants of social uprising, rather than national anti-Polish movements. As class warfare they were ruthlessly stamped out by the state, which would sometimes take their leaders to Warsaw for execution.
  Cossacks were first semi-nomadic, then also settled East Slavic people of the Dnieper River area, who practiced brigandage and plunder, and, renowned for their fighting prowess, early in their history assumed a military organization. Many of them were, or originated from run-away peasants from the eastern and other areas of the Commonwealth or from Russia; other significant elements were townspeople and even nobility, who came from the region or migrated into Ukraine. Cossacks considered themselves free and independent of any bondage and followed their own elected leaders, who originated from the more affluent strata of their society. There were tens of thousands of Cossacks already early in the 17th century. They had frequently clashed with the neighboring Turks and Tatars and raided their Black Sea coastal settlements. Such excursions, executed by formal subjects of the Polish king, were intolerable from the point of view of foreign relations of the Commonwealth, because they violated peace or interfered with the state's current policy toward the Ottoman Empire.
  During this earlier period of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the separate Ukrainian national consciousness was being formed, influenced in part by the context and heroes of the Cossack uprisings. The legacy of Kievan Rus' was recognized, as was the heritage of the East Slavic Ruthenian language. Cossacks felt being members of the "Rus' Orthodox nation" (the Uniate Church was practically eliminated in the Dnieper region in 1633). But seeing themselves also as members of the (Polish) "Republic-Fatherland", they dealt with sejms and kings as its subjects. Cossacks and the Ruthenian nobility, until recently subjects of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, were not formally or otherwise connected to the Tsardom of Russia.
  Besides the leaders of the uprisings, Ukrainian personalities of the period included Dmytro Vyshnevetsky, Samuel Zborowski, Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski and Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny.
  Many Cossacks were being hired to participate in wars waged by the Commonwealth. This status resulted in privileges and often constituted a form of social upward mobility; the Cossacks resented the periodic reductions in their enrollment. Cossack rebellions or uprisings typically assumed the form of huge plebeian social movements.
  The Ottoman Empire demanded a total liquidation of the Cossack power. The Commonwealth, however, needed the Cossacks in the south-east, where they provided an effective buffer against Crimean Tatars incursions. The other way to quell the Cossack unrest would be to grant the nobility status to a substantial portion of their population and thus assimilate them into the Commonwealth's power structure, w
caption: Commonwealth Ukraine was being colonized, but the Kiev Voivodeship was among the many areas where Ruthenian, rather than Polish property owners predominated[46]
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