Funded by the National Science Center
„The history of the Polish-Lithuanian Union in the years 1492–1569. From the dynastic to the real union”, SONATA, no. 2017/26/D/HS3/00415, funded; 382 340 PLN, 2018–2022 (extended until 7th May 2024), Principal Investigator: Dr Dominik Szulc. The main objective of the research project is to reconstruct the evolution of the relationship between the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the stage of the dynastic union in 1492 to the stage of the real union in 1569. The aim, therefore, is to reconstruct the way in which the relationship of these two states had evolved since the time when they were linked to each other only symbolically through the dynastic bond until they merged in a real union with common formal institutions and foreign policy.
„War damage in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the seventeenth century: comparative analysis of the phenomenon in the territory of Red Ruthenia and Greater Poland in view of seventeenth century economic crisis”, SONATA BIS, no. 2016/22/E/HS3/00479, funded: 723 190 PLN, 2017–2024, Principal Investigator: Dr Andrzej Gliwa. The main objective of the project research is to determine the scale and scope of the war damage, which affected the area of Red Ruthenia and Greater Poland in the seventeenth century. The accurate designation of the amount of war damage along with the identification of the most devastating enemy incursion, will allow to verify and analyze deeply rooted in polish historiography view of the important role of the extremely disruptive nature of war in the period of Swedish „deluge” and the thesis about the decisive significance of the middle seventeenth century for further economic development of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth associated with it. The outcome of the pilot studies on the war devastation in the area of the Land of Przemyśl in the seventeenth century and the preliminary results of research for Greater Poland in the midseventeenth century, indicate that the processes of economic regression of these regions had a slightly different course and dynamics than portrayed in the existing historical literature. These analyses suggest preliminary hypotheses with the first one stating that the war damage in the first half of the seventeenth century was of much larger scale and scope than previously estimated and the second one undermining the disastrous impact of the Swedish „deluge” on the whole area of the Commonwealth. Another important supposition is that the spatial distribution of the ravages of war in Greater Poland was quite different than in the territory of Red Ruthenia. Concentrated mainly in urban areas in Greater Poland, war damage in Red Ruthenia was focused mainly on rural areas. It was, among others, the result of military strategy of asymmetric warfare commonly used by Tatar hordes. Contrary to the military tactics used by Swedish commanders, the characteristic features of these population-centric military operation were avoiding direct clashes with the Polish troops, targeted killing and abductions of civilians as well as deliberate and indiscriminate damaging of economic infrastructure mainly on rural areas. One of the aims of the research project is to verify these hypotheses in a broader territorial context using GIS technology.
“The Polish Courtier at the Jagiellonian court and the elected king’s court. The social position, value system, role model”, OPUS, no. 2018/29/B/HS3/00907, funded: 407 540 PLN, 2019–2024, Principal Investigator: Dr hab. Bożena Czwojdrak. The project has been designed to explain the unexplored phenomena of the social position, the system of values and the role model of the Polish courtier in the Jagellonian monarchy and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by elected kings, until the fall of the latter i.e. from 1386, until the abdication of Stanisław August Poniatowski in 1795. The study will be limited only to the royal courts, as we do realize the extent of the subject matter, the time constraints and the difficulties we would encounter when taking into account the Lithuanian courts. In addition, the specifics of the Lithuanian court differ greatly from the process that took place at the court of the Polish Crown rulers and requires a separate examination, which might be another step in our research.
In the light of the present, small, fragmentary and largely intuitive knowledge of the courtesans of the Polish kings, it is possible to put forward a preliminary hypothesis that the social position, the system of values and the role models of the courtiers of Polish were rooted in the pan-European tradition. It means that all those elements had strong cosmopolitan background, adapting itself over time to the original and unique socio-political system of the Kingdom and later of the Commonwealth. This issue was noticed by Łukasz Górnicki while, based on the Italian original, he was preparing his “Dworzanin Polski” (an adaptation of Baltassare Castiglione “Book of the courtier”), which is our inspiration, but also a starting point for the discussion that may lead to completely new and unexpected conclusions.
“Polish-British Relations, 1937–1939”, PRELUDIUM, no. 2018/29/N/HS3/00930, funded: 139 300 PLN, 2019–2024, Principal Investigator: Marek Rodzik, MA. The main purpose of the project presented for realization in the grant shall be the study of Polish-British relations from the visit of Lord Halifax in Nazi Germany in November 1937 – which initiated the so-called active phase of appeasement policy – to the internationalization of the Polish-German conflict on 3 September 1939 when Great Britain and France joined the war. Although this topic has been the subject of historical research before, mostly in terms of the fact-oriented description of mutual relations, it has not yet been fully clarified what were detailed mechanisms for determining policies by both decision-making centres to their partners. One of those partners was a western empire with global commitments; the other was a state with limited potential yet aspiring to the role of a leader in East-Central Europe. The objective of this project is also a widening of the perspective on mutual perception and expectations of Great Britain and Poland in the period of time delineated above.
The main hypothesis assumes that on the one hand there was no full consent among British policy-makers for the position towards Poland, dependent on the evolving international situation which impacted the process of London’s policy crystallization towards Warsaw. On the other hand, it seems that Poland’s attitude towards British policy was complex: till the turn of March and April 1939, the response to the appeasement policy was ambivalent, whereas after the beginning of closer political cooperation between the two countries, the policy of London was perceived in a multi-perspective manner, not devoid of criticism.
‘Secularization of the West: Tacitism from the 16th to the 18th century‘, OPUS, no. 2019/35/B/HS1/04039, funded: 1 423 200 PLN, 2020–2023 (extended until 29th November 2024), Principal Investigator: Dr Jan Waszink. The aim of this project is to write a history of Tacitism via the struggles and controversies that surrounded it. By interpreting the rhetorical make-up and strategies of each of the selected texts in its contemporary social and political context, we can obtain a picture of the controversies and contested ideas at stake in that context. A series of these stories thus builds up into a history of the Tacitist movement. Eventually, by the end of the 17th century, Tacitism had lost its controversial edge and become part of mainstream European political thought, a clear indication that that political thought itself had changed. Meanwhile, the foundations of the modern discipline of political science had been laid by scholars of Tacitist inspiration, and they had made an important contribution to the foundations of economics as a science. This history of Tacitism will not only shed light on a crucial early phase in the emergence of modern political thought and attitudes, but it will also show how European societies in the past dealt with the complicated interplay of politics and religion, and that of politics and law; how clashes between power and justice and between conflicting principles were perceived, interpreted and negotiated in society; how secularisation was contested and defended; and how clashes and tensions between majority and minority opinion were countered and (eventually, in most cases) resolved. Thus it will provide material for useful comparisons to illuminate the politics of the present.
‘The History that Poland Needs. Ten Debates on Polish Past’, OPUS, no. 2020/37/B/HS3/03906, funded: 363 600 PLN, 2021–2024, Principal Investigator: Dr hab. Adam Kożuchowski. The aim of this project, except for reconstructing the history and dynamics of our selected debates, is to analyze the mechanisms and peculiarities of their functioning: (1) The problem of exceptionality versus typicality of the Polish historical development in general, and particularly in light of its methodological consequences. (2) The so-called Jagiellonian controversy: the consequences and legacies of four hundred years of Polish expansion eastwards, and coexistence with the peoples of today Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia.(3) The so-called Piast idea, as a response to the Jagiellonian one, and the expression of the ideas of perennialism and indigeneity. (4) The noble democracy controversy–its exceptionalism, consequences, and assessments. (5) The meaning and consequences of the partitions of Poland-Lithuania. (6) The insurrection controversy, covering all attempts to resist Poland’s mightier neighbors militarily, from the eighteen-century confederation of Bar, up to the anti-communist guerilla of the late 1940s. (7) The debates on collaboration, compromise, and other adaptation and survival strategies in the post-partitions era.(8) The debate on the reasons, nature, and causes of backwardness, addressing both the economic aspects and the peculiarity of the social structure. (9) Counterfactual scenarios as imagined solutions to Poland’s most troubling problems in the past. (10) The victimhood versus national guilt controversy, particularly concerning the post-1939 period.
‘The culture of the amateur programming of home computers in the 1980s in the context of cognitive capitalism’, OPUS, no. 2020/37/B/HS3/03610, funded: 769 889 PLN, 2021–2025, Principal Investigator: Dr Patryk Wasiak. The objective of the project is to deconstruct the practices of the amateur programming of 8-bit home computers in the 1980s as a cultural form. The Principal Investigator envision it as a concrete manifestation of a culture in a specific historical setting. He investigates how such ‘everyday programming’ was imagined, considered and experienced. To do so, he explores how amateur programming was embedded in the specific cultural, economic, and social currents in the highly developed countries of Western Europe and the US, during that decade. This research provides evidence that analysis of amateur software creation, a form of immaterial labor, can significantly contribute to a better understanding of the interconnections between the emergence of cognitive capitalism and the use of computing tools. This historical project aims to contribute to the debates on the role of software and coding skills in societies. Its agenda is to highlight how a historical study can make a timely and socially relevant contribution to the ongoing debates on the issue of the critical role of the technical competences of digital technology users.
‘The Polish socio-political Concepts of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century’, OPUS, no. 2020/39/B/HS3/02475, funded: 476 440 PLN, 2021–2025, Principal Investigator: Dr hab. Adam Kożuchowski. This study investigates the changes of the meaning, and the rhetorical potential of some 50 Polish socio-political concepts of the last two centuries. It is a study in the developments and transformations of the Polish political discourse, viewed through the prism of the key socio-political concepts. Concepts both define and mirror our imagination, and hence the socio-political realities that constitute both its source and its product. Thus, concepts are also carriers of political ideologies, which notoriously compete to monopolize their meanings. The ways we understand ‘nation’ and ‘society,’ ‘party’ and ‘revolution’ change in time, and these changes are in no way innocent: they are products of ideological competition. However, gaining a monopoly for one of the key political concepts is rare and never permanent. In countries like Poland, large segments of political imagination is formed by concepts borrowed from foreign discourses. Is the process of their transfer and adaptation determined by some definable factors, however? What are the moments when new concepts appear in the public discourse in great numbers?
‘Jesuits of the East? Artistic network of the Basilian order in Eighteenth-Century Poland-Lithuania’, SONATINA, no. 2021/40/C/HS3/00045, funded: 613 880 PLN, 2021–2024, Principal Investigator: Dr Melchior Jakubowski. The main goal of the project is to reassemble the artistic network of the Basilian order using GIS (Geographic Information System) and SNA (Social Network Analysis) methods in order to uncover the social mechanisms functioning within and around the order. Artistic network in this case means the links between humans, ideas, things and places. The project will study to what extent did Basilian artistic network resemble the Jesuit organization. How did the monastic network function in the Uniate order, joining the traditions of Eastern and Western Churches? Did “Basilian” art and artists exist? Were Basilian superiors and artists realizing universalized artistic vision? Or – on the contrary – did regional differences prevail? How significant was the impact of patrons? What did it mean “Basilian” with regard to art?
‘Czechoslovak-Polish Scholarly Entanglements in the Cold War Between High Politics and Individual Strategies’, OPUS LAP, no. 2020/39/I/HS3/03589, funded: 1 774 175 PLN, 2021–2024, Principal Investigator: Dr Tomáš W. Pavlíček. A Polish-Czech research team will investigate Cold War exchanges basing on ego-documents and interviews. By this the team expects to achieve a more delicate and varied pattern of scholarly contacts that would be possible by concentrating on official documents. Research in archives and libraries will allow to describe contexts in which these entanglements happened and pinpoint the ways in which scientists manipulated these contexts to achieve intended results. While this does not directly challenge the research that spoke on predominance of the state in structuring, allowing and limiting international contacts, it does point toward spaces of freedom that could be created – both outside of the official channels, but often also within them.
Project website: https://entanglements.ihpanstary.aionline.dev/
‘The French People in The Inmate Hierarchy of Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp’, PRELUDIUM, no. 2021/41/N/HS3/03594, funded: 139 051 PLN, 2022–2025, Principal Investigator: Paulina Chrząszcz MA. The main purpose of the project is filling in the current research gap and taking a closer look at the phenomenon of hierarchy development in the community of camp inmates deported from France to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp and its subcamps. It serves the objective of outlining the presence of French prisoners as a separate national entity in the camp, which has not been sufficiently emphasized as far. Special attention will be devoted to the participation of French inmates in resistance movement within the camp, here understood as inmate activity such as: self-help, sabotage, activism for martyrdom commemoration. Nevertheless, it will be important to establish which labour commandos inmates worked in and barracks they used. The final subject of the project is to record assigned duties of French inmates as compared to those held by members of other nationalities (especially Poles).
‘Studies on the Transformation of the Female Youth and Their Everyday Life in Interwar Tarnów’, PRELUDIUM, no. 2021/41/N/HS3/02065, funded: 130 795 PLN, 2022–2025, Principal Investigator: Marcin Wilk MA. The main task of this project will be a reasonably complete and multi-faceted reconstruction of the social and cultural functioning of various classes, groups and social environments of the female youth in interwar Tarnów. The project will also answer these questions: Who were the representatives of the “female youth”? How, as a specific and diverse social group, were they perceived in public space? What were their opportunities for social and individual fulfilment? What were they aspiring to? The additional objective is to develop a method of interpretation and historical analysis which would be adequate for the research on the social role of gender. Although the term “female youth” is well known, it is important to carefully consider whether this type of research can open up new perspectives and fit in with the current of so-called “girlhood studies”. Such a reinterpretation of the term “female youth” would allow us to draw on the traditional currents of Polish historiography, as well as on the achievements and works of educational history researchers.
‘The Fertility Decline in the Interwar Poland’, SONATA, no. 2019/35/D/HS3/00721, funded: 165 754 PLN (in IH PAN: 98 811,56 PLN), 2020(in IH PAN 2022)–2024, Principal Investigator: Dr Bartosz Ogórek. This project aims at consideration of historical fertility transition in the population of the Interwar Poland (1918–1939). The Total Fertility Rate (i.e. the average number of children born per women through the reproductive years) on Polish lands was more than six at the beginning of the 20th c. and fell to around three in the 1930s. Hence, the general research question are: how did that change happen? What were the main causes of this process on state, regional, environmental and individual level? Was this a culture or economy that dictated the course and tempo of change or maybe a blend of those? Which social groups were first to modify the fertility and which were the most reluctant to do so? By which means was the reduction of fertility achieved (sexual restraint, withdrawal, abortion) and how was the knowledge about these means spread? What does the fertility decline in the Interwar Poland tells us about the modernization of the Polish society and about the processes of social change in Central Eastern Europe?
‘Political relations between Poland and the Holy Roman Empire in the 10th–12th Centuries’, OPUS, no. 2021/43/B/HS3/01099, funded: 237 394 PLN, 2022–2025, Principal Investigator: Professor Zbigniew Dalewski. The project aims at reconsidering the political relations between the Piast monarchy and the Holy Roman Empire in the early and high Middle Ages. The research on that topic has a long tradition going back to the early 19th century. It was, however, carried out on the margins of studies concerning various aspects or events in the history of medieval Poland and has not resulted in any more extensive works presenting Polish-German relations in a broader time framework. The project is going to fulfil that gap and present Polish-German relations between the mid-10th century and the late 12th century.
“Yesterday’s war victims are today’s unemployment victims:” Polish Jewish Women’s Experiences of the Great War and the Economic Downturn in the Interwar Period, PRELUDIUM, no. 2022/45/N/HS3/01014, funded: 154 980 PLN, 2023–2026, Principal Investigator: MA Aleksandra Jakubczak. This project aims to verify and expand the hypothesis that for some women, the absence of men and, for others, men’s inability to support the family financially during the war and the interwar period led to the creation of a bigger space for independence for Jewish women, changes in social mores, gender roles, and intra-family relations. Individual histories of women from the Jewish lower classes will be situated in a broader context of macrostructures that determined the Jewish women’s opportunities and choices. Some of these delineating structures were, e.g., the local economy and Jewish place within it; the legal position of women in the Polish Republic and how their emancipation worked in practice; migratory laws that exposed protectionist attitude towards women, especially in the interwar period. Individual women’s decisions will also be situated in the microstructures in which they functioned – the Jewish community and family (and their attitudes toward women’s gainful employment, emigration, and the independence of women in general). Analyzing how Jewish women responded to the economic and financial challenges they and, their families and Jewish communities faced will allow a better understanding of the transformations in social mores within the Jewish community in the period under study.
‘Socio-political radicalization of the Polish province during the Great Depression and its consequences. The case of Wielkopolska/Greater Poland/ against the comparative background (1929–1939)’, OPUS, no. 2022/45/B/HS3/03408, funded: 1 032 134 PLN, 2023–2026, Principal Investigator: Associate professor Grzegorz Roman Krzywiec. The aim of the project is to reconstruct and analyze the course of the Great Depression of the 1930s and its impact on the radicalization of attitudes and political practices in the Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) province against the background of processes occurring in other parts of interwar Poland. The Depression is considered as the starting point for a comprehensive revision of capitalism as a socio-economic order with the emergence of two alternative socioeconomic orders; communism and fascism.
‘Imperial commoners of Brazil and West Africa (1640–1822): global history from a correspondence network perspective’, OPUS, no. 2022/45/B/HS3/00473, funded: 1 804 551 PLN, 2023–2027, Principal Investigator: Dr Agata Błoch. The history of Portuguese expansion shows extraordinary conquests, sea voyages and cross-cultural encounters. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Portugal created one of the largest European empires. In the overseas territories, the Iberian colonizers shared space with people of different ethnicities, skin colors, religions, and social status. This pluralism led to complex relationships between people of different social classes both in the metropolis and in the colonies and shaped societies around the world. Examining these relationships and the influence of the common people on the macrohistory/global history of the Portuguese Empire is the central goal of this project.
‘The Discourse of Composite Parliaments in post-Napoleonic Europe: The Belgian and Polish Case, 1815–1848’, OPUS, no. 2022/45/B/HS3/00464, funded: 1 131 248 PLN, 2023–2026, Principal Investigator: dr Piotr Kuligowski. The project seeks to explore how the language of parliamentarism may evolve in a situation of revolutionary fluctuations and numerous structural breaks and discontinuities, focusing on the example of the parliamentary discourses of Belgium and Poland in the post-Napoleonic era, i.e. in the years 1815–1848.
‘Henry Biterfeld of Brzeg and the Observant Reform of the Dominican Order. Critical edition of the treatise “De formatione et reformatione Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum”‘, OPUS, no. 2018/31/B/HS3/01196, funded: 207 364 PLN (in IH PAN: 49 983,46 PLN), 2019(in IH PAN 2023)–2024, Principal Investigator: Associate professor Anna Zajchowska-Bołtromiuk. The aim of the project is to identify the theoretical assumptions and historical circumstances of the rise of the observant reform of the Dominican Order at the end of 14th century as well as some aspects of its development in the 15th century.
