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cahnBackground: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-02 12:48 pm (UTC)With the liberum veto, how did Poland have ANY legislation at all?
Poniatowski (to an English visitor): My Catherine is soooo amazing and would never authorize any unjust use of force. I just trust her so much!
English visitor: Um. Hmm. How do I put this? You should see her in a crown.
Heee!
Repnin: OMG, the fine print's got a clause that's tantamount to abolishing the liberum veto in most cases! Vetoed!
I can't believe he didn't read the actual bill himself! That's his job, right?
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-03 06:44 am (UTC)Yay, I'm glad! The bad news is that the installments are not all this consistently entertaining; I made more of an effort with this one in hopes that retaining the basic structure of events helps everyone navigate the political complexities that are to come. The good news is that there are 4 installments on Sweden coming!
With the liberum veto, how did Poland have ANY legislation at all?
That's exactly what historian Michael Müller wants you to know, but he wants you to *work* for that information. He's not going to make it easy for you. The thing that finally defeated me was not the German, French, Polish, and Latin, it's that in the 17th and 18th centuries, Poles threw a lot of Latin words and phrases into their writing, so there isn't even a solid block of Polish I can ask Google to translate; it's all a mishmash. And that's when Google and I gave up. I may go back if my German and French become effortless enough to compensate for the large chunks of Polish+Latin I don't understand. (Latin by itself I could handle; I have a Classics background. But 18th century Polish plus Latin is WHY??)
The gist of what I got from Müller's book before giving up was that for most of its history, the liberum veto was not used arbitrarily. There was an honor system to only use it for proposed legisation that you believed violated the constitution, not just because you didn't like the law. Supposedly only during August III's time did the Sejm get paralyzed. If you used the liberum veto (or liberum rumpo) before that and it was suspected you were acting in a self-serving manner, there were social consequences.
I am unable to assess this argument due to aforementioned linguistic problems, but it seems plausible enough. (I mean, the country did survive a few centuries this way.)
I can't believe he didn't read the actual bill himself! That's his job, right?
Repnin: The fine print will get you every time! I swear that bill looked extremely innocuous and boring.
More seriously: yes and no. He was officially an ambassador, and it's not the ambassadors' job to review legislation. But unofficially, he was Catherine's satrap, and she did think it was his job to make sure all the legislation she wanted got passed, and none of the legislation she didn't want didn't.
What I suspect happened was underestimating Poniatowski again. He went out of his way to bury it in legalese in a bill that looked like it was about something else.
Poniatowski: *sigh* I tried.
ETA: Also, I should point out that Poniatowski was smart enough not to write "abolish the liberum veto in most cases." It was more like "introduce majority voting in these cases," where if you think about it, "these cases" works out to be most of the cases we care about. But he really made it look innocuous and boringly bureaucratic.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 07:14 pm (UTC)The gist of what I got from Müller's book before giving up was that for most of its history, the liberum veto was not used arbitrarily. There was an honor system to only use it for proposed legisation that you believed violated the constitution, not just because you didn't like the law.
Huh, interesting! Also, did they actually have a constitution?
Extremely understandable that you gave up on Müller's book...
Poniatowski: *sigh* I tried.
Great try! Actually I recently spoke to someone who follows EU legislation on the environmental front, and apparently sometimes you get 500-page documents that you have to get through and extract relevant information from in a short time, so maybe it was understandable that Repnin missed it...
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 07:46 pm (UTC)The bad news is
Huh, interesting! Also, did they actually have a constitution?
Not a single document (not until 1791), but much like England/Britain, a series of documents that limited what the monarch could do. To quote some passages from Liberty's Folly (the "szlachta" is the Polish nobility):
The szlachta rejoiced in their freedom from taxation imposed without their consent, first secured in 1374. By 1505, under the terms of the statute popularly known as Nihil Novi, the monarchy accepted that it could enact no major legislation without their consent. The monarchy’s elective character was firmly established even under the Jagiellonian kings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The creation of two Tribunals, or supreme law courts, for the Crown in 1578 and for Lithuania in 1581, designed to reduce the enormous pressures on the royal courts, irrevocably placed much of the monarch’s juridical power in the hands of elected noble deputies.
The extinction of the direct line of the Jagiellonian dynasty in 1572 enabled the szlachta to confirm and extend their gains. Their rights and privileges were codified in the ‘Henrician articles’, so called because they were originally conceded by the first elective successor to the Jagiellons, Henri of Anjou, king for a few months in 1573–4, before he fled to France to reign as Henri III. Every subsequent monarch-elect had to swear to observe both them and an additional set of conditions, the pacta conventa, specifically drawn up for each new king. His failure to observe these agreements gave the nobility the legal right to renounce their allegiance.
In theory at least, the poorest noble proprietor could feel constitutionally and legally secure, for his rights and privileges were no less than those of the mightiest magnate. In the eyes of the law, the two were equal.