The article highlights the role of the royal commissars in the demarcations of the boundaries of the land estates in the Rus’ palatinate during the 15th and 16th centuries. The analysis of the surviving lists of the commissars who were appointed by the king for the demarcation of the royal estates in the Przemyśl land shows that all major local office-holders were called to perform the functions of commissars. The royal commissars were mostly local power holders. They played the role of political mediators facilitating political communication between the king and provincial political communities of the nobility.

The paper analyzes the writing skills of Podolian nobles in the 16th century. The documentary source taken into consideration for the research is the 1563 Podolia Voivodeship Tax Registry, which includes hand-written notes and signatures of the estate owners. The analysis of these materials reveals the multilingualism of the writing produced in the territory of the Podolia Voivodeship. Ten linguistic combinations with the use of three languages – Latin, Polish and Ruthenian – were identified. The evidence points to the prevalence of Latin in writing. The second most used language was Polish, while the use of Ruthenian was insignificant. The relation of the language choice and ethnic identification is not straightforward, as the examples prove. The skill of writing was mostly the domain of officers (land, castle and private) who held positions that required them to write, as well as of representatives of the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
 

The present article focuses on the authority of starostas and city officials based on the judicial system in the Volhynian Voivodeship from the 1560s, when castle courts were established, up until the end of the 16th century. I analysed the factors that affirmed the domination of starostas and defined the formal extent of their powers, as well as those that helped to maintain a certain degree of autonomy between a starosta and city officials, and facilitated the emancipation of the latter. The officials’ oath, its perception in the gentry community and the judicial cases which concerned such issues were the focus of particular attention.
 

In Księgi hetmańskie [Hetman Books] by Stanisław Sarnicki, the Ruthenian land of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is depicted as a turbulent land under permanent threat. The reason of the threat were the incessant invasions of the Tartars. According to the words of Sarnicki, the inspiration to write the Books were some talks resulting from the activity of the Crimean warriors which were held in Ruthenia. They concerned the issues of war and defense. In his work the author tried to describe precisely the routes of Tartar invasions passing through Ukraine. He paid close attention to the vocabulary used in those territories. He described the bravery of the Ruthenians, their weaponry and methods of combat. He enumerated many well-known people related to the Ukrainian region. In Hetman Books one can also find some information on medicaments used in Ukraine. Sarnicki also devoted a lot of space to the Cossacks, whom he considered great soldiers. He praised their skills of fighting in sea battles. He also saw a possibility to establish a Cossack fleet for the Commonwealth.

In the years 1575–1578 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth used money to corrupt members of the court of the Sultan and Khan to protect the Ruthenian lands. On the one hand, the Poles “bought” their supporters from among the Crimean Tartars, and on the other hand, they wanted to influence the Khan using his sovereign, the Sultan. During this period, the Ruthenian nobility indeed defended their land against the Tartar invasions, but did not propose any changes to the system of defense. They did not see that their actions neither solved nor prevented the problem.

The participation of Zaporozhian Cossacks in the campaign of Chocim in 1621 was of great importance both because of the number of Cossack corps under the command of Petro Konashevych‑Sahaidachny (between 25 and 40 thousand men) and its role in the long siege of the Polish-Lithuanian-Cossack camp at Chocim. Most of the Turkish assaults launched on the reinforced camp caused serious losses to the Cossacks (approximately 6.5–7 thousand men). Various problems are still open for debate, such as the number of Cossack troops at Chocim, casualties in the battles in Moldavia, the siege and the march through Ukraine. Last but not least, the structure of the aforementioned armed forces (infantry, cavalry) and their contribution to the military effort of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth should be discussed at length, together with the Cossacks’ military expeditions over the Black Sea in 1621.

The article analyzes the influence of the Renaissance humanist outlook and Reformation ideology on the development of the Ukrainian society at the end of 16th and the first half of 17th century. The Ukrainian intellectuals used traditional creative means in order to rethink the heritage of past eras. It is the most clearly manifested in the spiritual writings of polemicists. Appeal to the past became the basis for the emergence of the concept of the “Rus’ people.” Actually the question of the historical existence of the Rus’ people took on overtones of a political argument which was clearly formulated by Yov Boretskyi. The reforms in the military area of Hetman Petro Sagaydachnyi and in the confessional area of Kyiv Metropolitan Petro Mohyla were conducted in line with the establishment of the concept in social consciousness.

The information on Belz and Kholm judges-deputies of the Crown Tribunal collected in this article shows correlation between their activities at local sejmik (dietine) meetings and the fulfillment of their duties as deputies. On this basis, one can conclude how much the deputy post contributed to the career of some sejmik activists whose election to the Tribunal could become a starting point in their further public advancement, their only one success in public life or, on the contrary, a regular practice. At the same time, the deputy post was not a monopoly in the hands of a narrow social circle, continuing to be an element of public career even if it did not constitute a way of life for noblemen.
 

Although much space in historical literature was devoted to Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, some aspects of his political and military activities are still uncertain. One of them is the issue of his expedition to the Tartar steppes conducted in the autumn of 1647. Historians claim that this event was consulted with the King, who was facing the failure of his war plans against the Ottomans and tried to provoke the Tartars belonging to the Horde to attack the Commonwealth. Unfortunately, no documents survive that could confirm that thesis. On the other hand, this scenario is based on an exemption of Mikołaj Potocki, commanded to Wiśniowiecki in November 1647. According to the information contained in this source, the Governor was not able to come due to the King’s command, ordering him to support the army on the Left-bank Ukraine.<mikołaj?></mikołaj?>

The defeat at Piławce (1648) received a wide coverage in the literature of the 17th century. The mention of this event can be found in letters, chronicles, diaries and occasional literature. The occasional poetic works of different authors point at various reasons for the defeat of the Polish army, from internal political disputes and disadvantages of moral nobility, through leaders’ incompetence to just God’s punishment. All the analyzed texts reveal the emotions of the writers: lamentations present despair and suffering, works that stimulate the fight express resentment and revenge, and parodies reveal sarcasm and irony aimed at ridiculing the unfortunate soldiers. Songs of the Polish defeat reflect a widespread sentiment in Polish society. The first reaction to the news of the defeat was fear, which then turned into anger and resentment directed against the defeated.

Under the Grzymułtowski’s treaty the Commonwealth received from Moscow a sum of 730,000 złotys. This money has been sought by the Ukrainian nobility who – by the virtue of the treaty – had lost any chance of recovering their Transdnieprian estates. Kyivian, Chernihivian and Bratslavian sejmiki instructed their deputies to obtain a compensation for their citizens for the lost property. These claims were presented at the Grodno diet of 1688, as well as on the successive two diets in Warsaw. The Warsaw Sejm in 1690 approved John III’s patent appointing the Warsaw commission to divide the treaty money among the exiled nobility of the ceded palatinates.

The article discusses the career and military achievements of the Commonwealth’s last Cossack commissioner, a distinguished officer of the Crown army in the reign of Jan III Sobieski. In the 1670s Baltazar Wilga served as a towarzysz (knight bachelor) of the cavalry, and in the years 1683–1708 he was a rotmistrz (captain), colonel and regimentary. From 1692 to 1699 he was the last royal commissioner to supervise the Cossack communities in the Kyivan Polesie. He died in 1708, leaving three sons born to his marriage with Katarzyna Łaskówna – officials and gentry men active in the first half of the 18th century.

Itineraries should be an important field of historical research. While there exists a clear dominance of studies devoted to the reconstruction of medieval itineraries, the early modern period is rather neglected. Charles XII of Sweden was a prominent king, and he still stands out in historiography as an often discussed personality, with an enormous impact on the developments in the Eastern and Northern Europe in the time of the Great Northern War, 1700–1718. A reconstruction of his travels and marches could yield a great amount of knowledge enabling us to understand the age and its spirit better. The older, classic studies are, for many reasons, no longer sufficient. An international project devoted to Charles XII’s itinerary could endow us with a lot of useful data.

This article discusses the existence of two authorities – the Cossack administration and city government in Poltava in the 1760s and 1770s. This paper provides a study of their structure, composition and powers. It analyzes the way the Magdeburg Rights were acquired and implemented by Poltava community. It looks at the relationship between the Cossack regiment and the city administration. The author concludes that in spite of all the problems that existed between the two authorities, the city lived its own life and its institutions performed their functions.
 

The article analyzes the content of the cultural priorities of representatives of the Cossack Hetman family of the Galagans and means of implementing them in the social and spiritual life of the Left-bank Ukraine in the 18th century. The author explains the people’s activity as primarily determined by their social and property status. The main areas of cultural patronage for the Galagans were religious charities, the construction and maintenance of places for worship, and art. During the time of Gregory Galagan education was the main focus of cultural patronage. At the beginning of the 18th century Ignat Galagan founded a military leader dynasty and strengthened it with property resources, as well as social and genealogical contacts through marriage. His descendants obtained European education, but in no way did they seek either a military-political or a social and community involvement.

The article analyzes the practice of educating children of the regimental and company foremen of Cossack Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine in the second half of the 18th century. On the basis of sources of personal origin (letters and diaries) an understanding of some Cossack education strategies was reconstructed. A revival of interest in problems of education and achievements of European pedagogical thought among Cossack sons can be traced to the middle of the 18th century. It was then that the attitude to childhood changed, and a transition to a new understanding of child development and parenting factors occurred. The article concludes that the strategy of education, common among the Cossack, did not remain unchanged throughout the 18th century. The values of “Latin” education and training were revised and supplemented by new ideals, and also as a result of entering the circles of the social elite of the Russian Empire.

The article presents a selected genealogy of the descendants of Cossack elders of Hetmanate and Slobozhanshchyna, who in the second half of the 19th century held positions of governors or vice-governors in the Russian administration of the Kingdom of Poland. The aim of the work is to find those key moments in the history of the family who chose such a career and their proteges in the bureaucracy of the Russian Empire. Representatives of the Left-bank Ukraine were a notable group of 134 governors and vice-governors in the Kingdom of Poland, during the russified administration of the Kingdom by the Russian Empire (1867–1918). Thus, it was a larger group than the emigrants from the Rightbank Ukraine, Podolia and Volyn together. This observation may lead to a conclusion that this was the result of a specific relationship between the Russian Empire and the Cossack elite of the former Slobozhanshchyna and Hetmanate in the 19th century.