Abstract:
The 1569 union between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - the most populous
and largest state in 16th century Europe. Two hundred years later neither
Lithuania nor Poland were to be found on the maps. In this project I examine the
collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through two alternative
analytical frameworks and compare their ability to render the collapse intelligible.
One framework is the comparative statics of equilibrium states; the other
framework is the emergent dynamics of evolutionary processes.
With respect to comparative statics, the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth is explained as the outcome of territorial competition in which the
Russian Empire, Kingdom of Prussia, and the Hapsburg Austria proved to be
more successful than the Commonwealth. With respect to emergent dynamics, explanation lies in the transformation of the nexus of relationships accompanied
by regime drift.
This dissertation argues that comparative statics is inadequate for explaining the
evolution and disintegration of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In order to
understand how societies evolve over time, it is necessary to adopt the inside-out
perspective that emergent dynamics offers. This dissertation illustrates this
alternative conceptual orientation with reference to the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth.
