Butterwick, Richard. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1733–1795: Light and Flame

On 24 October 1795, three leading European monarchies-Russia, Prussia, and Austria-partitioned among themselves what was left of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.Once a formidable force, by 1733 the Commonwealth had become a de facto Russian protectorate, viewed by other governments as vulnerable and impressionable at best, and up for grabs at worst.Prominent Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire (1694-1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), and Edmund Burke (1729-97)-whether out of genuine belief or in pursuit of bribes from the partitioning powers-argued that the Commonwealth had descended into such a state of anarchy that it threatened not only the safety of its own citizens but also the stability of the entire region.Larry Wolff (Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994]) famously interpreted these increasingly negative perceptions as evidence that the Commonwealth fell victim to demi-Orientalism, a discourse that fosters, replicates, and legitimizes the perception of Eastern Europe as dependent on and inferior to Europe's western core.Yet, as Richard Butterwick demonstrates in Light and Flame, the Commonwealth was not universally seen as an irredeemable, backward, and semi-barbaric realm unable to define itself on its own terms.In fact, some of its former detractors, including Rousseau and Burke, revised their earlier views and were largely impressed by the reforms initiated by the Commonwealth's elites under its last monarch, Stanisaw August (r.1764-95).These reforms aimed to revitalize the legal system, the economy, and society; reclaim sovereignty; and propel Poland-Lithuania into modernity.Butterwick's book, the first of its kind in English, recounts the Commonwealth's final seven decades, rethinking the well-worn narrative of decline into a story of political dynamism and cultural efflorescence, repositioning the Commonwealth as one of eighteenth-century Europe's most fascinating polities to study.In painting a vivid picture of the Enlightenment-era Commonwealth, Butterwick urges us to understand it as its citizens saw it: not as a state striving to govern its people, but as a system of political freedoms designed to facilitate civic participation in public affairs by the nobility, who alone

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