Noble community and local politics in the Wiłkomierz district during the reign of Sigismund Vasa (1587-1632)

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Lietuvos istorija; Zigmantas Vaza, 1566-1632 (Zygmunt III Vaza; Sigismund); Politinė istorija; Kilmingųjų luomas; Lithuanian history; Sigismund Vasa; Political history; Noble families.

ENResearch on the participation of the nobility in the politics of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the Union of Lublin has long been focused on the political history of events and decisions, the wider political attitudes of the nobility, or the institutional and legal history of how sejmiks (dietines) and other institutions related to the operation of the system sometimes called noble or nobiliary democracy. Much less attention has been devoted to what could be termed the sociology of politics, that is, not only establishing the ‘when’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of events, but investigating exactly ‘who’ was involved in them. To a large extent, this can be explained by the well-established view that Lithuanian politics was dominated by magnates who are held to have been the only genuinely independent actors in the political process. The vaguely defined lesser or broader nobility did not receive much attention, since at best it was portrayed as a target for influence by competing magnate factions and at worst as the subservient instrument of magnates in local politics. In the last couple of decades, however, these lesser nobles have gained more attention in the growing body of historical literature about clientage. Much research has been done on clientage as a lopsided friendship of unequal partners in which the chances for social advance of a weaker ‘noble friend’ are dependent on the favour and the brokering powers of a magnate. Researchers of clientage benefit from a huge advantage here. Most of the politics in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania can be reconstructed from archives left by magnate families, at least as far as the seventeenth century is concerned. [Extract, p. 132]