Böcker av Maciej Janowski

This first of three parts of the History of the Polish Intelligentsia deals with the time from 1750 to 1831. It traces the formation of the intelligentsia as a social class, stresses the importance of the birth of bureaucratic institutions and analyses the results of the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795.

Polish liberalism has generally been considered weak or nonexistent. Janowski, however, argues that 19th century Poland inherited a strong protoliberal tradition and that in mid-19th century, liberalism was dominant in Polish intellectual life.