Tadeusz Srogosz, Between War and Modernization. Studies on the History of the South – East Borderlands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th – 18th Centuries, Częstochowa 2016, pp. 267

Abstract

Professor Tadeusz Srogosz is a historian, working at the Jan Dlugosz Academy in Czestochowa. He is well-known in Poland and Ukraine, as a researcher who deals with the history of the First Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Ukraine. The professor’s latest book concerns the history of Ukraine’s right bank in the 17th – 18th centuries. The book consists of four parts. In the first part entitled Meeting with the Historiography, the author discusses person and viewpoints on the social, economic, political and administrative problems of right bank Ukraine of the following Polish and Ukrainian historians: Ludwik Kubala (1838-1918, Petro Mirczuk (1913-1999), Grogorij J. Hraban (1902) Valentino Otamanowski (1893-1964), Mykola Hryhorowicz Krykun (born in1932) and Władysław Andrzej Serczyk (1935-2014). Tadeusz Srogosz, in his book, showed various modernization routes presented by these historians. Ukrainian historians worked in very difficult political situation, which influenced their views. The author introduces a reader with a discourse around the events of the koliszczyzna and the hajdamak movements. He presented a widely controversial person in the historiography – the Kievan governor Józef Gabriel Stempkowski (died 1793). In the last part of the book he discussed modernization processes, various aspects of transformation in the south-eastern part of the First Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Stanisław August Poniatowski. He noted the increase in the number of doctors in the fight against plague.