Hey guys, just a bit curious about Ye Old Commonwealth. I'm somewhat interested in examining the nobility of the period and seeing how much of it was actually Polish or Lithuanian, checking out Polonization of the state population and to what extent Sarmatism was present in culture and ideology. Any sources you could recommend would be appreciated.
steps in to the thread like Hagrid in the Philosopher's Stone
Sorry I'm late.
If you want to read up on the Commonwealth of Both Nations, then I recommend learning either Polish, Lithuanian or Russian, because finding any good sources in English or any other language worth a damn is a pain. Norman Davies is good as expected (and probably the best English language source on the period in general), Daniel Stone and Robert Frost also have fairly good academic literature on the Commonwealth. If you want to immerse yourself in the period through fiction, then you can choose either Henryk Sienkiewicz's trilogy or the Silva Rerum series. However, all of them only offer a more or less general overview of the country, its history and society, so if you want to delve deeper, you'll have to read in the languages of one of the three nations.
And preferably pick only one of the three, because if you fly too close to the sun and try to read the Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Belarusian AND Ukrainian views on this period, you'll just end up faced with too many conflicting viewpoints and biases to get an accurate view of the period.
Just look at our examples. I read the Lithuanian perspective.
@Toraach probably reads the Russian, Belarusian or Ukrainian perspective (don't ask me which one, haven't figured out yet). Someone like, I dunno,
@Jan Olbracht reads the Polish perspective. Whenever we discuss the Commonwealth, it ends in slapfights. Don't let such a slapfight happen in your brain, too.
Generally, English-language authors like Davies don't have as many biases as writers from Eastern Europe, so they're probably your best bet as a beginner anyway.