Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

One of the hallmarks of modern diaspora studies is the dichotomy of a “homeland” and “hostland” in relation to a diasporic group. The history of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth complicates these contemporary categories. The multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Commonwealth was a homeland for Polish Jews. They formed an integral part of its social, cultural, and economic fabric, even as they identified and were identified as Jews. In a pre-modern world, with legal structures grounded in distinct estates, identities were also inscribed in law. Jewish judicial and communal autonomy was a product of the Jews’ legal status. In Poland-Lithuania, Jewish autonomy developed mimicking the governing structures of the Commonwealth itself. Polish Jews were, thus, a part of a larger real and imagined Jewish community whose homeland was Poland.

Judicial Autonomy: Medieval Realities and Modern Discourse

The chapter examines the notion that personal rather than territorial law prevailed in medieval Islam and discusses the tension between communal autonomy and governmental interference. The meaning and the limits of the so-called ‘dhimmi judicial autonomy’ are also discussed.

Partitions

This chapter explores the second and third partitions of Poland (1793, 1795), which rivaled the French Revolution in destroying the ancien régime. The partitioning powers' conservative reaction to the French Revolution and Napoleon brought to the fore the tensions of partial or conditional emancipation. Although Joseph II's 1789 legislation remained the dominant influence, the partitioning powers introduced multiple restrictions that neutralized its ideal of parity. Prussia's 1797 legislation of conditional emancipation left Posen's Jews in limbo. It stripped them of communal autonomy yet still treated them as a community. Russia's 1804 legislation aimed to shift Jews out of the liquor trade and into education, artisan crafts, and farming. It integrated them “into” estates, albeit without parity of taxation. Meanwhile, Francis I's Western Galician Law Code (1797) aimed to introduce uniform law to the area; instead, it became one among multiple layers. Although de jure entitled to municipal citizenship, Jews were de facto excluded. They were also denied entry to many occupations Joseph II had opened.

‘Civilising the Savage’: State-Building, Education and Huichol Autonomy in Revolutionary Mexico, 1920–40

Attempts to use schools to assimilate the Huichols into the Revolutionary nation-state prompted the development of divergent partnerships and conflicts in theirpatria chica, involving rival Huichol communities and factions, local mestizos, government officials and Cristero rebels. The provocations of teachers, the cupidity of mestizo caciques, rebel violence and Huichol commitment to preserving communal autonomy undermined alliances between Huichol leaders and federal officials, and led to the ultimate failure of the government's project. If anything, the short-lived Revolutionary education programme equipped a new generation of Huichol leaders with the tools to better resist external assimilatory pressures into the 1940s and beyond.