Race and Freedom: Africans in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the eve of Modernity

• Applicant: Vitali Byl
• Subject Area: Early Modern History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 530815276

Early- Modern proto-globalization facilitated greatly the movement of people across continents, including human trafficking for forced labour, and created new power structures where social and racial differences were often intertwined. That shaped the modern concept of race and spread racist ideologies even beyond the core regions of interaction. This project focuses on exploring interracial encounters and their outcomes in pre-modern Europe, particularly in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a society that was a hinterland of the Atlantic economy and simultaneously interacted with the Eurasian steppe and the Middle East. Despite its exceptional civil and religious liberties for the gentry, the society practised various forms of unfreedom, first of all, export-led serfdom but also slavery of captives from fights with Ottomans and steppe nomads. The country was also a destination for migrations from the West and East which led to unique ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity and relative tolerance. Less known is that it also experienced an influx of Western racial ideas and racially distinctive people. The study aims to investigate how the Polish-Lithuanian society dealt with the racialized idea of liberty and its practical implementation towards newcomers and locals of African descent. The project will examine three case studies from the mid-18th to early 19th century. The first case study explores African subjects of a powerful magnate house of Radziwill, their trafficking routes, roles in the manor economy, places in the social hierarchy, and cultural framework of Polish-Lithuanian ideology and culture. The second case study examines the intersection between abolitionism and serf emancipation and the Polish-Lithuanian society's ability to accommodate a racially different foreigner through the experiences of Jan Lapierre, T. Kościuszko's Black valet. The third case study focuses on a mixed-race Polish aristocrat and military officer who fought for independence and civil liberties for his country but also participated in the French military expedition to suppress the Haitian Revolution. The consideration of these cases represents a pioneering attempt to piece together scattered evidence of East European Black history and provide a novel perspective on regional history in a global context. It will analyze the extent to which the society's experiences of (un)freedom and diversity, as well as foreign ideas about race and slavery, influenced its internal discourse, worldview, and practices towards Africans both at home and abroad. The project highlights how a landlocked agrarian society like Poland-Lithuania was integrated into the global economy of forced labour, long-distance migration, human trafficking, and the exchange of ideas.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants