The ’establishment and impact of Polish rule

The changes that occurred in the administrative and social structure of Galicia as a result of Polish rule have been the subject of numerous studies. During the late nineteenth century, Polish scholars had already compiled a multivolume encyclo­pedia-like work describing the geography, demography, economy, growth of cities, and administration of pre-partition Poland; it includes extensive sections dealing specifically with Galicia (Wojewddztwo Ruskie).^[242] Similar works describ­ing all aspects of Galicia appeared at the outset of the twentieth century by the Polish historians Aleksander Jablonowski, who covered the sixteenth century, and Wladyslaw Loziriski, who concentrated on the first half of the seventeenth cen­tury, the apogee of Polish power and influence in eastern Europe.^[243] More recently, Soviet and Czechoslovak researchers have analyzed the political, administrative, and socioeconomic life in the Carpathian foothills of southern Galicia.^[244]

By the early fifteenth century, after Poland had consolidated its rule in Galicia, it was able to institute an administrative, judicial, and legal system on the Polish model.

As for the impact of Polish rule on Galicia’s social structure, there are numer­ous works by Ukrainian and Polish scholars who have focused in particular on the changes brought about during the late fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.^[249] The role of the nobility in Galicia, made up especially of middle and petty gentry who were either immigrants from Polish lands or from the polonized local Ukrainian elite, has traditionally been the object of attention in specialized Polish genealogical studies.^[250] An indication of the wide variety of literature on this topic is available in a bibliography of a recent study on the petty nobility.^[251] Individual family histories are particularly well represented in two heraldic journals published in L’viv during the twentieth century: Rocznik Towarzystwa Heraldycznego we Lwowie (L’viv 1908-32) andMiesi^cznikHeraldyczny (L’viv 1908-39). The problem of the petty nobility in the Carpathian region has received particular attention,^[252] and there are more general studies on nobles’ attitudes toward military levies,^[253] their role in the manorial agricultural economy over which they had complete control,^[254]

and their attempts to direct the administration and economies of the Galician cities.^[255]

The other social component of the manorial system that prevailed in Galicia was made up of peasants; their status, affected by the increasing demands of serfdom, is described in the general studies on the Galician social structure discussed above, as well as in the monographs on the rural population during the fifteenth century.^[256] Soviet and Polish Marxist authors have given particular atten­tion to the Galician peasantry in works that stress the exploitative aspects of the “feudal” pre-partition Polish economy and that trace all documented instances of the seemingly continual peasant “revolutionary” activity from the late fifteenth century revolt led by the Moldavian leader Mukha through numerous uprisings until the eighteenth century.^[257] Finally, the Orthodox and Uniate clergy, especially the question of their social origins and the impact of the Union of Brest on their social status, is the subject of older analyses by Izydor Sharanevych and Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi.^[258]