The Sarmatian Review, vol. 27, no. 2 (April 2007):1316-1317. Out of Favor with “Progress” Attracted by the apparent similarities in their historical development, Joachim Lelewel (1786-1861), Poland’s famous leftist scholar, sets out to outline A Historical Parallel of Spain and Poland in the 16^th, 17^th, and 19^th Centuries.

Lelewel’s is an early exercise in comparativism. His methodology draws on the Antiquity, Enlightenment, and Romanticism. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives serves as his partial model. “Enlightened” anti-Catholicism pervades Lelewel’s work, while Romantic liberal nationalism supplies its main ideological message. Unlike his illustrious contemporary Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), the Polish scholar eschews spinning tales about “The Great Man in History.” He insists that “comparisons cannot focus on a brief moment. They must be based upon the entire course of the life of a nation. They do not look for identical elements; true, they pinpoint the differences hidden in apparent and incidental similarities” (p. 19). The nation is more important than the state and therefore Lelewel downplays the instituti

onal forces emphasized by his other famous contemporary, Heinrich von Ranke (1798-1876). That Lelewel was a nationalist is obvious. However, his brand of Romantic nationalism has its roots firmly planted in the tradition of the multi-ethnic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The scholar’s Polishness was a conscious choice and not a function of “blood and soil.” And, for Lelewel, this was not just mere theory. His grandfather’s name was Heinrich Löllhöffel von Löwensprung, a Polonized noble Prussian family transplanted from Austria. They quickly became staunch Polish patriots.

One thus chose to be Polish, which entailed a duty to fight for the nation’s freedom. One’s will made one Polish. Within this volonté générale context, according to Lelewel, “Progress” was the hidden hand that inevitably propelled the engine of history, on the one hand. On the other, the humanity’s development was retarded by nefarious reactionary forces: the Throne and the Altar. The Historical Parallel dutifully follows this set up. In an interesting esthetic innovation, Lelewel analyses each nation in separate, parallel columns which he interrupts periodically with synthetic comments in standard text format. The scholar argues that Christianity meant Western civilization. Nations which adopted the Christian faith late were therefore culturally retarded.

That impacted Poland, which, to a large extent, modeled itself after the West but joined it only after a millennium apart. Christian since before its inception, Spain was on the other side of the scale. Spain dominated both land and sea. Poland was a land power. Both were magnificent, the latter in particular resplendent in its freedom. However, by the 17^th century both nations suffered from serious internal problems. “Internal factors of the decline of the states can exist dormant for a very long time unless they are assisted by external factors” (p. 30). Predatory neighbors provided the external stimuli to collapse. What Russia became for the noble Commonwealth, France was for its Iberian neighbor.

These crafty enemies first were propelled by the matters of religion and then by “mercantile and military interests” (p. 35). Their nefarious meddling and brute force destroyed Spain and Poland. The former was reduced to a status of a French dependency. The latter was completely eradicated from the map by Russi