PROGRESS WITHOUT CONSENT: ENLIGHTENED CENTRALISM VIS-À-VIS LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE TOWNS OF EAST CENTRAL EUROPE AND RUSSIA, 1764-1840 A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Curtis G. Murphy, M.A. Washington, DC November 3, 2011 Copyright 2011 by Curtis G. Murphy All Rights Reserved ii PROGRESS WITHOUT CONSENT: ENLIGHTENED CENTRALISM VIS-À-VIS LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE TOWNS OF THE POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH, 1764-1840 Curtis G. Murphy, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Andrzej S. Kami ński, Ph.D. ABSTRACT In the eighteenth century, European rulers pursued a common policy of enlightened centralism, which assaulted the rights of self-governing corporations in the name of material, social, and economic progress. For the towns of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, enlightened centralism began under King Stanisław August Poniatowski (r. 1764-1796) and continued uninterrupted through the partitions of Poland into the mid-nineteenth century. Employing the petitions, financial records, and demographic data of a select group of towns from Poland and Ukraine, this study investigates the consequences of enlightened centralization for the political and economic lives of burghers, Jews, and other town dwellers in Poland-Lithuania and some of its successor states: the Russian Empire (after 1795), Austrian West Galicia (1795-1809), the Duchy of Warsaw (1806-1815), and the Congress Kingdom of Poland (after 1815). A particular emphasis is placed on the fate of so-called private towns, which possessed royal charters and rights of self-government but belonged to individuals. When divorced from the effects of nineteenth-century industrialization and population growth, enlightened centralization in the towns of Poland-Lithuania did not produce the economic growth, administrative efficiency or social improvements that served to justify the abrogation of self-government in the minds of Enlightenment writers and many modern historians. Instead, centralizing policies weakened the political rights of townsmen, imposed enormous administrative costs, and substituted an iii ineffective and legalistic system for local control. Private towns fared the worst under centralization because state control undermined the ability and incentive of owners to offer attractive conditions to townsmen, and these unusual entities experienced an absolute decline in population and wealth after 1795. iv The research and writing of this thesis is dedicated to everyone who helped and inspired me along the way. I am particularly grateful to Professors Andrzej S. Kami ński, Catherine Evtuhov, James Collins, and Gerald Mara for their guidance and assistance in completing this project. In adittion, I received generous advice and archival assistance from Ryszard Szczygieł, Natalija Białous, and Krzysztof Kossarzecki. The Georgetown University History Department provided financial and moral support, as well as a fruitful environment for thinking and working. In addition, this dissertation would never have been completed without the advice, assistance, and overall support of my inimitable wife, Amanda. The research for this dissertation was supported by a U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays award and a fellowship from the Institute of Civic Space and Public Policy of Lazarski University, Warsaw. Curtis G. Murphy v TABLE OF CONTENTS A Note on Place Names …………………………………………………………………… vii Common Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………. viii Introduction: Self-Government, Poland-Lithuania and the Enlightenment ………………. 1 Chapter 1: Treasure in the Still: The Royal Towns, the Department of Police, and the Propinacja Law, 1776-1793 ………………………………………………………. 36 Chapter 2: Where Cameralism and Liberalism Meet: Order, Finance and Good Police in Lublin, 1780-1832 ………………………………………………………. 84 Chapter 3: Supervised Self-Government: Ukrainian Royal Towns under Tsarist Administration …………………………………………………………………….. 129 Chapter 4: Competing for Free Citizens on the Free Market: Private Towns, Owners, and the State in the Eighteenth Century ………………………………………………. 169 Chapter 5: “All District Towns Should Belong to the State”: The Integration of Private Towns into State Systems under Napoleon and the Tsars, 1809-1832 …………… 209 Conclusion: Enlightened Centralism and Federalism …………………………………….. 250 Appendix 1: Decree for Implementing the Propinacja Law ……………………………… 263 Appendix 2: Revenue, Expenditures, and Debts for Lublin, 1783 ……………………….. 266 Appendix 3: Other City Revenue and Expenditures for Lublin, 1784 ……………………. 267 Appendix 4: Revenue and Expenditures for Lublin, 1810-1811, 1816-1818 …………….. 268 Appendix 5: Population Figures, 1777-1819 ……………………………………………… 272 Appendix 6: Population Figures by Rank …………………………………………………. 273 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………. 274 vi A Note on Place Names The numerous border realignments, which characterize the territories of the former Commonwealth, present difficulties to the historian who wishes to employ place names without offending national sensibilities. Town names, in particular, have varied widely with the change of regimes, the most notorious example being modern-day L’viv (Latin: Leopolis; Polish: Lwów; German: Lemberg; Russian: Lvov). In this work, I follow the practice of employing the version of the town’s name recorded in the contemporary historical documents. In effect, towns in the Commonwealth retain their Polish name, while those under Russia are listed by the Russian version. The only exception is the towns of the Austrian partition, where I continue to employ the Polish version, as the primary documents I employed were recorded in Polish. This method avoids anachronism but demands that the reader will occasionally encounter different names for the same town, particularly for the Commonwealth towns absorbed into the Russian Empire. These towns, along with their modern, Ukrainian or Belarusian appellations, are listed below. Polish name Russian name Present name Bracław Bratslav Bratslav Dubno Dubno Dubno Kamieniec-Podolski Kamenets-Podol’skii Kam’ianets-Podils’kyi Krzemieniec Kremenets Kremenets’ Łuck Lutsk Luts’k Mohyłów Mogilev (Podol’skii) Mohyliv-Podils’kyi Nie świe Ŝ Nesvizh Niasvizh Ołyka Olyka Olyka Ostróg Ostrog Ostroh Zasław Zaslavl’ Iziaslav śółkiew Zholkva Zhovkva śytomierz Zhitomir Zhytomyr vii Common Abbreviations AGAD - Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych w Warszawie (The Main Archive of Old Records in Warsaw) AML - Akta miasta Lublina (Records of the town of Lublin after 1809, a fond in APL) AOZ - Archiwum Ordynacji Zamoyskiej (The Archive of the Zamoyski Entail, a fond in APL) APL - Archiwum Pa ństwowe w Lublinie (The State Archive in Lublin) AR - Archiwum Radziwiłłów (The Radziwiłł family Archive, a fond in AGAD) ASK - Archiwum Skarbu Koronnego (The Crown Treasury Archive, a fond in AGAD) AZ - Archiwum Zamoyskich (The Zamoyski family Archive, a fond in AGAD) BC - Biblioteka Ksi ąŜą t Czartoryskich (The Library of the Czartoryski princely family, in Kraków) DPKP - Dziennik Praw Królestwa Polskiego (The Legal Journal of the Kingdom of Poland, after 1815) DPKW - Dziennik Praw Ksi ęstwa Warszawskiego (The Legal Journak of the Duchy of Warsaw, 1807-1815) KBO - Komisja Boni Ordinis (The Good Order Commission, a fond in APL) KCW - Komisje Cywilno-Wojskowe Lubelskie (The Civil-Military Commission of Lublin, a fond in APL) KML - Ksi ęgi miejskie Lublina (Records of the town of Lublin before 1809, a fond in APL) KRSW - Komisja Rz ądowa Spraw Wewn ętrzych (The Governing Commission on Internal Affairs, a fond in AGAD) ML - Tak zwana Metryka Litewska (The So-Called Lithuanian Metrica, a fond in AGAD) PRN - Protokoł potoczny Rady Nieustaj ącej (The Ordinary Minutes of the Permanent Council, a subsection of ML) PSZRI - Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii (The Complete Collection of the Laws of the Russian Empire) SG - Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowia ńskich (The Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavic Countries) TsDIAK - Tsentralyni Derzhavnyi Istorycheskyi Arkhiv v Kyeve (The Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv, Ukraine) VL - Volumina legum (The Laws of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) viii [The] measures [of tyrants] may sound very “untyrannical” and beneficial to modern ears . But they all have in common the banishment of the citizens from the public realm and the insistence that they mind their private business. -Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition The substance of the ideas of 1789 is not the limitation of sovereign power, but the abrogation of intermediate powers. -Lord Acton, “Nationality” Introduction: Self-Government, Poland-Lithuania, and the Enlightenment Delegated Republicanism and Enlightened Centralism In the larger scheme, this dissertation concerns the clash of values and behaviors characteristic of two, opposed models of governmental organization: delegated republicanism and centralism. By delegated republicanism, I mean the division of political power between rulers in the capitals and autonomous, self-governing corporations in the provinces that prevailed in Europe prior to the eighteenth century. This arrangement evolved in Medieval Europe, when the king or territorial ruler delegated certain rights and responsibilities to corporate groups in exchange for taxes, with the presumption that these groups would govern themselves in the name of the sovereign. Delegated republicanism in not a