Polish Empire? You might say, there never was such a thing. But, there was - in the same way as there is now an American Empire.

By 1634, which is to say toward the closing years of this age, Poland had become the largest country in Europe. Its territory extended from the Baltic almost to the Black Sea and from Silesia in the west to what is now the heart of the Ukraine, two hundred kilometers east of the Dnieper River.

As a result, by the middle of the 17th century, as much as 60 percent of Poland’s population was not ethnically Polish, a situation which was bound to cause friction sooner or later, depending on how wisely the Polish rulers treated their alloethnic subjects.

The Polish King never called himself "Emperor," just as George W. hasn´t taken on this title officially.

And just like George W, the Polish King was no more than a figure-head, a puppet for other powerful players.

A post by Xymphora, I read recently, reminded me of the Polish Empire and its decline.

He writes:

I thought there was at least a chance that Bush would dance with the ones who brought him, and reject the latest version of the Zionist Plan for the Middle East. Apparently not. Not only did Bush reject the Baker suggestions, he ran roughshod over every single one of them.

In fact, by prominently mentioning Baker’s suggestions in his speech, he managed to publicly humiliate Baker and all of Bush’s father’s friends (I wonder if Bush’s father’s hip replacement surgery removed the father’s influence at a critical time).

Bush could have, for example, called for some kind of reevaluation of American strategy while avoiding mention of Iran and Syria. Instead, by making bellicose attacks on Iran and Syria, he rejected the entire tenor of the Baker plea for some sort of diplomatic sanity in the Middle East.

He had a clear choice between the Zionists and the American Establishment, and he chose the Zionists.

And after analysing the surge-speech, Xymphora concludes:

You have to wonder what the American Establishment, too decadent and weak to defend itself, will do when much of its wealth is destroyed.

And this is where the similarities with the Polish Empire come in.

Ultra-conservative Catholic historian Michael Jones cites Jewish historian Graetz:

"The high nobility continued to be dependent on Jews, who in a measure counterbalanced the national defects. Polish flightiness, levity, unsteadiness, extravagance and recklessness were compensated for by Jewish prudence, sagacity, economy and cautiousness. The Jew was more than a financier to the Polish nobleman; he was his help in embarrassment, his prudent adviser, his all in all."

The late civil rights activist Israel Shahak writes in his book "Jewish History, Jewish Religion":

(I)n eastern Poland, under the rule of the nobles (and of the feudalized church, formed exclusively from the nobility) the Jews were both the immediate exploiters of the peasantry and virtually the only town-dwellers.

No doubt, most of the profit they extracted from the peasants was passed on to the landlords, in one way or another. No doubt, the oppression and subjugation of the Jews by the nobles were severe, and the historical record tells many a harrowing tale of the hardship and humiliation inflicted by noblemen on 'their' Jews. But, as we have remarked, the peasants suffered worse oppression at the hands of both landlords and Jews;

Jones sees still another aspect:

There are other ways of viewing the "unique utilitarian alliance [that] was formed between the huge landowners and the Jewish financial elite." Looked at one way, Jewish migration to Poland brought with it Jewish capital, and Jewish capital was soon put at the disposal of the Polish crown and the large landowning magnates, whose estates expanded dramatically in size.

The Polish magnates proceeded to use both the Jews and their money to expand the Polish empire into the fertile steppes of the Ukraine, Belorus and the northern shore of the Black Sea.

Looked at in another way, this alliance concentrated the wealth into fewer and fewer hands, especially during the period of intense Jewish colonization in the Ukraine during the 80 year period between 1569 and 1648.

Since the leases involved monopoly rights, the Jewish tax-farmers could increase the political power of their wealthy patrons, and their own wealth and influence as well, by driving the smaller independent landowners to the wall.

Both Jones and Shahak explain in their writings that the role the Jewish communities played in Poland as tax-farmers and administrators was rather typical, not only in Christian but also in Islamic countries, although Jews never suffered from expulsion in Muslim countries, since this was forbidden by Islamic law.

But, you have also to realize that the role Jewish minorities played in Christian or Islamic majority societies is not unique either.

In some parts of Russia, for instance, the German minority played this role.
In parts of Turkey it was the Christian Armenians, and in Rwanda, the artificially created minority of the Tutsies helped the European colonialist to rule the majority Hutu population.

It is a convenient ploy of the ruling class to deflect anger against the oppression from themselves. It is also cruelly efficient, to use a group of people who are not connected in bonds of friendship or marriage with the exploited.

However, for this minority - these middlemen in an exploitive system - it also has its hazards, as we can see from anti-Jewish progroms and the genocides against the Armenians and the Tutsies.

One of the hazards is reckless hubris.

Lets see what happened in the Polish Empire:

It grew very large, into areas, where the population was not only no longer Polish speaking, they were not even Roman Catholic, like the Ukrainian Cossacks.

But the Polish nobles needed soldiers to defend or expand their Empire. So, they recruited the Cossacks when they started, what Jones calls, "the Polish crusade" against the Ottoman Empire.

In return, the Cossacks were promised some kind of autonomy, to be still under the Polish crown, but allowed to administrate their own areas without Jewish tax-farmers.

However, there must have been some kind of AIPAC around in the 17th century as well, or maybe they called it PIPAC.

Otherwise, it is inexplicable what happened in the Sejms, the Polish Parliament, which was constituted exclusively by Polish nobles, whose stupidity is beyond belief.

They used the Cossacks for their military strength, knowing full well, what they were capable of, and then betrayed them:

The law proposal, which was to give the Cossacks the promised part autonomy, was defeated in the Polish Parliament.
And then all hell broke loose.

The Cossack officer Chmielnicki, who also had a personal grudge, blamed Jews for the loss of his family, started the revolt.

Some of the Polish nobles tried to prevent the worst.

According to the Jewish historian Henryk Grynberg: "the Polish armies, who were at war with [the Cossacks] were the sole defenders of the Jews."

However they often were far to weak.
And as in every war, the innocent suffered with the guilty.

[When Chmielnicki] defeated the Polish army on May 16, 1648, the way was open to widespread looting, pillaging and murder. It is estimated that 100,000 Jews perished in the ensuing mayhem.

In the aftermath of this war, the Polish Empire had become so weak, that its neighbours first gained part of its territory.

Poland never recovered.

And a few decades later, it was partitioned for the first time and its land absorbed into other Empires. More partitions and occupations of Poland followed, the last one under Hitler and Stalin.

After WWII, Stalin just shifted the whole country to the west, by settling Ukrainians, who he before had thrown out from their homes in East-Poland, throwing out the Germans from Schlesien and Pommern, and settling the expelled Polish people there.

Today, Poland is one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, poor enough to be pushed into the "Coalition of the Willing."

So, you see, "Emperial Hubris" is not new and has destroyed many an empire before.

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