The Birth of the Aristocracy in Galicia: The New/Old Elites of the Former Ruthenian Voivodship

Abstract

After the first partition of Poland, the territory called Galicia found itself in a different legal and administrative system, in which a constantly expanding bureaucratic apparatus, which did not exist in such a form in the Polish lands, was of great importance. The nobility lost its former privileges, and Austria tried to win over the richest part of it by granting aristocratic titles, which reshaped the social elite who owed their position or elevation to the Habsburgs. The principle of equality of the nobility, characteristic of the Polish-Lithuanian state, was thus broken. The aristocracy took the place of the magnates, and the titles of counts and barons could be applied for by all those who held central offices in the final period of the Republic, sat in the Senate and held starosties in the cities. The old elites were being transformed into new ones, but as a result of this transformation, some of the families previously prominent in the former Ruthenian Voivodship later played no role in the Galician reality. Their place was taken by other families, introduced into the political, economic and social elite thanks to the success of outstanding individuals from their ranks. On the example of the Dzieduszycki family, we can trace a kind of mechanism of promotion to the elite of the noble community at the end of the Commonwealth and finding themselves in the new legal and political system of the partitioned state.