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Military Service in Early Sixteenth-Century Lithuania: A New Interpretation and Its Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Karl von Loewe
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Extract

The existence of compulsory military service has become a major theme in recent attempts to explain the development of Lithuanian society and politics in the early sixteenth century. Much of the discussion has centered on the relationship between military service and feudalism. This article concentrates not on that question but on the nature of military service and the understanding it can provide of the structure and dynamics of the economy of Lithuania in the sixteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 1971 , pp. 249 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1971

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References

1. Oswald P., Backus, “The Problem of Feudalism in Lithuania, 1506-1548,” Slavic Review, 21, no. 4 (December 1962) : 659 Google Scholar. Backus's unstated assumption that the Extended General Land Privilege of 1529 was the original (Latin) manuscript of the Lithuanian Statute of 1529 may trouble the reader of his otherwise careful presentatioa His notes 27, 29, 30, 46, 47, and 59, though supposedly referring to the statute, in fact refer to the privilege (published in Liubavsky, M. K., Ocherk istorii Litovsko-russkogo gosudarstva do Liublinskoi unii vkliuchitel'no, 2nd ed. [Moscow, 1915]Google Scholar), which was issued one month after the promulgation of the statute (published in Jablonskis, K. I., ed., Statut Velikogo kniashestva Litovskogo 1529 goda [Minsk, 1960]Google Scholar). Although the actual manuscript of the privilege may be older than the earliest extant manuscript of the statute, the influence of the former on the latter is moot, and apparently demands a more detailed textological analysis than Backus could justifiably engage in within the parameters of his presentatioa

2. For example, Liubavsky, M. K., Oblastnoe delenie i mestnoe upravlenie Litovskorusskogo gosudarstva ko vremeni izdaniia pervogo Litovskogo statuta (Moscow, 1892), p. 611–12.Google Scholar

3. Arkheograficheskaia, komissiia, ed., Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka, vol. 33 (Petrograd, 1915)Google Scholar, “Litovskaia Metrika, Otdel pervyi, Chast’ tret'ia : Knigi publichnykh del, Perepisi voiska litovskogo,” col. 7 (hereafter cited in the text as RIB). Vernadsky mistakenly claims that one horse and rider were to be provided for every ten service units. George, Vernadsky, Russia at the Dawn of the Modern Age (New Haven, 1959), p. 190.Google Scholar

4. Picheta, V. I., Istoriia sel'skogo khosiaistva v Belorussii, vol. 1 : Do kontsa XVI v. (Minsk, 1927), pp. 56–57 Google Scholar; Liubavsky, Ocherk, p. 194.

5. For example, Vernadsky, Russia at the Dawn of the Modem Age, pp. 175-77.

6. For additional points indicating the difficulties involved in employing the register for population figures, see Morzy, Józef, Kryeys demograficzny na Litwie i Biaiorusi w II polowie XVII wieku (Poznan, 1965), p. 4–5.Google Scholar