Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey

The King "Should Be but Imaginary": The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania in the Eyes of an English Diplomat, 1598

The King "Should Be but Imaginary": The Commonwealth of Poland-lithuania in the Eyes of an English Diplomat, 1598 Nancy S. Kollmann Many of us were introduced to Robert Crummey's work when we read Giles Fletcher and other English travelers in that memorably titled book, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom. Amidst his prodigious scholarship - ranging widely from boyar culture to Old Believer communities to the spirituality of Old BeliefBob 's publication of early English travelers to Russia has been particularly influential . Like many other publications at the time,l it responded to America's Cold War fascination with Russia; subsequently, as the waves of "culture wars," deconstructionism, and a "linguistic tum" moved through historical studies, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom provided students a fertile field of political incorrectness that they could submit to ever more sophisticated critique. While appreciative of the factual knowledge these travelers provided, even Crummey noted judiciously in 1968 that to place "considerable reliance on the information provided by European travelers ... is a treacherous, although necessary, undertaking.,, 2 Since the publication of Marshall Poe's and Larry Wolff's studies of tropes about Eastern Europe and Russia in European travel literature,3 we are all the more sensitive to the subjectivity of sources that dare to call another culture "barbarous." What prompted Bob to disseminate the English accounts, and what keeps us all coming back to them, of course, is the optimistic hope that historians can cull something of real historical insight from sources so deeply imbricated with presuppositions, judgments, and comparisons. Some of these authors were, after all, eyewitnesses. 1 On travel accounts alone, see the Arno Press series "Russia Observed," with over 25 titles published in 1970-71, and also Harry W. Nerhood, To Russia and Return: An AllIlotated Bibliography of Travelers' English-Language Accounts of Russia from the N inth Century to the Present (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968). 2 Lloyd E. Berry and Robert O. Crummey, eds., Rude and Barbarous Kingdom. Russia in the Accounts of Sixteenth-Centun) English Voyagers (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), xiv. 3 Marshall T. Poe, "A People Bam to Slavery": Russia in Early Modem European Ethnography , 1476-1748 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastem Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert 0. Crummey. Chester 5. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland, eds. Bloomington, IN: siavica Publi shers, 2008, 353-66. 354 NANCY 5. KOLLMANN Giles Fletcher certainly was, and he was also a product of Eton and Cambridge University. His "Of the Russe Commonwealth" is perhaps the most influential among those published by Crummey. I for one have studied and analyzed it over many years. Therefore I was fascinated while teaching East European history to discover (on the recommendation of my colleague Frank Sysyn) a travel account that complements Fletcher in striking ways. Soon after Fletcher's 1591 account of Muscovy, in 1598 another English diplomat, George Carew, penned a description of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania4 Carew was a university-educated lawyer, MP, and highly placed Chancery official, author of a highly-regarded manual of bureaucratic procedures. As a diplomat he was sent on sojourns to Poland in 1598 and France in 1605, ending life in 1612 with a knighthood, powerful patrons, and a modest fortune 5 Carew was also a scholar, if not by profession, then by avocation. He wrote a great deal, employing a research method of eye-witness observation, personal interviews, and secondary reading. In addition to the diplomatic dispatches written in Latin that Carew sent to the Queen in 1598, which focus on Baltic issues,6 Carew in that year or soon thereafter wrote a comprehensive survey of the entire Commonwealth. After his diplomatic service in France in 1605-09, he wrote a similar "Relation" about French society, politics, and geopolitics . But neither work-both apparently submitted to his monarch and both extant in manuscript in royal collections-was published in his lifetime. His "Relation of the State of France" was published in 1749/ and his account of Poland-Lithuania saw the light of day in full publication only in 19658 In writing such learned treatises, Carew was probably influenced by the example of his elder brother Robert, a professional historian. But that he did not publish them has contributed to debates on the authorship of his Polish book, whose manuscript identifies...