FAQ

Where is the master list now?

After the billionth blog migration I moved it here.

One day I might update it and make it somewhat semi-comprehensive. I used it myself a couple of times and I’m seeing the purpose, but I need to bring myself together to do it.

Master list what? How had the site started?

I initially created a blog where I planned to gradually review all important books of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1572-1795) on its politics and ideology. (I had then only a vague idea of the true scope of this.) Maybe, in the very long run, I will kind of accomplish this.

This whole attempt also persuaded me to return to actually finish an M.A. in History. So maybe there is some profit in blogging.

What is the stated purpose of the site now?

Okay, so I’ve decided to cover my various interests in a looser manner. These can be classified like so:

• Political sociology, including Early Modernity: court scheming, mechanisms of decisions, how debates were influenced, reconstructing underlying mentalities and Overton windows.
• Forms of power. Since antiquity and Aristotle we know that state power is only a fragment of power structures existing in societies: we have also power relations in the household (the Jean Bodin’s obsession), feudal power, various ways you can dominate other people with culture and capital. We should see how all this comes together in particular political regimes.
• Early modern free states. Chiefly the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, of course, but also Venice, Florence, Novgorod, Switzerland, Netherlands, the English Revolution, the lineage that stretches to the United States and revolutionary France.
• History of ideas. I’m mostly into Polish-Lithuanian, Rousseauist and Jeffersonian fur collar-wearing republicanism, but we must understand them in the context of their contemporaries and enemies: absolutist ideology, classical liberalism, American federalism and Old World conservatism. There’s also the next part in the 19th century, when republican radicalism lives its new adventures in the world of ruling reactionaries and rising socialist and nationalist movements.
• Other social and political history topics that I unilaterally declare interesting.

What if I’m not able to comment? How to contact you?

I know that in the fight against random link spammers sometimes the casualties are normal readers. The preferred way to contact me as to write to the address oldrep (at) protonmail.ch.

Can the older posts contain some inaccuracies and oversimplifications?

To some degree yes. This site chronicles my process of learning.

That said, I reviewed my posts during the latest migration (~2019) and haven’t noticed anything particularly egregious. Also notice that history is not only a discipline of facts, but also of their readings and interpretations; there are inevitably disagreements (also between the past and present me). If you want me to issue corrections for facts or revisit my interpretations, you know how to contact me.