The Revivals of the Jagiellonian Idea: Political and Normative Contexts

Abstract

The Revivals of the Jagiellonian Idea: Political and Normative Contexts The article has two major aims. First, it provides a short analysis of three revivals of the Jagiellonian idea which took place in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries in different historical and political circumstances. Second, it locates these revivals within the political and normative contexts of the time, and looks at different reasons that explain the persistence of the concept. The article also addresses more general questions, such as the ways that the Jagiellonian idea can be conceptualized, debates over its practicality and usefulness and its lasting presence in Polish national memory. Although there does not seem to be an agreement on the very meaning of the Jagiellonian idea, it certainly has enough normative or symbolic potential to animate strategic policy visions even in the twenty-first century.

Keywords

• the Jagiellonian idea
• Polish-Lithuanian union
• historical memory
• Oskar Halecki