Authors

Discussion

In East-Central and Eastern Europe, the hostility towards increasing immigration of non-white people is often justified by the self-perception of these societies and their histories as exclusively European and "white." This perspective frames such immigration as a disruption of an imagined centuries-long norm. This presentation argues that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which encompassed a significant part of the region, was peripheral but nevertheless an integral participant in the Early Modern proto-globalization processes that facilitated a modest yet continuous presence of Africans and mixed-race individuals, who became an organic, though now ignored, part of the Commonwealth’s society and history. Despite Poland-Lithuania's lack of direct involvement in colonial overseas expansion, it acted as a hinterland of the Atlantic World and participated in the global circulation of goods, ideas, and people. Members of the state elites sought to demonstrate their access to global markets and exotic lands by acquiring and displaying objects, animals, and even people from other continents. As far as slavery did not formally exist in Poland-Lithuania, those Black servants held a distinctive and sometimes ambiguous status, best described as "privileged dependency." Atlantic Rim and Mediterranean societies included a growing number of free Black and mixed-race individuals, some of whom sought opportunities in Poland-Lithuania. Furthermore, locally-born mixed-race individuals occupied a range of social statuses, from servants to members of the aristocracy, based on religious and social markers rather than skin colour. The perception of who is the Black –“Murzyn” in the Commonwealth, however, was fluid and inconsistent. The absence of formal racial segregation and institutional barriers to integration in Poland-Lithuania enabled the absorption of African-descended individuals into predominantly white society. However, this integration usually demanded full assimilation, requiring individuals to abandon their own non-European cultural and religious identities and practices. Thus, while a distinct Black diaspora did not emerge in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the history of Black and Mixed-Race presence reveals a complex interplay of privilege, dependency, and assimilation, challenging modern perceptions of homegeneous whiteness of the Central and Eastern European past.