The Rumanian political immigration in Poland of the 17th century

Abstract

The article analyses the phenomenon of Romanian political immigration to the lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the seventeenth century, constituting an important element of Polish–Romanian relations. The aim of the study is to present the causes, course, and significance of the migration of political and boyar elites from Moldavia and Wallachia to Poland. The author employed the historical method based on the analysis of manuscript and printed sources as well as the relevant scholarly literature. The research distinguished two main waves of migration: the so-called Mohyla immigration of 1591–1616 and the Petriceicu immigration of 1673–1684. It was demonstrated that the first of these involved the most important boyar families of Moldavia and played a significant political and cultural role both in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and in Moldavia. The second wave was larger in terms of the number of emigrants, but its political significance was short-lived. The analysis shows that Poland was a place of refuge for deposed hospodars and their supporters, becoming a space for political, social, and cultural interactions between the two countries. Political emigration from the Romanian lands had a lasting impact on Polish-Moldavian relations, and the Mohyla immigration in particular contributed to strengthening ties between the elites of both states.