Resources for the User's Guide to the Royal Hetman's Archives in archives and library collections

Abstract

This article is an overview of archival collections with provenance of hetman's archives, but physically separated into collections in archives and libraries across Poland (Kraków, Kórnik, Łódź, Poznań, Warszawa) and also Ukraine (Kiev, Lviv). Research, which later became an inspiration for this overview, has been conducted mainly in the early 90s. In the light of the above, this article does not claim to be called a "guide" to the royalhetmans' archives of the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century, but it could be viewed as an outline of such archival finding aid. This overview focuses on characteristics of different types of archival material, which author considered integrally connected to holding of an office of hetman, i.e.: personal, administrative and military, judiciary, financial, and also correspondence. Qualification criteria may raise some concerns, because selection of archives is subjective by nature, but also because in the discussed time period there was social consensus on the fact that one's private life and public sphere would overlap. Most of the archival materials used in this study comes from the hetman's archives of the eighteenth century (Jan Clement Branicki's; Franciszek Ksawery Branicki's; Stanisław Mateusz, Wacław, Seweryn Rzewuski's and Adam Mikołaj Sieniawski's). Eighteen century is considered to be the peak of development of private archives, which - without a doubt - had great impact on the preservation of hetman's archives of that period. Moreover, the fact that there is significantly larger collection of hetman's archives of that period, compared to previous two centuries, is the result of the hetman's office having a special place within the political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.