Historical Writing in the Service of Politics. Socio-political Changes of the Nineteenth Century in Western Europe from the Perspective of the Work of the Krakow Conservative, Henryk Lisicki (1839–1899)

Abstract

The article presents the views of Henryk Lisicki, a publicist and historian, actively cooperating with Krakow’s conservatives (Stańczycy). It focuses on the issue presented in his literature (and representative of his native environment), of the attitude of conservatives toward the nineteenth-century democratization processes. In his views, he revealed criticism of the legacy of the Great French Revolution of 1789. However, the article indicates that in his works Lisicki did this from a moderately conservative position. As a result, he argued for the possibility of adapting the deposit of „traditional values” resulting from the natural law to the reality forming in the Old Continent, under the influence of changes caused by the aforementioned revolution. The article also signals the political construct preferred by moderate conservatives (which is an alternative to the personal rule of a ruler or republic), in the form of a constitutional monarchy, which was exemplified by Victorian England. The text also points to representative elements of the moderately conservative worldview, which is a reception of conservative and liberal ideals.