Pride Goeth Before a Fall: Deliberations on the Nature of the Demise of Unions

Good+. Hardcover, 173 pages, NOT ex-library. Gentle creases in upper page corners. Book is clean, bright with unmarked text, no inscriptions, no stamps, firmly bound. Issued without a dust jacket. -- Contents: Introduction; 1. Denmark, Sweden and Norway: How the Scandinavian Union of Three Nations Fell; 2. 1632: The Year the Commonwealth of Three Nations Was Not Formed; 3. How the First British Empire Fell; 4. The Kingdom of the Netherlands 1815-1830: A Union Without Citizens for the Sake of the European Balance of Powers; 5. What Brought the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians to an End; 6. The Monarchy of Charlemagne versus Others in the EU; Conclusions; Bibliography; Maps -- "This text was inspired by an idea which once came to me and which, in my opinion, shows the greatest mistake in the history of Poland in the context of similar mistakes made by other nations. To me, this great mistake was the fact that the Commonwealth of Two Nations was unable to solve the issue of the political representation of Ruthenia (Ukraine) within its federal system. As a result of the short-sightedness of its elites - both Polish and Lithuanian, but also Ruthenian Cossacks - Poland and Lithuania were unable to move from the Polish-Lithuanian Union to a Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Union. As a result of the crisis of the Commonwealth and the civil war with Zaporizhzhia, which tore the country apart in the mid-17th century, all nations living within its borders at that time got into trouble, first suffering from the Tatar raids, followed by Moscow, Swedish, Prussian, Transylvanian and later Turkish invasions. The demographic impact was disastrous. The Polish-Lithuanian state was never able to struggle out of that situation; it lost its dominant position in Central Europe to the benefit of Russia, and eventually also its independence. I believe that the inability to find a positive solution for the issue of Cossackdom (Kozachyna) in the 17th century was the most serious political mistake in Polish history, which sealed the fate of the country and of the entire Central European region. This made me think about similar political sins in the history of other nations. Thus, I came up with a non-exhaustive list of similar situations and asked how political structures consisting of multiple entities disintegrate? This question has become particularly topical in the context of the ongoing severe crisis regarding the cohesion of the EU. This contemporary relevance motivated me to attempt to identify the mechanisms which bring about the demise of multinational unions. The history of break-ups of five unions will be discussed. The first is the Kalmar Union - a Danish-Norwegian-Swedish union which, despite the countries' relatively high cultural uniformity never reached political stability at any moment of its 126-year-long existence. The second case is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which was unable to transform itself into a trialist state, i.e. to recognise the political subjectivity of Zaporizhzhia. The third case is the break-up of the first British Empire as a result of the revolt of its North American colonies which were denied the representation in the imperial system, though they were encumbered with the costs of its functioning. The fourth example of the fall of a multinational union discussed in this work is the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the years 1815-30. It differs from the other unions in that it was created by external forces as a result of the international system rather than having stemmed from the internal power of the structure or the will of its citizens. The fifth case concerns the failure of the idea of unity of Southern Slavic people in the form of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenians between the two world wars. [.] The discussion will be concluded with a study of the present situation in the European Union to trace the symptoms of a disease with undermines its construction and threatens its break-up.".…