The Mediterranean at a crossroad: Polish orientality and European orientalism
(†) Jan Kieniewicz
Faculty of “Artes Liberales”
University of Warsaw
ORCID: 0000-0002-3580-9112
Received: 02/03/2024
Published: 17/12/2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31338/ahi.2025.4.4
ABSTRACT: The article takes up the collapse of the Mediterranean world as a consequence of European expansion. One unique testimony of that process is found in mid-19th-century travelogues recorded by intellectuals and artists. Four differing figures have been presented, who are joined by having experienced a specific trait of the onetime Commonwealth’s (Rzeczpospolita) identity, which I defined as Orientalness: Jan Potocki, Wacław Seweryn Rzewuski, Juliusz Słowacki and Stanisław Tarnowski. It was based on a very rich, independent adoption of elements of the Orient’s material culture. The testimony of the Mediterranean given by Polish authors describing their sojourns is at sharp variance with Orientalism, understood as a Western form of expressing the East.
KEYWORDS: world, East, Mediterranean, Orientalness, travelers, modernization.
