The Contractual Principle and Right of Resistance in the Ukraine and Moldavia

Abstract

The contractual principle and the right of resistance (ius resistendi) served as major legal and conceptual tools of European nobilities in their struggle with monarchical absolutism. These concepts were prevalent throughout early modern Western Europe. And they were a well-known and often-utilised feature of the nobility’s ‘ideological arsenal’ in Poland and Hungary. What has not been established, however, is how far the influence of these concepts extended to the east. They were absent in Russia proper and in the lands under direct Ottoman rule. But what of countries such as Left-Bank Ukraine or Moldavia which, although under the indirect rule of tsars and sultans, were known to be under strong Polish influence? Did their elites evince a familiarity with, and an acceptance of, the principle of a contractual, mutually-binding relationship between a sovereign and his subjects and its corollary, the right of resistance? To deal with this question we will examine two critical junctures in the political history of early eighteenth century Ukraine and Moldavia — the decision in 1708 of Hetman Ivan Mazepa of Left-Bank Ukraine to reject the overlordship of the Russian tsar, and the rejection in 1711 of Ottoman sovereignty by the Moldavian hospodar, Dimitrie Cantemir. Hopefully this undertaking will allow us to establish how far, and in what form, feudal constitutional principles extended beyond the eastern borders of Poland and Hungary.