This first of three parts of the History of the Polish Intelligentsia deals with the time from 1750 to 1831. It traces the formation of the intelligentsia as a social class, stresses the importance of the birth of bureaucratic institutions and analyses the results of the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795.

Jerzy Jedlicki is Professor emeritus at the Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences where he was head of the research group for the history of intelligentsia. He also was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. Maciej Janowski is Professor at the Institute of History at Polish Academy of Sciences and Recurrent Visiting Associate Professor at the Central European University in Budapest.

Contents: Birth of the Intelligentsia – After the partitions of Poland: Intellectuals in a divided state – Modern state institutions and the intellectuals – Insurrections or gradual change? – The intelligentsia’s sense of mission – After 1863: reactions to the national catastrophe – Intelligentsia and the modern party politics (turn of 19th and 20th centuries) – Early 20th century: intelligentsia and the growth of mass society.