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Changes and Significance of Territorial Divisions in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2026

Arkadiusz Borek Open the ORCID record for Arkadiusz Borek [Opens in a new window]
Arkadiusz Borek*
Affiliation:
Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
*
Email: aborek@ihpan.edu.pl
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Abstract

The territorial divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were stable for most of its existence. They were characterized by dualism: in the Kingdom of Poland, territorial divisions and their connection to public institutions were organic; in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, these matters were strictly ordered. Changes appeared in the eighteenth century, when we can observe localized modifications in the network of territories, and during the Partitions period two systematic reforms were passed. The detailed analysis of such changes clearly shows that the ruling class of the Commonwealth was mainly interested in the political aspects of the territorial divisions: the distribution of prestige by the creation of new land offices connected to new territories, and the use of territorial units as constituencies. This second aspect was the main motivation behind the reforms after the First and Second Partitions. The political and election-focused approach to the system of territorial divisions highlights the difference between the Commonwealth and major European states in this period.

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The Historical Journal , First View , pp. 1 - 23
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In the eighteenth century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was confronted with many political challenges; as the supreme lawmaking authority, the sejm was able to make very few decisions, the army was underfunded, and the country, together with its elites, remained politically dependent on Russia. The three partitions by Russia, Prussia, and Austria that took place in 1772, 1793, and 1795 were the climactic point of that era and spelled the demise of the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, the second half of the eighteenth century was also marked by thorough reflections on the condition of the state and its prospective reforms, and that time was crowned with the deliberations of the Four Years’ Sejm, also known as the Great Sejm (1788–92).Footnote 1 The issues which were raised in its sessions touched upon a question of interest for me in this article, namely the territorial divisions of the Commonwealth.

‘The vast Polish-Lithuanian state was divided into a number of elements which are impossible to capture in a systematic, model-based description. Any tentatively applied rule will immediately reveal some distinct features and exceptions.’Footnote 2 This kind of reflection seems to resonate well with any history scholar who ventures to depict the landscape of public institutions in the Commonwealth before the Partitions. The legal and political system of the Polish-Lithuanian state featured a number of regional discrepancies, including in its territorial divisions. That is why the authors of a volume on the history of the Polish political system posited that ‘in those days [the late eighteenth century] no systematic division of the country had yet been established’.Footnote 3

At the same time, these general statements co-exist with an absence of studies focused on a broader approach to the issue of the territorial divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. An idiographic approach, focused on the genesis and reconstruction of the spatial extent of particular territorial units and their network, predominates.Footnote 4 This situation stems from the fact that the origins and nature of the territorial system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth do not arouse major controversies, and the divisions themselves, as a whole, remained stable for centuries. This provided no impetus for research adopting a more problem-oriented approach. Consequently, limited debates arose around the original nature of the district (powiat) and the discrepancy between the boundaries of judicial and tax districts.Footnote 5 Significant changes begin to occur only in the eighteenth century. In this article I intend to capitalize on this situation by examining territorial structures comprehensively and as a dynamic phenomenon and I aim to present a more orderly overview of the topic. This is of special relevance because the question which I define below has never been explored in a research paper, although a few disparate pieces of information can be found here and there in the literature.

An interest in territorial divisions analysed from the historical vantage point is attested by a rich literature, in particular by various works in the form of maps and atlases. Despite the spatial turn which the humanities have been witnessing for some time, it seems that no attempt has been made to discuss formal territorial divisions in the pre-modern period in more general and theoretical terms.Footnote 6 This should come as no surprise because the issue of administrative/territorial divisions of states is strongly intertwined with legal and political systems at the local level and their developments over time, and therefore it is not easy to propose any broader conceptualization and to conduct comparative studies. Some scholars have discussed that question through the lens of geography or administration but have either explored the topic in typically modern terms or, as a starting point for their reflection, taken social and political developments since the French Revolution, and therefore stayed within the modern, teleological, and rational approach to territorial units.Footnote 7

However, the literature in the field of spatial humanities provides concepts that help identify issues useful for analysing changes in a state’s territorial structure. These are the concept of territory, which has been developed in the literature and is now defined as a function of space, power, and a group of people, analysed dynamically; and the concept of territorial practices, that is, measures that shape this kind of relationship.Footnote 8 In accordance with this perspective, in this article I will analyse territorial divisions as a form of spatial organization fulfilling specific functions for the ruling class of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth within the contemporary political and public system, while formal changes and reforms to these divisions will be viewed as measures aimed at adapting these elements to the current needs and goals of that class. While the application of categories from the field of spatial humanities allows for the definition of general issues that will fall within the scope of my interest, given the period under study – namely the eighteenth century – and the focus on state reforms, a natural consequence is an attempt to situate the conclusions within the broader context of the modernization of European states in the eighteenth century, driven by the Enlightenment’s aim to rationalize, streamline, and optimize their structures.Footnote 9 Consequently, besides a detailed inquiry into the condition of the Commonwealth, an important element will be to compare the reforms introduced in it with what is known about similar phenomena from that period in selected European states.

The goal of this article is to discuss the role and importance of internal territorial divisions of the Commonwealth in the final period of its existence. To this end, I will examine how territorial units were created, identify the objectives underlying these actions, and analyse how the newly established units were positioned within the network of existing territories and public institutions. I will focus on three cases involving the creation of individual territorial units, as well as two systemic reforms. In these developments, a clear demonstration of what meaning was attributed to territorial divisions by the people of the day can be found. In conclusion, I will argue that, by the eighteenth century, territorial divisions in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had largely lost their historical connection with the judicial system and had assumed a primarily political character – serving as a framework for organizing the parliamentary life of the state and fulfilling contemporary demands for prestige. Moreover, I will show, by comparison with other European states, that the Commonwealth followed its own path in this matter.

In this article, I use the terms ‘territorial divisions’ or ‘territorial units’ of the state, which are to be understood as the named parts of the state territory and some institutions of public life attached thereto. I mainly discuss relevant legislation and the political context, and will not describe in detail the boundaries of newly established elements. Moreover, I do not provide a detailed discussion on changes to the scope of powers of specific institutions which had territorial jurisdiction. I do not use the terms ‘administrative divisions’ and ‘administrative units’ as the meaning of such terms seems too narrow,Footnote 10 and they can be coloured by the bias of a more modern interpretation of the relations between a territory and its managing public institutions, in which such relations are fully shaped by the actions of central government, and territories are organized and their hierarchies defined from the top down. I rely on various types of historical sources. Most of them are normative and either provide direct accounts of how new units were established or confirm their existence. Such confirmations can be also found in several registries, cartographic materials, scholarly works of that time, and political writs.

I

As I have already said, it is not possible to explore territorial divisions and the establishment of new territorial units without discussing the institutional and legal landscape of the state. The overview in this section will show how the territories of the Commonwealth were connected to important elements of the nobility’s (Polish szlachta) public life. This picture will also be briefly compared with analogous situations in other European states.

The Commonwealth was born in 1569 and was made up of two parts: the Kingdom of Poland (the Crown) and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with one ruler and the sejm (parliament) but separate hierarchies of offices, armies, and budgets.Footnote 11 The Crown and Lithuania also had their own territorial divisions; territorial arrangements did not undergo any changes after the union, but the Lithuanian system was modelled on Polish solutions. Both parts of the Commonwealth were governed by the nobility, and their territorial and institutional frameworks, described below, operated accordingly. In the Crown, districts (pl. powiaty, sing. powiat) were the smallest units and, combined together, they formed voivodships (pl. województwa, sing. województwo). Some regions also had lands (pl. ziemie, sing. ziemia), whose statuses varied from one province to another. Lands could cover several districts or have a district-like status, or both terms could be used interchangeably. The system and the terminology had evolved within a space which formed the very core of the Polish state reborn in the fourteenth century, based on the territorial divisions stemming from the earlier feudal fragmentation and the activities of land courts,Footnote 12 and they were next adapted in regions annexed to the Crown at later stages.Footnote 13

Voivodships, lands, and districts existed alongside public institutions for which these territorial structures were the point of reference. Such institutions included: castle courts (royal courts presided over by starostas, dealing mainly with criminal cases), land courts (courts of the nobility, judging predominantly civil cases), the hierarchy of land offices (mostly titular positions), and the parliamentary and self-government system in the form of local assemblies of nobility, called sejmiks, which were convened to elect deputies for the sejm and to deliberate on statewide and local issues.Footnote 14 In the case of the Crown, it is hard to identify one single model of co-existence between institutions and territorial units. That correspondence was relatively homogenous for land courts (as territorial divisions were originally associated specifically with them): each voivodship or land had a separate land court, with districts operating as its auxiliary units. Nevertheless, exceptions existed.Footnote 15

For castle courts, the network of relations with territorial units was more complex. For instance, the majority of the voivodships of Kalisz and Poznań were placed under the jurisdiction of the castle courts presided over by the general starosta of Greater Poland, but their three border territories had their own starostas as well.Footnote 16 From the mid-sixteenth century onwards, the neighbouring Sieradz voivodship had two castle courts, each with two districts of that voivodship placed under their jurisdiction.Footnote 17

Relations between a territory and the hierarchy of land offices were also quite diverse in the Crown. Most offices were of purely honorific significance, but because they denoted membership in the elite echelon of the nobility they were an object of desire. In Greater Poland, each voivodship had a separate and well-developed official hierarchy, and the Wschowa land, part of the Poznań voivodship, also had its own offices. The situation was different in the Ruthenia voivodship, where hierarchies in a slimmed-down form were quite often established for single districts.Footnote 18

Royal Prussia, which included three voivodships – Pomerania, Malbork, and Chełmno – together with its sejmiks, may serve as an example of how variegated the arrangements could be. Institutionally, sejmiks could be present at any territorial level, and Prussia had sejmiks existing in both voivodships and districts. District sejmiks were convened in only five out of eight districts in the Pomerania voivodship. In the same voivodship, the voivodship sejmik brought together the nobility from all but one of its eight districts. The Malbork voivodship had no district and only one voivodship sejmik. The Chełmno voivodship had districts,Footnote 19 but sejmiks were convened only at the level of the voivodship, with the exception of sejmiks which elected candidates for offices in land courts: there were two of these as there were two land courts in the voivodship.Footnote 20 In other regions, the situation was less intricate but far from homogenous.Footnote 21

Treasury was the last element with an impact on territorial divisions. Voivodships, lands, and districts were also treasury precincts, and were used to collect extraordinary taxes. Some important (but infrequent) differences could be spotted between treasury and court districts.Footnote 22 The same territorial units and public institutions existed across the Crown, but their mutual dependencies were not defined along the same lines and were shaped by local historical circumstances.

In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania the situation was entirely different, mainly because its territorial and judicial system, modelled on the Polish one, was introduced under one consistent reform. The Duchy had started to adapt the Polish territorial division model as early as the fifteenth century,Footnote 23 and final touches were introduced just before the Union of Lublin of 1569, under the reform conducted between 1565 and 1566. The Duchy adopted a two-tier territorial design in which voivodships were split into districts. The latter operated as basic units, the centres of activity for courts and sejmiks and the seats of hierarchical offices. This meant that the boundaries of a district and a territory under the jurisdiction of a given institution were identical.Footnote 24 This was an orderly reform launched to reorganize institutions known from the Crown and to align their ties with territorial units. Samogitia was the notable exception in this coherent landscape of the Grand Duchy: initially it was the seat of the court and the sejmik, but was then divided into twenty-nine bailiff districts (governed by bailiffs, called ciwuns), a move which preserved the traditional split that had been present since the late middle ages. In 1764, Samogitia was divided into two court regions, each with jurisdiction over predefined districts.Footnote 25

A unique form of relations existing in the Commonwealth between public institutions and the territory is illustrated by the institutions of nobility in exile. These appeared during the wars of the mid-seventeenth century, when vast areas of eastern Lithuania and the Crown were occupied by enemy armies, and safe management of public life was not possible there. In the majority of cases, the sessions of sejmiks were relocated from annexed territories only temporarily, but in the Smolensk and Chernihiv voivodships the relocation was permanent. People were still appointed to land offices there, and efforts were made to maintain the scanty business of the judiciary.Footnote 26 On the one hand, this circumstance shows the separation of territorial units from the activities of public institutions, which I have already discussed above. On the other hand, it showcases the fact that districts or voivodships were communal or political, rather than solely spatial, categories.

As can be seen, in the early modern Commonwealth two institutional and territorial systems (based on the same concepts and institutions) existed in parallel: the orderly one, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the more intricate one, in the Crown. Nevertheless, in both cases territorial divisions were an important framework for public life as a whole, not only at the local level but also at the state level. In the latter case, the holder of an office or a deputy was, by name and by law, bound to a particular territory of the Commonwealth. While the system in the Crown was subject to some modifications which will be discussed further below, the divisions in Lithuania remained immutable.

The co-existence of two territorial division standards in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth makes it difficult to compare it as a whole with other European states of the period. The situation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was distinctive, as it abandoned its existing system of territorial divisions quite early and introduced a coherent system through a uniform reform. The Crown, by contrast, followed the European norm, characterized by the persistence of traditional territorial division systems (medieval in origin), within which all public and state functions were performed.

In England, the judicial and administrative apparatus operated based on a structure of counties that had been finalized by the beginning of the early modern period.Footnote 27 The situation was similar in Prussia. Until the mid-eighteenth century, individual territories of the sprawling Hohenzollern realm retained their traditional local territorial structures. However, with the centralization of the monarchy, the concept of the province as the primary component of the state emerged.Footnote 28 Traditional divisions persisted in the individual lands comprising the Habsburg monarchy: most Erblande were divided into quarters (Viertel), the Bohemian lands into circles (kraje), Silesia into principalities, and the Hungarian lands into counties (vármegyék).Footnote 29 The territorial division system of France also remained unchanged. There, however, two territorial structures had co-existed since the middle ages: a judicial (and military) one, the intermediate tier of which consisted of bailliages, and a fiscal one, based on élections; both also possessed administrative dimensions.Footnote 30 The exception to this pattern was Russia, where, as part of modernization during the reforms of the first three decades of the eighteenth century, existing territorial divisions were abandoned, and an entirely new three-tier hierarchy of units was introduced – a process that would be repeated later in that century (see further below).Footnote 31

The radical reforms of the territorial structure in Russia resembled the situation in Lithuania a century and a half earlier. In both cases, countries located on the periphery, as part of a broadly understood modernization process, broke away from traditional territorial structures much earlier than the core states they were oriented towards during this process.

Apart from France, which possessed two types of territorial structures, specialized territorial hierarchies that were significantly different from existing ones were generally not created. In England, at the end of the seventeenth century, a specialized territorial division emerged to serve the new excise administration; this structure was already more loosely tied to the existing county boundaries.Footnote 32 In Prussia, some provinces were divided into cantons, which partitioned space according to the number of households and whose purpose was providing soldiers for the Prussian army.Footnote 33 Typically, even when new administrative divisions were established, they aligned their activities to existing divisions.Footnote 34

It is not surprising to find various ‘anomalies’ – from a modern perspective – in the territorial divisions of that time, regarding both the course of the boundaries of individual units and the territorial competencies of individual institutions. Solutions that were model examples for a given system were interspersed with unique situations. This was a natural result of centuries-long historical processes in which successive solutions layered upon one another.Footnote 35

II

As I have already mentioned, before the First Partition, changes in the arrangement of territorial units, if any, had been scarce and mainly affected the western part of the Crown. There were three cases of that kind: the Inowłódz district, the network of districts in Royal Prussia, and the Gniezno voivodship. All are discussed below, in chronological order. Each example demonstrates that strictly political short-term goals – the creation of new offices and the manipulation of the electoral system – were the main reasons for localized changes of territorial divisions. The political functions of territorial divisions were clearly dominant for the nobility. I will also show how these changes were introduced into existing structures and how newly created units functioned in space. The sources for this analysis cover legal, political, and spatial practices.

The first change to take place in the eighteenth century in the territory of the Crown was the establishment of the Inowłódz district in the Łęczyca voivodship, in central Poland. Its limited presence in the sources on the one hand and its unquestionable and distinctive spatial characteristics on the other demonstrate how narrow political needs for prestige, in the form of land offices, could provide grounds for the creation of a territorial unit. The early date of its establishment has been challenged, and that act is associated with the law of 1791 (for which, see further below).Footnote 36 Such doubts do not seem justified, however. The first mention of the Inowłódz district dates back to 1726, the year when a number of new land offices in the Commonwealth were created under the constitution of the sejm, including in the said district.Footnote 37 New offices were established as an option for rewarding political allies of the royal court. The constitution did not provide for the creation of a new district for Inowłódz and treated it on a par with other lands and districts. This suggests that the district may have been established before the date of the constitution, but I believe that this is very unlikely. At the same time, several references prove that the Inowłódz district was firmly entrenched in public perception. We find clear references to it in the records of both local and central institutions.Footnote 38 The law of 1791 did not establish the Inowłódz district as such: the unit was described as already existing, but was recorded together with the adjacent Brzeziny district as one territory.Footnote 39 While this would suggest a lower status for the Inowłódz district, the evidence which goes beyond the pool of political and legal sources proves that this assertion is not valid.

First, the Inowłódz district appears in Teodor Waga’s geographical description of the Commonwealth from this period.Footnote 40 Secondly, cartographic materials and maps produced by Karol Perthées, the cartographer of King Stanisław August Poniatowski, give interesting insight into the spatial functioning of the Inowłódz district.Footnote 41 Study of Perthées’s map of the Łęczyca voivodship,Footnote 42 and associated preliminary materials, the so-called ‘parish sketches’, highlights the limited functionality of the Inowłódz district. This second source is of particular value as it was produced from a local perspective, depicted by the local clergy.Footnote 43 Parish sketches, elaborated directly from the answers provided by parish priests, list two parishes in the Inowłódz district: one in Inowłódz and one in Rzeczyca. Interestingly, based on taxation records, Perthées amended the affiliation of those parishes, classifying them as belonging to the Brzeziny district.Footnote 44 This confirms that territorial divisions were captured under different terms in different sources. When compared with the sketches, the later map is quite revealing. Apart from the two parishes already mentioned, it covers the parish of Lubochnia, bordering Inowłódz parish to the west. In other words, beyond the answers provided by parsons and tax registers, Perthées had the opportunity to carry out extra checks to determine the district affiliation of individual parishes (he may have made use of the survey of 1789Footnote 45). Whether the picture drawn based on the sketches or on the map is correct is not relevant here. What is really of relevance is the confirmation of the spatial presence of the Inowłódz district.

Studying the spatial dimension of the Inowłódz district lets us observe two other unique traits of this territory: its size and the ownership of its settlements. Inowłódz formed the smallest district in the Commonwealth, with only twenty-nine settlements (according to Perthées’s map) and an area of 250 square kilometres (the average area of a district was 1,749 square kilometres in the western part of the CrownFootnote 46). In addition, as many as twenty-three settlements in its area were royal property – a very high proportion, not found anywhere else. In other words, the area was not of significance for self-government, the judiciary, or the parliamentary system of the nobles. It existed solely as a place where new offices were designated, and had no other role.

Some important developments took place in the 1760s in Royal Prussia. As with the Inowłódz district, even when a new territorial unit was created to achieve a very narrow political goal (in the case of Pomerania’s districts, to maintain influence at the sejm), it could easily and quickly be introduced into the structure of territorial divisions and find grounding in spatial terms. Because of a high and variable number of deputies delegated for sejms from the Pomerania, Chełmno, and Malbork voivodships, the convocation sejm (the first sejm during an interregnum) of 1764 ordered the number of parliamentary representatives from these lands to be reduced to two per district.Footnote 47 To avoid loss of influence at the sejm, the Prussian nobility decided to redesign the voivodships, splitting them into districts which operated solely as electoral constituencies. As a result, at the provincial sejmik of Royal Prussia in 1764, the Malbork voivodship, which had previously had no districts, was represented by four new districts. Seven districts were created in the Chełmno voivodship. Deputies from these districts took part in the sejm which in summer 1764 elected Stanisław II August as the king.Footnote 48 In 1766, two new districts were established in the Pomerania voivodship. The last change was made in 1767, when the provincial sejmik decided to form two more districts in the Chełmno voivodship.Footnote 49

The number of district sejmiks did not grow as a result of these modifications.Footnote 50 New territorial units were created on the initiative of regional noblemen who strived to secure their position at the national level, and everything was decided at the level of local sejmiks. This case seems to be quite similar to that of the Inowłódz district: new territorial units in Royal Prussia could be only one thing – mere electoral constituencies. It seems that they fulfilled that role very well: there were forty-six delegates of Royal Prussia at the sejm of 1767–8, including those from the most recently established districts.Footnote 51

Apart from the election records, these newly created districts are poorly referenced in sources and thus in other contexts. It is likely that more source information would have been available if, under the First Partition of 1772, Prussia had not seized Royal Prussian voivodships in the Crown. However, all districts created before 1767 are referenced by Waga in his list.Footnote 52 This suggests that even an initiative of the szlachta of only one region, in matters of territory creation, gained broader acceptance among the general public. More importantly, a few localities are attributed to the newly created districts by the 1765 survey of royal estates of the Chełmno voivodship.Footnote 53 Nevertheless, these sparse references still show that the new districts were already rooted in the spatial framework of the voivodships.

The most significant change took place in 1768, with the creation of a new Gniezno voivodship, comprising two of six districts of the Kalisz voivodship: those of Kcynia and Gniezno. The creation of the Gniezno voivodship is much better documented than those of the Inowłódz district and the Royal Prussia districts. We can see explicitly the active role of the sejm in establishing the new territory and its attributes. However, the main reason for the changes was once again a short-term political goal, the creation of a new senatorial office, even if the legislators declared their intention to be that of making the judiciary more accessible. In fact, the observed circumstances are an argument for a practical separation between the network of courts and territorial division in the Crown.

The political background behind the decision to set up a new territorial unit can be identified in the constitution of the Gniezno voivodship. The legislation lists two reasons for the creation of a brand new voivodship: first, it highlights the need for novel land offices as resources to be used to remunerate people of merit. As in the case of the Inowłódz district, the new unit was therefore established as a means to conduct human resources policy at the national level. A more efficient operation of the judiciary is defined only as a secondary goal.Footnote 54 In contrast, the former was a sine qua non requirement. August Sułkowski was a person of particular ‘merit’ as a new member of the Russian faction; the new voivodship, with a new hierarchy of land offices, was created for him, and he was appointed the first voivode of Gniezno. This opened the door for him to the senate of the Commonwealth and formally sealed his political advancement.Footnote 55 The Gniezno voivodship was created for purely political reasons and was sanctioned by the sejm, which was subjugated to Russian interests.Footnote 56

Regardless of that political context, which is indicative of how instrumental the approach to territorial divisions was, the case at hand highlights complex interdependencies between territorial units, space, and public institutions. First, the constitution did not define the boundaries of the new voivodship. The information on its territory is provided only in subsequent laws, which did not address that issue directly and focused rather on sejmiks and court matters.Footnote 57 As I have mentioned, the new voivodship had two districts: Gniezno and Kcynia. It is often claimed in the literature that it also covered the Nakło district. This error is a natural result of ‘spatial’ thinking about the territory–institution relationship in the Crown at that time. These three districts formed the northern part of the longitudinally shaped Kalisz voivodship, and the Nakło district was its most northerly part. Against the ‘spatial’ logic, it was not incorporated into the new voivodship, becoming an exclave of the voivodship of Kalisz, separated from its main land by the territory of the voivodship of Gniezno.Footnote 58

However, neither the boundaries of the new voivodship nor the area placed under the jurisdiction of the courts of Gniezno are intuitive. A new land court was established, together with a new voivodship. This created an inconvenience because the land court in the Kalisz voivodship had to operate in physical separation from the Nakło district. Land courts were itinerant: they travelled around the territory of their jurisdiction, and their sessions were held in the capitals of each district. Because the Nakło district was so remote from the rest of the Kalisz voivodship, such operation became burdensome. The solution was found quite easily: the Nakło district remained in the Kalisz voivodship, but was subject to the jurisdiction of the land court in Gniezno (the decision was never put into effect). A similar discrepancy existed for the territorial jurisdiction of the castle court established for Gniezno. In addition to the two districts of the voivodship, the northern part of the Pyzdry district, an element of the Kalisz voivodship, bordering the Gniezno voivodship to the south, was also brought under its jurisdiction. The move was motivated by the convenience of the local nobility.Footnote 59 In this case, inconsistencies between territorial units and the judicial institutions arose, whereas the typical situation in the Crown was for the judiciary to correspond most closely to the territorial system.

III

Initially, the First Partition, formally sanctioned in 1772, seemed to be yet another temporary incursion by foreign troops of a kind experienced by the Commonwealth over and over again in the eighteenth century; it turned out, however, that it augured a completely new reality.Footnote 60 The obvious direct consequence was the loss of significant territories: lands along the lower Vistula (with the exception of Gdańsk) were lost to Prussia; those located between the Vistula and the Carpathian Mountains and in western Ruthenia (later Galicia) were lost to Austria; and the lands in the north-east were seized by Russia. When redrawing the borders of the Commonwealth, the partitioning powers did not take into account its previous territorial organization, and individual voivodships and districts were split or stripped of their former political centres.

It took nearly twenty more years before a comprehensive change in the territorial design of the Commonwealth was enacted by the Four Years’ Sejm. The law of 1791, the legal act analysed in this section, was nevertheless more a continuation of the system than a revolution. We can see the continuation of most of the structures, terminology, and concepts, and even some of the inconsistencies mentioned above. In this section, I will examine how the law of 1791 presents connections between public institutions and territorial units, how it changed the existing network of these units, and what its grounds were for creating new units. By concentrating on districts and voivodships as constituencies, the law clearly presents the territorial divisions of the state as part of the political sphere rather than any other, just as they had been before the First Partition. However, in 1791, the changes were not just about quick and particular political gains but were part of a reform of the whole political system of the state.

The law Distribution of voivodships, lands, and districts, together with the designation of towns, and the constitutive locations for sejmiks in the provinces of the Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was passed on 2 November 1791 and it governed the territorial divisions of the Commonwealth only until the next partition.Footnote 61 Its provisions touched upon a number of organizational issues: establishment of new districts, places of deliberation for sejmiks, numbers of deputies delegated by sejmiks for the sejm, election of members of the civil–military commissions of order, and rights to vote and to be elected granted to the nobility. The law mainly defined how the activities of sejmiks and other institutions should be linked with the associated territory.Footnote 62 In the area of territorial divisions and their relations with public institutions, the law of 1791 was definitely conservative and focused primarily on the operation of the parliamentary system.Footnote 63 First and foremost, it had no provisions to govern the relations between territorial competences of specific institutions in the Crown, on the one hand, and districts, lands, and voivodships, on the other hand. Certain modifications were introduced in some territories but local disparities still persisted. In the Poznań voivodship, districts held separate sejmiks and delegated two deputies for the sejm; at the same time, in the Sieradz voivodship, six districts were split between three sejmiks, and three sejmiks gathered in the Płock voivodship, which was divided into eight districts, while in the Mazovia voivodship sejmiks were convened for the whole lands. Other types of sejmiks were organized at the voivodship level. Some differences could also be spotted for newly established institutions: civil–military commissions of order and landed courts.Footnote 64 All in all, this piece of legislation and other related laws did not change the very nature of the ties existing between territorial units of the Commonwealth and its public institutions. Regional specificities and traditions were still respected.Footnote 65

The law of 1791 was also conservative when it came to the territorial design of the country; nothing changed in the existing framework, and no modifications were introduced at the level of voivodships and lands. The voivodships which had been truncated after the First Partition (Inowrocław, Belz, Vitebsk, Polock) remained intact as separate territories. What is more, the legislation did not liquidate the sejmiks of exiled nobility in the Smolensk and Chernihiv voivodships. The names of units were not changed even if the city after which they were named had been lost. Modifications were implemented solely at the level of districts, and not in every voivodship. The number of districts increased in the ten voivodships. The duchy of Samogitia was the only territory where, because of its high fragmentation, the number of districts was reduced. The number of districts in the voivodships was changed in order to meet the needs of the revamped parliamentary system, whereby each province was to elect sixty-eight representatives for the sejm. No sources indicate whether any other factors were contemplated. Territorial units were merely pieces of the framework needed for the operation of the political system; they were constituencies rather than districts with institutional jurisdiction. The changes outlined above did not, of course, happen out of nowhere. Proposals that the number of deputies should be determined at the level of district delegations had been circulating for quite some time, and the final solution adopted in the law of 1791 was conservative in this matter.Footnote 66

This does not mean, however, that the law changed nothing in the approach to the establishment of new territories. As a matter of fact, in comparison with earlier measures, the law of 1791 expressly addressed the delimitation of borders of newly created units. Quite naturally, new lands had to be created along the lines of existing districts. For this reason, specific solutions were needed if new units were to be created or borders between existing lands had to be shifted (the law also addressed those cases). If so, borders would follow the lines of Catholic parishes, and for each newly established district a list would be produced with parishes within its reach. At times, as an auxiliary measure, borders were drawn along the lines of rivers, or parishes were split further (for example, based on the registry of public levies). This shows that districts with stable borders had become a fixture of the territorial framework. In the beginning, they had emerged as court precincts and their boundaries were to a large extent shaped by the ownership of the land.Footnote 67 The decision of 1791 to rely on the network of parishes proves that attempts were made to use other means of territorial demarcation and, as a result, to make the whole procedure more objective.

IV

Territorial losses suffered by the Commonwealth as a result of the First Partition were actually quite modest compared to what was forfeited following the Second Partition of 1793, effected by Russia and Prussia. Russia seized the eastern half of the Grand Duchy and practically the entire territory of Crown Ruthenia, while Prussia gained the whole territory of Greater Poland, Cuyavia, and western Mazovia, up to the northern tip of Lesser Poland. What remained of the Commonwealth was reduced to a strip of land which stretched longitudinally from Livonia in the north to the cities of Kraków and Kremenets in the south. Because of huge losses in territories and population (including the nobility, the pre-eminent actors of political life), it was not now slight modifications but significant changes that had to be made to the system of territories, sejmiks, and courts. These matters were, among other things, discussed by the last sejm of the Commonwealth, convened in 1793, in the city of Grodno. The reform of the territorial system adopted at that time and discussed below remained rooted in the traditional divisions of the Commonwealth. The fact remains, however, that the introduction of a practically uniform territorial regime for the Polish-Lithuanian state at the end of its days heralded the most far-reaching change. Needless to say, in the face of the territorial losses from the Second Partition, cosmetic reforms were not an option. Despite this, the law of 1793 continued to treat the role of a constituency – the foundation of the political system – as the main function of a territorial unit. As with the previous law, I will discuss how the law of 1793 connected the territories of the Commonwealth with public institutions and how it approached the creation of a new territorial system.

The assembly gathered under the orders of the partitioning powers, principally to ratify their respective territorial annexations, but its legislation regulated the entire organization of the state. Territorial divisions of the Commonwealth were addressed by the laws Distribution, arrangement, and division of voivodships and lands, and the distribution of sejmiks, land courts and commissions of order in the Crown, and Distribution, arrangement, and division of voivodships in the provinces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Footnote 68 In terms of redesign of the territorial organization across the Commonwealth, both pieces of legislation went much further than the law passed by the Great Sejm, and, to a large degree, broke with pre-existing dispositions. There was one exception, though: the territories in Livonia (the duchy of Courland and the Pilten district) were still placed under the previous legislation.Footnote 69 The laws rearranged the hierarchy of territorial units, simplified their division in the Crown, and aligned both systems – in the Crown and in the Grand Duchy – even if both regimes still retained their respective differences and some inconsistencies. The two parts became the two provinces of the Commonwealth.

The Crown was split into ten voivodships, with three lands each. Each voivodship had two senators and six deputies. The territorial reach of voivodships and lands overlapped with the business of public institutions – sejmiks, courts, and commissions of order – with some one-off variations: the voivodships of Lesser Poland had only one sejmik; in Mazovia, in line with its traditions, there was one sejmik in each land. Land courts were usually organized for each land, and in a few cases one for the whole voivodship. Commissions of order were established according to the same rules, but there were fewer exceptions in this case. The importance of districts diminished; in essence, under the law, they lost their relevance, and their areas were referred to only when new boundaries had to be set. However, there were some exceptions. The Sochaczew district, formed from the parts of the former districts of Sochaczew and Mszczonów (both retained by the Commonwealth), was incorporated into the Warsaw land, which, together with the newly established Sochaczew district, elected a separate pool of judges and public officials. The same kind of interdependency existed between the Ciechanów land and the newly established Zawskrze district.

The situation in the Grand Duchy looked slightly different: based on the very same criteria eight voivodships were established, each comprising three lands, and each with two senators and six deputies. The term ‘land’ was introduced to replace ‘district’ as a naming convention for lower-level units. In essence, the tradition of the Duchy under which each land had separate public institutions was preserved, but with one departure from the rule: the land court and order commission of the Zawilia district (formerly part of the Vilna voivodship) operated separately from those in the Braslav land into which the district was now incorporated.

Regarding new territorial units to be established under the law, as a rule, they were designed based on pre-existing divisions. Only one new voivodship – that of Włodzimierz – was created in the Crown from scratch. The new voivodships in Mazovia were formed based on already existing territorial arrangements. At the level of lands, districts were either combined or renamed as ‘lands’. In most cases existing borders were preserved; if necessary, pre-existing units were split. In turn, in Lithuania changes were more extensive. While the two new voivodships were established based on earlier districts, the territory of the majority of units was modified compared to their earlier parts. Moreover, as was stressed by lawmakers, because times were turbulent it was not possible to define boundaries of voivodships, lands, and parishes in a sound and expeditious manner to make them ‘proportionate’ to the number of hearths. For this reason, the permanent council was tasked to make these arrangements in consultation with local administrative bodies based on tax rolls: that is, on population numbers. Therefore, new units were to be designed considering the needs of local communities and their population potential. The latter aspect was based on political considerations (adequate repartition of the number of representatives) rather than the modern conceptualization, under which the population living in a territory is a resource to be managed.

The law enacted by the sejm of Grodno organized the sejmiks in Lithuania in 1794.Footnote 70

V

The story of the establishment of new territorial units in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century provides a sound basis for drawing some conclusions and for a tentative definition of the role and significance of its territorial units. Beyond any doubt, it was not ‘a system’ as we understand that term today: their design was not envisioned as a whole, and they were not tasked with spatial development, resource management, or the provision of services to the population. The organization of the judiciary came the closest to that scope, but in the period under study this had never been the leading motivation for territorial changes. At that time, the matter of territorial divisions was not part of the administrative domain in the modern sense of the term. New territorial dispositions were always motivated by political pursuits: either because of immediate political gains (as in the case of new units created before the First Partition) or in order to reform the foundation of the parliamentary system as the core pillar for the operation of the Commonwealth (the goal of the laws enacted by the Great Sejm and the sejm of Grodno). In the Commonwealth, two systems existed in parallel: a rigorous one in Lithuania and a loose one in the Crown.

Therefore, in the light of the changes introduced in territorial divisions before the First Partition, the situation in the Crown is more clear-cut, and its territory definitely corresponds to a political entity. The known modifications demonstrate that the creation of new territorial units was determined strictly by the political context of the day. This was all about immediate political gains: new units were a necessary means to reward political partisans with offices and titles (Inowłódz district and Gniezno voivodship) or to keep the status quo in the parliamentary system (Royal Prussia). Paradoxically, this corresponds with the modern approach, which posits that new territorial divisions are created in order either to provide new resources or to increase the existing ones.Footnote 71 In the case discussed here, the resource meant prestige and political representation. The territorial system of the Crown allowed such moves as no rules existed that would otherwise constrain such new creations, and territorial units operated separately from the territorial jurisdiction of public institutions. This allowed for flexibility and offered the opportunity to introduce one-off modifications. The territory was not a space to be managed or competed for with other actors, but rather a stand-alone element of the stable institutional and legal landscape of the state. Because new units were established for political purposes and with so much ease, this could suggest that territorial design was of little importance for the political establishment of the time. I believe that this was not the case. A separate territorial unit was central to political activity in the Commonwealth of the day. Anyone who wanted to be active in the political life of the sejm or to upgrade their prestige with a land office had to ‘come from somewhere’ and prove their ties with a named territory. This is the reason why new units were set up but formally had only one function.

However, no rules existed in the Crown to govern the affiliation of one single territory with several institutions. Indeed, public institutions had their own territorial competences, but the territorial coverage was different for each of their categories; they produced their own separate territorial structures, even if this is not as easily discernible in the political discourse of the day as the division of the state into voivodships, lands, and districts. Spatial relations between all these territorial units were shaped by their independent political development, conditioned by local circumstances. For the people of that time it was not imperative to have a single territorial and institutional system, but this does not mean that such a regime was unknown to them. After all, it existed in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

The political significance of territorial units is also discernible in the laws of the Great Sejm and the sejm of Grodno. Both laws primarily governed the business of sejmiks and the number of their deputies, while judicial and administrative institutions were only of second importance. Therefore, territorial divisions functioned first and foremost as an operating framework for the parliamentary system. The perspective of the central political system outweighed the local one. The Great Sejm and the sejm of Grodno were more or less conservative in their decisions to maintain traditional units and their relations with public bodies. Changes passed by both sejms were forced by circumstances and intended to preserve as many existing solutions as possible in the political context at hand. Compared to these eighteenth-century reforms, the most far-reaching and at the same time the most consistent venture to model the territorial and institutional system which had developed in the Crown was its introduction in Lithuania at the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century. This shows that the potential ‘streamlining’ of the somewhat messy territorial design of the Commonwealth would not necessarily have to rely on intellectual ideas of the Enlightenment, but rather on the political commitment and power to enact such changes.

My article has focused on exploring a specific question: the establishment of new territorial units. The issues discussed here are predominantly political and legal, and landmark changes have been analysed on a case-by-case basis. The discussion does not exhaust the topic of the territorial divisions that existed in the Commonwealth before the Partitions. Because no single article could cover all the issues of relevance I have had to skip such points as ‘day-to-day’ business of territorial units or their definition as communities of the nobles. Indeed, such perceptions could depart from what can be said based on official records. Moreover, it would be interesting to probe into the approach to territorial divisions in the Commonwealth in earlier times. My initial hypothesis would be that the political status of territorial divisions changed as the system of the sejm and sejmiks evolved, which actually reduced their importance as a framework for the judicial system. My analyses and their interpretation have demonstrated that territorial units were still significant in the final days of the Commonwealth as they constituted a formal foundation for public activity and remained autonomous elements in the country’s institutional landscape.

Deep changes in territorial divisions during the late eighteenth century were rare in other European states, where the system itself generally remained stable, often undergoing quantitative development with the aim of improving administrative effectiveness. The English system of counties was remarkably stable.Footnote 72 In France, the structure of territorial units in the second half of the eighteenth century relied on the same underlying concepts, yet the number of units grew over time, remaining in flux, partly due to the annexation of new territories.Footnote 73 The turning point was, naturally, the French Revolution. From the outset, the necessity of a total structural overhaul was assumed; in 1790, France was divided into departments.Footnote 74 In Prussia, due to territorial expansion and extensive efforts towards state centralization in the eighteenth century, the system of districts (Landkreise) – traditional to Brandenburg – was extended to other Hohenzollern territories.Footnote 75 Changes in the number of circles took place in Habsburg Bohemia as early as the first half of the eighteenth century, though still within the existing system.Footnote 76 More importantly, the system of circles was subordinated to the central government and transferred to the Austrian lands, where it replaced earlier divisions, generally inheriting their boundaries.Footnote 77 The process was thus analogous to what occurred in Prussia. Circles were not introduced in Hungary; however, Joseph II implemented a new territorial structure above the county level.Footnote 78 Notably, the internal division of Hungarian counties into districts (járások) proved to be quite dynamic over the long term.Footnote 79 In the second half of the eighteenth century, Russia under Catherine the Great stood out among other major European monarchies, as it significantly altered its internal territorial structures for the second time. The reform, prepared from the mid-1760s and implemented successively from 1775, introduced a two-tier division (gubernii and uezdy).Footnote 80

Within this European context, the case of the Commonwealth was atypical. The uniqueness of its territorial changes resulted primarily from its objective circumstances – they were necessitated by significant territorial losses due to the Partitions, a problem none of the aforementioned powers had to face. Furthermore, the legislation of both sejms reflects a political logic entirely different from that present in the reforms of other countries. In the latter, any changes to the territorial structure or its purpose served to optimize functionality, strengthen monarchical administration, and make more efficient use of existing resources. Conversely, the primary objective of the acts passed by the Commonwealth’s final sejms was to partition the country into electoral districts for the purpose of parliamentary representation. Although this should also be considered a measure to rationalize and optimize the state system, the underlying concept of the state was completely different. Similar goals were considered regarding France’s division into departments; however, in that instance, the action was intended to dismantle the ancien régime.Footnote 81 For the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was a continuation of the fundamental principles of their state’s functioning.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my special thanks to Professor Dorota Dukwicz and Dr Wiesława Duży for their comments on the early draft of the text. I also thank Joanna Ruszel of JR TRANSLATIONS, Warsaw, Poland, for providing the translation of the initial version of the text. I made use of Google AI Studio (models Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, 3.1 Flash Lite Preview, and 3 Flash Preview), Google Scholar Lab, and NotebookLM to translate and correct sections of this article and to assist with searching and reviewing literature. The aforementioned tools were used without modification between December 2025 and August 2026.

Funding statement

This work was supported by the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities, grant ‘Cartography at the service of political reforms in the times of Stanisław August Poniatowski – a critical elaboration of “Geographical-statistical description of the parishes in the Kingdom of Poland” and the maps of the palatinates by Karol Perthées’, no. 11H 18 0122 87.

Competing interests

The author declares none.

References

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2 Michał Zwierzykowski, ‘Odrębności ustrojowe Wielkopolski w dobie nowożytnej’ (‘The distinctive constitutional features of Greater Poland in the early modern period’), in Stanisław Achremczyk, ed., Między barokiem a oświeceniem. Staropolski regionalizm (Between the Baroque and the Enlightenment: Old Polish regionalism) (Olsztyn, 2008), p. 54.

3 Zdzisław Kaczmarek and Juliusz Bardach, Historia państwa i prawa Polski (History of the Polish state and law) (2 vols., Warsaw, 1964–8), ii, p. 538.

4 Most details on territorial divisions in the Commonwealth are covered by three series: Urzędnicy dawnej Rzeczypospolitej XII–XVIII wieku (Officials of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, twelfth–eighteenth centuries), Urzędnicy Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego (Officials of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), and Atlas Historyczny Polski. Mapy szczegółowe XVI wieku (Historical atlas of Poland: detailed maps of the sixteenth century). The sixteenth English edition of the last one is Marek Słoń and Katarzyna Słomska-Przech, eds., Polish lands of the Crown in the second half of the sixteenth century (Warsaw, 2021). Studies of particular regions are: Andrzej Janeczek, Osadnictwo pogranicza polsko-ruskiego. Województwo bełskie od schyłku XIV do początku XVII w. (Settlement on the Polish–Ruthenian borderland: the Bełz voivodship from the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth century) (Warsaw, 1993); Krzysztof Mikulski, Osadnictwo wiejskie województwa pomorskiego od połowy XVI do końca XVII wieku (Rural settlement in the Pomeranian voivodship from the mid-sixteenth to the end of the seventeenth century) (Toruń, 1994); Mariusz Lubczyński, Szlachta powiatu ksiąskiego za ostatnich Jagiellonów: struktura majątkowa (The nobility of the Ksiqẓ district under the last Jagiellons: property structure) (Warsaw, 2016).

5 Antoni Gąsiorowski, Powiat w Wielkopolsce XIV–XVI wieku. Z zagadnień zarządu terytorialnego i podziałów Polski późnośredniowiecznej (The district in Greater Poland in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries: problems of territorial administration and of the divisions of late medieval Poland) (Poznań, 1965); Juliusz Bardach, ‘Powiat w Polsce późnośredniowiecznej’ (‘The district in late medieval Poland’), Czasopismo prawno-historyczne (Journal of Law and History) (1967), pp. 139–55; Henryk Rutkowski, ‘Cracow voivodeship’, in Słoń and Słomska-Przech, eds., Polish lands, pp. 232–3; Lubczyński, Szlachta powiatu ksiąskiego, pp. 26–56.

6 David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris, eds., The spatial humanities: GIS and the future of humanities scholarship (Bloomington, IN, 2010); Pietro Costa, ‘A “spatial turn” for legal history? A tentative assessment’, in Massimo Meccarelli and María Julia Solla Sastre, eds., Spatial and temporal dimensions for legal history (Frankfurt-am-Main, 2016), pp. 27–62.

7 Robert Bennett, ed., Territory and administration in Europe (London, 1989); Jordi Martí-Henneberg, ed., European regions, 1870–2020: a geographic and historical insight into the process of European integration (Cham, 2021).

8 See Stuart Elden, The birth of territory (Chicago, IL, 2013); Marco Antonsich, ‘Territory and territoriality’, in Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston, eds., International encyclopedia of geography (Chichester, 2017), pp. 1–9; Mario Damen and Kim Overlaet, eds., Constructing and representing territory in late medieval and early modern Europe (Amsterdam, 2022).

9 Marc Raeff, ‘The well-ordered police state and the development of modernity in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe: an attempt at a comparative approach’, American Historical Review, 80 (1975), pp. 1221–43; Hamish Marshall Scott, ‘Introduction: the problem of enlightened absolutism’, in Hamish Marshall Scott, ed., Enlightened absolutism: reform and reformers in later eighteenth-century Europe (London, 1990), pp. 15–25; Christopher Storrs, ‘Introduction: the fiscal-military state in the “long” eighteenth century’, in Christopher Storrs, ed., The fiscal-military state in eighteenth-century Europe: essays in honour of P. G. M. Dickson (Farnham, 2009), pp. 1–22.

10 Jarosław Dobkowski, ‘Z problematyki podziału terytorialnego państwa’ (‘On problems of the territorial division of the estate’), Studia Prawnoustrojowe (Studies in Law and State Organization), 1 (2002), pp. 123–37, at p. 123.

11 Almut Bues, ‘The formation of the Polish-Lithuanian monarchy in the sixteenth century’, in Richard Butterwick, ed., The Polish-Lithuanian monarchy in European context, c. 1500–1795 (London, 2001), p. 65.

12 Krzysztof Chłapowski, ‘Granice i podziały administracyjne Królestwa Polskiego i Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów w XV–XVIII wieku’ (‘Borders and administrative divisions of the Kingdom of Poland and of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries’), Studia Geohistorica, 7 (2019), pp. 163–89, at pp. 165, 167–8.

13 Krzysztof Mikulski, Urzędnicy Prus Królewskich XV–XVIII wieku. Spisy (Officials of Royal Prussia, fifteenth to eighteenth centuries: registers) (Wrocław, 1990), pp. 8–9; Eugeniusz Janas, Witold Kłaczewski, Janusz Kurtyka, and Anna Sochacka, Urzędnicy podolscy XIV–XVIII wieku. Spisy (Officials of Podolia, fourteenth to eighteenth centuries: registers) (Kórnik, 1998), pp. 21–2.

14 Adam Lityński, ‘Samorząd szlachecki w Polsce XVII–XVIII wieku’ (‘The self-government of the nobility in Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’), Kwartalnik Historyczny (Historical Quarterly), 99, no. 4 (1992), pp. 17–34, at pp. 22–3, 27; Anna Sucheni-Grabowska, ‘The origin and development of the Polish parliamentary system through the end of the seventeenth century’, in S. Fiszman, ed., Constitution and reform in eighteenth-century Poland: the constitution of 3 May 1791 (Bloomington, IN, 1997), pp. 22–6.

15 Janina Bielecka, ‘Organizacja i działalność sądów ziemskich w Prusach Królewskich od wieku XV do XVIII włącznie’ (‘The organization and activity of the land courts in Royal Prussia from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century inclusive’), Archeion, 63 (1975), pp. 145–64, at pp. 154–8; Mikulski, Urzędnicy Prus Królewskich, pp. 22–3; Adam Moniuszko, Mazowieckie sądy ziemskie (1588–1648). Organizacja – funkcjonowanie – postępowanie (The Mazovian land courts, 1588–1648: structure – functioning – procedures) (Warsaw, 2013), p. 45. For more on Royal Prussia in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, see Karin Friedrich, The other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and liberty, 1569–1772 (Cambridge, 2000).

16 Michał Gochna, ‘Greater Poland’, in Słoń and Słomska-Przech, eds., Polish lands, pp. 262–3.

17 Teodor Waga, Kadencye sądów ziemskich y grodzkich oraz juryzdykcyi sądowych ultime instantiae oboyga narodów (The sessions of the land and castle courts and of the judicial jurisdictions of last instance of both nations) (Warsaw, 1785), pp. 9–10; Edward Opaliński and Hanka Żerek-Kleszcz, Urzędnicy województw łęczyckiego i sieradzkiego XVI–XVIII wieku. Spisy (Officials of the Łęczyca and Sieradz voivodships, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: registers) (Kórnik, 1993), p. 7.

18 Kazimierz Przyboś, Urzędnicy województwa ruskiego XIV–XVIII wieku. Ziemie halicka, lwowska, przemyska, sanocka. Spisy (Officials of the Ruthenian voivodship, fourteenth to eighteenth centuries: the lands of Halicz, Lwów, Przemyśl and Sanok: registers) (Wrocław, 1987), pp. 13–15.

19 Mikulski, Urzędnicy Prus Królewskich, pp. 8–9.

20 Stanisław Achremczyk, Reprezentacja stanowa Prus Królewskich w latach 1696–1772 (The estate representation of Royal Prussia in the years 1696–1772) (Olsztyn, 1972), pp. 33–5; Zbigniew Naworski, Sejmik generalny Prus Królewskich 1569–1772. Organizacja i funkcjonowanie na tle systemu zgromadzeń stanowych prowincji (The general sejmik of Royal Prussia, 1569–1772: its organization and functioning against the background of the province’s system of estate assemblies) (Toruń, 1992), p. 194.

21 Adam Lityński, ‘Z problematyki klasyfikacji sejmików ziemskich’ (‘On problems in the classification of land sejmiks’), Prace Prawnicze (Studies in Law), 1 (1969), pp. 89–105, at pp. 101–3; Juliusz Bardach, ‘Elections of sejm deputies in old Poland’, in Władysław Czapliński, ed., The Polish parliament at the summit of its development (16th–17th century) (Wrocław, 1985), pp. 124–7; Wojciech Kriegseisen, Sejmiki Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej w XVII i XVIII wieku (The sejmiks of the noble Commonwealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) (Warsaw, 1991), pp. 25–33.

22 Rutkowski, ‘Cracow voivodeship’, pp. 232–3; Lubczyński, Szlachta powiatu ksiąskiego, pp. 26–56.

23 Andrzej Zakrzewski, Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie (XVI–XVIII w.). Prawo, ustrój, społeczeństwo (The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: law, political system, society) (Warsaw, 2013), p. 58; Chłapowski, ‘Granice i podziały’, pp. 165–6; Anna Pytasz-Kołodziejczyk, ‘Territorial administration of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the management of the natural resources of the grand-ducal domain in the 15th and 16th centuries (formation and function)’, Echa Przeszłości (Echoes of the Past), 21 (2020), pp. 59–75, at pp. 59–60.

24 Andrzej Zakrzewski, Sejmiki Wielkiego Ksie̦stwa Litewskiego XVI–XVIII w. Ustrój i funkcjonowanie. Sejmik trocki (The sejmiks of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries: structure and functioning: the Trakai sejmik) (Warsaw, 2000), pp. 20–1; Andrzej Rachuba, Wielkie Księstwo Litewskie w systemie parlamentarnym Rzeczypospolitej w latach 1569–1763 (The Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the parliamentary system of the Commonwealth, 1569–1763) (Warsaw, 2002), pp. 45–55; Henryk Lulewicz, Andrzej Rachuba, Przemysław Romaniuk, and Andrzej Haratym, Urzędnicy Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Spisy. Województwo trockie XIV–XVIII wiek (Officials of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: registers: the Trakai voivodship, fourteenth to eighteenth centuries) (Warsaw, 2009), pp. 19–21.

25 Andrzej Haratym, Henryk Lulewicz, Andrzej Rachuba, and Przemysław P. Romaniuk, Urzędnicy Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Spisy. Księstwo Żmudzkie XV–XVIII wiek (Officials of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: registers: the duchy of Samogitia, fifteenth to eighteenth centuries) (Warsaw, 2015), pp. 19–21, 29, 33–7; Pytasz-Kołodziejczyk, ‘Territorial administration’, pp. 61, 64, 65–6.

26 Jarosław Stolicki, ‘Miejsca odbywania sejmików koronnych na wygnaniu w latach 1648–1696’ (‘The places where the Crown sejmiks in exile were held, 1648–1696’), Prace Historyczne (Historical Studies), 144 (2017), pp. 441–57; Jarosław Stolicki, ‘Ostatnie sejmiki ukrainne w XVII wieku’ (‘The last Ukrainian sejmiks in the seventeenth century’), Wschodni Rocznik Humanistyczny (Eastern Humanist Yearbook), 20 (2023), pp. 161–77; Henryk Lulewicz, Andrzej Rachuba, and Przemysław P. Romaniuk, Urzędnicy Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Spisy. Ziemia smoleńska i województwo smoleńskie XIV–XVIII wiek (Officials of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: registers: the Smolensk land and the Smolensk voivodship, fourteenth to eighteenth centuries) (Warsaw, 2003), pp. 17–23.

27 Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter Webb, English local government, from the revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act: the parish and the county (10 vols., London, 1906–29), i, pp. 305–10; Anthony Fletcher, Reform in the provinces: the government of Stuart England (New Haven, CT, 1986), p. 4.

28 Reinhold August Dorwart, The administrative reforms of Frederick William I of Prussia (Cambridge, MA, 1953), pp. 3–4, 19–23, 40, 63, 130–1, 170–5.

29 Ignaz Beidtel, Geschichte der österreichischen Staatsverwaltung, 1740–1848 (Innsbruck, 1896), pp. 22–3; Julian Janczak and Tadeusz Ładogórski, eds., Śląsk w końcu XVIII wieku (Silesia at the end of the eighteenth century) (2 vols., Wrocław, 1976), i, pp. 8–9; Robert John Weston Evans, The making of the Habsburg monarchy, 1550–1700: an interpretation (Oxford, 1979), pp. 157–62, 195–6; Eva Semotanová, ‘Territorial development and the transformation of landscape’, in Jaroslav Pánek and Oldřich Tůma, eds., A history of the Czech lands (Prague, 2018), pp. 31–3; István M. Szijártó, Estates and constitution: the parliament in eighteenth-century Hungary (New York, NY, 2020), pp. 275–9.

30 Gustave Dupont-Ferrier, Les officiers royaux des bailliages et sénéchaussées et les institutions monarchiques locales en France à la fin du moyen age (Paris, 1902); Armand Brette, Atlas des bailliages ou juridictions assimilées ayant formé unité électorale en 1789 dressé d’après les actes de la convocation conservés aux Archives nationales (Paris, 1904), pp. xxi–xxiv; Gustave Dupont-Ferrier, ‘Essai sur la géographie administrative des élections financières en France de 1356 à 1790’, Annuaire bulletin de la Société d’histoire de France, 65 (1928), pp. 193–342; Gustave Dupont-Ferrier, ‘Essai sur la géographie administrative des élections financières en France de 1356 à 1790’, Annuaire bulletin de la Société d’histoire de France, 66 (1929), pp. 233–55; Roland E. Mousnier, The institutions of France under the absolute monarchy, 1598–1789 (2 vols., Chicago, IL, 1979–84), ii, pp. 253–5, 280–6; Anne Zink, Pays ou circonscriptions. Les collectivités territoriales de la France du Sud-Ouest sous l’ancien régime (Paris, 2000), chap. ‘Les cadres stables et vivants: les regroupements’.

31 Isabel De Madariaga, Russia in the age of Catherine the Great (London, 1982), p. 48; Simon M. Dixon, The modernisation of Russia, 1676–1825 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 129; Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: the struggle for power, 1671–1725 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 273–80, 429.

32 John Brewer, The sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688–1783 (London, 1989), p. 102; Miles Ogborn, ‘The capacities of the state: Charles Davenant and the management of the excise, 1683–1698’, Journal of Historical Geography, 24 (1998), pp. 289–312, at p. 296.

33 Berthold Schulze, ‘Die Kantone Pommerns 1733–1786’, Baltische Studien, 38 (1936), pp. 265–316, at p. 268; Otto Büsch, Military system and social life in old regime Prussia, 1713–1807: the beginnings of the social militarization of Prusso-German society (Boston, MA, 1997), pp. 14–22; Peter H. Wilson, ‘Social militarization in eighteenth-century Germany’, in Jeremy Black, ed., Warfare in Europe, 1650–1792 (London, 2005), pp. 164–5, 178–81, 194.

34 Dorwart, Administrative reforms, p. 241; Peter George Muir Dickson, Finance and government under Maria Theresia, 1740–1780 (2 vols., Oxford, 1987), i, p. 27; Jerzy Gordziejew, Komisje Porządkowe Cywilno-Wojskowe w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim w okresie Sejmu Czteroletniego (1789–1792) (The civil–military order commissions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the period of the Four-Year Sejm, 1789–1792) (Kraków, 2010), pp. 274–80.

35 Brette, Atlas des bailliages, pp. xiv, xix, xxiv; Webb and Webb, English local government, pp. 310–18.

36 Opaliński and Żerek-Kleszcz, Urzędnicy województw łęczyckiego i sieradzkiego, p. 5.

37 Volumina legum (9 vols., St Petersburg and Kraków, 1859–89), vi, p. 230 (hereafter VL).

38 VL, ix, p. 83; Andrzej Tomczak, ed., Lustracja województw wielkopolskich i kujawskich 1789. Województwa łęczyckie i brzesko-kujawskie (The 1789 survey of the Greater Poland and Kuyavian voivodships: the Łęczyca and Brześć-Kuyavia voivodships) (3 vols., Warsaw, 1977–2020), iii, pp. 130–94; Opaliński and Żerek-Kleszcz, Urzędnicy województw łęczyckiego i sieradzkiego, pp. 5–6; Hanka Żerek-Kleszcz, ‘Posłowie łęczyccy 1764–1792 i ich status majątkowy’ (‘The deputies of Łęczyca 1764–1792 and their financial status’), Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Historica, 72 (2001), pp. 133–46, at p. 139.

39 VL, ix, p. 336.

40 Teodor Waga, Krótkie zebranie historyi i geografii polskiej (A short compendium of Polish history and geography) (Supraśl, 1767), p. 253.

41 Karol Buczek, The history of Polish cartography from the 15th to the 18th century (Wrocław, 1966), pp. 98–110; Adam Krawczyk, ‘Carol Perthées “Descriptions of parishes”: a source for the historical geography and economic history of central eastern Poland in the late XVIIIth century (introductory information)’, Zeszyty Naukowe UJ. Prace Geograficzne (Scientific Papers of the Jagiellonian University. Geographical Studies), 43 (1976), pp. 191–6; Adam Krawczyk, Karola Perthéesa ‘Geograficzno-statystyczne opisanie parafiów Królestwa Polskiego’ (Karol Perthées’s ‘Geographical and statistical description of parishes of the Kingdom of Poland’) (Kraków, 2025).

42 Mappa szczególna województwa Łęczyckiego zrządzona z innych wielu mapp mieyscowych tak dawniey jak i swieżo odrysowanych tudzież goscincowych y niewątpliwych wiadomości wszystko według reguł geograficznych i obserwacyi astronomicznych (A particular map of the Łęczyca voivodship, compiled from many other local maps, both formerly and freshly drawn, as well as from road-books and indubitable reports, all according to geographical rules and astronomical observations), Central Archives of Historical Records, Warsaw, Zbiór Geograficzny Stanisława Augusta (Geographical collection of Stanisław August), 1/403/0/-/AK 96.

43 Buczek, History of Polish cartography, pp. 104–6.

44 Geograficzno-statystyczne opisanie parafiów Królestwa Polskiego (Geographical and statistical description of parishes of the Kingdom of Poland), 12 vols., Vladimir Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, Kyiv, I 5975, vi, fos. 136r, 144r.

45 Tomczak, ed., Lustracja województw, pp. 130–56.

46 My own calculations based on https://data.atlasfontium.pl/layers/datafontium_data:geonode:powiaty, accessed 20 July 2024.

47 VL, vii, p. 10; Achremczyk, Reprezentacja stanowa, pp. 147–50; Jerzy Dygdała, Życie polityczne Prus Królewskich u schyłku ich związku z Rzecząpospolitą w XVIII wieku. Tendencje unifikacyjne a partykularyzm (The political life of Royal Prussia at the end of its relationship with the Commonwealth in the eighteenth century: unifying tendencies versus particularism) (Warsaw, 1984), pp. 121–2; Friedrich, The other Prussia, pp. 31, 203.

48 VL, vii, p. 130.

49 Achremczyk, Reprezentacja stanowa, pp. 33–4, 149–52; Dygdała, Życie polityczne, pp. 137, 184–5, 218.

50 Stanisław Achremczyk, Sejmik Generalny Prus Królewskich (The general sejmik of Royal Prussia) (Olsztyn, 2016), p. 71.

51 Dygdała, Życie polityczne, p. 218.

52 Waga, Krótkie zebranie, pp. 280, 283, 289.

53 Jerzy Dygdała, ed., Lustracja województw Prus Królewskich 1765. Województwo chełmińskie. Ziemia chełmińska (The 1765 survey of the Royal Prussian voivodships: the Chełmno voivodship: the Chełmno land) (4 vols., Toruń, 2003–15), ii/2, pp. x–xi, 109, 185.

54 VL, vii, p. 348.

55 Dorota Dukwicz and Michał Zwierzykowski, ‘Sułkowski h. Sulima August’ (‘Sułkowski, of the Sulima coat of arms, August’), Polski słownik biograficzny (Polish biographical dictionary), vol. 45 (Warsaw, 2007), p. 545.

56 Zbigniew Chodyła, ‘Utworzenie i początki funkcjonowania województwa gnieźnieńskiego (1768–1774–1776)’ (‘The creation and early functioning of the Gniezno voivodship (1768–1774–1776)’), Gniezno. Studia i materiały historyczne (Gniezno: Historical Studies and Materials), 2 (1987), pp. 8–22.

57 VL, vii, pp. 349, 355.

58 Chodyła, ‘Utworzenie i początki’, p. 23.

59 VL, vii, p. 355; Chodyła, ‘Utworzenie i początki’, pp. 23–4, 44–5.

60 Dorota Dukwicz, ‘Czy rozbiór był wstrząsem? Problem reakcji społeczeństwa szlacheckiego Rzeczypospolitej na zabór części terytorium oraz utratę suwerenności w okresie pierwszego rozbioru’ (‘Was the partition a shock? The problem of the reaction of the Commonwealth’s nobility to the seizure of part of its territory and the loss of sovereignty during the First Partition’), in Wojciech Kriegseisen, ed., ‘My i oni’. Społeczeństwo nowożytnej Rzeczypospolitej wobec państwa (‘Us and them’: early modern Commonwealth society and the state) (Warsaw, 2016), pp. 355–77.

61 VL, ix, pp. 326–8. Gordziejew, Komisje Porządkowe Cywilno-Wojskowe, pp. 27–8; Przemysław Jędrzejewski, ‘Akta Komisji Porządkowych Cywilno-Wojskowych (1790–1794)’ (‘The records of the civil–military order commissions (1790–1794)’), Krakowski Rocznik Archiwalny (Kraków Archives Annual), 19 (2013), pp. 129–57, at pp. 132–3.

62 Jerzy Kądziela, ‘Local government reform during the Four-Year Diet’, in Fiszman, ed., Constitution and reform, pp. 383–7; Gordziejew, Komisje Porządkowe Cywilno-Wojskowe.

63 Kądziela, ‘Local government reform’, pp. 380–1.

64 VL, ix, pp. 136, 147, 370–1; Bogusław Leśnodorski, Dzieło Sejmu Czteroletniego, 1788–1792. Studium historyczno-prawne (The work of the Four Years’ Sejm, 1788–1792: a historico-legal study) (Wrocław, 1951), pp. 333–6; Wiesław Szaj, ‘Organizacja i działalność administracyjna wielkopolskich komisji porządkowych cywilno-wojskowych (1789–1792)’ (‘The organization and administrative activity of the Greater Poland civil–military order commissions (1789–1792)’), Studia i Materiały do Dziejów Wielkopolski i Pomorza (Studies and Materials for the History of Greater Poland and Pomerania), 12 (1976), pp. 85–102, at pp. 86–7; Jacek Sobczak, Wielkopolskie sądy ziemiańskie (The landed courts of Greater Poland) (Warsaw, 1977), pp. 43, 45; Kądziela, ‘Local government reform’, p. 382; Ramunė Šmigelskytė-Stukienė, ‘The modernisation of the court system in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: changes to the organization of the local district courts and regulation of judges’ duties in 1764–1793’, Lithuanian Historical Studies, 21 (2017), pp. 1–30, at pp. 14–30.

65 Some matters from the law on The distribution… were also modified by the Declaration for the provinces of the Crown on the proper holding of sejmiks on 14 February 1792, but it was not a qualitative change worthy of further discussion here. See VL, ix, pp. 395–8; Jacek Sobczak, ‘Reforma sejmików na sejmie czteroletnim i jej realizacja w Wielkopolsce’ (‘The reform of the sejmiks at the Four Years’ Sejm and its implementation in Greater Poland’), Roczniki Historyczne (Historical Annals), 46 (1980), pp. 67–98, at pp. 71–4; Grzegorz Glabisz, Sejmiki Wielkopolski w latach, 1764–1793 (The sejmiks of Greater Poland in the years 1764–1793) (Poznań, 2022), p. 52.

66 Bruillony projektów formy rządu za panownia Augusta III w r. 17. niedoszłych z papierów po Xciu Kanclerzu Czartosyskim (Drafts of abortive projects for a form of government during the reign of Augustus III in the year 17.., from the papers of the late Prince Chancellor Czartoryski), Central Archives of Historical Records, Archiwum Publiczne Potockich. Zbiór pism politycznych do Dziejów panowania Augusta III należących przez Xcia Marszałka Wielkiego Koronnego Lubomirskiego zebranych (Potocki Public Archive: collection of political writings relating to the history of the reign of Augustus III, gathered by Prince Lubomirski, grand marshal of the Crown), 1/335/0/-/61 pp. 109–13, www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/jednostka/-/jednostka/17840558, accessed 20 July 2024; Stanisław Konarski, O Skutecznym Rad Sposobie Albo O Utrzymywaniu Ordynaryinych Seymow. Cz. 4 Y Ostatnia (On the means of effective counsels, or on the maintaining of ordinary sejms: part 4 and last) (Warsaw, 1763), pp. 147–50; Jerzy Michalski, ‘Plan Czartoryskich naprawy Rzeczypospolitej’ (‘The Czartoryskis’ plan for the reform of the Commonwealth’), Kwartalnik Historyczny, 63 (1956), pp. 29–43, at pp. 32–3; Kądziela, ‘Local government reform’, p. 380; Andrzej Zakrzewski, ‘Prawa litewskiego “lepszość i większa z zdrową polityką stosowność”’ (‘The “superiority and greater congruence with sound politics” of Lithuanian law’), in Dorota Wiśniewska-Jóźwiak and Marcin Głuszak, eds., Nil nisi veritas. Księga dedykowana Profesorowi Jackowi Matuszewskiemu (Nil nisi veritas: a volume dedicated to Professor Jacek Matuszewski) (Łódź, 2016), pp. 231–41; Glabisz, Sejmiki Wielkopolski w latach, 1764–1793, pp. 45–9.

67 Gąsiorowski, Powiat w Wielkopolsce, pp. 72–8; Chłapowski, ‘Granice i podziały’, p. 168; Władysław Pałucki, ‘Sandomierz voivodeship’, in Słoń and Słomska-Przech, eds., Polish lands, pp. 253–4.

68 [Konstytucje sejmu grodzieńskiego z 1793 roku] (The constitutions of the Grodno Sejm of 1793) (Warsaw, 1794), pp. 222–33, https://polona.pl/preview/192dfd89-bd42-42e9-a7c7-85f118ccb274, accessed 20 July 2024; Dmitrij Ivanovič Ilovajskij, Sejm grodzieński roku 1793: ostatni Sejm Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej (The Grodno Sejm of 1793: the last sejm of the Polish Commonwealth) (Warsaw, 1872), p. 325.

69 [Konstytucje sejmu grodzieńskiego z 1793 roku], pp. 233–4.

70 Ramunė Šmigelskytė-Stukienė, ‘Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės naujųjų pavietų seimelių vietos parinkimo ir įrengimo problema 1792–1794 metais’ (‘The issue of selecting and preparing a location for newly established dietines in new powiats of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1792–1794’), in Vydas Dolinskas, Rimvydas Petrauskas, and Edmundas Rimša, eds., Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės istorijos atodangos. Profesoriaus Mečislovo Jučo 90-mečio jubiliejui skirtas mokslinių straipsnių rinkinys (Exposures of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: a collection of scholarly articles dedicated to Professor Mečislovas Jučas on his 90th birthday) (Vilnius, 2016), p. 540.

71 Adriaan Bours, ‘Management by territory and the study of administrative geography’, in Bennett, ed., Territory and administration, p. 73.

72 Webb and Webb, English local government, p. 283.

73 Louis Desgraves, ‘La formation territoriale de la généralité de Guyenne’, Annales du Midi. Revue archéologique, historique et philologique de la France méridionale, 62 (1950), pp. 239–48; Mousnier, Institutions of France, pp. 261, 280–1; Zink, Pays ou circonscriptions, chap. ‘Les regroupements’.

74 Marie-Vic Ozouf-Marignier, La formation des départements. La représentation du territoire français à la fin du 18e siècle (Paris, 1989).

75 Adolf Schill, Die Einführung des Landratsamtes in Cleve-Mark (Leipzig, 1909); Janczak and Ładogórski, eds., Śląsk, p. 9; Klaus von der Groeben, Die öffentliche Verwaltung im Spannungsfeld der Politik. Dargestellt am Beispiel Ostpreussen (Berlin, 1979), pp. 40–2; Gustavo Corni, ‘Absolutistische Agrarpolitik und Agrargesellschaft in Preußen’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 13 (1986), pp. 285–313.

76 Dickson, Finance and government, p. 223; Jiřina Štouračová, Vývoj správních institucí českého státu, 1526–1848 (The development of the administrative institutions of the Czech state, 1526–1848) (Brno, 2014), pp. 36–7, 68; Semotanová, Territorial development, p. 32.

77 Dickson, Finance and government, pp. 277–80; Josef Löffler, ‘Grundherrschaftliche Verwaltung, Staat und Raum in den böhmischen und österreichischen Ländern der Habsburgermonarchie vom ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert bis 1848’, Administory, 2 (2018), pp. 112–39, at p. 118.

78 Derek Beales, Joseph II: against the world, 1780–1790 (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 480–7.

79 András Molnár, ed., Zala megye archontológiája, 1138–2000 (The archontology of Zala County, 1138–2000) (Zalaegerszeg, 2000), pp. 29–30, 47–8.

80 De Madariaga, Russia, pp. 277–91; John P. Le Donne, ‘The territorial reform of the Russian empire 1775–1796. I: central Russia, 1775–1784’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, 23 (1982), pp. 147–85; John P. Le Donne, ‘The territorial reform of the Russian empire 1775–1796. II: the borderlands, 1777–1796’, Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, 24 (1983), pp. 411–57; Dixon, Modernisation of Russia, p. 130.

81 Ozouf-Marignier, La formation des départements, pp. 35–36.