Nieuwe tijd: Framing Ukrainian-Dutch Relations in Early Modern Times. Patterns of relevance for further research

Framing Ukrainian-Dutch Relations in Early Modern Times. Patterns of relevance for further research. An analysis and documentation of "relations" presupposes the existence of two subjects. But what have these subjects actually been between roughly the 15th and 18th century? Both "the low countries" and "Ukraine" in a European context were - as it might seem - perceived rather as cultural landscapes than unique political entities. In particular, was there any “existence as a subject” of Ukrainians in those times? There certainly was. Already a closer look, based on studies of Ukrainian historians like Dmytro Nalyvajko or Teodor Mackiw out of the 1980s and 1990s, tells important points. There was a presence of Ukrainians in Early Modern mental maps of Western Europe, mainly through the Cossacks and their rebellions under leaders like Bohdan Chmelnyc'kyj or, later, Ivan Mazepa. In Western Europe, this facilitated interest of travelers and of newspapers in “Ruthenian” or “Cossack” religion, culture and political organization. No early modern Western European took Ukraine as a part of Russia (or better, Muscovy). In turn, there was - next to the well-known connections of trade via the Polish and Baltic ports, mainly Gdansk - also a vivid cultural exchange with “the low countries”, many patterns of which still wait to be explored more systematically. Books of intellectual celebrities like Erasmus of Rotterdam or later, Justus Lipsius were widespread among Polish and Ruthenian noblemen, and had their place also in Eastern Christian teaching institutions like the Ostrih academy of the Mohyla academy of Kyiv. A particularly illustrative example is Claes Janszoon Visscher (1587 – 1652), known as Piscator, who published in 1650 his Theatrum Biblicum. The work became a main reference for iconographic ideas for Eastern European artists (both printers and icon-painters) between Lviv and Kyiv, and later up to Moscow and Novgorod. This is just another example. Summarizing and systematizing already existing, albeit sometimes scarcely known studies from both Ukrainian and Western historians, the contribution wants to identify the traces worth to be followed in further, more specific research. That includes treating Ukraine as a part of early modern Europe, within a framework that made many bilateral connections between cultural landscapes and political formations possible – one of them being Dutch-Ukrainian or Dutch-Ruthenian.