Book contents
- Cross Purposes
- New Studies in European History
- Cross Purposes
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Ascendance of the Cross
- 2 Colonization in the Shadow of the Cross
- 3 Female and Furious: The Invention of the “Defense of the Cross”
- 4 Solidarity’s Sacred Politics
- 5 The Transformation Crusades
- 6 Religious Populism and Its Opponents
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Colonization in the Shadow of the Cross
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 December 2022
- Cross Purposes
- New Studies in European History
- Cross Purposes
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Ascendance of the Cross
- 2 Colonization in the Shadow of the Cross
- 3 Female and Furious: The Invention of the “Defense of the Cross”
- 4 Solidarity’s Sacred Politics
- 5 The Transformation Crusades
- 6 Religious Populism and Its Opponents
- Conclusion
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the aftermath of the First World War, partitioned Poland regained its independence. As the young nation attempted to delineate its new borders and defend them from threatening Others, in particular the atheist Soviet Russia, the symbol of the cross came to denote an ethno-nationalist vision of the country’s future. Focusing on three highly controversial monumental crosses erected in the contested Polish–Lithuanian/Belarusian/Ukrainian borderlands, I show how Catholic symbols in the service of the emerging nation-state helped to legitimate Poland’s claim to the multi-ethnic territories of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania and communicated military dominance and moral supremacy over Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Jews, who had come to be symbolically excluded from the national fold.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cross PurposesCatholicism and the Political Imagination in Poland, pp. 63 - 107Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022