Historian Every Saturday: Oleksiy Sokyrko. Did the Hetmanate Catch the Train of the Military Revolution? (19.10.2024)
A lecture by the historian Oleksiy Sokyrko (the “Historian Every Saturday” series) on the Hetmanate in the context of the European Military Revolution of the 16th–17th centuries. Key points: the Cossack host and the standing mercenary army of the Hetmanate, the concept of the military revolution and of the fiscal-military state, the reasons why Russia gained military pre-eminence through Peter’s reforms, and the thesis that the Hetmanate was a full-fledged early modern state that “did not manage” to complete a professional army. A source for the article on the Lithuanian-Polish and Cossack era.
Key moments
- 06:05 A Cossack host on self-supply + a standing mercenary army of the Hetmanate funded by the state (special taxes)
- 08:29 The concept of the 'military revolution' (Michael Roberts): firearms and artillery broke the feudal military system
- 22:45 The fiscal-military state: centralised taxation, abolition of immunities, secularisation of the church (Britain, Sweden)
- 20:19 Russia's military pre-eminence was a consequence of Peter's reforms and the Great Northern War, not something 'organic'
- 42:55 The Hetmanate was part of the military revolution but 'failed to board the train'
- 46:37 Not 'inferiority': the state and elite of the Hetmanate formed in about 50 years (a record pace)
- 51:55 The 'Hetmanate after the Hetmanate': sociocultural 'genes' that the Russian Empire failed to eradicate