Oster Gentry Becoming Cossacks: from Registered Cossacks to Participation in Ukrainian National Revolution of the Middle of the 17th Century
Abstract
The purpose of the research paper is to study the process of Oster starostwo in Kyiv Voivodeship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth poor gentry becoming Cossacks and to trace the specifics of that process from the mid-16th cent. to the second half of the 17th cent.
Scientific novelty. It is found out that the process of Oster gentry becoming Cossacks was initiated in the mid-16th century with the creation of Cossack registers in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The idea is developed that just the poor gentry was one of the principal sources of replenishment of the Cossack stratum in the second half of the 16th – 17th century. The evolution and the reasons for Oster gentry becoming Cossacks are traced; The process of social transformation is analyzed on the facts of the representatives of Oster gentry behavior. The idea is developed that despite the new social status, a great number of the newly become Cossacks gentry during the Hetmanate remained the bearers of gentry values.
Conclusions. The becoming Cossacks of the Oster gentry began in the mid-16th cent. with the establishment of Cossack registers. The change in social status did not change the main occupation of Oster starostwo gentry, which from the end of the 15th to the mid-17th cent. carried the military service for protecting the state border of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and from 1569 – the Commonwealth. In the period between 1500 and 1618, Oster starostwo of Kyiv Voivodeship was located on the border with the Moscow Chernihiv-Siversk region.
The first record of Oster Cossacks dates back to March 16, 1557. Already in 1559, Oster Cossacks carried out a sortie to Chernihiv region.
The process of becoming Cossacks became of mass character in 1648, which was facilitated by the dull-witted policy of Oster starosta Stephen Aksak and the newly came Polish gentry. Many of the local gentry representatives had become Cossacks with the preservation of privileged status and pre-war estates. Oster became the Pereiaslav Regiment Hundred center. At the beginning of 1650, based on the Oster Hundred, for a short time, there existed a separate Oster Regiment. The former gentry started to play a significant role in the formation of the Cossack officers (starshyna). The newly became Cossacks representatives of Oster gentry participated in the political struggle, and during the campaign of Jan II Kazimierz on the Left Bank in 1663-1664, most of them defected to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From 1665, conflicts with Moscow Streltsy quartered in Oster became constant, which in 1668 caused the Anti-Moscow uprising.
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