{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025735294117647058, 'fraction_numerical': 0.006350267379679145, 'mean_word_length': 4.926732673267327, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Domination of Eastern Europe: Native Nobilities and Foreign Absolutism, 1500-1715. By Orest Subtelny. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986. xii, 270 pp. Illustrations. Tables. $30.00, cloth.

Orest Subtelny's basic contention is that the conflict of native East European nobilities and foreign rulers, who tried to suppress their rights and privileges and to establish absolute rule, is a crucial factor in the development of the East European states and nations. His test cases are Hungary, Poland-Lithuania, Moldavia, Livonia and the Ukraine. These choices are somewhat arbitrary. Why Moldavia and not Wallachia? Who were the foreign rulers in the Romanian principalities, the Ottomans or the Phanariote Greeks? The Swedish Vasas' rule in Livonia could also be compared with the subsequent Romanov period during which the "Baltic Germans" did not do too badly. It is easy but also unfair to raise questions about something the author did not do. It is more appropriate to look at what he accomplished. The scholarship behind this volume is impressive. Given the diversity of people and events covered by Subtelny, it had to be. The bibliography and footnotes show where his personal expertise was the strongest, but he covered his bases well in all five cases. The major merit of his work is its daring originality. In a sense, it compares apples with oranges because these fruits all have outer peels in common. The author knows that it is hard to find too many common features in the ruler-nobility struggles of these regions, and he is not trying to create artificial similarities to sustain his original thesis. That he is able to sustain its validity despite meticulous adherence to fact is the book's greatest strength and value. According to the author, the countries under discussion were "noble-associations." The story is basically that of the transformation of these noble-associations into states in the modern sense of this term. This transformation marked the victories of the foreign ruling establishments. This reviewer agrees with Subtelny's conclusion, especially because going beyond it either would have destroyed the unity of the volume's theme or would have led to exaggerating the power gained by the monarchs. It should not be forgotten— and the author did not forget—that the noble opposition forced the monarchs into modifying their aims, goals, and systems. Livonia did not become an integral part of Sweden; Poland never became simply a power base for Saxon ambitions in the Reich, and the Habsburgs could never fully integrate Hungary into the centralized state they wished to establish. What emerged in Eastern Europe was, indeed, a modern state structure introduced by the victorious rulers, but these states still differed sharply from the models that these'foreign masters strove to emulate. This difference is the core of the various different fruits that Subtelny compares, and it explains much of subsequent East European history.