Local Early Modern Space

The abundance and prosperity of Lviv has long been dependent on international trade. During the centuries of its existence, this Galician city was situated at the crossroads of important merchant routes. However, new modern capitalist ways of achieving economic success were largely propagated in Europe from the eighteenth century, and Lviv, for some reasons or other, appeared to be beyond these processes. When the Austrians arrived there in 1772, they found a provincial, rather decayed town, which had preserved its old traditional crafts.

     The main intrigue of this research lies in answering the following question: "How the developed modern practices and ideas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were realized in the context of Lviv, a great, but provincial urban center of East Central Europe?" Let us consider the issue taking as an example the informal district of Pidzamche in Lviv, which became an important center of modernization processes origin and evolution.

     Speaking of modernization, it is also important to clearly define what is subject to modernization. In the proposed project, we try to delineate spaces, so it is worthwhile to start with a conditional definition of a local traditional organic space in the area of Pidzamche at the turn of the nineteenth century before the spread of specific modern practices, objects, ideas, and senses.

     We can argue that the conditionally "traditional" social space of Pidzamche in the late eighteenth – early nineteenth centuries, before the advent of developed modern practices, was defined by a number of points, including:

— an economic specialization as most low-status and "dirty" economic businesses were gradually transferred there;
— a considerable spread of small and basic forms of trade constituting an important alternative of the downtown merchants' activities  and competing with them;
— a lack of clear norms and formalities in inter-ethnic, professional, and governmental relations (compared to the downtown);
— existence of orderly, almost "urban" housing at "near" Pidzamche – in the Jewish ghetto and in the "princely" quarters;
— a correlation with cultures considered "foreign" by the official Lviv, i.e. Jewish, Armenian, and Ruthenian;
— negative "external" (from the perspective of the downtown) stereotypes — "dirty Jews", "robbers", "social drop-outs".

     So Pidzamche appears a district which is culturally and socially marginalized, but, at the same time,  important in the economic life of the city. Unlike the downtown, hidden behind the walls, which was in a condition of significant economic decline (caused by various factors, including prolonged wars in the previous century and fading usual trade and business practices specific to the region), active economic activity — though mainly that of basic, primitive nature — never stopped in the Krakivske suburb, including Pidzamche. It certainly turned Pidzamche into Lviv's most fertile ground for the introduction of modern capitalist practices. However, the economic activity of the Krakivske suburb competed with the downtown and, superimposed on the "Jewish factor" (a large Jewish ghetto was located in this suburb), caused a rather negative and hostile attitude on the part of the "internal" town residents.

      The peculiarities of Pidzamche's "traditional" space can be considered in three main areas: 1) Jewish Pidzamche; 2) Pidzamche as a suburb specialized in trade and handicraft; 3) multicultural Pidzamche. Each aspect is analyzed in the following sections of the research and in specific research microfocuses.