Apples, Books, Fruit Preserves… Cultivating a History by Countess Ludwika Ostrowska, Lady of the Maluszyn Manor – in Search of the Anthropological Dimension of Historiography

The article presents an analysis of the history included in a history textbook for peasant children, entitled ‘Stories from World History for Country Folk’, written by a landowner, domain manager, social activist, writer and historian – Ludwika Ostrowska of Maluszyn (1851–1926). The authors hypothesize that the cultural model of the Polish landed gentry played a crucial role in Ostrowska’s work. During their research, they wanted to show that the multiple social relations of the Polish gentry in the second half of the nineteenth century became a mirror image of the subjective aspects of human activity created in Ostrowska’s narrative. They point out that farm management (filled with a resource that creates a model of landowning culture) became the fundamental category of all intellectual reflections of Ludwika, outlining the general framework for her thinking about the world (both present and past). By suggesting that Ostrowska ‘cultivated’ history, they wish to draw attention to the need to search – supported by broader source research and methodological reflection – into the anthropological dimension of historiography.