OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi ElEctivE Monarchy in transylvania and Poland-lithuania, 1569–1587 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi Elective Monarchy in transylvania and Poland-lithuania, 1569–1587 FElicia r oșu 1 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi 3 Great clarendon street, oxford, ox2 6dP, united Kingdom oxford university Press is a department of the university of oxford. it furthers the university’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. oxford is a registered trade mark of oxford university Press in the uK and in certain other countries © Felicia roșu 2017 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 impression: 1 all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of oxford university Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. 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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi dla Pana Profesora OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi ‘Kings and princes come to other peoples by hereditary right and natural succession, but to us they are not born, but chosen by the common vote of the nobility.’ (andrzej Wolan, 1572) OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/10/17, SPi Acknowledgements This book is the result of a long process of learning, writing, pausing, rethinking, and rewriting. none of this would have been possible without my teachers and mentors at Georgetown university, where my interest in transylvanian and Polish- lithuanian history first took shape. i remain forever grateful to my advisors, James B. collins, Gábor J. agoston, Gerald M. Mara—and especially to my main source of inspiration for pursuing history in the first place, andrzej s. Kamiński, whose vision and unwavering support continue to fuel my work, and to whom this book is dedicated. The many research trips required for this project were made possible by fund- ing from Georgetown university, the u.s. department of Education (Fulbright- hays), the cosmos club Foundation (Washington, d.c.), the institute for civic space and Public Policy (Warsaw), and leiden university. i am grateful for their dedication to supporting research in the humanities. i also wish to thank the many archivists and librarians who kindly helped to locate my sources in the Polish, hungarian, austrian, romanian, italian, French, and German repositories i used for this project. Their expertise has made my research—and my life—so much easier. My wonderful editors at oxford university Press—terka acton, stephanie ireland, and cathryn steele—made this book possible by finding its topic inter- esting in the first place, and then seeing it through to the end. The writing pro- cess was immensely helped in its last stages by colleagues who were generous enough with their time to read my manuscript in part or in whole. i am deeply grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their in-depth comments and ques- tions, which helped to significantly broaden and refine my arguments. i am also indebted to andrzej Kamiński and Eulalia Łazarska for inviting me to their annual conference, ‘recovering Forgotten history: The image of central and Eastern Europe in English-language academic textbooks’, where my manuscript was examined in excruciating but incredibly useful detail by igor Kąkolewski, teréz oborni, Endre sashalmi, and Wacław uruszczak in the summer of 2016. My book would be poorer without their input. My warmest thanks to susan Ferber from the ouP new york office, who was also present at the conference, and whose editing genius made my book more readable than it would have been without her generous help. Jim collins and my colleagues from leiden, Jeroen duindam and Judith Pollmann, read various parts of my manuscript and offered priceless feedback on my writing as well as general advice about the bigger pic- ture. i also wish to thank Béla nagy, from the hungarian academy of sciences, for the patience and care with which he created the maps in this book, and teréz oborni for helping in the process.