Simono Daukanto ir Juozo Jaroševičiaus istorinės Lietuvos samprata

LT1844-1845 m. Vilniaus ir Peterburgo spaustuvėse dienos šviesą išvydo J. Jaroševičiaus ir S. Daukanto kultūros istorijos veikalai. Jau T. Narbuto devynių tomų "Lietuvių tautos istorija" sužadino Lietuvos visuomenės susidomėjimą krašto praeitimi, o jos autorių iškėlė į žymiausių ano meto istorijos autoritetų gretas. Nemažai entuziastų kaupė istorinę ir etnografinę medžiagą, kasinėjo piliakalnius ir pilkapius, rašė lokalinių vietovių istorijas ir apžvalgas. Kiekvienas spaudoje pasirodęs straipsnis susilaukdavo vienokio ar kitokio aptarimo, istorinis ar etnografinis tyrinėjimas tapdavo ženkliu kultūrinio ir... politinio gyvenimo įvykiu. Atsirado pirmosios mokslinės polemikos užuomazgos, istorija imta laikyti moksline disciplina. Istorinė Lietuva atgijo mokslinių ir populiarių leidinių puslapiuose [p. 90].

ENSimonas Daukantas’ and Juozas Jaroševičius’ historic works are not ascribed to popular books of the 19th century Lithuanian society. However, the concepts of these historians made influence to the later historic consciousness of the society. Daukantas in his work “The Character of the Ancient Lithuanians, Highlanders and Samogitians” and Jaroševičius in his work “Picture of Lithuania from the Point of View of Its Civilization from the Most Ancient Times Up to the End of the 18th Century”, introducing the concepts of “culture” and “civilization” for the first time tried to present the entire history of Lithuanian Culture. The object of Daukantas’ culture is the authenticity of the Lithuanian ethnographic heritage. Jaroševičius’ concept of Lithuanian civilization covers cultural achievements and interrelations of pagan Lithuanian community as well as those of different nations in the Gand Duchy of Lithuania. Having different understanding of christening in Lithuania and the spread of Polish culture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well as different comprehension of the terms “Lithuanian” and “Lithuanian culture”, the two historians came to different conclusions. Daukantas saw the reasons of Lithuanian state and its nation’s decline in the period of Polish-Lithuanian Unified State and the influence of Polish culture. Jaroševičius’ concept of the development of Lithuanian civilization was based on completely different presumptions and conclusions: dynamic development of Lithuania was determined by the marked influence of Polish Civilization.Thus, the historic concepts of Daukantas and Jaroševičius reflected some of the ideas of the first half of the 19th century on the heritage of the ancient Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. While the historian from Žemaitija (Samogitia) conceived the past from the point of view of the developing national ideology, describing it in estate, language and ethnic criteria, Jaroševičius’ historiographic viewpoint expressed ethnopolitic mentality which was alive in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and which later was described in Lithuanian national ideology as “Polish” and “favouring the union”.