Just 'a Strange Polish Muslim'? Seyfeddin Thadée Gasztowtt, the 1905 Global Moment and Biography in Global Intellectual History

Abstract

This paper discusses opportunities of biography for global intellectual history by concentrating on the case study of Seyfeddin Thadée Gasztowtt (1881-1936). Gasztowtt was a Polish-French travelling political activist, who tied the issue of Poland’s independence to the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim world in the wake of the 1905 Japanese victory over Russia. Focusing on mobile individuals who operated in transcultural settings helps us to understand how major turning points in international history become ‘global moments’. These moments gain global significance only by virtue of activists seizing them and employing them in the service of their respective causes. A biographical approach gives us insight into how individuals were both shaped by and productive in watershed moments. The microscale analysis offered by biography is a productive lens through which to examine the processes of cross-cultural intellectual transfer and transregional entanglement.