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History of Poland (966 to the present time)

I am due to make a trip to Poland soon, and I have been reading up about Polish history. 

The original homeland of the Slavic peoples is considered to be the region of Pripyat' in Belarus. 

The Polish people descended from the West Slavic tribes, known collectively as the Lechtitic tribes, who settled in the Vistula and Oder river basins between the 300s and 700s AD. These included the Polans, Vistulans, Pomeranians, Goplans, Lendians, Mazovians, and Silesians, with the Polans playing a central role in unifying them. 

The history of Poland begins with the conversion of Duke Mieszko to the Christian faith in 966. The main Christian influence was Great Moravia, the homeland of Mieszka's bride, Dobrawa, a devout Christian - her country having been Christianised by Cyril and Methodius about a century earlier.

The map below shows the geographical extent of Poland under the rule of Mieszko. His capital city was at Gniezno. The light blue is the extent of Mieszko's Duchy in 940, and the yellow shows its extent in 985. 

(Map by Pedros.lol - Z. Kurnatowska, M. Kara, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15008968)

In due course, under the next ruler, Boleslaw I, Poland was given its own bishop and later archbishop at Gniezno, and recognised as a Christian nation in its own right. 

One the greatest rulers of Poland was Casimir the Great (r. 1333 to 1370). However, when he died without an heir, the Piast dynasty came to an end. 

With no heir, Poland's path lay in partnership with neighbouring Lithuania. The still pagan ruler of Lithuania, Jagiello, married Jadwiga, a Polish Christian princess, embracing the Christian faith and creating a personal union between Poland and Lithuania from 1385.

Later, in 1569, this personal union became the Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita) of Poland and Lithuania. Given the different nations and religious affiliations in the Commonwealth, at this time Poland became a place of religious tolerance. The Mennonites took refuge in the Vistula region, and there were Lutheran and Reformed Christians, as well as a group of Unitarians known as the Lesser Brethren.

At the same time, the arrival of the Jesuit order in 1564 marked the start of the Counter Reformation. By the mid-1600s, Protestants' rights were restricted and conversion from Roman Catholicism forbidden by law on pain of death. Unitarians and Mennonites were expelled in 1658 for pacifism. The rights of non-Roman Catholics were only restored in 1768/1773.   

The period 1573-1648 is known as the Polish Golden Age. During this time, in Poland, science flourished (e.g. Copernicus), as well as literature (Jan Kochanowski). It was also a time of territorial expansion; as a result of the Livonian campaign 1558-1583, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth expanded into the Baltic region, incorporating what is now Latvia (while Estonia was taken by Sweden).

In 1772, 1793 and 1795, Poland was partitioned three times by neighbouring Germany, Austria and Russia, resulting in it ceasing to exist as an independent country. Under Napoleon, there seemed to be the prospect of nationhood once again, but this was cancelled at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, and Poland became part of the Russian Empire.

After World War I, Poland once again became independent. It was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia in autumn 1939 that triggered World War II. 

In 1945, Poland was once again a nation state, but its borders were moved eastwards with what had been eastern Poland now part of the Soviet Union and what had been the eastern regions of the German Reich now part of Poland (the land to the east of the Oder-Neisse line). 

This map shows the borders before and after 1939. 

(By radek.s - Own workData can be verified at https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/mlg09/curzonline.html, and https://www.flickr.com/photos/70917937@N00/4817588069/., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1720759)

Post-World War II, Poland was part of the Eastern Bloc ruler by a Communist Party controlled from Moscow. The election of a Polish Pope, John Paul II, in 1978 was a huge moment. During the 1980s, the Solidarność independent trade union movement sought to challenge the ruling Communist party. In 1989, free elections were held, and the Communist party lost power. In November 1990, the former leader of Solidarność, Lech Wałęsa, was elected President of Poland.

Poland joined NATO in 1999, and the European Union in 2004.

 


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