A history of Poland

Abstract:

This book is one of a series - Palgrave Essential Histories - which aims to provide compact, readable and informative national histories for those wishing to gain a broad understanding of a country’s history.

The work is organised over ten chapters. The first two cover the emergence of nation states in central Europe and the Polish kingdom through to the late fourteenth century. Chapter three deals with the Jagiellonian period which brought the union with Lithuania through the marriage of Jadwiga, seen as a future Queen of Poland, to Jogaila the Lithuanian ruler and his installation as King of Poland. Chapter four explores the influences at work within Poland in the times of the Reformation and Renaissance. It discusses the rising power of the new urban communities prospering from increased trade creating new entrants to wider knowledge of the world through travel, and the debates surrounding the legal system coupled with the increasing power of the printed word following the development of printing. Chapter five addresses the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, covering the relationships with the Cossacks and the rule of the Vasas leading to a collapse of the power of the Crown. The period 1669-1795 is dealt with in chapter six which explores the republic of the nobility and the Sarmatian culture going on to the collapse of the Polish and Lithuanian Commonwealth independence.

Chapter seven deals with the years of foreign tutelage under Russia, Prussia and Austria and the rising power of mass politics beginning to work in the three empires mirrored in Poland by the Peasant Alliance. The outbreak of the First World War saw the three partitioning powers at war with each other, and the ultimate cessation of hostilities in November 1918 allowed for the establishment of an independent Poland and a rise in the influence of the Catholic Church - these topics are covered in chapter eight. The Second World War and the establishment of Communism is the subject of chapter nine, which covers the worst period of modern Polish history - when through displacement and genocide the nation saw its population decreased by one quarter in relation to its pre-war levels. But the Polish spirit survived, subdued maybe but ready to reassert itself when the opportunity arose in the late 1950s. Chapter ten covers a brighter period of Polish history which saw the collapse of Communism, closer relations with the West and entry to the European Union.

The work will be of general interest to anyone wishing to have a better understanding of Poland as it is today - like most nations a product of its past.

Anita J. Prazmowska is Senior Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics.