Jerzy Lukowski - A Concise History of Poland

A Concise History of Poland

Poland is a tenacious survivor-state: it was wiped off the map in 1795, resurrected after the First World War, apparently annihilated again in the Second, and reduced to satellite status of the Soviet Union after 1945. Yet it emerged in the vanguard of resistance to the USSR in the 1980s, albeit as a much more homogeneous entity than it had been in its multi-ethnic past. This book outlines Polands turbulent and complex history, from its medieval Christian origins to the reassertion of that Christian and European heritage after forty-five years of communism. It describes Polands transformation since 1989, and explains how Poland navigated its way into a new Commonwealth of Nations in the European Union.

Recent years have witnessed significant changes within Poland, Eastern Europe and the wider world. This new edition reflects on these changes, and examines the current issues facing a Poland which some would accuse of being out of touch with European values.

Jerzy Lukowski is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Birmingham, UK. His most recent books are The European nobility in the eighteenth century (2003) and Disorderly liberty: the political culture of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century (2010).

Hubert Zawadzki is an independent scholar and member of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford. He is the author of A man of honour: Adam Czartoryski as a statesman of Russia and Poland 17951831 (1993), and editor and translator of Irena Protassewiczs A Polish Womans Experience in World War II (forthcoming). He has given talks on BBC radio and has appeared on BBC TV programmes involving Poland. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

This is a series of illustrated concise histories of selected individual countries, intended both as university and college textbooks and as general historical introductions for general readers, travellers and members of the business community.

A full list of titles in the series can be found at : www.cambridge.org/concisehistories

A Concise History of Poland

Third Edition

Jerzy Lukowski

and

Hubert Zawadzki

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108424363

DOI: 10.1017/9781108333993

Cambridge University Press 2001, 2006, 2019

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2001

Second edition 2006

9th printing 2014

Third edition 2019

Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow Cornwall

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names : Lukowski, Jerzy, author. | Zawadzki, W. H., author.

Title : A concise history of Poland / Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki.

Description : Third edition. | New York : Cambridge University Press, 2019. |

Series : Cambridge Concise historiesidentifiers: lccn 2018037314 | ISBN 9781108424363 (hardback)subjects: lcsh: Poland History. | bisac: history / Europe / Eastern.

Classification : lcc dk4140 .l85 2019 | ddc 943.8dc23

Lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018037314

ISBN 978-1-108-42436-3 Hardback

ISBN 978-1-108-44012-7 Paperback

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For

Lesley and Francesca

It was gratifying to have been approached by Cambridge University Press with a request for a new edition of the Concise History of Poland , following the editions of 2001 and 2006. This latest edition is primarily concerned with casting light on Polands evolution since joining the European Union: the economic and social contrasts resulting from the neoliberal transformation of the country and the accompanying political battles which have produced a growing polarization in Polish political life.

For those who have a particular interest in the history of an earlier Poland, we strongly recommend the magisterially forensic work by Professor Robert Frost, volume 1 of the Oxford History of Poland-Lithuania (Oxford 2015), which looks at the development of the Polish state under the Jagiellonian dynasty. We look forward to the appearance of the successor volume, covering the period 15691815 though it will be some years before it appears.

For the extended Part Two we would like to thank Michael Laird again for his very useful comments on the revised

We are delighted to be able to bring out a second edition relatively soon after the original and are grateful to Cambridge University Press for allowing us both to expand the text and to add further illustrative materials. Most of the expansion has gone into the pre-1795 section of the book. A number of reviewers felt, rightly, that there was too dense an accumulation of materials (though some also appear to have failed to appreciate this belongs to a series of Concise Histories) and we trust that our additions will help readers come to grips more comfortably with what was one of the most complex states of Europe. The present day adds its own complexities and we have tried to take these on board at least to the extent of showing readers the challenges and problems that face todays republic and member of the European Union.

Our thanks to Steven Rowell for his generous insights into the history of the medieval and early modern Lithuanian state, and to Michael Laird for his very useful comments on

Writing Concise Histories is an activity more rewarding than satisfactory. The begetters know how much has been omitted; readers, no matter how much or how little they know, have to put up with those omissions. This present offering in the Cambridge Concise Histories series is no exception. It is, however, the first to have been written by two authors, one an eighteenth-century specialist, the other more at home in the nineteenth century. Neither of us felt quite up to the undertaking of an all-embracing treatment of Polands entire past; if some of the difficulties which such an undertaking might have created become apparent to our readers, then we will have achieved something.