Authors

Graham Cox¹;  ¹ University of Birmingham, UK

Discussion

Western Europe first became aware of Poland’s yearning for restored sovereignty with the November Uprising of 1830. The occupying imperial powers’ reprisals when it failed, particularly in the Russian partition, led to many Poles fleeing to the West in the so-called “Great Emigration”, creating Polish diasporas in the West. Flight from further failed uprisings, oppression and poverty, swelled the diasporas. However, only in 1917 did restoring Poland come to be in the West’s interests, when regime change in all three failed occupying empires destroyed the Balance of Power in Europe and created the need for Poland as a buffer state in a new political landscape.
The Polish diasporas played a significant part in keeping this Polish Question alive until the Western powers’ saw the need to act. They raised awareness through meetings, pamphlets, and discourse with the Western ruling elites, and the resulting press reports and editorials. This aspect of diasporan agency has been previously studied in part: in Britain 1830-1846 (Cybowski 2016) and from the 1890s in Poland (Porter 2000, Davies 1972). I will show that the Polish diaspora kept awareness of Poland alive in Britain during the so-called “Springtime of Nations” in 1848 (with competing claims for statehood), the failed January uprising of 1863 (resulting in further migration), until the 1890s when Polish nationalism evolved into political parties with their own voice.