Kraj znany a państwo jeszcze nie. Rozważania o geografii wolnej Polski na łamach periodyków geograficznych II RP

Abstract

Despite the partitions of Poland, the geography of the Polish territories was the object of studies carried out by Polish geographers, particularly in the latter half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. When in the years 1918-1923 the Polish state was rebuilt and its internationally recognised borders were formed, and physical geography of these lands had already been worked out in a rather thorough and up-to-date way. Th e geographers, historians, politicians and the administrative elite were confronted with the need to define the role of the Polish state and its place as a real political being and entity which its inhabitants would be conscious of. In response to this need a lively discussion was conducted in Polish geographical magazines of the interwar period. It was even more important since Polish authorities as well as the scholarly and intelectual elite had to solve the problem of unifying the lands and their inhabitants within one political organism. And yet, after above one hundred years of non-existance as a state, there were numerous differences between the particular previously annexed territories and their inhabitants. At the same time, the Polish nationality was common for about 70% of the population in this multinational country. A successful and definite solution of the issue of the state-awareness among the inhabitants of Poland, which was considered to be an object of geography and geographers’ practice, was not easy to be found because of fierce political disputes. In terms of quality, a new situation was created by the political consequences of the coup d’état by Józef Piłsudski in 1926. Th e winning party, which ruled with a heavey hand, continuously needed to take into account the power of their political opponents. Discussions and disputes, propositions and manifestos published in the interwar period indicated that the contemporary political and scholarly elite, regardless of the ideological matters, was aware of the necessity to consolidate the social conviction of the existance of the independant Polish state.