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Kingdom of Poland | |||||||||||||||||
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| 1815–1915 | |||||||||||||||||
| Motto: Z nami Bóg! (Polish for 'God is with us!') | |||||||||||||||||
| Anthem: Pieśń narodowa za pomyślność króla "National Song to the King's Well-being" | |||||||||||||||||
 Map of Congress Poland, c. 1815, following the Congress of Vienna. The Russian Empire is shown in light green. | |||||||||||||||||
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| Status |
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| Capital | Warsaw | ||||||||||||||||
| Official languages | Polish, Russian (from 1867)[1] | ||||||||||||||||
| Common languages | Polish, Yiddish, German, Russian[2] | ||||||||||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholicism | ||||||||||||||||
| Demonym(s) | Polish, Pole | ||||||||||||||||
| Government | Constitutional monarchy (1815–1832) Absolute monarchy (1832–1915) | ||||||||||||||||
| King | |||||||||||||||||
• 1815–1825 (first) | Alexander I | ||||||||||||||||
• 1894–1915 (last) | Nicholas II | ||||||||||||||||
| Namiestnik (Viceroy) | |||||||||||||||||
• 1815–1826 (first) | Józef Zajączek | ||||||||||||||||
• 1914–1915 (last) | Pavel Yengalychev | ||||||||||||||||
| Legislature | Sejm | ||||||||||||||||
| Senate | |||||||||||||||||
| Chamber of Deputies | |||||||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||||||
| 9 June 1815 | |||||||||||||||||
| 27 November 1815 | |||||||||||||||||
| 29 November 1830 | |||||||||||||||||
| 23 January 1863 | |||||||||||||||||
• Vistula Land established | 1867 | ||||||||||||||||
| 19 September 1915 | |||||||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||||||
• 1897 census | 9,402,253 | ||||||||||||||||
| Currency |
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| Today part of | |||||||||||||||||
¹ Sopoćkinie area | |||||||||||||||||
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Congress Poland[a] or Congress Kingdom of Poland,[3] formally known as the Kingdom of Poland,[b] was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established when the French ceded a part of Polish territory to the Russian Empire following France's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1915, during World War I, it was replaced by the German-controlled nominal Regency Kingdom[c] until Poland regained independence in 1918.
Following the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland ceased to exist as an independent nation for 123 years. The territory, with its native population, was split among the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire. After 1804, an equivalent to Congress Poland within the Austrian Empire was the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also commonly referred to as "Austrian Poland". The area incorporated into Prussia initially also held autonomy as the Grand Duchy of Posen outside of German Confederation, but later was demoted to merely a Prussian province (the Province of Posen), and was subsequently annexed in 1866 into the North German Confederation, the predecessor of the German Empire.
The Congress Kingdom of Poland was theoretically granted considerable political autonomy by the liberal constitution. However, its rulers, the Russian emperors, generally disregarded any restrictions on their power. It was, therefore, little more than a puppet state in a personal union with the Russian Empire.[8][9] The autonomy was severely curtailed following uprisings in 1830–31 and 1863, as the country became governed by viceroys, and later divided into governorates (provinces).[8][9] Thus, from the start, Polish autonomy remained little more than fiction.[10]
The capital was located in Warsaw, which towards the beginning of the 20th century became the Russian Empire's third-largest city after St. Petersburg and Moscow. The moderately multicultural population of Congress Poland was estimated at 9,402,253 inhabitants in 1897. It was mostly composed of Poles, Polish Jews, ethnic Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and a small Russian minority. The predominant religion was Roman Catholicism and the official language used within the state was Polish until the failed January Uprising (1863) when Russian became co-official as a consequence. Yiddish and German were widely spoken by their native speakers.
The territory of Congress Poland roughly corresponds to modern-day Kalisz Region and the Lublin, Łódź, Masovian, Podlaskie and Holy Cross Voivodeships of Poland as well as southwestern Lithuania and a small part of the Grodno District of Belarus.
The Kingdom of Poland effectively came to an end with the Great Retreat of Russian forces in 1915 and was succeeded by the Government General of Warsaw, established by the Germans. In 1917, part of this was renamed as the short-lived Kingdom of Poland, a client state of the Central Powers, which had a Regency Council instead of a king.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Kamusellawas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "The Social and Political History of the Polish Language in the Long 19th Century". Kamusella. 24 January 2017. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
- ^ Britannica (8 January 2010). "Congress Kingdom of Poland". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 18 January 2022.
- ^ * Ludność Polski w XX Wieku = The Population of Poland in the 20th Century / Andrzej Gawryszewski. Warszawa: Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Geografii i Przestrzennego Zagospodorowania im. Stanisława Leszczyckiego, 2005 (Monografie; 5), p 539, [1]** (in Polish) Mimo wprowadzenia oficjalnej nazwy Kraj Przywiślański terminy Królestwo Polskie, Królestwo Kongresowe lub w skrócie Kongresówka były nadal używane, zarówno w języku potocznym jak i w niektórych publikacjach.
- Despite the official name Kraj Przywiślański terms such as, Kingdom of Poland, Congress Poland, or in short Kongresówka were still in use, both in everyday language and in some publications.
- ^ * POWSTANIE STYCZNIOWE, Encyklopedia Interia:
- (in Polish) po upadku powstania zlikwidowano ostatnie elementy autonomii Królestwa Pol. (łącznie z nazwą), przekształcając je w "Kraj Przywiślański";
- after the fall of the uprising last elements of autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland (including the name) were abolished, transforming it into the "Vistula land;"
- ^ * Królestwo Polskie Archived 2017-04-24 at the Wayback Machine. WIEM Encyklopedia:
- (in Polish) Królestwo Polskie po powstaniu styczniowym: Nazwę Królestwa Polskiego zastąpiła, w urzędowej terminologii, nazwa Kraj Przywiślański. Jednakże w artykule jest także: Po rewolucji 1905-1907 w Królestwie Polskim... i W latach 1914-1916 Królestwo Polskie stało się....
- Kingdom of Poland after the January Uprising: the name Kingdom of Poland was replaced, in official documents, by the name of Vistula land. However the same article also states: After the revolution 1905-1907 in the Kingdom of Poland and In the years 1914-1916 the Kingdom of Poland became....
- ^ * Królestwo Polskie, Królestwo Kongresowe, Encyklopedia PWN:
- (in Polish) 1915–18 pod okupacją niem. i austro-węgierską; K.P. przestało istnieć po powstaniu II RP (XI 1918).
- [Congress Poland was] under German and Austro-Hungarian occupation from 1915 to 1918; it was finally abolished after the creation of the Second Polish Republic in November 1918
- ^ a b Nicolson, Harold George (2001). The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812–1822. New York: Grove Press. p. 171. ISBN 0-8021-3744-X.
- ^ a b Palmer, Alan Warwick (1997). Twilight of the Habsburgs: The Life and Times of Emperor Francis Joseph. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. p. 7. ISBN 0-87113-665-1.
- ^ Agnieszka Barbara Nance, Nation without a State: Imagining Poland in the Nineteenth Century, dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin, pp. 169-88
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