Warsaw, Pt. 2

---

Poland has a fascinating history and culture. It began in about the 10th century, and became a great nation. Warsaw is the third city to be the capital of Poland, after Poznan and Krakow, because a king moved there temporarily after a fire in his palace in Krakow and then realised it was better to rule the country from the middle. Poland had a monarchy from the beginning, but after one king died without heirs, the nobles decided to elect a king from among the nobility and aristocracy. They also had a parliament of sorts, in which a single vote could veto a bill, but apparently it took a few hundred years for anyone to actually use this-- they just tried to work things out. Poland also used to be joined with Lithuania, from the 14th century, when a female king (more on this in my Krakow post) married a Lithanian prince and joined the kingdoms.

A really important part of Polish history is the partitions. Prussia, Russia and Austria basically decided to just kind of cut off chunks of a whole other country for themselves! This happened three times. First, they scooped out territory near them in 1772. Then they did it again in 1793 and 1795, until Poland was not on the map anymore. Russia was pretty bad to be under, and Germany was middle, and Austria was best, as it was already multi-ethnic and didn't make them use German to the exclusion of Polish. That said, it generally bites to have your country sliced up without even consulting you. There was some resistance, but three bullies at once isn't really a fair fight.

The next big thing is independence in 1918-- November 11th is their independence day, for when the Treaty of Versailles was signed ending WWI, Poland was re-created along Wilson's principles of nation-states for ethnic groups. Poland established a democracy, although really, it soon went over to a military leader, Jozef Piłsudski. He was a hero for defeating the Soviets in their attempt to get the German proletariat going by marching across Poland (big countries tend to think they can just use anybody as their road- cf. Germany trying to march through Belgium to France in WWI, if I recall correctly).

---