Radosław Paweł Żurawski vel Grajewski

“The Taken Lands” in English-language press related to the political camp of prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski at the begining of exile

The article is based on three English-language press titles published in the early 1830s in Great Britain by Polish emigrants and British supporters of the Polish case related to the political camp of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski. These are: “The Hull Polish Record,” “The Polish Exile,” and “Polonia or Monthly Reports of Polish Affairs”. The main aim of the article is to recreate the image of the so-called “Ziemie Zabrane” (The Taken Lands) – i.e. the former Polish provinces incorporated directly into the Russian Empire after 1795. These were the lands of today’s Lithuania, part of Latvia, all of Belarus and the right-bank of Ukraine. The authors of the several articles devoted to this issue presented – in their writings – the history of these lands from the Middle Ages, their fate during the partitions until the November Uprising, the course of which in Lithuania and Ukraine was described in more detail. There were also reports of repressions that fell upon the inhabitants of these lands after the defeat of the uprising. On the pages of the surveyed press one can also find reports on the state of the economy of these lands, trade and water routes; biographies of famous people born in these areas and many descriptions of their tourist and sightseeing values. In each of these cases, the authors of the texts tried to emphasize the ties between these lands and their inhabitants with the rest of the Polish territory and convince the potential readers that they constitute its integral part, which should be included in it in the event of the reconstruction of the independent Polish state.