The cult of St. Olaf among sea merchants and its manifestation in testaments of Lübeck Bergenfahrer

St. Olaf was one of the most vivid symbols of religious life in the northern part of medieval Europe. Many churches devoted to him were scattered across Scandinavian countries and his resting place in Nidaros (Trondheim) cathedral attracted numerous believers. As a patron saint of Norwegian kings and various organizations he seems to be a religious icon that permeated into some lay aspects of life, including the economic sphere. Although relatedness of his cult to sea is apparent in the oldest liturgical texts, Scandinavian sources pointed out in this article provide no certain evidence proving its relevancy to sea trade. However, in the Late Middle Ages St. Olaf’s cult gained popularity among the Bergenfahrer – Lübeck sea merchants strongly involved in the commercial activity in Bergen. Testaments left by the Bergenfahrer constitute a set of evidence that illuminates the role that St. Olaf’s cult played among this group of merchants. This role seems to be twofold: St. Olaf’s cult was a symbol which shaped corporate identity of the Bergenfahrer, contributing to the organisational sphere of their activity, and provided spiritual support which shaped personal identity of individual merchants.

The Gołąb Confederacy in modern historiography

In 1972, Adam and Kazimierz Przyboś have published an edited Diariusz kołowania i konfederacji pod Gołębiem i Lublinem w 1672 r. (Diary of Gołąb and Lublin concentration and confederacy of 1672), a work that has provided an impulse for further study of the Gołąb Confederacy. At the time it has been one of the few confederacies with its own monograph, published already in 1936 by A. Przyboś, but since then – and until the 1972 edition of Diariusz – the subject has been mostly neglected, as was the case with the entire unhappy reign of King Michał. For K. Przyboś the said edition has been a starting point for a number of analytical studies of that period, and especially of the confederacy itself. In this research program, he has been followed by several younger historians, whose studies are reviewed in the article. The confederacy has received particular attention in the works of Jarosław Stolicki and Leszek Wierzbicki. Source editions connected to the confederacy, such as personal and public diaries and journals, and especially the 1672 resolutions of the nobles, also play a highly significant role.

* W niniejszym artykule omówiono studia, które ukazały się drukiem w latach 1972‒2017.

Economic consequences of the occupation of Galicia by the Russian army in 1809

The intervention of the Russian army in Galicia in June 1809, during the War of the Fifth Coalition, was formally the implementation of the alliance with Napoleon (the Treaty of Tilsit). In reality, Russia was concerned with preventing territorial expansion of the Duchy of Warsaw and hoping for a possible seizure of some Austrian lands. The costs of maintaining the Russian army had to be covered by the inhabitants of the part of Galicia they occupied. The value of food, forage supplies and taxes collected to supply Russian troops, as well as requisitions, amounted at least to 5.87 million florins. That was a serious sum, all the more so because taxes had already been collected from Galicia and the supplies were transferred to the Austrian army. However, these burdens have not led to the collapse of the country’s economy. This was partly due to the fact that only the beneficiary of military supplies changed: the Russian army took the place of the Austrian army. The several-month stay of the Russian army in Galicia contributed to the weakening of the economic and military potential of the Habsburg monarchy at the final stage of the war of 1809, as the state was deprived of the inflow of financial and material resources from its north-eastern areas before the Treaty of Schönbrunn.

Parting with a villain? Yuan Shikai in light of new research

Yuan Shikai, the military strongman of late Qing Empire, talented administrator and reformer, crucial figure during the 1911 (Xinhai) Republican Revolution, president with dictatorial power and, finally, a self-proclaimed emperor, is the most controversial figure of 20th-century China. After his death during the civil war that his actions provoked, historiography (communist and non-communist) portrayed Yuan as traitor and chief villain. In following years Yuan was almost unanimously denounced by Soviet (S.L. Tikhvinsky, O. Nepomnin) and Western (L. Sharman, E. Hummel) historiography. His first biography, written by Jerome Ch’en in 1960, fully upheld this portrait. Significant studies (1968 and 1977) of Ernest P. Young, based on important primary sources, went unnoticed at the time. It was also the case with Stephen McKinnon’s volume on Yuan as brilliant Qing official in Tianjin and Beijing between 1901 and 1908. During the two last decades of the 20th century some smaller studies changed this unfavorable portrait. In the eyes of Marie-Claire Bergère, Madleine Ch’i, Luke Kwong and Henerietta Harrison, Yuan appears as a far-sighted statesman and defender of Chinese raison d’état. The last biography written by Patrick Fuliang Shan portrays Yuan as an extremely power-hungry and astute politician and as a conservative reformer and modernizer, at the same time. His political failure was both his personal tragedy and a catastrophe of the Chinese nation.

The Sejm projects for the creation of primary schools for the Polish national minority in Eastern Galicia. A contribution to the history of Polish-Ukrainian relations at the beginning of the 20th century

This article presents the projects for the creation of primary schools for the Polish national minority in Eastern Galicia that were introduced in the Sejm by Polish deputies Franciszek Sobolewski and Tadeusz Rutowski. These schools were to be established in the Eastern Galicia province, in villages with a predominance of Ukrainian people. Ukrainian deputies accepted the idea of creating schools for national minorities, but they intended to use the notified projects to create a separate parliamentary commission and open a debate on all matters concerning Polish-Ukrainian relations. Ultimately, a separate commission was not established, and Polish-Ukrainian relations became inflamed.

Michał Bobrzyński vs. Roman Dmowski: A historiographical-political duet on the resurrection of the Polish state

Just as the year 1795 was traumatic – the year of removal of the Polish-Lithuanian Republic from the political map of Europe – and it rekindled a passionate dispute on the reasons of the fall of the previously spacious and powerful monarchy, so was the year 1918 happy for the Poles – the year of regaining independence, which marked the beginning of another great, and no less passionate, dispute upon the merits in the task of the resurrection of the Polish state. That dispute went beyond the frame of historical debates or schoolbooks, evoking unflagging political emotions during the two decades of the Second Republic’s existence. It was a kind of a settlement of accounts with the recent (for the people of the time) national past, while the question on merits in the task of reviving the state was, at the same time, a question on the moral right to rule the state and control its fate. Two voluminous publications issued shortly after Poland regained independence played a particularly important role in the aforementioned dispute: a two-volume “historical essay” Wskrzeszenie państwa polskiego (Resurrection of the Polish state), published anonymously by Michał Bobrzyński in the period 1920–1925, and a piece by Roman Dmowski entitled Polityka polska i odbudowanie państwa (Polish politics and rebuilding of the state), published in 1925 and followed by two more editions within the author’s lifetime: the second edition in 1926 and the third one in 1937. This text analyses both works in the context of the above-mentioned historiographical-political dispute upon merits in the restoration of the Polish state.

* Niniejszy tekst jest rozszerzoną wersją referatu wygłoszonego podczas pierwszego dnia obrad III Konferencji Naukowej Polsko-Litewskiej „Unia, federacja, niepodległość? Polski i Litwy drogi do niepodległości”, zorganizowanej przez Polską Akademię Umiejętności oraz Instytut Historii Litwy (Wilno) w Krakowie, w gmachu PAU przy ul. Sławkowskiej, w dniach 18–19 X 2018 r.

Communication airports in Poland after 1918

The history of communication airports coincides with the century-long existence of the reborn Polish State, because it was only after 1918 that the first airports adapted to passenger traffic were established in the country. Two periods of their development deserve particular attention: the interwar period, in which the communication aviation was born, and the time after 2004, when its rapid expansion was noted. The establishment and development of the communication aviation of the Second Polish Republic was strongly associated with the statist policy aimed at modernizing the state. This is evidenced by the construction of airports in Warsaw, Gdynia, Katowice, Łódź and Vilnius, whose activities have helped to integrate the country after the years of partitions. In People’s Poland, civilian communication was based on a network of military airports, which was supplemented with a new airport in Gdańsk-Rębiechów. Large areas of the north-eastern voivodeships were excluded from air connections and timid attempts to overcome these disproportions only appeared in the Third Republic of Poland in the form of airports in Lublin and Radom. The fourfold increase in the number of passengers served by Polish airports in 2004–2016 was an unquestionable phenomenon influenced by the Open Sky policy.

Conspirators in the Polish Blue Police and Polish Criminal Police in Kraków during 1939‒1945

The article describes the history of Polish pre-war policemen who were forced to continue their service in the Polish Police in the General Government (the so-called Blue Police), created by German occupying authorities. Many of these policemen, faithful to the oath they had made before the war, worked for the Polish Underground State. In Kraków, the capital of the General Government, in the Autumn of 1939, Polish policemen began to create conspiracy structures, which gradually became one of the most effective Polish intelligence networks. Thanks to them, the Home Army, subordinated to the Polish Government-in-exile in London, could learn the secrets of the Kraków Gestapo and the German police. Despite the enormous efforts of the German counter-intelligence machine and the losses among the conspirators, they worked out the exact structure of the German forces in Kraków, helped the persecuted population and infiltrated secret German institutions. In post-war Poland, many of them experienced persecution at the hands of the communist regime. Most of them preferred to keep their wartime experiences secret. To this day their activities are poorly known, being suppressed by the popular image of a Polish policeman-collaborator created by the media.

Bilateral relations between Poland and Japan were generally friendly since the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), throughout the entire interwar era, after the government of Japan recognized independent Poland after WWI (on 6 March 1919), and even during WWII. What was seen as important was a mutual support on the international arena during international conflicts (such as those in Upper Silesia, Manchuria, etc.) and especially military and espionage cooperation. How did the Cold War influence Polish-Japanese relations? Did the relations, which were until that time friendly, play a role in this period – a time of trouble for the entire world? The author tries to answer these questions, relying on selected and important events and issues from the period of the Cold War (until 1989).

“Protection” of Silesian hard coal mines by the state Security Service in the 1980s (on the example of hard coal mine “Katowice”)

During the entire period of the Polish People’s Republic the Polish state security forces conducted surveillance operations of factories and other workplaces. All spheres of activity – political, social and economic – were controlled. These actions intensified in the 1980s, a unique period in the recent history of Poland, after the workers’ strikes in August 1980 and the creation of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union (NSZZ) “Solidarność”. In response to the upheaval, the martial law was introduced, casting a grim shadow on the social and economic reality of the entire decade. Because of the importance of coal mining for the country’s economic system, the activities of state security forces were meticulously carried out in the mines, including the hard coal mine “Katowice”. All actions were controlled and recorded, not only those of workers who sympathized with powers hostile to the regime, but any event disturbing the rhythm of work – entirely coincidental events were tracked alongside possible cases of sabotage. Regardless of the real intentions behind these activities, this scrutiny of the state apparatus created a kind of chronicle of events that took place in the hard coal mine “Katowice” in the period under discussion.