Book of Abstracts
The Postcolonial Perspective in the Study of Polish History:
Benefits, Challenges, Potential
BOOK OF ABSTRACTS
Alexis Angulo (University of Warsaw)
It is Time for Poland to Look at Latin America. Understanding Coloniality in the Early Encounters between Poland and Latin America
One of the main proposals of decolonial scholars from Latin America (Dussel, Mignolo, Quijano, Segato, Martinez Andrade, etc.) is to understand 1492 as the beginning of a new world-system that inevitable brought coloniality along with modernity and capitalism. In this paper I will reflect on this decolonial perspective and explain why it is so difficult for Poles to recognize their role within the modern/colonial world. The aim of this paper is to point out some colonial motifs in memories from the 19th and early 20th centuries from Poles who traveled to Latin America, which exemplify the (inter)relation of subjectivities inherent to coloniality, as understood by Latin American decolonial scholars. While Poles officially did not possess colonies, they did look for a place within a hierarchy of “races” and “ethnicities”. They supported and legitimized a colonial world order that is not easy to spot from a Western perspective, especially from a country that did not have colonies and that currently benefits from it.
Josef Butler (King’s College London)
Are We in the Same Boat? How Did the Experience of Polish Refugees in the British Imperial Periphery Affect Resettlement in Postwar Britain?
This paper will pose the question, to what extent Poles were part of a common grouping with non-European migrants from the British Commonwealth, and to what extent their positionality was informed by similar experiences in similar settings. It also explores the influence of British Imperialism upon Polish refugees, investigating how those ideas competed with, or contradicted, extant ideas related to Imperialism and Colonialism informed by the prewar Polish context, and the degree to which Polish experiences in the British imperial periphery informed behaviours in the centre. These questions will shine a light upon an often-overlooked aspect of the global histories of post-war migration during the period of decolonisation.
Ben Dew (Coventry University)
Polish Émigrés in Britain and the Politics of Empire, 1830-1864
From the 1830s onwards, Britain was home to a sizeable population of Polish émigrés. While these individuals came from a diverse range of social and political backgrounds, they were united in their opposition to the imperial or quasi-imperial systems of government that administered Polish territories. The refuge they found in London, however, placed them at the heart of another large cosmopolitan imperium. This paper addresses the consequences of this situation by exploring the engagement of Polish émigré communities in debates concerning the British empire. The focus of the discussion will be on two forms of discourse: the various campaigns undertaken by émigrés and their supporters to secure political and financial support in Britain; and analyses of empire in Polish-language periodicals aimed specifically at an émigré audience. In investigating these sources, my aim is to show how defending Polish causes led émigré writers to provide both explicit endorsements and tacit critiques of British imperial practices.
Katja Castryck-Naumann
Thwarting the Nuclear Powers: The Polish Concept of Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zones and Its Trajectory in the Decolonizing World
The achievement of political independence, the end of imperial rule, was a decisive step and a moment of victory for those who had rallied around the common cause of decolonization. However, political sovereignty did not end global colonial power relations. On the contrary, decolonizing states were confronted with colonial legacies and neo-colonial interventions. In the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and during the subsequent nuclear arms race between the USSR and the US, and later the UK, the question was whether decolonizing states would be used for, or could resist, the stationing of nuclear weapons on their territories. In 1957, Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki had proposed to the UN General Assembly the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Central Europe, the region where the nuclear powers’ armed forces were most directly confronted. The proposal was ultimately rejected. But the concept of regional denuclearization – an alternative to the often-failed efforts at universal nuclear disarmament promoted by the US and the USSR – circulated internationally. Since the late 1950s, nuclear-weapon-free zones have been established throughout the so-called Global South. In my paper, I trace the international trajectory, appropriation and adaptation of a concept developed by diplomats and lawyers in the Warsaw Foreign Ministry in 1956/57, which has significantly influenced the politics of nuclear disarmament to the present day. This history is instructive for using postcolonial studies and its interest in forces that could thwart (neo-)colonial relations to review Polish relations with the decolonizing world.
Jawad Daheur (Centre for Russian, Caucasian and Central European Studies in Paris)
Benefiting from the ‘Racial Contract’: The Consumption of Colonial Goods in Prussian Poland in the 19th Century
This paper examines the history of Polish colonial entanglements through the lens of the consumption of colonial goods, i.e. goods imported from colonies such as coffee, tea, spices, rice, sugar, chocolate and tobacco. Previous research on this topic, notably by Bolaji Balogun (2022), has explored the ways in which Eastern Europe benefited from the colonial global economy. Charles Mills (1997) identifies material advantage as one of many benefits derived from the ‘racial contract’ – a set of formal and informal agreements among whites that establish and maintain a white supremacist society. Through trade with European colonial powers, Poland already had access to colonial goods in the early modern period. This access and the associated material benefits were maintained and even strengthened throughout the nineteenth century, the period on which this paper focuses. The nineteenth century, however, was marked by major changes. Whereas in previous centuries, it was mainly the aristocracy that was able to increase its standard of living thanks to the consumption of colonial goods, access to these products was later democratised and extended to an ever-widening section of the urban and rural population. The paper explores this phenomenon using the case of Poland under Prussian rule during the 'long’ nineteenth century (until 1914). On the basis of available trade statistics, reports from the chambers of commerce, accounts from the economic press and other qualitative sources, it examines how colonial goods were distributed in the ethnically mixed provinces of East Prussia and provides estimates of the quantities consumed according to period and region. From a micro-historical perspective, particular attention will be given to the network of colonial shops, which played a central role in democratising access to colonial goods. The dynamics of the cultural resonance of consumption will also be explored through an analysis of advertising and iconographic material.
Mateusz Drozdowski (University of the National Education Commission)
Postcolonial Perspective and Post-Soviet Studies: Differences and Opportunities
The aim of the paper is to show similarities and differences between two research trends and methodological approaches: the post-colonial perspective and the post-Soviet studies. The comparison seems to be particularly justified in the case of Poland and East Central Europe when analyzed within the framework of post-Soviet (or post-communist) studies as a region immanently marked by the communist system. Poland’s post-communism led to the emergence (especially in the 1990s) of specific political, economic, social and cultural difficulties and challenges. One can notice an evident convergence of the post-communist methodological approach with the postcolonial perspective, or analysis and explaining remnants of imperialism. My presentation analyzes the assumptions, conceptual framework and methodology of the two approaches, trying to examine whether (and to what extent) the achievements of postcolonial thought can be applied to the dynamically developing research on the process of the transition of the Central-Eastern Europe. Or maybe the post-Soviet studies can be considered as nothing more than a branch of the post-colonial theory?
Aleksandra Fila/Aleksandra Natalia Wojewska/Joanna Zabielska (University of Vienna)
Migrant Storytelling as a Decolonial Practice: The Case of Polish Migrants in Western Europe
This project aims to contribute to the decolonial turn in thinking about East-West divisions by focusing particularly on the experiences of Polish migrants in Western Europe. During the presentation, we will recapitulate the existing analyses of the forms of discrimination faced by migrants from Poland and, more broadly, from the (Central) Eastern European region. Building on that, we will present our proposal for creating an online platform for collecting the testimonies of Polish migrants in Western Europe, connecting singular migrant experiences into a larger multivocal narrative. This project has been born out of our preliminary investigations, consisting of discussions we have had with each other and with other Polish and (Central) Eastern European migrants, in particular from the academic and artistic milieus. We believe that the various forms of marginalization – those quite evident and more subtle ones – which are experienced by migrants in these worlds are exacerbated by the general power dynamics underpinning the spheres of artistic and academic production. Thus, moving beyond such methodologies as autoethnography, we aim to provide a forum for self-reflection and exchange with others sharing similar concerns. Our ambition is to democratize the decolonization debates and expand our understanding of post-colonial/decolonial knowledge by focusing on – and validating – artistic and vernacular forms of production of knowledge by Polish migrants.
John Freeman
‘At Least We Don’t Have to Apologise for that Yet’: The Entanglement of Polish History with the Duchy of Courland’s Colonial Ambitions
The paper seeks to discuss the ways in which the Commonwealth and its population may have been present in the colonial endeavours of Courland, drawing upon theories of entangled histories. Polish-Lithuanian political identity and connections were both utilised and hidden in specific circumstances by Courlanders in this colonial history. It will also ask what incidents of Polish ‘hijacking’ of this history represent. Is it emblematic of a desire to elevate the Polish nation in a case of what Dariusz Kołodziejczyk described as extreme ‘megalomania’? Is it part of a difficult relationship with post-colonialism, whereby some aspire to write Poland into the history of expansionist Europe? Or is it simply the allure of ‘click-bait’ which drives Polish engagement with this overseas colonial past?
Karina Gaibulina (Independent Scholar)
Forced into Ethnography. Polish Political Prisoners in Colonial Service of the Russian Empire
The establishment of the Empire opened up new possibilities for transcultural encounters, determining the conditions of interpersonal relations and mutual knowledge transition, as well as the exchange of cultural patterns. In the 19th century, ethnography, also known as cultural anthropology, emerged as a new field of study aiming to understand the origins of cultural diversity. It involved the exploration and examination of “primitive peoples” and often served the interests of imperial powers. The practices of collecting and organising information about everyday life, social structure, mythology, folklore, history, and traditions of Other people who inhabited European colonies served as a practical way to manage the colonies and maintain a dominant position of the colonisers.
Even though the Poles did not start their own colonial endeavours, like the conquest of Siberia, the Caucasus, or Central Asia, they still played a role in it. Some were compelled to join the local Russian administration or Russian army forces stationed on the imperial frontiers, while others willingly seized the chance to pursue careers within the colonial structure. All of them justified their involvement in the Russian Imperial conquest of the southern and eastern territories of the Eurasian continent mostly by claiming to bring civilisation, material goods, technological progress, medicine, education, etc., to peoples at a “lower level of development.” In this manner, Polish political prisoners, similarly to other colonial agents, viewed themselves as missionaries of Western values, which they imported from Western Europe.
I am interested in exploring nineteenth-century sources by three Polish exiles, Adolf Januszkiewicz, Bronisław Zaleski, and Seweryn Gross, which were classified as “ethnographic” by asking the following questions: How did the analytical and interpretative practices of these Polish exiles align with the broader trend conducted by the Russian Empire’s scientific research during its expansion toward eastern and southern territories? To what degree were texts of Polish exiles different from similar texts written by Russian or Western European researchers? Did the status of “political prisoners” allow Poles to look at the culture of nomads differently? Can the analyzed examples serve as an alternative historical and ethnographic source compared to texts compelled by Russian authors today?
Matthieu Gillabert (University of Fribourg)
Academic and Lay Science Confronted with the Notion of ‘Race’ in Communist Poland (1945-1970)
Between the wars, eugenics and anthropology brought together researchers interested in racial issues, whether for social policy reasons, nationalist aims, or links with 'colonial sciences’. This paper examines the future of this scientific legacy after the Second World War, in an ethnically homogenized post-Nazi Poland where the question of race became taboo, and in an egalitarian communist society. Nevertheless, empirical research shows that the racial paradigm continued to be used. In what academic contexts? And how was this research disseminated to a wider public? This paper attempts to answer these questions by examining the careers and work of Polish anthropologists in the 1950s and 1960s.
Zoltán Ginelli (Independent Scholar)
Globalizing the Generalplan Ost: The Transcolonial Histories of Central Place Theory
In 1940, Nazi agronomist and SS-Oberführer Konrad Meyer set up an institution to devise the ‘rational’ plans of ‘colonizing the East’ in order to create an ideal landscape for settler colonists of an imperial German-Aryan race by wiping Eastern Europe from all ‘lesser’ races. The Generalplan Ost (‘General Plan East’), as it was called, was the spatial plan of the Holocaust. It followed an expansionist German colonial vision of Lebensraum, which imagined ‘Slavic lands’ as an Aryan colonial frontier comparable to that of North America. The main architect behind these plans was German geographer Walter Christaller. Generalplan Ost was the first large-scale application of his ‘central place theory’ (CPT), a mathematical spatial economic theory on the ideal, ‘rational’ hexagonic layout and hierarchical structure of settlements with their catchment regions (Christaller 1933). During the war, Americans and Soviets raced to get their hands on Nazi technology, plans, maps and experts. Meyer’s institution was evacuated by the Americans in Operation Dustbin, and a controversial ‘denazification’ found the team not guilty of war crimes. Later on, CPT-based regional planning thrived in both Germanies. In the West, Christaller became widely acclaimed as one of the pioneer and most influential theorists in quantitative geography, urban theory, regional science and planning. Christaller’s Nazi activities were made public only in the late 1970s, but the controversial technoscientific continuities were only researched from the 1990s onwards. My book project shows how the ‘quantitative revolution’ in geography relied on globalizing CPT through the networks of American knowledge hegemony in the 1960s, while the wider geographies of the Generalplan Ost remain an unacknowledged ‘dark condition’ of this American-led technoscientific ‘revolution’. The expansive Nazi plans had a Dutch side embedded in previous plans for polderization and new settlements, and were copied by Spanish internal colonization projects in the Franco era. Japanese planners visited Meyer’s office in 1941, and returned with the plans with great enthusiasm. Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis, formerly educated in Germany and working on regional plans for Marshall Plan reconstruction, established an urban planning company to globalize CPT through export projects in Africa and the Middle East in the 1960s. Yet more strikingly, Jewish Zionist settlers from Germany and Eastern Europe who established Israel based their ‘rational’ regional plans for new settlements on CPT in the 1950s. In Poland, postwar reconstruction led geographers and urban theorists to develop new regional plans for their country, inspired by CPT and former Nazi planning, in the National Office of Spatial Planning (1946–48). Although shut down by the communists, Polish planners could later use their acquaintance with CPT-based technoscience in export projects, such as in the Baghdad Plan in Iraq, and in entering American-led knowledge networks in the 1950s. This paper argues for globalizing the Generalplan Ost through the transcolonial histories of Christaller’s CPT. It discusses how various colonial projects were interlinked through ‘transcolonial technosciences’, but these global histories were 1) compartmentalized into discrete national stories, 2) biased by Eurocentrism, 3) contained by Holocaust memory politics, and 4) conditioned by the Westcentric hegemonic structures and politics of knowledge.
Marta Grzechnik (University of Gdansk)
Under Diverse Suns: The Maritime and River/Colonial League’s Positioning of Non-European Territories and Their Roles in the Colonial Programme
Knowledge about the non-European world was limited in Poland in the interwar period, due, in part, to its lack of statehood in the preceding century, and with that institutions which could facilitate the production and distribution of such knowledge. As part of promoting their colonial programmes and aspirations, the interwar Poland’s colonial milieu, with the Maritime and River/Colonial League as its most vocal representative, sought to promote the knowledge about overseas lands and peoples in the Polish society. Because of the League’s focus on colonial expansion, this knowledge was heavily influenced by the European colonial discourses of the times, mostly reproducing the stereotypes and hierarchies inherent in them. However, the descriptions of the various non-European territories and their inhabitants differed: from the harsh, unforgiving backdrop to the Polish settlers’ heroic efforts in South America, through resource-rich Africa inhabited by potential workforce, to the unbridled exoticism of South Asia. In this paper I compare the ways in which the League’s discourse positioned the various territories, placing them in the context of the different functions the League envisioned for them in its colonial programme. Referring to the conference’s theme of the usefulness of postcolonial reading of Polish experiences, I am going to examine what this positioning revealed not only about the ones being described – the non-European peoples – but also those doing the depicting – the Poles as an aspiring colonial nation, with its precarious position on the European margin, and a limited political and discursive power.
Marta Harasimowicz (Charles University in Prague)
Does the Memory of Socialism Need to Be Decolonized? Heritage of European Socialist Dictatorships in Museums and (New) Possibilities of Its Reflecting in Emancipatory Ways
The paper will focus on the phenomenon of exoticization of the socialist past in museum presentations and the possibilities and limits of postcolonial approaches to reflect this period and its heritage. Based on examples from current museums in East-Central Europe and with a special regard to the context of Polish history we will mainly try to answer following questions: In which way is the socialist past exoticized and what are the reasons for this?What does the otherness of the socialist experience consist of? To which extent could the common view of this period be affected by the „Western gaze” and to which extent it is a result of the inner development of post-socialist societies? How can postcolonial theories help to grasp the socialist past and to narrate it? What are, on the contrary, their limits? If the main purpose of the museums is, „to preserve the past from the aggression of the present’’ (Šola 2003), how can we deal with it and not to ignore the conflicting aspect of the socialist dictatorships heritage, which is its inherent feature?
Aleksandra Kaye (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology)
Reframing Great Emigration: Polish Experiences in Latin America through a Postcolonial Lens
This paper uses the postcolonial framework to reinterpret the migration of Polish intellectuals and professionals to Latin America during the „Great Emigration” period. The migrants in question were formally trained knowledge practitioners: engineers, topographers, medical doctors, naturalists and educators who lived and worked in Latin America from 1830 to 1889. Departing from prevailing historiographical narratives that predominantly focus on political motivations and patriotic ideals of Great Emigration migrants, this paper instead turns towards the diverse socio-economic and cultural factors that shaped the migration experiences of Polish intellectuals and cultural elites in Latin American contexts, highlighting the significant influence of economic opportunities, professional aspirations, and socio-cultural interactions on their decision to relocate. The paper argues that the Polish migrants’ experiences in Latin America were influenced not just by the political upheavals in their homeland but also by global power structures and colonial legacies, among other factors.
Dorota Kołodziejczyk (University of Wrocław)
Anti-imperialist Discourse in the London Wiadomości: A Postcolonial Perspective
The first issue of the London Wiadomości in 1946 opened with a statement that directed the Polish exiles directly to the discourse of national cause in the dire situation of once again denied independence. Drawing on the ethos of Romantic nationalism, the Wiadomości editors evoked the familiar and venerated tradition of thinking the nation in exile. But they also added a new component to that statement, naming the USSR straightforwardly an imperialist power. In this way, the Wiadomości announced its involvement in the Cold War geopolitics as the weekly’s mission. In my presentation, I am going to pursue the main tenets of the Wiadomości anti-imperialist critique of the USSR, trace the related comments on the British empire and explore the ambiguous logic of a specific anticolonial stance of the weekly. Throughout, my purpose will be to investigate the possibility of a situated postcolonial perspective on that part of Polish émigré history that on the one hand gives justice to the colonial contexts of Polish history and yet, on the other hand, provides the possibility of a critique of national historiographies at work.
Anna Konieczna (University of Warsaw)
Translation and Reception of South African Novels in the Polish People’s Republic
In my presentation, drawing on existing translations and literary and socio-cultural journals, I would like to reflect on two interlocking issues: What vision of apartheid and South African society did the Polish translations present? What was the reception of the works of South African writers in Poland? When analyzing these two issues, I rely on postcolonial theory while trying to understand to what extent the translated novels were a story about one of the African countries, and to what extent they were a mirror of Polish society. As I write these words, I do not yet know the answer to these last questions.
Magdalena Kozłowska (University of Warsaw)
Encounters and Perceptions: Polish Jews and their Relations with Jews from the Middle East in the Interwar Period
In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western Europe, fascination and ambivalence toward Jews living in the Middle East were widespread phenomena among West European Jews. This discourse undoubtedly influenced Polish Jewry’s perceptions. However, the extent to which it shaped these perceptions remains a question. By tracing individual perspectives and narratives, during the presentation I will illuminate how Polish Jews constructed discourses surrounding Middle Eastern Jewry and explore the factors influencing their attitudes. By situating Polish-Jewish encounters within the broader postcolonial framework, I will uncover the complexities of power relations and cultural perceptions.
Elżbieta Kwiecińska (Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Science)
Ukrainian Anticolonial Critique against the Concept of the Polish Civilizing Mission in the 19th Century
In Polish national contemporary historiography, there has been a controversy whether the colonial and postcolonial paradigm can be appropriated to study Polish-Ukrainian history. The opponents of integrating Poland into colonial and postcolonial studies argue that this scholarship was created in a different context in the West to examine fits former overseas colonies. Nevertheless, in my paper, I will show how the colonial and anticolonial discourse was adopted by both Polish and Ukrainian national activists in the 19th-century to describe Polish-Ukrainian relations. I will demonstrate how Mykhailo Drahomanov, Ivan Franko and Mykhailo Hrushewvsky criticised the concept of the „Polish civilizing mission to the East” as a colonial concept. By these means, they opposed Polish domination in social and political life in 19th-centiry Habsburg Galicia and the plans to restore Polish national state in historic borders from 1772.
Patryk Labuda (Polish Academy of Sciences)
Contested Memories of Colonialism in Eastern Europe and the Global South
This paper draws on international law relating to the use of force, self-determination and decolonization to enrich our understanding of colonialism in Poland, East-Central Europe and the Global South(s). Specifically, it canvasses post-2022 debates in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, before the International Court of Justice and the UN Human Rights Council to illustrate how states use language and concepts relating to colonialism to frame their international legal arguments about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as the Israel- Gaza conflict. A comparison of how East-Central European and Global South actors frame the (il)legality of Russia’s post-2022 actions in Ukraine and Israel’s post-2023 campaign in Gaza reveals divergent conceptualizations of colonialism, racism, injustice and oppression in the global order, with implications for the future of transnational cooperation between Poland, East-Central Europe and the Global South. In critically examining these contested memories, this paper hopes not only to offer a cross-regional approach to colonialism as a concept, norm and theory, but also to foster dialogue between ‘East’ and ‘South’ and enhance understanding of their mutual trajectories in time and space.
Christopher Lash (Łazarski University in Warsaw)
‘You Forgot Poland?’: Polish involvement in the Iraq war and its aftermath through a postcolonial lens
This paper examines Polish participation in the Iraq war (2003-8) and its aftermath through a postcolonial lens within the context of Warsaw’s foreign policy choices in the post-Cold War era. After the fall of communism, Poland attempted to join ‘core’ Western countries and institutions, while simultaneously distancing itself from the countries of the ‘periphery’. The paper argues that Poland has operated in a liminal space during the Iraq war and its aftermath, as it has been treated as an ‘internal other’ of the West, and at the same time has ‘othered’ the Iraqi periphery. The paper does this by applying three key postcolonial theories to the case study: Said’s concept of orientalism, Coronil’s concept of occidentalism and Spivak’s ideas related to the subaltern. The paper finds the following to be true: a) Poland has been orientalised by core Western states while it has also orientalised the Iraqi and Middle Eastern periphery, b) Poland has generally been a willing participant of occidentalist strategies concerning Iraq and the Middle East and c) Western core states have attempted to speak for/silence Poland while Poland has spoken for/silenced the Iraqi/Middle Eastern periphery.
Michał Lubina (Jagiellonian University)
‘A Jurney to Burma’ by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński. A Postcolonial View
Historically speaking, Poland had little contact with Asia-Pacific. Consequently, Polish writers rarely wrote about Asian matters. “A Journey to Burma” by Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, one of the most famous 20th century Polish writers, is a notable exception here. This now forgotten text “would have become a classics in postcolonial studies” as Włodzimierz Bolecki put it, had it been translated. Indeed, “A Journey to Burma” is an exceptional case study to research Polish contacts with Asia, particularly from the point of view of postcolonial theory. Herling’s Burma diary is a complicated, ambivalent and controversial volume. Deep and orientalist, brilliant and shallow, empathic and stereotyping, it is ambiguous as much of the material researched by the postcolonial theory is. Thus, it merits research.
Jerzy Łazor (SGH – Warsaw School of Economics)
The Colonial and Imperialist Interpretations of Foreign Investment in Interwar Poland: Origins and Contexts
The paper will look at the long history of colonial and imperialist interpretations of FDI in interwar Poland. Focusing on French capital due to its importance (France was the largest foreign shareholder in Poland), it will use the daily and weekly press, archival materials, and historical works from various periods concerning the biggest Franco-Polish conflicts, such as those concerning Żyrardów and the Warsaw power plant. It will contrast public discourse from the interwar period, with stalinist, post-1956, and contemporary interpretations proposed by historians. The paper will ask questions about the conceptualization of both colonialism and imperialism in each of the periods, and the changing rationale for employing them to explain the interwar reality. It will then discuss what the use of these concepts can offer to historians working on interwar Poland’s economy, international relations, and identity.
Michał Maciejewski (University of the National Education Commission)
Polish Anticolonial Rhetoric during the Italian Invasion of Ethiopia, 1935-1939
This paper examines Polish anticolonial rhetoric in popular media during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935–1936), analyzing how the conflict shaped public discourse in interwar Poland. Through an exploration of articles from major Polish newspapers, the study uncovers how Ethiopia was framed as both a symbol of Christian solidarity and an exotic “other,” while Italy’s fascist colonial ambitions were scrutinized through a mix of pro- and anti-colonial lenses. Particularly within socialist and leftist media, anticolonial rhetoric emerged as a critique of European imperialism and fascism. Publications like Robotnik condemned the Italian invasion, linking the struggle of Ethiopia to broader global movements against colonialism and oppression. This discourse presented Ethiopia as a victim of fascist aggression, casting the Ethiopian resistance as part of the wider fight against imperialist expansion. In other words, the paper explores how Polish anticolonial thought was shaped by Poland’s historical experience with subjugation and its own ambiguous stance on colonial ambitions.
Rachel O’Sullivan (Center for Holocaust Studies, Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History)
Nazi Germany’s Population Policies in Annexed Poland: A (Post)colonial Analytical Approach
For over two decades, historians have argued about the potential for understanding Nazi Germany’s actions in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, within wider global patterns of colonialism and colonial violence. While earlier arguments tended to overlook the many specifics of Nazi violence and the Holocaust, newer research which utilizes interdisciplinary comparative analysis demonstrates that investigating Nazi Germany’s actions in Poland from outside the sphere of National Socialist ideology can be productive, nuanced and does not deny the singular characteristics of Nazi rule or the Holocaust. Building on such research which seeks a more balanced approach, this paper explores two fundamental aspects of Nazi Germany’s expansion in annexed Poland—namely inclusion and exclusion—using a colonial lens. It examines reports and propaganda related to the resettlement and Germanization of ethnic Germans, alongside the oppression of Poles and Polish Jews in the Reichsgau Wartheland and Danzig West-Prussia. The paper then explores into the connections between inclusion, exclusion, and the Holocaust, viewed through the prism of the theoretical framework of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism operates by removing indigenous populations by numerous means including murder and replacing them with settlers, thus representing a particularly destructive form of colonial territorial control. This paper offers fresh insights into the population strategies and atrocities of Nazi Germany by viewing them from a different perspective, while also acknowledging the unique aspects of Nazi rule and violence in annexed Poland. It therefore highlights ways in which the (post)colonial analytical approach can be beneficial to certain aspects of Polish history.
Piotr Puchalski (University of the National Education Commission)
Postcolonial Dissonance: Polish Émigré Attitudes toward Colonialism in Africa
The participation of communist Poland in the Eastern Bloc’s ostensibly anti-colonial and solidarity policies in Africa was the subject of recent studies by scholars such as Przemysław Gasztold, Matthieu Gillabert, and Christopher Lash, to name only a few. Nonetheless, the growing literature on global political, cultural, and socioeconomic connections during the Cold War has paid less attention to the role of émigré communities from Eastern Europe in aiding, opposing or complicating the projects undertaken by either superpower in Africa, not to mention their own agenda for shaping relations with the established and newly independent states on the continent. In this talk, I analyse different Polish émigré communities in terms of their attitudes toward racism and colonialism, demonstrating the ways in which their anti-communist animus, Catholic faith, as well as the local political realities could all affect their attitudes toward colonialism in Africa.
Maria Rhode (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
Africa and the Religious Connection: Polish Anthropologists in the Field and at Their Home Desks (19th-20th Centuries)
Studies about 19th-century Poland’s colonial ambitions and Polish entanglements in the colonies mostly concentrate on adventurers, novelists, publicists and politicians. For example, colonial institutional experience and its impact on domestic politics has been analyzed in the case of the prominent activist Stanisław Szczepanowski (Klemens Kaps). Although Poles had also been active within Catholic missionary congregations in Africa, and while Poles like Mieczysław Ledóchowski held influential positions within the Catholic hierarchy building dense global networks, their impact on Polish imaginations about the continent and its population, especially racist thinking produced by religious actors and the missions, or the missionaries’ involvement with colonial scientific expeditions, still need more attention. In the first place, I will show the colonial mindset concerning the African continent, constructed by the Polish Catholic press. Secondly, I will follow Polish physical anthropologists’ work in Africa in order to demonstrate the importance of religious actors within the field of Polish physical anthropology as intermediaries on the spot.
João Fusco Ribeiro (University of Évora, Portugal)
Unlocking Opportunities: Polish Economic Interactions in Angola in the Aftermath of Decolonization (1975-1979)
The relations between the countries of the Soviet bloc (Global East) and the decolonized states of the Global South have been a particular subject of analysis by historians focused on the agency of both peripheries in creating transcontinental interconnections of “socialist solidarity”. The wave of decolonization that swept across Lusophone Africa (1974-1977), particularly the complex Angolan transition to independence, was an active phase in the development of these links with the communist world, even with socialist states that were until then reluctant to become entangled in the competitive dynamics of the Cold War in Southern Africa. Recent historiography argues that the involvement of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL- Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) in Africa was comparatively cautious and small-scale, based on a pragmatic approach guided by economic considerations and relatively independent of the Kremlin (see Gasztold 2018, 2023, Puchalski 2023, Knopek 2023). In this paper, using archival material, I dialogue with this literature by focusing on the case of Angola in the aftermath of decolonization as a privileged window of observation of the “hot” Cold War in Southern Africa in order to examine Warsaw’s economic engagement, interactions, specialization, and motives. Two main questions guided the research. The first deals with the modes of economic cooperation that were produced and its financial conditions (non-repayable aid, loans or deals in the form of hard currency or barter). The second deals at how Polish state-owned enterprises explored business opportunities in Angola and how they interacted with potential customers and cooperated or competed in a market crowded with other Socialist enterprises and Western transnational corporations.
Jerzy Stachowicz/Agnieszka Haska (University of Warsaw)
From Margarine Palma to the ‘Conquest of the Black Land’: Colonial Discourse as an Element of Contemporary Polish Cultural Imaginarium
The colonial discourse of the interwar period was part of the creation of an imagined Poland as a military, political and economic power. Even though these dreams of overseas conquests did not actually come true, various elements taken from the propaganda of the Maritime and Colonial League, with obvious changes, have been permanently embedded in popular and visual culture, public and even political discourse. Today colonial motifs can easily be found in the Polish cultural imaginarium; they continue to influence ways of thinking not only about the past, but also about the present. In the proposed paper we will identify these elements and discuss how colonial propaganda from a century ago is still a cultural pattern with influence on the contemporary public discourse in Poland and is still one of the foundations (albeit hidden) of the national myth. We also want to show how pointing out of Poland’s colonial entanglement in the interwar period and the presence of colonial themes in the cultural imaginary is disregarded or undermined in this discourse – or meets with political and social resistance.
Keely Stauter-Halsted (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Post-Colonial or Post-Imperial? The Residue of Empire in the Polish Second Republic
The paper will explore the ways imperial practices lingered during the early years of the Polish Second Republic, looking at matters of infrastructure such as imperial law, marriage codes, trade networks, and carceral forms (including civilian internment camps used in the broader colonial world and in the three empires). I will consider the question of whether these “ghosts of empire” represent post-colonial or post-imperial remnants – and why that matters to how we understand the transition from empire to nation-state.
Jakub Szumski (Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena)
From South West Africa to East Timor. Poland’s Legal Encounters with the Global South at the International Court of Justice
In 1962 and 1995, Polish lawyers from Poznań University, Bohdan Winiarski and Krzysztof Skubiszewski, participated in adjudicating two landmark cases as judges at the International Court of Justice (South West Africa and East Timor). Mentor and protégé, Winiarski and Skubiszewski, both delivered dissenting opinions against the Court’s majorities, but they provided completely opposite answers to the question of how international law should address post-colonial self-determination. In 1962, Winiarski, drawing on the tradition of formalism, was cautious about how the ambitions of the decolonized world could disrupt the existing international order and openly sided against other judges from the Socialist World. In contrast, during the 1990s, Skubiszewski embraced self-determination as a principle framed against Realpolitik and formal concerns, urging the ICJ to heed the “demands of justice.”
This paper explores the history of Poznań’s lawyers’ positions in cases of post-colonial self-determination as legal encounters with the Global South. It argues that between the 1960s and 1990s, these positions evolved to accommodate the ambitions and claims of the decolonized world. However, this evolution was not due to recognizing these claims as universal or analogous to national struggles in East-Central Europe. Instead, the change resulted from tensions between formalist and value-oriented styles of legal reasoning and the Cold War realities, which required the lawyers to orient themselves along the East-West axis.
Wiktoria Tabak (Jagiellonian University)
Looking beyond the Centre and Periphery
In my presentation, I would like to elaborate on the above recognitions and propose why, in my opinion, looking at Polish history and culture through decolonial perspectives is an activity that is not only promising but also necessary. I am interested in what an analysis of art, and especially theatrical performances in response to so-called ‘migration crises’, can offer in this context and this type of research. After all, following Bruno Latour (2013), I assume that art and science are social practices that reorganise the social imaginary and shape civic attitudes. Therefore, it is in their combination that I see the potential for the creation of a pluralist epistemology based on other, more embodied and affective, modes of knowledge production that can be treated as the realisation of decolonial praxis.
Rhuan Targino Zaleski Trindade (Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste – Brazil)
Polish Immigration and Brazilianness: The Narratives on ‘Polish Imperialism’ in Brazil during the 1930s
The 1930s saw the consolidation of a strong nationalist discourse of construction and establishment of Brazilianness as a policy of the government of Getúlio Vargas. In this context, foreign immigrants, as well as their descendants and the activities of their countries of origin, became preferential targets of government actions and policies that controlled migratory processes, criminalized foreign ethnic and national activities and stimulated the process of nationalization and the promotion of Brazilianness among descendants of foreigners and their institutions, among others. This phenomenon also manifested itself within the intelligentsia, especially the press, with anti-foreign narratives and the construction of threats and “perils” (perigos) linked to the immigrant presence and actions of countries of origin towards this population. The Poles, within this broader scope, were included as a potential “peril” to Brazilianness and national integrity, creating narratives of “Polish imperialism” in Brazil in different contexts, given the ethnic and national policies of the reborn Poland toward its immigrants since 1918. In this talk, I analyze such discourse in different historical sources: official documents, press, and literature.
Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ (University of Vienna)
Vietnamese Voices: Polish-Vietnamese Connections during Global Socialism
After the Geneva Accords, the Polish People’s Republic—as part of the socialist bloc—began providing support to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (or North Vietnam), launching a long collaboration between these two countries. While the resulting multilayered connections were, at times, overtly political, they were also wayward and intimate. Complicating the popular framing of the situation in postcolonial Vietnam as a “hot” proxy conflict driven by the interests of superpowers engaged in a supposedly Cold War, my talk will excavate the forgotten shared histories between Poland and Vietnam. Central to these encounters were practices of cultural and discursive production. Drawing on Vietnamese and Polish sources, the talk will examine these relations through the prism of an emergent cultural sphere and its role in forging, maintaining and, at times, subverting the political agenda. This sphere not only exposed Polish society to the postcolonial Other but was also essential in creating a sense of belonging to the socialist project. Through a series of examples, I show that the postcolonial moment in the socialist world was embedded in cultural knowledge production as much as culture was entrenched in, and a product of, concrete social and political relationships.
Jan Wasiewicz (Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznań)
The Postcolonial Perspective in the Study of Peasant History. The Colonial Question in the Peasant Press of the Second Polish Republic
In this paper I will pose the question of whether, and if so, to what extent/in what aspect, the (traditional) postcolonial perspective can be applied to the study of the history of the peasantry inhabiting the lands belonging to the various historical forms of the Polish state and the partitioning states. My aim will be to show that the adoption of such a perspective is heuristically prolific not only with regard to the history of the peasantry in the serfdom era (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries), but also in the later periods, in particular in the interwar period. In this context, I will focus on two issues: firstly, the internal colonisation taking place especially in the Eastern Borderlands, and secondly, how the situation of the peasantry in the Second Republic was linked to Polish aspirations and projects of overseas colonisation. Applying the postcolonial perspective to the critical analysis of these two issues will allow us to grasp important links between the internal socio-economic processes taking place in the Second Republic (agrarian overpopulation, hunger for land, land reform, migration) and the global situation. The source material on which I will base my analysis will be the results of research of the peasant press, in particular the weeklies: „Piast” and „Wyzwolenie”, the official organs of the two main peasant parties, respectively, the centre-right Polish People’s Party „Piast” and the left-wing Polish People’s Party „Wyzwolenie” [Liberation].
Łukasz Zaremba (University of Warsaw)
From Colonial Imagery to Colonial Imagination. Visual Culture and Colonialism without Colonies in Interwar Poland
Over the last two decades the leading researchers of the historical „colonial culture” in Poland have been literary studies scholars. Therefore, literature and the more general colonial discourse, has been recognized as the primary field of proliferation and production of colonial imagination in Poland, especially in the period ranging from end of the 19th century until the outbreak of World War II. However, the intensification of colonial fantasies in Interwar Poland (especially in the 1930s) coincided with an expansion of visual media in the public sphere. I thus investigate the role of various images – from colonial cinema, through the illustrated press to caricature, comics, and outdoor advertising – in processes that researchers recognize as „colonialism without colonies” or „colonial complicity”. The aim of the project is to interrogate the participation of a semi-peripheral, newly independent country in transnational colonial culture from a visual perspective, in which language is not a natural and easily detectable boundary between states. The presentation will draw attention to the challenges and difficulties related to examining the circulation and the role of images in generating colonial imagination and historical ways of seeing in the Interwar period.