“Your map showing the electoral divide in Ukraine (#343) is quite interesting, and put me in mind of a similar one that I saw last year, that prompted me do a bit of map research,” writes David G.D. Hecht. “If you look at the Wikipedia article on the Polish legislative elections of 2007, there is a map there similar to the Ukrainian one. I looked at this map and thought, hmmm…where have I seen this divide before? Looks very familiar. This isn’t just some urban/rural, professional/worker, white-wine-and-brie/beer-and-sausages thing!”
Mr Hecht did some overlay work, and came up with this remarkable fit: “The divide between the (more free-market) PO and the (more populist) PiS almost exactly follows the old border between Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia, as it ran through Poland! How about that for a long-lasting cultural heritage?!?” How about: amazing, bordering on the unbelievable?
The Ukraine map isn’t the first example on this blog of electoral cartography showing older cultural divides. Map #330 demonstrates a correlation in the Southern US states between areas of intense cotton production in 1860 and counties voting for Obama in 2008. And map #108 shows the regional divides at issue in France during the 2007 presidential election. I am reminded of German artist Heinrich Böll (b. 1917 in Cologne), who once said that he could still sense the cultural difference between both banks of the Rhine, once the border between the Roman Empire and the barbarian hordes across the river.
The erasure of older borders doesn’t mean they totally disappear — the new map is a palimpsest, even if it sometimes has to be held up to the UV light of an election for those old, overwritten boundaries to reappear. But it is quite strange for an old border like the one between the Kaiser’s Germany and the Czar’s Russia to reappear on a Polish election map as recent as 2007. Poland has moved around the map of Europe quite a bit, most recently in 1945. Poland basically moved west, losing its eastern part to the Soviets and gaining the eastern part of Nazi Germany.
The losses and gains of territory were accompanied by huge movements of people, in numbers probably not seen since the Völkerwanderung at the collapse of the Roman Empire. Expropriated Germans moved west, as did Poles, who took their place. In the context of that momentous re-organising of the region’s ethnic composition, the palimpsest of the Imperial border, cutting Poland in half, seems improbable. And yet there it is, in an almost perfect fit. As I am not an expert in Polish politics, the history of Polish resettlement in the country’s new territories, or the putative phenomenon of cultural-historical anamnesis, I welcome all tentative explanations for this phenomenon.
Many thanks to Mr Hecht for producing and sending in this overlay map.
This map isn’t on the English Wikipedia but can be found on the Polish one. It shows the electoral result map for the 2005 Sejm elections. The partitioning isn’t quite as clear cut but there is a still definite Europe v. Russia split. http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Wybory_sejm_2005_Barry_Kent.png
Comment by Jeffrey — December 15, 2008 @ 11:18 pm
V. interesting. How does the Polish map match up to industrialized/rural Poland and cross-border trade?
Comment by Taztigger — December 15, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
Thought-provoking. The formerly-Habsburg Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria isn’t mentioned, but is on the Russian side of this divide, indeed even more strongly PIS than the formerly-Russian Congress Kingdom of Poland.
Comment by Jonathan — December 16, 2008 @ 12:00 am
Another mass migration of people caused by borders: the Partition of India.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
Comment by boznia — December 16, 2008 @ 12:29 am
[...] Strange Maps shows the electoral impact of the (really) old Germany-Russia border through modern Poland. « Assorted Links [...]
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It always boggles my mind how history passes through generations.
Great map, thanks!
Comment by Justin — December 16, 2008 @ 2:32 am
This really isn’t that surprising given the massive demographic shift that occurred in Poland a little over 50 years ago as the German inhabitants were expelled from the formerly-German part and the area was resettled by Poles from the other side of the county. It wasn’t all that long ago, I really don’t think this divide is all that unexpected. I actually thought this would be the case and looked up these images about a year and a half ago myself.
Comment by Bob — December 16, 2008 @ 2:42 am
There’s a division of long standing between Poland A and Poland B.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729145-2,00.html
Briefly put, Poland A is composed of those regions and populations in western, northern and central Poland that have profited the most from the post-1989 reforms, while Poland B is composed of those regions in central and eastern Poland that have no profited. Poland A’s also disproportionately urban.
Comment by Randy McDonald — December 16, 2008 @ 3:05 am
Forget the pre-WWI imperial borders. Tsarist Russia is irrelevant. The significant date is 1945, before which none of the orange areas had ever been part of Poland. All of them were annexed from Germany after WWII, ethnically cleansed of Germans, and resettled by Poles. In general they have richer farmland than the rest of Poland. That’s the historic divide, and it’s still vaguely in living memory.
Comment by David — December 16, 2008 @ 3:35 am
Here’s another thought: How about the separation between the Ottoman Empire and the Austria-Hungary empire? I remember hearing in a class that you can tell when you crossed over that border – and that was back in 1985, when Yugoslavia was still united.
Comment by Don H. — December 16, 2008 @ 3:51 am
It’s not too surprising considering that the vast majority of the population in western Poland has been there for just over 50 years. They didn’t have time to get conservative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_from_Poland_during_and_after_World_War_II
Comment by Murphy — December 16, 2008 @ 4:04 am
Strictly speaking, a good chunk of that orange area was Polish after WWI (and inhabited by ethnic poles within Germany before that). In some ways that just makes the divide all the more striking, though, since only about half that orange area is inhabited by people who were expelled from the east and sent west to replace German expellees.
Comment by jfruh — December 16, 2008 @ 4:14 am
David, that’s actually totally false. All of the territories within Poland’s post-1945 borders sit comfortably within territories which over the coarse of history were part of Poland. In fact, today’s territories correspond to the old Polish territories of the Piast dynasty, with the exception of parts of the modern day German Laenders of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, and Brandenburg, as well as pieces of the Czech Republic. Poland’s history is tumultuous and spans over a millennium, during which parts of the Polish Kingdom broke off into duchies and merged back into the Crown due to internal and external forces. The cradle of the Polish state is after all in the west. Turning a blind eye to the imperial era is disingenuous since that by itself brought with it settlement, Germanization, and Russification policies.
Murphy, that’s also not quite accurate. The territories recovered by Poland from Nazi Germany are a fraction of western Poland. Also, the number of Poles expelled from the eastern lands annexed by the Soviet Union was comparatively small since those lands were relatively sparsely populated compared to Poland proper, and where Ruthenians, not Poles, formed the majority. Much of the very west of the country is also rather sparsely populated.
Comment by Bob the Chef — December 16, 2008 @ 5:33 am
Long time reader delurking now, since it’s rather rare that you see a map of my country here. There’s an interesting, and related fact to note: the German and Soviet occupations also left a different kind of map division. Check out the State Railway’s (PKP) map of connections. You’ll note that the density of rail tracks corresponds strongly with the same division we’re discussing.
Google Translated link (the site is in Polish): http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pkp.pl%2Fcop%2Fmapa&sl=pl&tl=en
Normal link: http://www.pkp.pl/cop/mapa
What you’re after is the first map. Note the striking similarity.
Also, I’m not the first to write about that, in fact I got the idea off a blog post I’m unable to locate at the moment.
Comment by k3rni — December 16, 2008 @ 7:11 am
Correction: not Soviet, but Tsar Russian of course.
Comment by k3rni — December 16, 2008 @ 7:13 am
“almost exactly follows the old border between Imperial Germany and Imperial Russia”
Was there a time when there was no Poland but Russia and Germany (Prussia?) shared a border? I think that is wrong…
Comment by Tony — December 16, 2008 @ 9:04 am
Re: the separation between the Ottoman Empire and the Austria-Hungary empire
It’s still visible, in Romania, when crossing the Carpathians. The area inside the mountains (Transylvania) was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while the rest (Moldavia and Wallachia) was part of the Ottoman Empire.
Actually, it’s also visible in the results of the 2008 elections (see here: http://www.politico.ro/harta-politica/deputati/), and we’re talking 90 years after the unification of the country and the dissolution of the empires.
Comment by dragos — December 16, 2008 @ 9:08 am
Edit: compare with the geographical map: http://ro.globalcom.ro/harti-din-romania/harta-fizica-romania.html
Comment by dragos — December 16, 2008 @ 9:10 am
“Was there a time when there was no Poland but Russia and Germany (Prussia?) shared a border? I think that is wrong…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_(1795–1918)
Comment by Pixelmatsch — December 16, 2008 @ 9:30 am
David, as Bob observes, you have been using your hat as a megaphone. Which is fine, I do plenty of that myself, except that you seem all too sure of your (non)facts.
Lying on the North European plain, Poland does not have natural borders on the east or west. This has meant that these borders have changed radically over time. If you look at a map of Poland around the year 1000 you’ll find its borders were fairly similar to the current ones. The main exception is that the north-eastern part of what is now Poland at that time belonged to pagan tribes closely related to modern-day Lithuanians. Also, the coast was only weakly linked to the Polish state. The two centres around which Poland formed in the previous century or so were Krakow in the south and Poznan in the west. Warsaw was not built until much later. Over time, Polish cities, especially in the west, came to be settled by German tradespeople, with a similar process taking place in the east, the difference being that there the cities came to be settled by Polish tradespeople. In effect, the cities in that is now western Poland became predominantly German while areas now in western Ukraine, Byelorussia and Lithuania came to have a large and powerful Polish minority. In line with that change, the borders of Poland slowly crept eastward with small, well-developed areas in the west being replaced by much larger but underdeveloped areas in the east. A map of Poland from around 1700 would show its western border running about a third in from its current western border but then continuing all the way to include all of the Baltic states, Byelorussia and Ukraine. Everywhere in the great area, the populations were highly heterogenous. The big events shaping the mix were the 1228 location of the state of the Teutonic Knights in eastern Prussia – resulting in the genocide of the local population and their replacement by a colonist German society and Poland’s 1794 subdivision between Prussia, Russia and Austro-Hungary. The line on the map does, indeed, follow the line between the Prussian-held and the Russian-held areas following this division, a line that divided Poles for well over a century. The Austro-Hungarian areas were much smaller and included Krakow and Lvov in the south of Poland. They tend to show the same voting patterns as the Russian areas. Very significantly, the Prussian areas saw a lot more development than the Russian or Austrian areas.
The division ended in 1918 but the Second World War brought further changes that have to be considered. Prior to WWII Poland was extremely heterogenous with large numbers of Jews, Germans, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, etc. living within its borders. I believe that, in fact, Poles accounted for less than fifty percent of the total, though I am not sure. After WWII, Poland became one of the most homogenous countries in Europe due to ethnic cleansing and genocide committed by the Russians and Germans. Importantly, there was a massive forced migration of Poles from formerly Polish lands in the east to the formerly German lads in the west. This means that many of the people now living in the west and voting for Citizens’ Platform are the descendants of those who lived in what is now Ukraine. In other words, it is perhaps misleading to give cultural explanations of the voting patterns. Instead, I suspect, the level of development of the respective areas must be considered – the Polish migrants in the west having had the benefit of the existing infrastructure in those areas. As Randy observes, the division is referred to within Poland as Poland A and Poland B – a historically-caused economic difference rather than a primarily cultural difference. This makes a lot of sense since the policies of Citizens’ Platform are perceived as being pro-business while the Law and Justice party is socially conservative but economically statist. The areas of the country which have reason to believe that they can manage without ’state-interference’ vote for Citizens’ Platform while those that feel they require ’state-aid’ vote Law and Justice. Further evidence for this is that the areas around Warsaw, which used to be under Russian control, none-the-less are well-to-do and vote Citizens’ Platform. Strangely enough, Polish voting patterns might, therefore, be seen as evidence for that old communist claim that the standard of living, much more than other considerations, shapes world-views.
Comment by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski — December 16, 2008 @ 10:35 am
I might add that there is an upside to Poland’s kaleidoscopic borders. It has given cause to several interesting strangemap posts.
Comment by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski — December 16, 2008 @ 10:43 am
“Here’s another thought: How about the separation between the Ottoman Empire and the Austria-Hungary empire? I remember hearing in a class that you can tell when you crossed over that border – and that was back in 1985, when Yugoslavia was still united.”
There is still a divide between liberal/Central European Voivodina and Serbia proper. To oversimplify a little, Voivodina has a tradition of ethnic coexistence. The more warlike, nationalist values often seen as typically “Serb” stem from the more backwards and mountainous areas in the South as well as Montenegro where most of the wartime leaders had their roots and may have been shaped by the guerilla-style fight for independence as well as the need for alternative organisation like clan and village against the more arbitrary Turkish rule.
The difference has slowly eroded though, following steady waves of colonization from the South.
Comment by Snirkelsnorkel — December 16, 2008 @ 11:08 am
Seems like I had a gap in my knowledge of the history of Poland… Anyway, I think the divide is between “what was Poland before 1945″ and between “what became Poland after 1945″.
Comment by Tony — December 16, 2008 @ 11:19 am
@12 Murphy
“It’s not too surprising considering that the vast majority of the population in western Poland has been there for just over 50 years. They didn’t have time to get conservative.”
Where do you get that standing for free markets would make you non conservative over being populist? Is that indeed traditionally the more liberal area of Poland?
Come to think of it, how is the main division between the PiS and PO listed as free market and populism, do they mean socialism?
Comment by BAT — December 16, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
[...] An Imperial Palimpsest on Poland’s Electoral Map — More weird political cartography from Strange Maps. [...]
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Let’s jump even farther back. Much of northern Europe was Christianised in the early 8th Century, not from the south, but from Britain, by St. Boniface (Wynfrith).
Even at that time the British version of Christianity was different than that emanating from Rome. Eight centuries later the split was formalized in the formation of the Anglican Church.
Most notably, however, at the end of the 17th Century religious wars in Europe, the demarcation between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic areas of Germany rarely wandered more than about 20 miles from the southern limit of the area Christianised by Boniface more than 900 years earlier.
Comment by Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) — December 16, 2008 @ 2:38 pm
Correlation != causation. Interesting though the overlay is, I’d be interested to see an overlay of economic performance, unemployment, rurality, all of which I’d suggest have more to do with the voting split than history: note the anomalies of Warsaw, Lodz and Krakow.
Comment by Anthony Zacharzewski — December 16, 2008 @ 4:46 pm
[...] of Imperial Germany up until 1918. A quite remarkable fit. The map is from the excellent blog Strange Maps, and was produced by David G.D. Hecht. I first heard about it from [...]
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Several people have commented that the division is really from 1945 and not 1918. That is wrong. Poland from 1918-1939 included portions of German Silesia and Pomerania that were part of Imperial Germany. Remember the “Polish Corridor” between East Prussia and Brandenburg? If the electoral distinction was because of 1945, then we would expect to see a swath of blue further west that cuts off Prussia. There’d be two distinct patches of orange. We don’t see that, so the division must be because of 1918.
When Poland was reborn in 1918, it had been divided and occupied since the Paritions of the 1790s. So Prussia (later Germany) and Russia developed the parts of Poland they occupied for over a century. That is a lot of time, and each country that ruled their portion of Poland left their mark. Even in 1918-1939 Poland there was an obvious difference between those parts once ruled by Germany and Russia, with the German portions being more industrialized, urban, and educated than the Russian portions. Interestingly, the part of Poland ruled by Austria-Hungary has politics closer to the eastern portion (once ruled by Russia) than the western portion (once ruled by Germany).
It is not surprising that such differences have lead to different outcomes, different interests, and different politics.
That those areas seized from Germany after 1945 also votes similarly is not surprising, as those areas would be similar to the part ruled by Germany before. But the distinction derives from the development of those Polish lands from the Partition period, not 1945.
Comment by Chris Durnell — December 16, 2008 @ 7:01 pm
Wonderful, wonderful post. The east-west divide – as some of you have already noted – comes from the pre-World War I division of Poland between Austria, Germany and Russia. Again, as in the Balkans, we have Europe’s superpowers to blame for the political landscape of modern Europe. Had Poland been divided differently it is safe to say that Poland’s political makeup would be wholly different. But does this mean that liberal politics (PO) is a more ‘civilised’ and western point of view and conservatism (PiS) in the Eastern European sense is a product of the mind of Homo Sovieticus?
See my related post:
http://uzar.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/age-old-legacy?referer=sphere_related_content/
Raf
http://uzar.wordpress.com/
Comment by Raf Uzar — December 16, 2008 @ 7:02 pm
In all election the voters map looks like this, no surprise here.
And saying those orange part were not habituated by Poles is more then a massive exaggeration. Poles have been living there under German rule. You also forgot about the third party: the Habsburg empire. This lasted for 123 years so the consequent influences wont just disappear in 50 years.
Comment by retro grrrl — December 16, 2008 @ 7:45 pm
@#25 – “Populist” in the sense of right-wing populist, heavily catholic traditional values xenophobic conservatism. Donald Tusks’s party is right-wing as well, though more pro-western, making the polish voting population one of the most right-leaning in all of Europe.
Comment by Birdseed — December 16, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
thanks
Comment by الوليد — December 16, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
Fascinating comments, Konrad. Thank you!
Comment by 256 — December 16, 2008 @ 8:29 pm
Tony, it is actually kind of good to hear about someone who did not know Poland had been subdivided. Prior to 1989 the most common error concerning Polish history seemed to be that it began in 1939. :-)
Birdseed, Poland is a somewhat right-wing country. It should be pointed out, however, that a few years ago the party of government was the ex-communists who now style themselves as social democrats. The reason they are not visible on the political scene is that their rule turned out to be ridiculously corrupt, with the last period of their rule being punctuated by new scandals on a weekly basis. In effect they dropped from over 40% of the vote to under 10%, with Law and Justice (PiS) and a couple of extremist parties taking over their voters in the short-term. That’s what led to Poland’s previous ultra conservative but also ultra incompetent government by Law and Justice and those other two parties. Citizens’ Platform represents a return to the centre, though Poland’s progressives have thus far failed to re-constitute themselves. I can not imagine this remaining a long-term situation as Poland’s youth are a lot more like the youth in France or England than like their own parents.
Comment by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski — December 16, 2008 @ 9:35 pm
256, thanks.
Comment by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski — December 16, 2008 @ 9:36 pm
Wow!! This is the web at its best. Somebody brings in a fact correlated by another fact and then an INTELLIGENT discussion follows. Some bring in facts that add to our knowledge, others bring in hypotheses (the Austrio-Hungarian thread in this discussion). Thank you all.
Comment by Bernard Massé — December 16, 2008 @ 9:41 pm
ISTM that the most likely explanation of this division is that the ex-German areas were the ones with the greatest population churn after WW II. This would include Pomerelia (the “Polish Corridor” between Prussia and Pomerelia) and the Poznan region (formerly the Warthegau). Though these areas were majority Polish, they had substantial German populations from the Middle Ages, and were further Germanized in the 1815-1918 era.
But then in 1945 the entire Germanophone population was expelled, replaced by Polophone transferrees from the east and south. It seems very probable that this new population was a mixture from all parts of “old Poland”, and thus lacked the longstanding local ties and family connections that existed in “old Poland”, and that even in the Corridor and Poznan this effect was very strong.
Comment by Rich Rostrom — December 16, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
“The big events shaping the mix were the 1228 location of the state of the Teutonic Knights in eastern Prussia – resulting in the genocide of the local population and their replacement by a colonist German society”
I wouldn’t call it “Genocide” Forceful Germanization began with unification of Germany. Until when authorities cared about contributions and taxes only. Disappearance or tribes of native Balts – Prussians is result of wars, plagues, famines, Germanization, Lithuanization, Polonization and finally plague and famine of 1709-1711.
Comment by L — December 16, 2008 @ 11:27 pm
“The big events shaping the mix were the 1228 location of the state of the Teutonic Knights in eastern Prussia – resulting in the genocide of the local population and their replacement by a colonist German society”
Second, the Old Prussians were not Polish nor Slavs but Balts akin to the Latvians and Lithuanians. Matter of fact, the Knights were called in by the Polish king to pacify them by force because they were a menace to the Polish state. True, the Knights eventually became a bigger menace.
It should also be added that the Prussians were probably Germanized rather than exterminated, as can be seen in the myriad of Prussian-derived placenames and dialect words.
Comment by Snirkelsnorkel — December 16, 2008 @ 11:42 pm
I too am struck by the fact that the greatest support for the state economy is in the south, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire not the Russian Empire.
I think you are also looking at a rural industrial split based on where the natural resources are.
Comment by Jeff Beeler — December 17, 2008 @ 1:40 am
Snirkelsnorkel, you’re quite right about both the original Prussians being Balts and the Teutons being called in by the Polish sovereign – not a king but a duke, however. But, I don’t think I implied anything that is inconsistent with what you say. Indeed, I say as much in my comments to an earlier post on this blog, in which I point out the connection between the 1228 event and the causes of WWII in 1939. As for the question of the degree to which the original Prussians were killed out right and to what degree they were simply forced to take up the culture of their conquerors I am definitely willing to give ground given evidence. Interestingly, there is now the possibility of obtaining just that by doing DNA studies of the descendants of Germans who’d lived in Eastern Prussia and comparing the results to other Germans and to Lithuanians. Two further pieces of evidence which suggest the genocide theory, however, are the speed with which Prussia was pacified by the Teutonic Knights, especially given how intransigent the locals had been till then, and the massive colonisation effort which followed, both of which suggest that the land had been cleared of its previous inhabitants. What-is-more, the existence of numerous Balt names living on would not seem to provide such strong evidence for the Germanisation theory given the existence of Indian and Aboriginal names in North America and Australia, both areas where the local populations were decimated by the invaders and form a tiny minority of the current population.
L, Germany was unified at the end of the 19th century, nearly 700 years after the events in question. You’re thinking of the Germanisation of the multi-ethnic societies that were typical of central Europe since the Middle Ages and accepted till the rise of nationalism, not what happened to the Balt Prussians. One way or another, they ceased to exist before the end of the 13th century.
Comment by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski — December 17, 2008 @ 1:41 am
Bob and Konrad, I think we have some confusion about what I meant by “Poland.” If you believe, as recent historians increasingly do not (see Timothy Snyder), that “Poland” is the logical continuation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, then yes, lots of places have been part of Poland. Even Moscow has been part of Poland, however briefly.
But if by “Poland” one means a modern nation-state founded in 1918 (and staking its legitimacy on a completely different kind of state that had vanished more than a century earlier), then my statement stands, although the point about the Polish Corridor is well taken. I don’t deny that some ethnic Poles lived in Silesia and Pomerania prior to 1945, but these areas were predominantly German and had been so since the middle ages. So, for that matter, was the Polish Corridor, and so was Danzig/Gdansk.
Before WWII, Poland (like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before it) was an extremely multiethnic state. Since the aftermath of the war, it has been among the world’s most homogeneous nation-states, due to the Holocaust, the loss of its eastern territories to the USSR, and the annexation and ethnic cleansing of Silesia and Pomerania.
It’s all well and good to say that the Rzeczpospolita controlled parts of the orange territory at various points centuries ago. But it doesn’t tell us much about why the present divide exists. It’s far more useful to understand the profound demographic shifts visited on those territories after 1945, as more than one commenter has noted.
Comment by David — December 17, 2008 @ 2:28 am
@25 BAT – The conservative remark was a joke. Sorry, I’ll put quotes on or something next time…
Nothing like a bit of nationalism to get the blood going. On one side you’ve got people telling us about the Piast dynasty and how the situation 700 years ago justifies annexing a majority-German territory. On the other hand other people write things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered_Territories
Comment by Murphy — December 17, 2008 @ 2:41 am
David,
Let’s not nitpick. We could also argue that Germany as a ‘modern’ state was founded in 1949, or in 1871. Take your pick.
Raf
http://uzar.wordpress.com/
Comment by Raf Uzar — December 17, 2008 @ 10:11 am
So the most convincing explanation for this would appear to be that western half of the country is wealthier, which has had an affect on voting patterns. But there don’t seem to be any explanations for what that is the case, and why the difference along the old borders is so stark. Could it perhaps be due to Western Poland’s inheritance of German infrastructure after 1945? If true it is a rather depressing conclusion, that late 19th/early 20th century development could still have such an impact today, in spite of everything done the Poles afterwards.
Comment by idantlol — December 17, 2008 @ 12:33 pm
Yeah, Raf, one could argue that. That’s what historians do. What do you think, that there’s always been a German nation-state? That nation-states are eternal and not historically contingent?
We’re trying to explain the historical circumstances that produce present-day discrepancies. I (along with many others) have argued that 1945 is the crucial date for understanding this map, because that’s when modern Poland absorbed the territories marked in orange. Other people are nitpicking by mentioning that the orange territories enjoyed some rule by a state called “Poland” (actually Poland-Lithuania) during the middle ages. So what?
If, instead of “none of the orange areas had ever been part of Poland”, I had written “none of the orange areas had been part of Poland since the middle ages”, we wouldn’t be having this debate. And then we could focus on my main point, which I stand by.
Anyway, Germany in 1949 is a rather weak analogy to Poland in 1918. Germany has been an independent state (and in 1949, was two independent states) since 1871. It was occupied militarily, split in two, reconstituted politically, and deprived of some territory, but it wasn’t abolished as a state or absorbed into the territory of its conquerors. The state of Poland-Lithuania disappeared forever in 1795. An independent Polish nation-state was founded in 1918, and radically transformed in 1945. Polish nationalists will tell you that the Poland of 1918 is the Poland-Lithuania of 1795, despite the fact that they are separated by more than a century, and have entirely different governments, ruling classes, and borders. Historians, however, view such claims as problematic at best.
Comment by David — December 17, 2008 @ 1:05 pm
thank
Comment by ท่อตัน — December 17, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
[...] excellent blog Strange Maps has just offered up a very interesting example of the last legacies of the recent past — meaning the past hundred years or so. This map, [...]
Pingback by edwired » Blog Archive » Imperial Legacies in the Present — December 17, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
David, I think that we’re actually much closer in views than this discussion sounds and that we’re both reacting to things that other people have written on this issue rather than necessarily what we have written. A number of views you seem to think are mine are, definitely, actually close to the opposite of what I believe. Thus, I am more than happy to say that post-1918 Poland was a very different nation from the pre-1794 Commonwealth of Two Nations whose identification with that earlier state is a simplification. I think that a careful analysis ought to capture both the continuity and the discontinuity of what might be called Polish history. I, certainly, would never argue for anything so ridiculous as the claim that the ethnic cleansing that took place in what is now western Poland after 1945 was historically justified by those areas having been part of a Polish state close to a thousand years earlier. I see such a view as abominable and, again, have said as much in a previous comment on this blog. I am also very much aware of the great amount of falsifying of history that gets done in the service of nationalist agendas and want nothing to do with them. Indeed, if you must know, I find myself at the extreme end of the Europhile spectrum and would be perfectly happy to do away with nation states today. When I use labels such as ‘Poland’ or ‘Germany’ it is as a shorthand and am happy to pick apart the assumptions within the use of such terms. Having said that, the claim that areas that are now within western Poland had never previously been a part of Poland is highly misleading. In fact, if your line of argument were accepted at face value you could reach the conclusion that, since Poland was a newly-formed country in 1918, Warsaw and Krakow had never been a part of Poland prior to 1918, a claim which, given the normal use of the term ‘Poland’, is at best wildly misleading and not one that I suspect you had intended to make. So, let’s not read into each other’s comments things we did not say.
Comment by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski — December 17, 2008 @ 2:32 pm
Those borders are not from the 1794 partition, which gave a significantly larger portion to Prussia, including Warsaw, as well as to Austria. These are 1815 borders, after the reconstituted Duchy of Warsaw was re-partitioned at the Congress of Vienna. Prussia accepted Russian control of the whole territory in exchange for control of Saxony, but opposition from France, Austria, and Britain forced them to accept only part of Saxony, as well as some Polish land.
Comment by Ethan — December 17, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
As the polish railways exactly fit to that map ( high density in the former german part, lower density in the former austrian and russian parts )I suggest that the liberals won there because it was easier to move from town to town for mass political meetings…;-)
Comment by lp — December 17, 2008 @ 6:17 pm
You’re quite right, Ethan. I was being sloppy.
Comment by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski — December 17, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
[...] in Daily life at 11:41 am by LeisureGuy Look at this fascinating map to see how old divisions hang [...]
Pingback by Old divides can be viewed on new maps « Later On — December 17, 2008 @ 7:41 pm
[...] odtworzyłem granice zaborów niz David Hecht, który wpadł na ten pomysł i który wysłał Strange Maps tę mapę: Za Strange [...]
Pingback by » ‘Historyczna’ mapa wyborcza: edycja polska i ukraińska Trystero: O tym się nie pisze. — December 17, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
Yesterday:
“Expropriated Germans moved west, as did Poles, who took their place.”
“Moved west?” They were chased out of their houses at gunpoint. German civilians either fled the advancing Soviet army out of fear of being raped/beaten/killed, or they were afraid of being captured and sent to gulag. They lost everything. At least the people removed from eastern Poland were compensated with German property when they were relocated to what is now western Poland….
Today:
Poland has become an emigrant country. Most young Poles want to leave their country, as there are no jobs. Where are the Poles going? I cannot imagine that there would be any jobs for them in Germany……..
Comment by Bourgoises Pig — December 17, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
I doubt this corresponds to former German areas, as nearly all the ethnic Germans left, and were replaced by Poles who had been in turn evicted from the territories to the East by the Russians when they occupied certain areas that formerly were Polish.
So in present day Poland, those living in the Western Poland are descended from those who had their origins in Eastern Poland.
It seems that the pattern corresponds more closely to urbanization, as I can see urban areas of Warsaw, Radom, Bialystok, and Lublin, all not in the area formerly under German administration.
Comment by enigmafoundry — December 17, 2008 @ 9:43 pm
Konrad– fair points. I’ve acknowledged that I was guilty of oversimplification in my original post. I certainly didn’t intend to start an argument, and neither did I intend to refer to you with my reference to “Polish nationalists” (who, in any event, have understandable grievances given the course of Poland’s 20th century history). I’m something of a polonophile myself, and I once enjoyed a wonderful week in Warsaw and Krakow (not to mention Vilnius, a city that was Polish when Wroclaw and Poznan were not). Apologies for any misunderstandings.
The point is, the modern history of those western areas marked in orange as ethnically Polish territories begins with the forced resettlements after WWII. That, and not the border between imperial Russia and Germany, is probably the most relevant starting point for understanding this map.
Comment by David — December 17, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
someone should do a similar map for western Belarus, formaly east poland
Comment by Elefant — December 17, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
Elefant:
When there are real elections there I’m sure somebody will.
Comment by Styr — December 18, 2008 @ 12:57 am
@#61 “someone should do a similar map for western Belarus, formaly east poland”
I’m not the biggest student of Belarussian politics, but I’m fairly sure you won’t see a huge divide in the electorate of most dictatorships!
Comment by BAT — December 18, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
There are, in fact, four regions on this map of Poland. Russian, Austrian and German partition from pre-WWI and former German territories annexed after WWII. In 2007, people in the last part voted alike as their counterparts in former German part. Also, Austrian part voted alike Russian. But in both cases, reasons may be different as history of those population is different.
But look at the most south-eastern district of Poland, distinguishing itself by pretty orange. It was inhabited mostly by Ukrainians and/or Ruthenians before and just after WWII. In 1947 those terrains were ethnic cleansed (most of population were sent to the lands taken from Germany) and then re-settled by people from various region of Poland. In fact, history of this district is very similar to western and north-western parts of country. And look, they voted alike in 2007.
Comment by amatil — December 18, 2008 @ 3:38 pm
[...] Die Polen, der Kaiser und der Zar Von Jörg Lau | 10:24 Wieder einmal eine erstaunliche Karte bei Strange Maps: Hier sieht man die Ergebnisse der polnischen wahlen von 2007. Das Land ist gespalten zwischen den [...]
Pingback by ZEIT ONLINE - joerglau » Die Polen, der Kaiser und der Zar — December 19, 2008 @ 9:24 am
As a non-European living in Poland for over a year now and teaching in Wroclaw (Breslau), I find this to be no surprise. (I AM pleasantly surprised at the level of historical knowledge and absence of name-calling that always plagues these online forums.) :)
As some of you have correctly noted, the map above shows only the German-Russian border before 1918, not Austrian Galicia, and not the interwar German-Polish border, which closely follows one of the oldest political boundaries in east central Europe: the eastern border of the Holy Roman Empire (1335-1806) and then the German Confederation (1815-66). After 1918, most of German Posen (Polish Wielkopolska, “Greater Poland”) and West Prussia were assigned to Poland; these areas had been under continuous Prussian/German rule for just over a century, from 1815. The overwhelming majority of Poles west of THAT line arrived only in ‘45, though I stress that the situation is MUCH more complicated than one of simple expulsion and settlement. Many border areas of German Silesia had sizable Polish minorities, and Breslau always had a small Polish community until the 1930s. Many Germans fled west before the Red Army in ‘44-45 (the German authorities in Breslau removed all women, children, and old men before turning the city into a fortress, which was then burned almost to the ground in three months of horrific fighting). Most of the rest were forcibly expelled after the war by the new Polish authorities, and went to (usually the western) zone of Germany. But many stayed on, and left only in the ’50s, for the DDR. Others never left, and “became” Poles; a few are still bilingual. I live just over that interwar line on the “old Polish” side, where Poles can visit their grandparents in local cemeteries, but there were many Germans or Germanized Poles here as well, and still are (e.g. our bilingual neighbors the Hoffmanns). And several of my students, mostly Silesians, have German-origin names, just as many others have eastern ones of Belarusian or Ukrainian origin ending in -ewicz or -uk.
All that said, I’m not sure this matters as much as the facts of geography, urbanization, and general political and social trends. The former German lands are much closer to Germany and the Czech Republic, many students study German in school (as well as English, of course), the farms and industries were generally more modern, and you see much more business, high-tech, and foreign investment, not only from the EU but also U.S. and East Asian companies. And as #64 points out, the Poles who arrived after the war were immigrants, even if often involuntary — and immigrants in all societies often have a different outlook from longer-settled populations. (That might partly explain the popularity of PO in southern East Prussia, another post-’45 part of Poland, which is closer to Russian Kaliningrad than anything else.) I’ve heard that western Polish society is less religious too, though I’m not in a position to judge this.
The historical legacy is there, but I think it’s too easy to fall back on the old divisions. I live near two cities of similar size, Ostrow Wielkopolski and Kalisz. The former was German Ostrowo, the latter belonged to Tsarist Russia. Ostrow has more cafes and still has some of the feel of an eastern Prussian provincial town (the Red Baron was stationed there before WW1). Kalisz is bigger, historically more important, was home to a large Jewish minority (and Germans and Russians), but has fewer cafes. Do people from Kalisz vote more for PiS than people from Ostrow *because* they are on “that” side of the old line? Did PO win by a landslide in Lower Silesia *because* it used to be in the Reich?
Comment by Ron — December 19, 2008 @ 11:59 am
Let’s say me in this very interesting debate and forgive me my poor English (much poorer than knowledge about true history of Poland :)
I’m very impressed by your knowledge about history of Poland but I have to correct some pure speculations.
This interesting map have two mistakes.
Minor: This voting divide of Poland is a constant and real fact but not so pure and radical as on this map. I suppose the map is little “improved” to thesis.
Major: Main reason of this partition isn’t old German Imperial, that is way old German borders on this map is not correct reason of this political divide. To be more strictly – they are true “virtual reason”. Why?
Because this partition has two reasons: II WW with Hitler’s policy total cleaning genocide all “Nongermans” to old german borders (e.g. borders before I WW), and the second – 45 years of communism totalitarity.
During II WW western part of nowadays Poland was completly ethnically cleaned (forced displaced/displaced to forced work/death camps/forced germanised/murdered) from lands owned by Poland before 1939 and from lands owned this time by nazist Germany, but traditional residing by etnically Polish people, what wasn’t problem in earlier centuries, before age of strong nationalism. That is way during II WW Germans totally cleaned from Poles “orange” part of map (part of this Poles was forced replaced to “Generalna Gebernia” – blue part of this map.
This is first reason of this divide. Second reason is 45 years of communism totalitarism.
As a decision of three wining powers, especially USSR, etnic and historical borders was completly ignored and Polish borders was displaced some hundreds kilometers to West and former German land was totally depopulated. This decision (and of course 6 years of war) generated millions homeless, unrooted people. This regained “orange” territory was settled by Poles but it wasn’t “homogenic probe” of Poles. It was settled especially by “loose” people – town proletary, homeless people from destroyed towns, non-land ownned peasants, youngest child of peasants, millions of forced displaced from old east part of Poland and of course – thousands victims of war – completly homeless and zero owners with addiction of adventurers, thieves, burglars and so on. This way “blue” territory was better cleaned from this type people.
Next reason was rule of communists – on “blue” territory, not depopulated by Germans, communists was viewed as absolutly evil people – there they stool lands on mass scale, thieved homes, “nationalised”=thieved all possesion remained after war. In addition there was rest of old Polish power, old Polish high-society (strongly genocided by Russians and Germans – part of total policy to re-engineered all nation in uneducated peasants) but still cooperated and existing in consciousness of people.
On the “orange territory” there was quite diffrent. There communists can play role of “good policemans” – all territory was depopulated from stampede escaped Germans to absolutely “tabula rasa” state. So communists can by “good” – give homes, lands, etc. And it was “clean territory” – there they was only, not called in question power, only ruled of everybody life success or defeat and even death, only high society between eradicated, rooted out people. There were good terms for total social-engineering. 45 years of this situation consolidated of this political partition.
On the other hand there are other reasons of this partition: divisions and unbalanced development in XIX c., continous changing mentality from “heart of Europe” to “Asiatic Mongol steppes”, and so on, but these are only minor reasons in confrontation with two absolutely total reasons – biggest victim of II WW caused by two imperial totalitarisms: 5 years rules of the one of them and 45 years rules of the second (1939-1989).
Great thanks for reading my lame English text. :)
Best regards
/-/
Mariusz [mr.]
¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
Comment by Mariusz [mr.] — December 19, 2008 @ 11:29 pm
Official Polish Railways Map:
http://www.paiz.gov.pl/_img/_pictures/4405.gif
Comment by lp — December 20, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
Excellent! A border that is not a border!
The past is always present.
Good job!!
Comment by lichanos — December 20, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
Some have already touched on this, but the reason behind these voting patterns is not the old pre-1944 borders, since the vast majority of the population(s) living in these areas was forcibly removed in 1944-49. If the old populations were responsible for these patterns, then this map would have to extend further eastward into modern Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine to include the 2.1 million Poles who inhabited parts of these countries (as relics of the Old Rzeczpospolita/Commonwealth days) before being expelled by the Soviets in 1944-47. The real reasons behind this map have to do with the population that replaced those of pre-1944, and more importantly, the rather new sense of social mobility created by the massive population movements of the war. Besides the 10-13 million Germans expelled from Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania, there were also millions of Poles within Poland who had been expelled by the Nazis from various regions (e.g., Warthegau, Lublin-Zamosc, etc.), as well as millions of war refugees and returning soldiers and slave laborers from the Reich. All of this added up to an unusually mobile population where people simply chased jobs within Poland to wherever they were available, and the ‘ziemie odzyskane’ — the seized territories from Germany — were ripe for such migrants. This social fluidity never completely went away, moreover, and these regions of Poland fostered a lifestyle among its inhabitants who felt little ancestral connection to their home cities, and who easily moved to other parts of the country if better opportunities existed there, in very stark contrast to the staid, conservative and land-based pre-war population. Naturally such peoples are more likely to accept change and will often vote more liberally than those still tied to their ancestral home region. Compare a place like New York City in the U.S. which has a huge proportion of its population not actually born in the city, to somewhere like rural Alabama where a majority of the population can trace their ancestry in the region back centuries.
Comment by Tomek — December 20, 2008 @ 8:57 pm
LOL @ David’s comment…
“The significant date is 1945, before which none of the orange areas had ever been part of Poland.”
Yeah, the “orange” parts actually include my home town Poznan, where Poland was founded.
I guess that shoots down pretty much everything you said. Good say Sir.
Comment by Dave W — December 21, 2008 @ 7:02 am
Конкурс для блоггеров от DRUGREVENUE с призовым фондом в 3000 долларов, спешите
Comment by Sergey Brin — December 21, 2008 @ 3:46 pm
Who knows the musical the fiddler on the roof?
Does it have anything to do with this history?
The Litvak?
Sholem Aleichem
Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi
In the second half of the 16th century it became a center of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Bohdan Khmelnytsky called here the “Council of Pereyaslav”, where the Ukrainian Cossacks had voted for a military alliance with Muscovy and accepted the Treaty of Pereyaslav.
Comment by Faust — December 21, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
…also… Die Kommentare sind meistens doof…. Bevölkerung aus dem Osten (heute Ukraine) war umgesidelt nach Westen. Dazu auch viele aus Mittelpolen. Pommern war polnisch. Ostpreussen vorher auch. Ditto Schlesien und Niedersachlesien. Teil der DDR-Gebiete auch. Die Grenzen wurden durch die Dummheit von Politikern so gezeichnet. Am besten versuchen wir uns damit abzufinden….
Comment by Marek51 — December 22, 2008 @ 10:06 am
Poland got milk?
http://cool-maps.blogspot.com/search?q=poland
Comment by Björn — December 22, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
Voting behavior is interesting. However, it would be much more interesting to see a map that reflects the percentage of Poles that are learning German. Is the number of German speakers in Poland increasing or decreasing? How does it vary by region?
Language, more than anything else, is the biggest barrier between Poland and Germany.
Comment by Bourgoises Pig — December 22, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
[...] Or that the party divide in the 2007 Polish Legislative elections mimics the WWII border between Ger…? Regional differences are well pronounced in Ukraine’s electoral maps. Andrea, who just returned from Berlin mentioned that she saw the old division between East and West was still quite pronounced. The lesson from these maps and experiences are that old borders/divisions between people rarely go away easily. It’s also an interesting observation – that despite increased opportunities for personal mobility, that old traditions and borders can have such a strong effect on the present. [...]
Pingback by Old Habits Die Hard | Now and Then: an American Social History Project blog — December 22, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
“As Randy observes, the division is referred to within Poland as Poland A and Poland B – a historically-caused economic difference rather than a primarily cultural difference.”
it should also be noticed that, in the interwar Second Republic, a similar distinction between Polands A and B was made on that Poland’s territory. Poland B comprised what is now western Belarus and Ukraine, though, while the more developed Poland A comprises what is now Poland B. So there’s a certain historic west-to-east downwards economic gradient at play, as well.
Comment by Randy McDonald — December 23, 2008 @ 3:18 am
Hey, David, let’s see Wikipedia:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Polska_992_-_1025.png
> LOL @ David’s comment.
>
> “The significant date is 1945, before which none of the
> orange areas had ever been part of Poland.”
>
> Yeah, the “orange” parts actually include my home town
> Poznan, where Poland was founded.
And this cradle of polish state is located almost in the very heart of “orange areas” :)
Best regards
/-/
Mariusz [mr.]
Comment by Mariusz [mr.] — December 24, 2008 @ 12:42 am
[...] geography matters. A recent post on Catholicgauze, and also at gnxp and Strange Maps, shows how the geographic borders of Imperial Russia and Imperial Germany still predict election [...]
Pingback by tdaxp » Blog Archive » Did Geographic Ignorance Accelerate Detroit’s Decline? — December 24, 2008 @ 3:36 pm
“Yeah, the “orange” parts actually include my home town Poznan, where Poland was founded.”
Maybe the Polish Kingdom, but legend has it that Poland began in Gniezno. The name says it all.
Comment by eric — December 26, 2008 @ 12:38 am
[...] of half-eaten meat, Britain in a cloudbank, or Australia in a puddle; but some way down the page there was a fascinating post that superimposed the outline of imperial Germany on a color display of recent electoral returns in [...]
Pingback by Fresh Bilge » Caution: Cartographer at Work — December 27, 2008 @ 11:48 pm
An excellent site to sense the Austro-Hungarian/Ottoman divide is Belgrade. If you travel northward from Macedonia through the Serbian heartlands there is that hard to define Balkan atmosphere, which doesn’t change when you enter Belgrade. A large metropolis, but a Serbian one, definitely the Balkans. Now cross the Sava river into Semlin (Zemun), today suburb of Belgrade, before 1914 an Austrian frontier town. The change is abrupt: the architecture and, with it, the atmosphere becomes definitely Central-European. Cyrillic inscriptions have gradually replaced Latin over the past twenty years but if you disregard them and close your ears, you are in Austria. Or rather the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for Semlin was part of the Vojvodina, a region which even today is only partly Serbian-speaking. (A sizable part are ethnic Hungarians, numbers vary with whom you are speaking to)
Comment by Guido — December 29, 2008 @ 6:39 pm
These kind of maps are excellent, they remind us that however things may change, nothing is ever really new, but the present is always connected to history.
Also, however silly and childish it may be, I just can’t resist to point out that the name of the party PIS literally translates to “PISS” in Dutch. XD It cracks me up every time.
Comment by Watson Waterstone — December 31, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
yo…
wonderful…
Trackback by liger — January 2, 2009 @ 11:23 am
It’s good that you paid attention to the huge movements of people after the war. Actually, in 1945 only about 30% of Poles lived in the same places where they had lived before the war.
Comment by Krzysztof — January 6, 2009 @ 2:00 pm
[...] georiënteerde (PiS). Oude grenzen vervagen dus blijkbaar niet zomaar? Bij het kaartenblog Strange Maps gingen ze u al voor in Duiding ende Discussie. Maar ga gerust uw gang in de comments, hier alvast [...]
Pingback by Grenzen Duits Keizerrijk In Europa van nu - Sargasso — January 8, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
[...] 348 – An Imperial Palimpsest on Poland’s Electoral Map « Strange Maps (tags: invisibleborders history map psychogeography politics poland) [...]
Pingback by anthillz » Blog Archive » links for 2009-01-10 — January 10, 2009 @ 11:04 pm
“The significant date is 1945, before which none of the
orange areas had ever been part of Poland.”
@David
With all the respect due to Your historial knowledge and culture of word, allow me however to disagree. As a matter of fact the great of majority of mentioned area are native Poland lands. You put too much epmhasis on borderlines whilst the bottom line is the identity of local societies, which over the centuries regardless of established state responded mostly to Polish sentiments. Adding to aforementioned multinationality of these regions, it should be noted that among inhabitants of these “reclaimed lands” we can distinguish people who declare their nationality to which none of the kingodms that ever existed corresponds (such as Silesians).
What more can be submitted in favour of Polish origins of Greater Poland and Silesia(Upper and Lower). During turmoil of the ages, when these lands fell from one reign to another, as far as I know there was never any significant local civic or military movement aiming at incorporating them into German or any other state. On the contrary, numerous initiatives were undertaken for the sake of reestablishing Polish reign(especially at times of subdivisions). Actually, in history of Poland, there were only two successful military uprisings – both took place in Greater Poland, respectively in 1806 and 1918. Obviously precondition for a successful military uprising is overwhelming support from local population. And You claim that these were never Polish lands.
As for the merits, the reasons for voting distribution are purely economical (as it was already pointed out), but have their roots in history as decades of German reign showed up not only in Kulturkampf but also in (relative) economic progress, while Russian Tzars and Austrian Emperors deliberately pushed subdue them lands into poverty and backwardness.
Wish You all the best
Kamil
Comment by Kamil — January 12, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
Just thought I’d ask, for those of you who read German or Polish, I started Gregor Thum’s very interesting and well researched “Die fremde Stadt: Breslau nach 1945″ (”The foreign city: Wroclaw after 1945″) over the holidays. It focuses mainly on the process of creating a modern Polish identity for the city during the Communist decades, and not on social developments as much (much less voting patterns), but is obviously relevant for our question.
Re 83, I’m not exactly sure what “that hard to define Balkan atmosphere” is. I spent some wonderful holidays in Belgrade and throughout pre-’91 Yugoslavia a few years ago, and both downtown Belgrade and many of the neighborhoods felt very “central European” to me. The architecture is somewhat different from the familiar Habsburg styles of Zagreb or downtown Sarajevo, but that’s to be expected: the rulers of 19th-century Serbia modeled their buildings after numerous Western influences, not only Austro-Hungarian. The few traditional Ottoman-style houses left in the old city (e.g. the Question Mark inn, or the Skadarlija district) seem as touristy to the locals as to, well, tourists.
Comment by Ron — January 13, 2009 @ 12:35 am
Ron, you’ve just reminded me of what is possibly the single best book to look at to understand the history of that part of today’s Poland. I am thinking of Norman Davies’ _Microcosm: A Portrait of a Central European City_. The city is Wroclaw, in the south west part of Poland, which was part of Germany and called Breslau before 1945 (among 50 or so other names it has had and numerous countries that it has belonged to). Davies is very good on showing the intricacy of the identities that the inhabitants of places such as Wroclaw have felt were theirs throughout history.
Comment by Konrad Talmont-Kaminski — January 13, 2009 @ 8:15 am
[...] Strange Maps has interesting posts about “electoral cartography showing older cultural divides.” [...]
Pingback by Attempting to Redraw History « From Laurel Street — January 15, 2009 @ 10:35 pm
[...] German, Russian, and Austrian empires. And it seems that Poland’s recent election results partially track the separation between the formerly-German and the formerly-non-German parts of the [...]
Pingback by Matthew Yglesias » The Ghosts of the Past — January 16, 2009 @ 10:10 pm
thank you for your report dear
Comment by اس ام اس باحال — January 17, 2009 @ 1:45 pm
>I am reminded of German artist Heinrich Böll (b. 1917 in Cologne), who once said…
Just to set the record straight, Heinrich Böll was one of Gerany’s foremost post-WW II _writers_ (not that writers aren’t a _kind_ of artist).
Comment by Wub-Fur Internet Radio — January 17, 2009 @ 7:18 pm
[...] 348 – An Imperial Palimpsest on Poland’s Electoral Map « Strange Maps The Ukraine map isn’t the first example on this blog of electoral cartography showing older cultural divides. (tags: history statistics europe maps poland) [...]
Pingback by links for 2009-01-18 « Embololalia — January 18, 2009 @ 6:01 pm
[...] "An Imperial Palimpsest on Poland’s Electoral Map" [Strange Maps] (tags: Poland) [...]
Pingback by Life of Alan » links for 2009-01-20 — January 21, 2009 @ 4:00 am
poland is a so so beautifull country in this world.i wisited already near the poland.i met with the peopol,s of POLAND.peopol,s are good there.The Weather is godd there.my wish to go there again in next year.
Comment by khizer mehmood — February 11, 2009 @ 9:09 pm
I don’t know if this has already been said, but saying that the border between Germany and Russia ran through Poland is a very unwise choice of wording. Pomerania and Silesia was German and the Germans who lived there were forced to move – many died during the journey to an already burdened Germany. In total, 20 millions from former German territory and Eastern Europe became refugees, of which 3 millions died.
Comment by Emil KR — February 16, 2009 @ 12:38 am
I think the railway map is the most revealing here.
It is clear that the Imperial German areas received much more economic development than the Imperial Russian areas. That sort of economic change lasts a *long* time — which areas have been industrialized sticks for centuries in some cases (look at English geography). So it is quite likely that the Imperial divisions *determined* the later economic divisions into “Poland A” and “Poland B”, which drive the politics.
This explanation does not require any continuity of people, only of factories, mines, roads, railways, ports, etc.
Comment by N. — February 22, 2009 @ 3:21 pm
[...] eines Blogposts von Anne bin ich auf eine tolle Karte der Wahlergebnisse von Polen aus dem Jahr 2007 gestoßen. Es zeigt die Spaltung des Landes Polen – [...]
Pingback by Wahlen in Polen 2007 | schonleben mittendrin: subjektiv, subversiv! — March 9, 2009 @ 10:38 am
It’s fascinating following this discussion. I must agree and side with David, though. Most of the people in here disagreeing with him seem to do so deliberately, not willing to actually read what he is saying.
Schlesien, Pommern and Preussen have for the larger part of modern history, the period of organized societies, been part of German states, although these areas, as most border regions in Europe, were traded back and forth through waves of settlement and conquests, as well as treaties and truces. Some of the first known people to inhabit Schlesien, for example, were Germanic tribes, who were later driven out by Poles. Then, in the Middle Ages the Germans moved back in slowly, and the core of these lands remained German in culture and demographics up until WWII.
That the Germany of Adolf Hitler committed unimaginable atrocities against Poles, Jews and others from 1939 to 1945 does not, however, justify forcibly expelling 16 million German civilians, of whom 2 million were murdered, from their ancestral lands. See this link for the ethnic makeup of Eastern and Central Europe in 1914.
I would think that the major reasons for these areas to vote more liberal today than the rest of Poland are that they are closer to the rest of Europe and see the benefits of transnational cooperation and development, and the fact that these areas are, and were, highly industrialized, making for a, on average, more affluent and better educated population, prone to vote for more liberal and secular parties than the less educated and well of, mostly rural east. I’m sure church attendance would be lower, and that support for the EU and level of education would be higher than in these areas, too.
Comment by Ole P. — March 18, 2009 @ 9:55 am
not very surprising.
It has been only 50 years.
Compare these 2 maps:
http://weeswaakzaam.punt.nl/upload/520px-SGP-stemmers_per_gemeente_Tweede_Kamer_2003.jpg
and
http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/351/351-083.htm
one is from 2003 (% voters for a small religious party) the other the cease fire line of the Dutch/Spanish war (1609-1621)
Comment by Anton — April 4, 2009 @ 1:42 pm
My own theory is as follows:
The western territories of Poland, reclaimed from Germany after World War II have only been inhabited by Poles for a few decades, mostly by people expelled from parts annexed by the Soviet Union.
The fact that those people were expelled from their former homelands and raised in an area where the Communists could start from scratch is reflected in a weakening of traditional ties and the influence of the Catholic Church.
Therefore, the less traditional and religious western half of the country, which has historically voted for liberal socialists and post-Communists had this time voted for free-market liberals, whereas the more religious, patriotic and conservative east voted more conservatively.
So while the West seems to have made an about turn from left to right in its voting preferences, all it’s really doing is switching cola brands by choosing one brand of liberalism over another.
The East voted for a moderately conservative party with a hotchpotch of economic views, ranging from socialist to free-market. But the economic system was an issue of secondary importance for those voters.
Comment by Martin — April 5, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
Nice…
Comment by immifsalist — April 7, 2009 @ 6:21 am
@Martin:
“My own theory is as follows:
The western territories of Poland, reclaimed from Germany after World War II have only been inhabited by Poles for a few decades
”
Please, read the comments. The most orange part in the middle of the western Poland on this map is Wielkopolska region, which has been inhabitated by strong Polish majority for 1000 years.
Comment by jakas1 — May 29, 2009 @ 6:47 am
Yes, but those areas were few among the territories that Poland acquired as compensation for the east (where Poles were a minority except for the northest part)-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bevölkerungsverteilung_Ostmitteleuropa_um_1918.jpg – You can see the clearer red line indicate the border of Germany as of 1918.
Comment by Emil KR — May 29, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
Vielen Dank
Comment by moon — July 3, 2009 @ 5:30 am
Muchas gracias
Comment by sun — July 4, 2009 @ 7:58 am