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Poland, [c] officially the Republic of Poland, [d] is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative voivodeship provinces, covering an area of 312,696 km 2 (120,733 sq mi). [14] Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union.
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1 day ago · Poland, a country of central Europe, is located at a geographic crossroads that links the forested lands of northwestern Europe and the sea lanes of the Atlantic Ocean to the fertile plains of the Eurasian frontier. Poland’s capital city is Warsaw, and other important cities include Krakow and Gdansk.
Poland is located in the exact geographical center of the European continent. Poland is the first European country and second country overall to have written a constitution, although the constitution has changed (as recently as 1997). Poland's flag is divided between two equally sized horizontal strips, with white on top and red on bottom.
- Warsaw
- Prime Minister: Donald Tusk
- 1 USD equals 4.047 Polish zloty
- (2024 est.) 37,587,000
- Overview
- The early state
- Collapse and restoration
history of Poland, a survey of important events and people in the history of Poland from the time of its foundation as a state. Located at a geographic crossroads in central Europe, Poland has waxed and waned over the centuries, buffeted by the forces of regional history. In the mid-1500s united Poland was Europe’s largest and perhaps most powerful...
The terms Poland and Poles appear for the first time in medieval chronicles of the late 10th century. The land that the Poles, a West Slavic people, came to inhabit was covered by forests with small areas under cultivation where clans grouped themselves into numerous tribes. The dukes (dux) were originally the commanders of an armed retinue (drużyna) with which they broke the authority of the chieftains of the clans, thus transforming the original tribal organization into a territorial unit. Two tribes, the Polanie—based around the fortified settlement (castrum) of Gniezno—and the Wiślanie—who lived near Kraków—expanded to bring other tribes under their control.
Exposed to some missionary activities linked with St. Methodius, the state of Wiślanie fell under the rule of Great Moravia—which was destroyed by the Magyar invasion of the early 10th century—and came eventually under the rule of Mieszko I, the first ruler of the Polanie to be mentioned in written records. He is regarded as the founder of the Piast dynasty, the beginnings of which are clouded in legend, though the names of three of his predecessors are known. Creating what a contemporary Spanish-Jewish traveler, Ibrāhīm ibn Yaʾḳūb, described as the most powerful of the existing Slav states, Mieszko accepted Roman Catholicism via Bohemia in 966. A missionary bishopric directly dependent on the papacy was established in Poznań. This was the true beginning of Polish history, for Christianity was a carrier of Western civilization with which Poland was henceforth associated.
Facing the crucial problem of Poland’s relationship to the two pillars of medieval Christendom, the Germanic Holy Roman Empire and the papacy, Mieszko battled the expansive tendencies of the former—a record that dates from 963 refers to a struggle with the German dukes—while he sought reliance on Rome, to which he subordinated his state in a curious document, the Dagome iudex (c. 991). Poland alternately competed and cooperated with neighboring Bohemia and Hungary as well as with the principality of Kievan Rus. At Mieszko’s death the Polish state stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Carpathian Mountains, resembling in shape post-World War II Poland.
Because the principle of primogeniture was unknown in the country, every succession led to internal strife. Mieszko’s successor was Bolesław I (the Brave). Commanding a huge military force, he sought hegemony in east-central Europe. In 1000 he received the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, who dreamed of restoring a universal Roman empire and who recognized the sovereign status of the Polish duke. Moreover, Otto agreed to an independent Polish ecclesiastical organization that added an archbishopric in Gniezno and bishoprics in Kraków, Wrocław, and Kołobrzeg to the already extant bishopric in Poznań. Given the role of the church in medieval statehood, this was a great achievement. Paying their respects to St. Adalbert (Vojtěch)—the former bishop of Prague slain by the pagan Prussians and later elevated to sainthood—the two rulers sought to coordinate their missionary activities in the pagan Slav lands between the Elbe and Oder rivers. This area, home of the so-called Polabian Slavs, formed a kind of buffer between the two states and was the object of their respective expansion.
The successors of Otto pursued German objectives rather than imperial mirages and struggled with Bolesław, who briefly occupied Bohemia and intervened in Kievan Rus. Polish-German strife continued intermittently until 1018. In 1025 Bolesław assumed the royal crown, which made him the equal of the other monarchs of Europe.
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The virtual collapse of the state under Bolesław’s son Mieszko II, who was even obliged to renounce his kingly status, showed how much the political fortunes of a state were bound to the personality of its ruler. Mieszko’s successor, Casimir I, had to flee the country, which was torn by internal strife. A pagan reaction against Christianity combined with revolt against fiscal and administrative burdens to bring about a popular uprising. Casimir had to be restored by the emperor, Conrad II, who wished to preserve a balance of power in the region. Known later as “the Restorer,” Casimir eventually succeeded in bringing under his sway most of the Polish lands, reviving the ecclesiastical organization, and making Kraków his capital instead of Gniezno or Poznań, which had been devastated by the Czechs.
Casimir’s son and successor, Bolesław II (the Bold), sought to revive the great power designs of the first Bolesław. Skillfully exploiting the great Investiture Controversy between the empire and the papacy that affected most of Europe, Bolesław II sided with Rome and gained the royal crown in 1076. Bolesław was later drawn into a conflict with Stanislaus (Stanisław), the bishop of Kraków, whom the king ordered killed in 1079 under circumstances still debated by historians. Bolesław then fled to Hungary, where he died. The cult of St. Stanislaus, who was canonized in 1253, became widespread in Poland and was invoked to defend the freedom of religion against the state and ethics against power.
Poland is the fifth-most populous country of the European Union and the ninth-largest country in Europe by area. The territory of Poland covers approximately 312,696 km 2 (120,733 sq mi), of which 98.52% is land and 1.48% is water. [1] The Polish coastline was estimated at 770 km (478 mi) in length. [2]
- Ranked 69th
- Raczki Elbląskie, −1.8 meters (−6 ft)
- Rysy, 2,499 meters (8,199 ft)
- North European Plain
Dec 23, 2021 · Poland's history as a state began near the middle of the 10th century. By the mid-16th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ruled a vast tract of land in Central and Eastern Europe. During the 18th century, internal disorders weakened the nation, and in a series of agreements between 1772 and 1795, Russia, Prussia, and Austria ...
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative voivodeship provinces, covering an area of 312,696 km2 (120,733 sq mi). Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union. Warsaw is the nation's capital and largest metropolis. Other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław ...
