Abstract
Until the mid-eighteenth century, Poland was little known in Britain. But books, human contacts and the first partition of 1772 brought the country to the attention of the political classes. The work of the revolutionary Sejm of 1788 and the constitution of 3 May 1791 elicited widespread admiration which turned into active sympathy following the second partition and final dismemberment of the Polish state. These feelings endured, reaching a pitch during the Insurrection of 1830–1831; the Polish cause, seen as a struggle against tyranny, was lauded in verse, Polish exiles were embraced and supported financially. But their engagement with Chartists at home and participation in the 1846–1848 revolutions in Europe alienated the sympathies of the propertied classes, while socialists dismissed them as insufficiently radical.
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Notes
- 1.
The Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke in the House of Commons and in Westminster Hall, Volume IV (London, 1816), 148.
- 2.
See Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); also: W.F. Reddaway, “Great Britain and Poland 1762–72,” The Cambridge Historical Journal Vol. IV, No. 3 (1934): 223–262; cf. Nathaniel Wraxall, Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw and Vienna in the years 1777, 1778 and 1779, vol. II, p. 3.
- 3.
Adam Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London, 1776), Book I, Chapter XI, 300.
- 4.
Adam Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland (London: Cape, 1992), 332–333.
- 5.
Zofia Libiszowska, Życie polskie w Londynie w XVIII wieku (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy “Pax”, 1972), 45–46.
- 6.
Libiszowska, Życie polskie w Londynie, 12, 47.
- 7.
Libiszowska, Życie polskie w Londynie, 55.
- 8.
Richard Butterwick, Poland’s Last King and English Culture. Stanisław August Poniatowski 1732–1798 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 17–19; Benedict Wagner-Rundell, “Liberty, Virtue and the Chosen People: British and Polish Republicanism in the Early Eighteenth Century,” in Britain and Poland-Lithuania. Contact and Comparison from the Middle Ages to 1795, ed. Richard Unger (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 201–2.
- 9.
Zamoyski, Last King, 199.
- 10.
Norman Davies, “The Languor of so Remote an Interest. British Attitudes to Poland 1772–1832,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series, XVI (1983): 80; see also David Bayne Horn, British Public Opinion and the First Partition of Poland (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1945).
- 11.
Zamoyski, Last King, 199.
- 12.
Edmund Burke, The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, volume 2, ed. Lucy Sutherland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960–1978), 514.
- 13.
Davis, “The Langour,” 80.
- 14.
Paul Langford, ed., The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, volume 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 351.
- 15.
Zofia Libiszowska, “Polska reforma w opinii angielskiej,” in Sejm Czteroletni i jego tradycje, ed. Jerzy Kowecki (Warsaw: Państ. Wydaw. Naukowe, 1991), 63.
- 16.
Zamoyski, Last King, 335.
- 17.
Samuel Fiszman, “European and American Opinions of the Constitution of 3 May,” in Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Poland,” ed. Samuel Fiszman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 474–475; Libiszowska, Polska Reforma, 66.
- 18.
Fiszman, “European and American Opinions,” 475.
- 19.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1791, 569–72; The Scotsman’s Magazine, June 1791.
- 20.
Edmund Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, etc., in The Works of Edmund Burke (London, 1828) VI: 243–4.
- 21.
“The Political Crisis: or, a Dissertation on the Rights of Man [July 1791],” in Political Writings of the 1790s, ed. Gregory Claeys, 8 vols (London: William Pickering, c.1995), III: 148–9; Charles Pigott, Strictures on the Political Tenets of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke (London, 1791), ibid., II: 129.
- 22.
Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, Correspondence, ed. W.S. Lewis, 48 vols (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–83), XI: 286.
- 23.
Walpole, Correspondence, vol. XXXIV: 120.
- 24.
Walpole, Correspondence, vol. XXXIX: 487.
- 25.
Walpole, Correspondence, vol. XXXIV: 159.
- 26.
The Annual Register for 1791, Chapter VI, 112, 118, 126.
- 27.
Claeys, Political Writings, vol. V: 37, 45, 208–9, 371; vol. VI: 59; A Vindication of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, in Claeys, Political Writings, vol. VII: 113.
- 28.
See Claeys, Political Writings, vol. VII: 207; Libiszowska, Polska Reforma, 71; Fiszman, “European and American Opinions,” 480–1.
- 29.
Libiszowska, Polska Reforma, 71; Zofia Libiszowska, Misja polska w Londynie w latach 1769–1795 (Łódź: Łódzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 1966), 115.
- 30.
Burke, Correspondence, vol. VII: 158.
- 31.
Zofia Libiszowska, Życie polskie w Londynie w XVIII wieku (Warsaw: Instyt. wydawniczy PAX, 1972), 153–154.
- 32.
Libiszowska, Misja, 116.
- 33.
Libiszowska, Życie, 156; Reforma, 71; Misja, 117.
- 34.
Libiszowska, Reforma, 72.
- 35.
Burke, Correspondence, vol. VII: 158,159–60; Langford, Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, VIII: 40–1, 422–3, 429, 431.
- 36.
Marian Kukiel, Czartoryski and European Unity 1770–1861 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 112ff., 117.
- 37.
Krystyn Lach-Szyrma, Anglia i Szkocja. Przypomnienia z podróży roku 1820–1824 odbytej (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1981).
- 38.
The Westminster Review, vol. 14, January–April 1831, 250.
- 39.
The Political Writings of Richard Cobden (London: T.F. Unwin, 1903), vol. I, chapter II, Poland, Prussia, and England.
- 40.
Anne Lohrli, “Dickens and the Friends of Poland,” Dickens Studies Newsletter vol. 14, No. 3 (September, 1983), 101–104.
- 41.
The Times, 27 May 1848.
- 42.
The Times, 25 May 1848.
- 43.
The Morning Post, 30 May 1848.
- 44.
Krzysztof Marchlewicz, “Continuities and Innovations: Polish Emigration after 1849,” in Exiles from European Revolutions in mid-Victorian England, ed. Sabine Freitag (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 109.
- 45.
Marcelina Czartoryska to Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, 17: xi 1848, Biblioteka Czartoryskich, Kraków, rkps. Ew. XVII/841, 541–544.
- 46.
The Morning Post, 17 November 1848.
- 47.
The Times, 16 November 1848.
- 48.
Adam Zamoyski, Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789–1848 (London: William Collins, 2014), 490.
Bibliography
Periodicals
Annual Register
Gentleman’s Magazine
Morning Post
Scotsman’s Magazine
Times
Westminster Review
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Zamoyski, A. (2023). From the Moon to Kennington Common: British Perceptions of the Poland and the Poles 1750–1850. In: Bowers, M.A., Dew, B. (eds) Polish Culture in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32188-7_2
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