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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2017
1 In the standard work of Gooch, G. P., History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (London and New York, 1913, 604 pp.)Google Scholar, only nineteen lines deal with Polish historiography, and only two names, Lelewel and Szajnocha, are mentioned. Similar examples could easily be cited: in the well-known American Guide to Historical Literature (New York, 1936) the Polish section is very good, thanks to the contributions of R. H. Lord, the author of a most remarkable monograph on The Second Partition of Poland (Cambridge, 1915) and of J. S. Orvis, who published in 1916 a Brief History of Poland. But even here the information is rather scarce (6 pp., and only 6 titles for the period before the partitions),because the choice had to be limited, with a few exceptions, to publications in the Western European languages, as is also the case with Kerner's, K. J. Slavic Europe (Cambridge, 1918, pp. 149–188).Google Scholar Polish historians themselves have recently published some outlines of Polish historiography in French, e.g., M. Handeisman, “La Pologne” in Histoire el historiens depiiis cinquante arts (Uibliotheque de la Revue hislorigue, Paris, 1927, I, 287–303), which discusses the main problems and refers to the author's previous articles; a cooperative pamphlet, L'Historiographie polonaise aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Warsaw, 1933), presented to the International Congress of Historical Sciences; and a very detailed account, “Cinquante ans de travail historique en Pologne,” Revue historique-Bulletins critiques, 1939, pp. 325–344 and 364–406, which is unfortunately limited to three contributions on political history because of interruption by the war.
2 On the most distinguished Polish historian of that period an excellent dissertation has just been published by Sister Rutkowska, M. Neomisia, Bishop Adam Naruszewicz and his “History of the Polish Nation” (The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C., 1941, 138 pp.)Google Scholar. See the introduction (pp. 1–24) on Polish writing of history before Naruszewicz, and the important paragraph on “The folios of Naruszewicz” (pp. 71–74). i.e., the 230 manuscript volumes of source material which he collected and left to his successors.
3 Geschichte der romanischen mid germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (Berlin and Leipzig, 1824). See in the English translation by Ashworth (London, 1889), p. 1, and the passage on p. 3 where Ranke makes the following statement concerning the Hungarians and the continguous Slavs, even those who joined the Roman Church: “It will not be said that those peoples belong also to the unity of our nations; their manners and their constitution have ever severed them from it.”
4 A very valuable biography of Lelewel, written by the late Professor I. Chrzanowski, who died in January 1940 in a German concentration camp, has just been published in Great Men and Women of Poland (New York, 1941).
5 It is difficult to agree with the remark made in the Guide to Historical Literature (1121a) that Szujski “idealized the old Polish republic.” Part of his writings, which fill ten volumes, would deserve even today a translation into English.
6 In 1916 he published an extremely interesting German outline, Die reussische Well (Vienna, 1916; there is also a French edition, Les Ruthcnes et les problcmes religieux du monde russien) where he discusses some of the most important and controversial problems of Eastern European history.
7 Both of these published certain articles in German which are sometimes quoted even today, but hardly give an adequate idea of their outstanding contributions not only to Polish, but to general European history.
8 In addition to his monumental genealogy of the Piast Dynasty (1895), he published in 1919–1920 three volumes on the “Rcgnum Poloniac” from 1295 to 1370, of basic importance to any understanding of the mediaeval Polish state. In another of his many works, published posthumously in 1934–1935, he discussed the intellectual role of Poland's first national historian, Vyinccnty Kadlubek (died 1223), and thereby made these two volumes a prime contribution to the origins of Polish civilization and its close connection with the Latin West.
9 He was the only Polish historian who contributed to the Cambridge Modern History (X, 413–474, two chapters on Russia and Poland from 1815 to 1831) and had at least one of his books (Danzig and Poland, London, 1921) translated into English. There is a French translation of his brilliant biography, Prince Joseph Poniatouski (Paris, 1921) but not of his last three volumes on Napoleon and Poland.
10 American readers would be interested to know that he published (in 1894, reedited in 1906) a biography of his favorite hero, Kościuszko, which has retained its basic significance, although more recently Adam Skałkowski, an author of valuable monographs on the same period, is of another opinion.
11 It would be highly desirable to translate into English some of his studies on the Ukraine, as so many recent publications in the English language consider these problems exclusively from the Russian or Ukrainian viewpoint. Of particular interest is one of Jablonowski's monographs in which he describes how the University of Kiev originated under Polish rule and became an Orthodox Ukrainian center of Western culture.
12 Even those who do not read Polish might enjoy his Monumenta Poloniae Palaeographica (Cracow, 1907–1910), two series of beautiful plates reproducing the oldest documents written in Poland, all in Latin with commentaries in the same language.
13 Zakrzewski's critical edition of the enormous correspondence of Stanisław Hosius, all in Latin (vol. VI and IX of the Ada hislorica res geslas Poloniae illustranlia), unfortunately interrupted at 1559, is just one example of Polish collections of source materials which are indispensable to students of general European history. The Polish Academy was preparing the continuation of that collection which, owing to the international role of Hosius, is of the utmost importance for the study of the Reformation period.
14 A detailed summary in German, by A. Latterman, appeared in 1931 in Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für Polen, Heft 23.
15 Published in 1933 in a German edition, Der Kampf urn die Ostsee.
16 A short summary of his work may be found in The Cambridge History of Poland (Cambridge, 1941, ch. VI: “The Age of Stanislas Augustus and the National Revival”). Dembinski's earlier (1913) standard work on Polish international relations before the second partition (Polska na przełomie) should certainly be translated into English, since it is based on many unpublished documents from British archives and illustrated some important problems of British foreign policy.
17 A French summary of his book on the Hungarian reign of Władyslaw III of Poland (1440–1444), very important for the history of central and southeastern Europe, was published in 1930 in the Revue d'Etudes slaves, X, p. 37–75.
18 Only the last named of these books appeared also in a French translation. Americans might be still more interested to know that before publishing, in 1938–19.39, two large volumes on the entire history of the Confederation of liar prepared in twenty years of research, Konopczynski wrote an exhaustive biography of one of its leaders, Casimir Pulaski, including his role in the American Revolution.
19 Some of his works have been published in French (Napoléon el la Polngne 1806–1808; Les idles françaises el la mentalité polilique en Polngne, etc.). Handelsman was also editor of the Polish section of Professor Shotwell's Economic and Social History of the World War, and contributed to the first volume of this section an account of Poland's struggle for independence during the war of 1914–1918.
20 Just before the present war he published two volumes on Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812 — by no means limited only to Polish participation, but the most recent and probably the best general description of that decisive moment in European history. Here again a translation would seem urgent.
21 Unfortunately these translations, e.g., the German version published in 1912, were limited to the first volume (considerably enlarged in subsequent Polish editions) to which Kutrzeba later added a second volume on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and two others on the divided Poland of the nineteenth century.
21a According to recent information, Siemieñski, after devoting his life to the organization and development of the Principal Archives in Warsaw, died in November 1941 in a German concentration camp.
22 He also contributed to the recently published Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. I.
23 His Oxford lectures on Five Centuries of Polish Learning have just been published in English (Oxford, 1941).
24 Kazimierz Chodynicki, who had started this review (Ateneum wileñskie) in 1923 and was also the author of a comprehensive history of the Orthodox Church in the old Polish Republic fi vol, until 1632), died under the German occupation.
25 This Institute issued many of its publications in English, and its review, Baltic and Scandinavian Countries, which contains many contributions on historical subjects, merits special recommendation.
26 The History of Silesia until 1400, edited by the Polish Academy in three large volumes (the last was ready for print at the outbreak of the war in 1939), covered not only political, but also constitutional, social and cultural developments in a treatment much more exhaustive than any German publication on this subject.
27 An excellent French translation (by P. Rongier) of his two volumes on the Jagiellonian University in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries appeared in Cracow in 1903–1905 (Histoire de l'Université de Cracovie). This outstanding contribution to the history of the Renaissance in Central Europe never received sufficient attention abroad.
28 None of these books have been translated, and no one seems to have noticed that, for instance, Sobieski's monograph on Henry's mediation between Sweden and Poland in 1602–1610 (Cracow, 1906) contained, in an appendix, one of the best studies of the famous “grand dessein,” while in his volume on the relations between French and Polish Calvinists (Cracow, 1910) entirely new material, regarding the religious situation in France after the St. Bartholomew, discovered in the British Museum, was published for the first time.
29 Begun in 1923, this remarkable work was not entirely finished when the war broke out: most of the material collected for the last volume was destroyed during the bombardment of Warsaw, but there is some hope that the author, now in this country, might publish an English summary of the whole outline.
30 These monographs by M. Handelsman and a group of his students appeared in the series of historical studies edited by the Warsaw Learned Society.
31 Since almost all of them are in occupied territory, we shall only point out that at least two of them, K. Zmigryder Konopka, a most promising specialist in the field of ancient Roman history, and Kazimierz Tyszkowski, author of important publications on Poland and her relations with Sweden and Russia ca. 1600, died at Lw6w during the Soviet occupation. In this sketch only certain well-known scholars of over fifty have been mentioned.
32 La Pologne au Ve Congrés international des Sciences historiques, Varsovie, 1924; La Polognc au VIe Congrès … , Varsovie, 1930; La Pologne au VIIe Congrès … , 3 vol., Varsovie, 1933–1934. All edited by the Polish Historical Society.
33 Pologne-Suisse, Recueil d'Etudes historiques, Warsaw 1938.
34 In addition to the series Problimes politiques de la Pologne contemporaine, the Library was preparing an edition of all source materials concerning Franco-Polish relations. A first volume covering the diplomatic negotiations of 1635 appeared just before the war.
35 Begun before the first World War, this collection was divided into two series: the first containing the Polish material of the mediaeval Papal Registers, the second, the reports of the Papal Nuncios in Poland since the sixteenth century. Six volumes have been published, two others were being printed when the present war broke out.
36 The second volume, almost completed before the war, has just been published as a separate book: The Cambridge History of Poland from Augustus II to Pilsudski (1697–1938). The first volume, from the origins to Sobieski, is four-fifths complete and might appear next year.
37 The author of the present article has condensed the main results of his own research, dealing chiefly with the Jagcllonian period, in a synthetic volume of the History of Poland, recently published in English (London: Dent, 1042; and New York: Roy Slavonic Publications, 1943).
