Dějiny Polska – Kosman Marceli (2022)

This history of Poland is written by Polish historian Marceli Kosman, a professor of history and political science at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and a leading expert on the late medieval and modern history of Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. Because these territories were incorporated into the Polish and Polish-Lithuanian state to varying degrees and at different times, Kosman’s research gives him a particularly refined understanding of the territorial divisions and internal diversity of Polish history. His synthesis is divided into eight balanced sections covering the development and consolidation of the Polish state under the Piast dynasty, its expansion under the Jagiellonians, the Polish-Lithuanian monarchy and noble republic, its decline and partition between Russia, Prussia and Austria, the restoration of independence and its problems, suffering and resistance during the Second World War, Soviet rule, and the birth of the new Poland at the turn of the 1990s. The book examines the history of the state and society, cultural and religious development, and everyday life in different periods, while also considering other ethnic groups and neighbouring nations, including the Czechs. Kosman presents Poland’s thousand-year history as a fact-based reflection on the fate of an influential European nation and on the roots of its current development. His account is valuable not only to historians, political scientists and humanities students, but also to a broad culturally minded readership. The contents are in Czech.