Category Archives: language

by Joel | 30 October 2026 · 5:14 am

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Before 1914

From The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark (Harper, 2013), pp. 199-202:

Britain presents a rather different picture. Unlike Stolypin and Kokovtsov or their German colleagues Bülow and Bethmann Hollweg, the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had no reason to fear unwanted interventions by the sovereign. George V was perfectly happy to be led by his foreign secretary in international matters. And Grey also enjoyed the unstinting support of his prime minister, Herbert Asquith. Nor did he have to contend, as his French colleagues did, with over-mighty functionaries in his own Foreign Office. Grey’s continuity in office alone assured him a more consistent influence over policy than most of his French colleagues ever enjoyed. While Edward Grey remained in control of the Foreign Office for the years between December 1905 and December 1916, the same period in France saw fifteen ministers of foreign affairs come and go. Moreover, Grey’s arrival at the Foreign Office consolidated the influence of a network of senior officials who broadly shared his view of British foreign policy. Grey was without doubt the most powerful foreign minister of pre-war Europe.

Like most of his nineteenth-century predecessors, Sir Edward Grey was born into the top tier of British society. He was the descendant of a distinguished line of Whig grandees – his great grand-uncle was the Earl Grey of the 1832 Reform Bill and eponym of the popular scented tea. Of all the politicians who walked the European political stage before 1914, Grey is one of the most baffling. His aloof and lofty style did not go down well with the rank and file of the Liberal Party. He had long been a Liberal MP, yet he believed that foreign policy was too important to be subjected to the agitations of parliamentary debate. He was a foreign secretary who knew little of the world outside Britain, had never shown much interest in travelling, spoke no foreign languages and felt ill at ease in the company of foreigners. He was a Liberal politician whose vision of policy was opposed by most Liberals and supported by most Conservatives. He became the most powerful member of the faction known as ‘the liberal imperialists’, yet he appears to have cared little for the British Empire – his views on foreign policy and national security were tightly focused on the European continent.

…

There was a curious dissonance between Grey’s persona – private and public – and his modus operandi in politics. As a young man, he had shown little sign of intellectual curiosity, political ambition or drive. He idled away his years at Balliol College, Oxford, where he spent most of his time becoming Varsity champion in real tennis, before graduating with a third in Jurisprudence, a subject he had chosen because it was reputed to be easy. His first (unpaid) political post was fixed up through Whig family connections. As an adult, Grey always cultivated the image of a man for whom politics was a wearisome duty, rather than a vocation. When parliament was dissolved in 1895 following a Liberal defeat in a key vote, Grey, who was then serving as an MP and parliamentary under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, professed to feel no regrets. ‘I shall never be in office again and the days of my stay in the House of Commons are probably numbered. We [he and his wife Dorothy] are both very relieved.’ Grey was a passionate naturalist, birdwatcher and fisherman. By the turn of the century, he was already well known as the author of a justly celebrated essay on fly-fishing. Even as foreign secretary, he was apt to leave his desk at the earliest opportunity for country jaunts and disliked being recalled to London any sooner than was absolutely necessary. Some of those who worked with Grey, such as the diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice, felt that the country excursions were getting out of hand and that the foreign secretary would be well advised to ‘spare some time from his ducks to learn French’. Colleagues found it difficult to discern political motivation in Grey; he struck them as ‘devoid of personal ambition, aloof and unapproachable’. And yet Grey did develop a deep appetite for power and a readiness to deploy conspiratorial methods in order to obtain and hold on to it. His accession to the post of foreign secretary was the fruit of careful planning with his trusted friends and fellow liberal imperialists, Herbert Asquith and R. B. Haldane. In the ‘Relugas Compact’, a plot hatched at Grey’s fishing lodge in the Scottish hamlet of that name, the three men agreed to push aside the Liberal leader Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and establish themselves in key cabinet posts. Secretiveness and a preference for discreet, behind-the-scenes dealing remained a hallmark of his style as foreign secretary. The posture of gentlemanly diffidence belied an intuitive feel for the methods and tactics of adversarial politics.

Grey quickly secured unchallenged control over the policy-making process, ensuring that British policy focused primarily on the ‘German threat’. It would be going too far, of course, to view this reorientation of British policy as a function solely of Edward Grey’s power. Grey was not the puppet-master; the men of the new policy – Bertie, Hardinge, Nicolson, Mallet, Tyrrell and so on – were not manipulated or controlled by him, but worked alongside him as the members of a loose coalition driven by shared sentiments. Indeed, Grey was quite dependent on some of these collaborators – many of his decisions and memoranda, for example, were modelled closely on reports from Hardinge. The ascendancy of the Grey group was eased by recent structural reforms to the Foreign Office whose object had not been to reinforce the authority of the foreign secretary, but rather to parcel influence out more widely across a range of senior officials. Nevertheless, the energy and vigilance with which Grey maintained his ascendancy are impressive. It helped, of course, that he enjoyed the firm support of his former co-conspirator Herbert Asquith, prime minister from 1908 until 1916. The backing of a large part of the Conservative bloc in the House of Commons was another important asset – and Grey proved adept at maintaining his cross-party appeal.

But Grey’s plenitude of power and consistency of vision did not entirely protect British policy-making from the agitations characteristic of the European executives. The anti-German position adopted by the Grey group did not enjoy wide support outside the Foreign Office. It was not even backed by the majority of the British cabinet. The Liberal government, and the Liberal movement more generally, were polarized by the tension between liberal imperialist and radical elements. Many of the leading radicals, and they included some of the most venerable figures in the party, deplored the foreign secretary’s policy of alignment with Russia. They accused Grey and his associates of adopting a pose towards Germany that was unnecessarily provocative. They doubted whether the advantages of appeasing Russia outweighed the potential benefits of friendship with the German Empire. They worried whether the creation of a Triple Entente might not pressure Germany into adopting an ever more aggressive stance and they pressed for détente with Berlin. A further problem was the complexion of British public opinion, especially within the cultural and political elite, which, despite intermittent Anglo-German ‘press wars’, was drifting into a more pro-German mood during the last few years before the outbreak of war. Antagonism to Germany coexisted across the British elites with multi-layered cultural ties and a deep admiration of the country’s cultural, economic and scientific achievements.

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by Joel | 29 October 2026 · 5:52 am

Who Ruled France’s Third Republic?

From The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark (Harper, 2013), pp. 190-193:

In France, there was a different but broadly analogous dynamic. To a much greater extent than in Russia, the foreign ministry, or the Quai d’Orsay as it was known on account of its location, enjoyed formidable power and autonomy. It was a socially cohesive and relatively stable organization with a high sense of its own calling. A dense network of family connections reinforced the ministry’s esprit de corps: the brothers Jules and Paul Cambon were the ambassadors to Berlin and London respectively, the ambassador to St Petersburg in 1914, Maurice Paléologue, was Jules and Paul’s brother-in-law, and there were other dynasties – the Herbettes, the de Margeries, and the de Courcels, to name just a few. The ministry of foreign affairs protected its independence through habits of secrecy. Sensitive information was only rarely released to cabinet ministers. It was not unusual for senior functionaries to withhold information from the most senior politicians, even from the president of the Republic himself. In January 1895, for example, during the tenure of Foreign Minister Gabriel Hanotaux, President Casimir Périer resigned after only six months in office, protesting that the ministry of foreign affairs had failed to keep him informed even of the most important developments. Policy documents were treated as arcana. Raymond Poincaré was informed of the details of the Franco-Russian Alliance only when he became premier and foreign minister in 1912.

But the relative independence of the ministry did not necessarily confer power and autonomy upon the minister. French foreign ministers tended to be weak, weaker indeed than their own ministerial staff. One reason for this was the relatively rapid turnover of ministers, a consequence of the perennially high levels of political turbulence in pre-war France. Between 1 January 1913 and the outbreak of war, for example, there were no fewer than six different foreign ministers. Ministerial office was a more transitory and less important stage in the life cycle of French politicians than in Britain, Germany or Austria-Hungary. And in the absence of any code of cabinet solidarity, the energies and ambition of ministers tended to be consumed in the bitter factional strife that was part of the everyday life of government in the Third Republic.

…

Of course, there were exceptions to this rule. If a minister stayed in power for long enough and possessed sufficient determination and industry, he could certainly imprint his personality upon the workings of the ministry. Théophile Delcassé is a good example. He remained in office for a staggering seven years (from June 1898 until June 1905) and established his mastery over the ministry not only through tireless work, but also by ignoring his permanent officials in Paris and cultivating a network of like-minded ambassadors and functionaries from across the organization. In France, as elsewhere in Europe, the waxing and waning of specific offices within the system produced adjustments in the distribution of power. Under a forceful minister like Delcassé, the power-share of the senior civil service functionaries known collectively as the Centrale tended to shrink, while the ambassadors, freed from the constraints imposed by the centre, flourished, just as Izvolsky and Hartwig did during the early years of Sazonov. Delcassé’s long spell in office saw the emergence of an inner cabinet of senior ambassadors around the Cambon brothers (London and Berlin) and Camille Barrère (Rome). The ambassadors met regularly in Paris to discuss policy and lobby key officials. They communicated with the minister through private letters, bypassing the functionaries of the Centrale.

The senior ambassadors developed an extraordinarily elevated sense of their own importance, especially if we measure it against the professional ethos of today’s ambassadors. Paul Cambon is a characteristic example: he remarked in a letter of 1901 that the whole of French diplomatic history amounted to little more than a long list of attempts by agents abroad to achieve something in the face of resistance from Paris. When he disagreed with his official instructions from the capital, he not infrequently burned them. During a tense conversation with Justin de Selves, minister of foreign affairs from June 1911 until January 1912, Cambon somewhat tactlessly informed de Selves that he considered himself the minister’s equal. This claim looks less bizarre if we bear in mind that between 1898, when he became ambassador to London, and the summer of 1914, Cambon saw nine ministers enter and leave office – two of them did so twice. Cambon did not regard himself as a subordinate employee of the government, but as a servant of France whose expertise entitled him to a major role in the policy-making process.

…

Underpinning Cambon’s exalted sense of self was the belief – shared by many of the senior ambassadors – that one did not merely represent France, one personified it. Though he was ambassador in London from 1898 until 1920, Cambon spoke not a word of English. During his meetings with Edward Grey (who spoke no French), he insisted that every utterance be translated into French, including easily recognized words such as ‘yes’. He firmly believed – like many members of the French elite – that French was the only language capable of articulating rational thought and he objected to the foundation of French schools in Britain on the eccentric grounds that French people raised in Britain tended to end up mentally retarded. Cambon and Delcassé established a close working relationship whose fruit was the Entente Cordiale of 1904. It was Cambon, more than anyone else, who laid the groundwork for the Entente, working hard from 1901 to persuade his British interlocutors to settle over Morocco, while at the same time urging Delcassé to relinquish France’s putative claims on Egypt.

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by Joel | 26 October 2026 · 5:32 am

The Poles Who Built Harbin

This week’s newsletter from Culture.pl contains several articles about Poland’s connections with Asia. Here are some excerpts (minus photos) from Harbin: A Polish City in China by Anna Cymer (2021), which utilises material from Edward Kajdański’s article ‘The Role of Poles in the Construction and Organisation of the East China Railway: The Memoirs of Engineer Stefan Offenberg’ published in Gdańsk East Asian Studies in 2016.

In the 1890s, Russia committed itself to a major investment: the construction of a rail link between the south Siberian town of Chita and the important Russian port on the Sea of Japan, Vladivostok. The shortest possible route was mapped out through Manchuria, a region that belonged to China. The two countries came to an agreement – in exchange for Russia’s military assistance, the Chinese agreed to the building of the nearly 1500-kilometre railway line through its territory.

The initiator and manager of this enormous project was the then-finance minister of Russia (soon to become premier) Sergei Witte. It is he who hired Polish engineers to design and build the East China Railway. Although the late 19th century was not a time of good relations between Russia and partitioned Poland, Witte nonetheless recognised the talents of Polish specialists in the field of construction; he appointed Polish engineer Stanisław Kierbedź as the de facto manager of this vital project (he was the nephew of another Stanisław Kierbedź, the famed designer of then-innovative iron truss bridges – notably the bridge over the Wisła River in Warsaw which opened in 1864 and was popularly known as the Kierbedź Bridge).

The precise laying out of the route of the railway was undertaken by railroad engineer Stefan Offenberg, who had earlier managed the construction of one of the key stretches of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Offenberg described his experiences in Manchuria in his book The Role of Poles in the Construction and Organisation of the East China Railway. Thanks to his memoirs, we know, for example, about the harsh weather and challenging landscape conditions the Polish engineers had to endure as they fought their way across the taiga laying out the railway’s route.

Construction of the East China Railway commenced in 1897. Selected as the base of the project was a small fishing village called Harbin (also known as Charbin). That is where the officials overseeing the project were to live, along with the planning engineers. Engineer Adam Szydłowski undertook the planning of the new city that was to arise and the organisation of the massive project’s entire support infrastructure.

Some sources indicate that it was Szydłowski himself who selected Harbin as the central location for the enterprise. Its convenient location on the Sungari River not only lent itself to effectively oversee the construction work, but Harbin also connected with a new branch of the southern bound railway which led to Russian bases in the Yellow Sea port of Dalian.

In the spring of 1898, Szydłowski purchased the building of the former brewery in Harbin and made it the cornerstone of his new city. Other than Szydłowski, early residents of the new settlement included his technicians Raweński, Wysocki and Pawlewski, whose given names have been lost over time. It was not long before the first new homes for construction workers were built in the fishing village. The rail line was divided into a number of segments of which Poles were responsible for roughly half, but the work was not done only by Russians and Poles. From the very start, the city of Harbin was a melting pot of nationalities: Germans, Belgians, Austrians and Englishmen lived there as well, representatives of various firms that supplied the railroad with machinery and other necessities. Even more nationalities were to be found amongst the railroad construction workers: while Poles played a significant role in the actual physical construction work (among them Polish revolutionaries who had been exiled to Siberia), the East China Railway was also built by Georgians, Armenians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Greeks, Turks, and Mongolians.

The first cars of the East China Railway rolled out in 1903. That is when the growth of the city of Harbin began in earnest – thanks to the opening of the vital rail link, it became a fast growing metropolitan area with a steadily growing population (amongst whom was a large cohort of businessmen and traders).

Not insignificant, too, was the city’s special renown as a welcoming international city. Thanks to this reputation, the city attracted political activists who had been forced to flee their own countries (such as opponents of the Soviet October Revolution). In 1917, Harbin was already a city of over 100,000 residents, including members of some 33 nationalities. The most numerous of these groups for many years were the Poles, who, at their height, numbered ten thousand. From the beginning of the 20^th century, Polish schools were open in Harbin (e.g. the Henryk Sienkiewicz High School, among whose alumni was the future author Teodor Parnicki), a Polish press flourished and a neo-Gothic Polish church stood on a parcel of land acquired by Offenberg.

One of the builders of the railroad, engineer Karol Weber, established the ‘Gospoda Polska’ (Polish Inn) Association in 1907 for which he built a lavish headquarters in the city. Harbin hosted a Polish scout chapter and a chapter of the Polish Youth Union. For many years, the director of the Russo-Chinese Bank was neither Russian nor Chinese, but rather a Pole, Stanisław Gabriel; for a year, a Pole was the city’s mayor; and a number of Poles sat on the board of the East China Railway. Among the many enterprises established in Harbin by Poles was the local brewery established in 1900 by Jan Wróblewski. The brewery remains active to this day and it is probably China’s oldest beer brewery.

In 1937, Russia and China signed an agreement according to which only members of those two nations could work on the railway. This agreement forced many Poles to leave Harbin; the Polish diaspora was also shaken by the arrival of the Red Army in 1945. Harbin’s last Polish newspaper ceased to appear in 1940. In 1947, the authorities decided to deport the Poles who remained in the city; the repatriated Poles were resettled in Elbląg, Olsztyn, Opole, Wałbrzych, Szczecin and elsewhere. A Harbiners’ Club is still active in Szczecin and it lobbied successfully for a traffic circle to be named for ‘Polish Manchuria’. The Pomeranian Library in Szczecin holds a collection of archives and memorabilia recalling the Polish presence in Harbin.

Today, Harbin has a population of five milllion and is the second largest and second most important city in north-eastern China. Few traces remain of the Polish presence in Harbin’s early years: the neo-Gothic church (formerly St Stanislaus Church; since 2004, the Church of the Most Holy Heart of Jesus) still stands in the city centre; the brewery mentioned above continues to operate; and the bridge over the Sungari River was long referred to as the Kierbedź Bridge. For over a dozen years, there has been a Polish-language program offered at the Harbin Normal University (HNU).

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Filed under China, education, industry, language, migration, Poland, Russia, USSR

by Joel | 22 October 2026 · 5:26 am

From Habsburgs to Austria-Hungary

From The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark (Harper, 2013), pp. 65-67:

Two military disasters defined the trajectory of the Habsburg Empire in the last half-century of its existence. At Solferino in 1859, French and Piedmontese forces prevailed over an army of 100,000 Austrian troops, opening the way to the creation of a new Italian nation-state. At Königgrätz in 1866, the Prussians destroyed an Austrian army of 240,000, ejecting the empire from the emergent German nation-state. The cumulative impact of these shocks transformed the inner life of the Austrian lands.

Shaken by military defeat, the neo-absolutist Austrian Empire metamorphosed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Under the Compromise hammered out in 1867, power was shared out between the two dominant nationalities, the Germans in the west and the Hungarians in the east. What emerged was a unique polity, like an egg with two yolks, in which the Kingdom of Hungary and a territory centred on the Austrian lands and often called Cisleithania (meaning ‘the lands on this side of the River Leithe’) lived side by side within the translucent envelope of a Habsburg dual monarchy. Each of the two entities had its own parliament, but there was no common prime minister and no common cabinet. Only foreign affairs, defence and defence-related aspects of finance were handled by ‘joint ministers’ who were answerable directly to the Emperor. Matters of interest to the empire as a whole could not be discussed in common parliamentary session, because to do so would have implied that the Kingdom of Hungary was merely the subordinate part of some larger imperial entity. Instead, an exchange of views had to take place between the ‘delegations’, groups of thirty deputies from each parliament, who met alternately in Vienna and Budapest.

The dualist compromise had many enemies at the time and has had many critics since. In the eyes of hardline Magyar nationalists, it was a sell-out that denied the Hungarians the full national independence that was their due. Some claimed that Austria was still exploiting the Kingdom of Hungary as an agrarian colony. Vienna’s refusal to relinquish control over the armed forces and create a separate and equal Hungarian army was especially contentious – a constitutional crisis over this question paralysed the empire’s political life in 1905. On the other hand, Austrian Germans argued that the Hungarians were freeloading on the more advanced economy of the Austrian lands, and ought to pay a higher share of the empire’s running costs. Conflict was programmed into the system, because the Compromise required that the two imperial ‘halves’ renegotiate every ten years the customs union by which revenues and taxation were shared out between them. The demands of the Hungarians became bolder with every review of the union. And there was little in the Compromise to recommend it to the political elites of the other national minorities, who had in effect been placed under the tutelage of the two ‘master races’. The first post-Compromise Hungarian prime minister, Gyula Andrássy, captured this aspect of the settlement when he commented to his Austrian counterpart: ‘You look after your Slavs and we’ll look after ours.’ The last decades before the outbreak of war were increasingly dominated by the struggle for national rights among the empire’s eleven official nationalities – Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Ruthenians, Poles and Italians.

How these challenges were met varied between the two imperial halves. The Hungarians dealt with the nationalities problem mainly by behaving as if it didn’t exist. The kingdom’s electoral franchise extended to only 6 per cent of the population because it was pegged to a property qualification that favoured the Magyars, who made up the bulk of the wealthier strata of the population. The result was that Magyar deputies, though they represented only 48.1 per cent of the population, controlled over 90 per cent of the parliamentary seats. The 3 million Romanians of Transylvania, the largest of the kingdom’s national minorities, comprised 15.4 per cent of the population, but held only five of the Hungarian parliament’s 400-odd seats. From the late 1870s, moreover, the Hungarian government pursued a campaign of aggressive ‘Magyarization’. Education laws imposed the use of the Magyar language on all state and faith schools, even those catering to children of kindergarten age. Teachers were required to be fluent in Magyar and could be dismissed if they were found to be ‘hostile to the [Hungarian] state’. This degradation of language rights was underwritten by harsh measures against ethnic minority activists. Serbs from the Vojvodina in the south of the kingdom, Slovaks from the northern counties and Romanians from the Grand Duchy of Transylvania did occasionally collaborate in pursuit of minority objectives, but with little effect, since they could muster only a small number of mandates.

In Cisleithania, by contrast, successive administrations tampered endlessly with the system in order to accommodate minority demands. Franchise reforms in 1882 and 1907 (when virtually universal male suffrage was introduced) went some way towards levelling the political playing field. But these democratizing measures merely heightened the potential for national conflict, especially over the sensitive question of language use in public institutions such as schools, courts and administrative bodies.

Nowhere were the frictions generated by nationalist politics more in evidence than in the Cisleithanian parliament, which met from 1883 in a handsome neo-classical building on Vienna’s Ringstrasse. In this 516-seat legislature, the largest in Europe, the familiar spectrum of party-political ideological diversity was cross-cut by national affiliations producing a panoply of splinter groups and grouplets. Among the thirty-odd parties that held mandates after the 1907 elections, for example, were twenty-eight Czech Agrarians, eighteen Young Czechs (Radical nationalists), seventeen Czech Conservatives, seven Old Czechs (moderate nationalists), two Czech-Progressives (Realist tendency), one ‘wild’ (independent) Czech and nine Czech National Socialists. The Poles, the Germans, the Italians and even the Slovenes and the Ruthenes were similarly divided along ideological lines.

Since there was no official language in Cisleithania (by contrast with the Kingdom of Hungary), there was no single official language of parliamentary procedure. German, Czech, Polish, Ruthenian, Croat, Serbian, Slovenian, Italian, Romanian and Russian were all permitted. But no interpreters were provided, and there was no facility for recording or monitoring the content of speeches that were not in German, unless the deputy in question himself chose to supply the house with a translated text of his speech. Deputies from even the most insignificant factions could thus block unwelcome initiatives by delivering long speeches in a language that only a handful of their colleagues understood. Whether they were actually addressing the issues raised by the current motion, or simply reciting long poems in their own national idiom, was difficult to ascertain. The Czechs in particular were renowned for the baroque extravagance of their filibustering. The Cisleithanian parliament became a celebrated tourist attraction, especially in winter, when Viennese pleasure-seekers crowded into the heated visitors’ galleries. By contrast with the city’s theatres and opera houses, a Berlin journalist wrily observed, entry to parliamentary sessions was free.*

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Filed under Austria, Balkans, Czechia, democracy, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, language, military, nationalism, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Yugoslavia

by Joel | 18 October 2026 · 5:20 am

Polish Punctuation Peculiarities

As a former copyeditor and proofreader, I found one article of particular interest in this week’s newsletter from Culture.pl: Alicja Zapalska’s (2021) Pen to Paper: Mastering the Quirks of Polish Writing. Excerpts follow.

Periods in unexpected places, paragraphs full of dashes, and mysterious abbreviations abound in Polish writing. Here are a few tips to make sense of the Polish language’s unique style and punctuation (language proficiency not included).

Reading and writing might be the bane of any intermediate foreign-language speaker – now, not only do words have to be spelled right, there’s also a whole new set of writing rules to contend with. The bad news is, there are just enough differences in writing styles between Polish and English that intelligibility is not always guaranteed. The good news? At least it’s the same alphabet (sort of)!

Where’s the Dialogue?

Glancing at a page of Polish dialogue might feel a bit like looking at Morse code. Instead of using a quotation mark at the beginning of speech, you should instead add an em dash (—) on both sides of the sentence. The dash is known as a pauza (or myślnik when relating to dialogue) and it serves a variety of functions similar to dashes in English. But, it also replaces the apostrophes in written conversations.

— Like this — she said.

You may also notice the lack of a comma before the dash. Although you can add other punctuation as needed (exclamation points, question marks), leave the commas out of it! Not all dialogue ends with he said/she said. In cases when a complete sentence follows the dialogue, use a period.

— Like this. — He left the room.

If there is no verb or description after the dialogue, instead of continuing in a new paragraph, there is no need to add a myślnik to the end. The biggest part of getting used to this style of writing dialogue may be more mental than physical. While reading, it’s easy to be pulled out of the world of the story, as the brain is wired to interpret quotation marks as people speaking. This problem goes both ways, however. Polish speakers learning English tend to forget the quotation marks, so if you’re working with or reading the work of a Polish speaker, don’t be surprised to see a stray myślnik here and there.

Unlike the versatile quotation mark, dashes are used for dialogue and not quotes; if you’re looking to quote someone or something, our next rule can help you out with that.

‘Quote this’

In Polish, quotation marks are referred to as a cudzysłów, literally meaning ‘foreign [= someone else’s] words’. That’s exactly the context they’re used in when marking words that come from somewhere other than the original author. However, instead of the hanging apostrophes English speakers use, Polish quotation marks look like this: „ ”

They can be used for titles of books, quotes or to add an ‘ironic’ glance to a word. Not much changes between English and Polish for this, but remember to never use them for dialogue!

The nature of a cudzysłów changes if you are trying to use a quote within a quote.

In that case, it’s most common to use » «, which is known as cudzysłów niemiecki (literally, [German] quotation marks). For example:

Napisała „nie jestem pewna czy wolę »Pana Tadeusza« Adama Mickiewicza czy raczej Wajdy.“

She wrote, “I’m not sure if I prefer ‘Pan Tadeusz’ by Adam Mickiewicz or by Wajda”.

Although these characters may seem foreign to English speakers, at least Polish has the advantage of not being bogged down by a surplus of quotation marks that sometimes occurs in cases of double-quoting.

Abbreviations

English is no stranger to abbreviations but they are most often reserved for casual writing, proper titles (like Mr, Dr, etc.) or Latin words (exempli gratia would be a common one). Polish texts, on the other hand, tend to make use of abbreviations at every turn, most often of their own language. Here are a few abbreviations that you’re likely to come across:

tj., to jest – that is

tzw., tak zwane – so-called

m.in., między innymi – among others (like e.g. but used at the beginning of a list)

np., na przykład – for example

Two abbreviations that may be confusing are:

itp., i tym podobne – and similar (much like the English etc.)

itd., i tak dalej – and so on (also used like the English etc.)

Their translations are very similar, so how do you know which one to use? The slight differences are mostly intuitive, so some reading and practising is the best advice. But if you’re nervous about getting it wrong, good news: you can just use both! When writing out lists of items, adding both itp. and itd. to the end of the list shows that it’s too long for you to complete. For example:

Cały dzień oglądaliśmy filmy Wajdy, Smoczyńskiej, Pawlikowskiego, Holland, itp., itd.

All day we watched movies by Wajda, Smoczyńska, Pawlikowski, Holland, etc., etc.

Crash course in Latin

So, when you open up a Polish-language newspaper, take a look through the pages and see how many abbreviations you can spot! Although these are some of the most common ones, there are plenty more that might require a Google search. Good news is, there are plenty of online resources dedicated to abbreviations (because there really are just that many).

Polish writers, especially of academic texts, tend to use Latin phrases without translation. The Polish-Latin connection goes deeper than just some phrases, however; much like Latin, most Polish words are accented on the penultimate syllable. And Poland is one of the few languages whose word for ‘tea’ doesn’t come from the Chinese cha or te, instead most likely from the Latin ‘herb’.

Both in everyday conversation and writing, Latin phrases are more likely to crop up. Here are a few to get you started:

Notabene (literally ‘note well’, which can also be shortened to nb.) is used before providing tangential but important information.

De facto is also common in English, and the meaning remains the same in Polish though it is also used to add a rhetorical flourish to a sentence.

Ex aequo (pronounced egzekffo) means to tie or place equally in some kind of ranked contest, like a sports match.

Sensu stricto, meaning in a narrow sense – it’s also sometimes shortened to just the word ‘stricte’.

Vel, the Polish answer to ‘a.k.a’, used when signifying pseudonyms or in similar situations.

Pro forma (literally ‘for the sake of form’) is used to denote that something is happening mostly for appearance’s sake.

Na cito is used when asking for something quickly or immediately, Poland’s ASAP.

Dates, numbers and numerals

Much like other European nations, Poles write the date in day/month/year order. Instead of slashes, however, it’s most common to use periods between the numbers. Though Arabic numerals are standard, another acceptable form would be to use a Roman numeral for the month, such as 28 XII 1899. With this form, periods are no longer used.

In Polish, always refer to centuries using Roman numerals. Though you may see the year written out similarly to the English method (i.e. ‘1970’), there is also a wordier style that may crop up: instead of 1970, that number would become ‘lata siedemdziesiąte XX wieku’, which literally translates to ‘the 70s of the 20^th century’. When writing out just the decade, use Arabic numerals with a period after the number.

W latach 90. wszyscy uwielbiali disco polo.

In the ‘90s, everyone loved disco polo.

Mastering the titles

Unlike the Germanic roots of English, Polish is a Slavic language. A clear difference between the two languages (other than grammar, spelling and everything else) is the way

s titles are written out. English tends to capitalise every word in a title except for articles, conjunctions and prepositions. The exception to the rule would be ‘artistic’ titles that choose to lowercase each word, but that is a deliberate choice. In Polish, only capitalise the first word in the title. The rest of the words, with the exception of names, are lowercase.

For example, Stanisław Lem’s book The Star Diaries is capitalised throughout, while in Polish it is written as Dzienniki gwiazdowe. A wordier example would be Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, which becomes Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych.

Another facet of using titles is the ever-important colon. Quick rule: don’t use it! Although colons are fair game in every other part of writing, titles instead use a period to differentiate between a heading and a subhead. The film The Art of Loving: The Story of Michalina Wisłocka becomes Sztuka Kochania. Historia Michaliny Wisłockiej. The first word after the period is always capitalised as well, and in this case is followed by a name, otherwise the remaining words would be lowercase.

Here on Culture.pl, regular readers may notice that we actually tend to capitalise Polish titles and put colons in them, as if they were English titles. We do this to ensure that our English-language readers actually recognise them as titles, since these two rules are anathema to the non-Polish-reading eye and can interrupt one’s reading flow!

Foreign names

When dealing with foreign names of people or products in Polish, changing the required cases can be a little trickier. If you’re reading this article, hopefully you’ve made some progress in differentiating between genitive, accusative and all the other cases Polish depends on.

Foreign words present a certain difficulty with declension, but spelling-wise the rule is simple. If a foreign word ends in a vowel, add an apostrophe before the ending. If the word ends in a consonant, no apostrophe needed! A few quick examples include Nowy film Marvela (a new Marvel movie) or komputery Apple’a (Apple computers).

Here are two renditions of Willy Brandt’s name in a Polish placename: Skwer Willy Brandta, Willy’ego Brandta.

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by Joel | 11 October 2026 · 6:44 am

Demise of Polish Social Media

This week’s Culture.pl newsletter offers retrospectives on its 25-year history of reporting on cultural developments in Poland. Here are some excerpts from a 2025 retrospective by Patryk Zakrzewski, translated in 2026 by Agnieszka Mistur, offering A journey to the graveyard of Polish social media – before Meta products took over the world.

Before the word ‘selfie’ became established in the Polish language, the Fotka.pl service was launched (the portal was inaugurated on Valentine’s Day – 14 February 2001). According to the INNPoland portal, the beginnings of the website were entirely analogue – its creator, Rafał Agnieszczak, had to register the domain by sending an appropriate application to the Research and Academic Computer Network by regular mail and paying a 200zł fee. The inspiration was an American website, Am I Hot or Not? We can learn about the beginnings of Fotka from Bartek Świderski’s review of the website, ‘Żylety i pasztety (Bombs and Hags; the website sexy.onet.pl was also rated), which he published in Machina in 2001.

…

The development of these types of portals was coupled with the dynamic development of the digital camera market – in 2005 alone, 900,000 such devices were sold in Poland. Meanwhile, the number of people using the Internet in Poland between 2001 and 2005 doubled thanks, among other things, to the Neostrada service offered by Telekomunikacja Polska.

On the other hand, the massification of the Internet sparked a response from the network elitists (this is when the term ‘Neo kids’ was coined), and photos from Fotka (as well as from NK or Grono, which will be discussed below) became fodder for mocking blogs, such as ‘Białe Kozaczki’ (White Boots) – with women’s outfits considered ‘embarrassing’ or ‘Pobożni Chłopcy’ (Pious Boys), where photos of young men flexing their muscles were displayed against the background of first communion pictures, images of St Mary’s girls and portraits of the Pope.

Incidentally, Fotka – the only dinosaur of Polish social media – is still alive and well (albeit under the more global domain .com). However, it has changed its profile a bit: today, it functions primarily as a dating site.

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In the article ‘Świat jest mały, czyli Grono.net’ (The World Is Small, or Grono.net) by Agata Krzewińska, published in Życie (Life) in 2004, we read:

The fact that the world is small was proved by an American social psychologist, Stanley Milgram, in his experiment. In a simple way, the scientist demonstrated that two random people living in two distant locations are connected by a chain of only about six people. This means that only these six people (and not several hundred, as was initially expected) would have to shake hands for each of us to be able to shake hands with the Pope or the president of the United States. The Milgram experiment from the late 1960s has once again become popular thanks to experimental internet websites, such as ‘Social Networking’ […]. Grono.net is the first website of its kind in Poland.

In line with this assumption, anyone visiting the portal could check how many handshakes away they were from another Grono (Group) user. The creators of the website – Piotr Bronowicz (Bronek), Tomasz Lis (Czarodzic) and Wojciech Sobczuk (Sopel) – came from the community centred around the Radiostacja (Radiostation) discussion forum. The people who gathered on Grono were initially ‘alternative warsawites [warszawka]’. That’s what they were called by Piotr Cichocki’s interlocutor in his book Sieć przyjaciół. Serwis społecznościowy oczami etnografa (Network of Friends: A Social Networking Site Through the Eyes of an Ethnographer), which was the result of several years of research into the portal’s community. At that time, the website was semi-closed (only people who received an invitation from someone they knew could join), which fuelled interest – at one point, invitations to join Grono even became the subject of auctions on Allegro. In an article in Przekrój (Cross-Section) from 2004, Izabela Szymańska explained:

The fact that only ‘friends of our friends’ become part of Grono makes you feel that no one unwanted will get in, that you’re among your own. […] Grono’s popularity is based on being part of something which cannot be joined by everyone. As a chosen one, you can show your graciousness to those who are not in Grono but would like to be.

Over time, the elitism of the portal began to decline (and invitations were no longer required). At the end of its life, when the ‘the young and the creative from big centres’ had already moved on to Facebook, it was considered a totally uncool service for gimbusy – unsavvy young teens.

Let us return, however, to the time of its prosperity. Discussions took place in a grono (group) – a thematic forum (to create and moderate your own grono, you had to buy the status of a grono–master via text message). Membership in a grono was displayed on the user’s profile, so the right choice of groups was an important element of self-creation. When creating a profile, the user had to answer the question ‘What am I looking for?’ – they could select: a partner, friends, an adventure or nothing (in which case the profile was not visible in the search engine). Compared to today’s social media, the service was characterised by greater transparency of activities; for example, you received a notification informing you who viewed your profile or removed you from their friends list.

Over time, new functionalities were added: the option to add an mp3 to your profile or change its background; a git button, which is the equivalent of the Facebook ‘like’ button (the most popular photos were added to the Grono greatest hits list, i.e. the ‘top gits’ category visible on the homepage); and, after some time, a kit button to express disapproval.

In 2006, Grono won the Nocne Marki (Night Owl) award from the magazine Aktivist in the category ‘Zajawka 2006: Najlepszy serwis Web 2.0’ (Clip 2006: Best Web 2.0 Service). Other nominees were Moblog (a service for blogging from mobile devices, sponsored by Nokia), Smog (a website for presenting ‘funny stuff’) and Wrzuta.pl (a service for sharing mp3 files).

As recently as 2008, Grono.net was the most popular social media platform in Poland. At that time, all of Central and Eastern Europe was a colourful mosaic of local social media: in the Czech Republic, the most popular service of this type was Lide.cz; in Lithuania, One.lt; in Latvia, Draugiem.lv; in Hungary, Wiw.hu (which, as the founders of Grono said in interviews, was an inspiration for them when creating the website). Parenthetically, Grono made an attempt at foreign expansion – English and Spanish language portals Grapeo.co.uk and Bago.es were created – but failed.

As early as 2009, the website began to lose the competition for the hearts and minds of users to Facebook, which was also due to changes made to the website, such as the introduction of a new layout and additional paid services. The popularity of the thematic group called ŻĄDAMY STAREGO GRONA!!! (WE DEMAND THE OLD GRONO!!!) was skyrocketing, and the profile pictures showed graphics made by the users in Paint with slogans such as ‘Grono has sold itself’ or ‘The new Grono is shitty’ (see illustrations from the abovementioned book by Piotr Cichocki). The portal was closed in 2012.

According to the Megapanel/PBI Gemius study Dzieci aktywne online 2007 (Children Active Online 2007), young people in the 15-24 age group constituted the largest group among Internet users (33.76%). Of these, 85% were active users of social media. At that time, 42% of Poles had access to the Internet.

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People with similar interests joined so-called clubs – the equivalent of discussion forums, which also had their own galleries and guestbooks. The online newsletter Pulsik was an original idea – an information portal created by Epuls users for Epuls users. There was also a scoring system for active users of the platform. A feature that originated from Fotka was the ‘Epuls mascots’ tab, which displays users whose profile pictures received the highest ratings from other users.

The platform’s internal currency were called pulsars. They could be used to buy additional emoticons, virtual gifts for friends, features such as quizzes for friends or access to a premium account, a so-called Divine Puls. Another lesson in capitalism was the internal sales platform, where the more entrepreneurial and talented Epuls users, in exchange for pulsars, sold their graphics, which were used as profile photos. The website also collaborated with mBank; Epuls was connected to the electronic banking service called izzyBank – ‘the first virtual bank for young people ages 13 to 18’.

Predatory monetisation, user dissatisfaction with the new website layout and changes to the portal, and of course the expansion of Facebook contributed to a slump in Epuls’s popularity – the portal lost more than 700,000 users within a few months in 2010. A slow decline then began, and the site was finally shut down in 2017.

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We have already mentioned portals with a distinctly youthful profile, so it’s time for an intergenerational service, which for many older users was something like a ‘gateway to the Internet’ – a place where they gained their digital skills and took their first steps in building online relationships.

It was founded in 2006 by Maciej Popowicz, then an IT student at the University of Wrocław, together with Michał Bartoszkiewicz, Paweł Olchawa and Łukasz Adziński. Nasza Klasa (Our Class), because that is what we are talking about, was modelled on the American website Classmates.com, and the name of the portal was taken from a song by Jacek Kaczmarski. The idea was simple – to create a platform that would enable people to find their school friends after many years, and it hit the spot. You could escape from school memories to an imagery faraway space, Neverland, where fictional schools could be created. Hogwarts, of course, attracted the largest group of people.

Over time, the original function of the portal began to be expanded with other services and tools. Nasza Klasa offered a whole range of browser games, including something for those seeking something bucolic (‘Wiejskie życie’ [Rural Life] or ‘PGR’ [Agro-Commune]) or thrills (‘Miejskie gangi’ [Urban Gangs]), and fishing fanatics (‘Na ryby’ [Gone Fishin’]) were not forgotten. In 2009, the website introduced its own internal currency – the euro-sponge. You could use it to buy new emoticons (referred to as ‘super faces’), virtual gifts for your friends, an extra transfer for photos in your gallery or – just after the Smolensk disaster – a black ribbon for your profile photo. The currency was named after the website’s mascot – Pan Gąbka (Mr Sponge).

Since there were also many young users on the portal, Nasza Klasa initiated an educational campaign for children that taught the rules of online safety. Its faces were a pair of superheroes – Sekurion and Protekta.

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In 2010, over 11 million people had accounts on this website – more than half of all internet users in Poland at that time. Soon after, however, the portal underwent rebranding and began to lose its character in competing with foreign social-media giants. Many of the new changes were met with resistance from users – this was the case, for example, with the introduction of śledzik, i.e. the equivalent of Facebook’s newsfeed. People unfamiliar with internet slang – much to the amusement of jokesters – spread a chain letter saying that, to get rid of the hated function, you should enter the code 5P13RD4L4J 5L3D21U (can be read as ‘f**k off śledzik, ed.). However, the real outcry was caused by the new website regulations (operating under the abbreviated name nk.pl since 2010). The main issue was that all content added by users was the property of the portal and could be used, for example, for marketing purposes. Ironically, users generally moved to Facebook, a service that, as we know, does not care much about user privacy and has similar provisions in its terms and conditions. The website only had about one million users in 2020, and it was closed on 27 July 2021 at 11:59pm.

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The Polish response to Twitter was BLIP – the name of the service is an acronym of the slogan ‘Bardzo Lubię Informować Przyjaciół’ (I so like keeping my friends informed). Its launch caused controversy in the Polish blogosphere, although it was not actually to blame. The problem was that shortly before this, Grono had started promoting its service with an almost identical name (Blimp) and functionality (although the launch of Blip had been announced earlier), preceded by an aggressive marketing campaign which involved spamming the most popular Polish blogs with comments …

…

Blip users could share short messages of up to 160 characters and attach photos, links or voice messages. ‘Blip weighs nothing, Blip is everywhere’ – a woman’s voice assured us in an advertising spot. On 22 October 2009, the website proudly announced on its blog that 10 million messages had already been sent via Blip. Zakład Ubezpieczeń Społecznych (the Social Insurance Institution, ZUS) had a Blip account, as did the editorial offices of national media (Radio Zet, TVN24, Przekrój), football clubs (Legia Warszawa, Widzew Łódź) and city offices (Radom, Kraków). All the same, it remained a niche service, as the number of Blip users that year was just over 300,000. In 2013, the service was closed, and users were encouraged to migrate to Wykop.pl, which is still in existence today. Other platforms, such as Flaker.pl, Pinger.pl and Spinacz.pl also tried their hand in the microblogging market.

The most popular Polish messenger of the time, Gadu-Gadu (Chit-Chat) (which became the owner of Blip at one point), also tried to promote its social-media platform. The MojaGeneracja.pl portal, which was launched in February 2007, offered the possibility of creating a profile, rating other profiles or running a blog. An original feature was the option to leave voice comments. In addition to the typical set of tools, other branches of MojaGeneracja (MyGeneration) were developed over time, such as the educational portal EduNacja or Muzango, where artists could create their profiles and share mp3 files. The latter was probably an attempt to respond to MySpace.

Official blogs on the portal were also kept by public figures: the band Łzy, Tede, Gosia Andrzejewicz, Doda, Joanna Senyszyn and Lech Wałęsa (at mojageneracja.pl/1980; the former president also received a special number in the Gadu-Gadu messenger – 1980)….

Moja Generacja is a prime example of rapid growth and equally abrupt decline in user numbers. In 2008, there were 5 million registered accounts on the platform, but by 2012, this number had dropped to less than half a million. Despite protests from people attached to the portal, the decision to shut it down was made in November 2012….

In the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, domestic social media were already basically an endangered species – and those that survived were a mere shadow of their former popularity.

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by Joel | 10 October 2026 · 9:32 am

25 years of Culture.pl

This week’s Culture.pl newsletter offers retrospectives on its 25-year history of reporting on cultural developments in Poland. Here’s a brief excerpt from one of its many articles.

Join me in travelling back in time. It’s Poland, 2001, the first year of Culture.pl’s existence. These were the days of Poland’s first ever reality show, the Polish edition of Big Brother and the popularity of the cult TV series The Lousy World (Świat według Kiepskich), which followed the lives of a dysfunctional family from Wrocław. It was also the beginning of ‘Małyszomania’ (the collective obsession with award-winning ski jumper Adam Małysz and, what followed, the sport itself) and ‘Pottermania’ (the brilliant translation of the first Harry Potter book only came out in 2000, three years after its debut in the UK). It was also the year in which the horrific attacks on the World Trade Centre took place and the ‘war on terror’ began. 2001 also saw Steve Jobs unveil the iPod (yes, dear children, iPod, not iPhone), which set off a domino effect, ultimately leading to the shift away from physical media and the emergence of a model of cultural participation based on subscriptions and streaming, in which we own nothing, but have access to (practically) everything.

Let’s begin with a closer look at the very reason our website could be created in the first place. In 2001, less than 20% of Poles are said to have had access to the internet. On 15th January 2001, the Polish Telecommunications company (Telekomunikacja Polska, TP for short) launched their newest service, Neostrada. Neostrada broadband internet quickly became a symbol of the emergence of the internet in Poland (the young users flooding onto the web, unfamiliar with – brace yourselves – ‘netiquette’, were dubbed ‘neo kids’). The cheapest subscription cost 300 PLN a month (which in 2001 amounted to almost 15% of the average salary); initially, the service was also available only in Warsaw. In September 2001, the Polish-language Wikipedia was launched, and by the end of the year it already had over 500 pages (today it has over 1.7 million). Although the popular Polish instant messaging service Gadu-Gadu had been in existence since 2000 (with 250,000 users by 2001), the social media revolution hadn’t even begun yet. Even MySpace, which seems prehistoric from today’s perspective, would not launch for another two years. In a 2001 article in Machina magazine, you could read about this internet novelty: ‘A new literary genre has emerged. It’s called a blog.’

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by Joel | 30 September 2026 · 6:21 am

Melanesian Obsidian in Micronesia

From Waka Kuaka | The Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 131, no. 4 (2022):

OBSIDIAN POINT DISCOVERED ON KAPINGAMARANGI ATOLL, MICRONESIA:
IMPLICATIONS FOR POST-SETTLEMENT REGIONAL INTERACTIONS

TAKUYA NAGAOKA. Pasifika Renaissance
PETER J. SHEPPARD, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland
CALLAN ROSS-SHEPPARD, McGill University
NINA KONONENKO, University of Sydney, Australian Museum

ABSTRACT: An obsidian point was discovered by chance by local people on Kapingamarangi Atoll, a Polynesian Outlier in Micronesia. In addition to use-wear and residue analysis to identify its use, pXRF analysis conducted on it demonstrated that it was brought from the Admiralty Islands in Papua New Guinea over about 900 km. The information on other Admiralty obsidian artefacts found in western Oceania and other associated phenomena suggest that those artefacts were brought from the source through an interaction network between Micronesia and Melanesia during the first half of the second millennium AD. They had significant social value as prestige goods in the peripheral areas of the Admiralty obsidian circulation, serving as chiefly heirlooms and grave goods. In addition to skilful Caroline Islands seafarers, Polynesian Outlier populations had an important role in the interregional interactions during this dynamic period in the western Pacific, which was possibly activated by Polynesian intrusion into the region related to a larger Polynesian expansion into eastern Polynesia circa AD 1000. Further, we argue that the Saudeleur dynasty of Pohnpei, which achieved the development of a famous megalithic politico-religious centre, Nan Madol, was influential in the interaction sphere during its height in AD 1000–1500. Thus, by using archaeological, linguistic, historical, ethnological, oral traditional and DNA data, the interdisciplinary analysis of this rare obsidian artefact has deepened our understanding of post-settlement interaction in the region.

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by Joel | 29 September 2026 · 5:53 am

Some Polish Nobles on the Grand Tour

This week’s edition of Culture.pl has an interesting historical article by Jakub Zarzycki, titled The Grand Tour, or the ‘Great Journey’ Through Europe, first published in 2023 and translated from Polish by Michał Pelczar. Here are some more excerpts.

Grand Tour of a Polish Nobleman

Such a trip was in Polish sometimes referred to as a peregrination (peregrynacja) or a voyage (wojaż), and its participants were called peregrines or voyagers (peregrynanci and wojażerowie, respectively). German terms were also used, such as Kavalierstour (for ‘bachelor tour’) or Kavaliersreise.

It is worth noting geographic and social differences between nations. The English, being mostly Protestants, came to the continent, which involved a physical crossing of the English Channel and a stay in countries with a different – that is, Roman Catholic – religion (such as France and particularly Italy). Meanwhile, for Poles, among whom Catholics predominated, it was a trip to lands not so religiously different from theirs.

Such a trip was to happen only once, because later the young nobleman entered adult life. Initially, the peregrines were therefore between the ages of 16 and 20; later, from the 18th century, older people went. It happened that brothers of similar age traveled together. Jan (later king) and Marek Sobieski, departing in 1646, were 17 and 18, respectively. Janusz Antoni and Michał Serwacy Wiśniowiecki, starting their journey in 1695, were 17 and 15 years old. Later, they held high offices, as Janusz became the castellan of Kraków, while Michał became the voivode of Vilnius and the great hetman of Lithuania.

The journey (sometimes combined with study) could last from one to four years, sometimes longer. Both the young Sobieskis and the Wiśniowieckis left Poland for a total of two years. The grand tour of the brothers Jan Stanisław and Aleksander Jan Jabłonowski, sons of Stanisław Jan, the grand crown hetman and the commander of the Polish hussars during the Battle of Vienna, lasted longer – they stayed abroad for over five years – from September 1682 to January 1688.

As a side note, it can be remarked that their father also spent part of his youth abroad – the period of his studies in Prague and the Grand Tour, spent primarily in France, were in the years 1648 to 1650.

The time spent in each city was not divided equally. It was assumed that one could spend up to a year in Paris (combining this stay with studies), and only a few weeks would be left for Madrid. This is what the Jabłonowskis, for example, did. The Sobieskis also spent most of their trip in the French capital, while the Wiśniowieckis lived there for almost a year.

The trips were, of course, carefully planned, and the most important element of preparation was the choice of a guardian. Young people did not leave alone but under the supervision of a preceptor, also called a mentor, governor or tutor. As Antonii Mączak, the precursor of research on travel in modern times, wrote in the book Everyday Life in Traveling Around Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Życie Codzienne w Podróżach po Europie w XVI i XVII Wieku) that this guardian had to be

a thoroughly competent person who knows the countries he visits, speaks languages and treats the care provided during a foreign trip as a profession. Such a tutor was valuable, as he ensured the young man used his experience and made it possible to trust that he would avoid unnecessary risks. Such specialists were passed on by fathers through letters of recommendation. They would often become authors of widely read and useful guides.

One such professional preceptor was Lassels, the author of the term Grand Tour, who traveled in this manner five times in total. The young Jabłonowskis had two tutors – Jan Michał Kossowicz and Szymon Ignacy Gutowski. The Wiśniowieckis were looked after by Jan Kamocki, and the Sobieskis by Sebastian Gawarecki. During such trips, preceptors could complete their own studies and, of course, visit previously unknown places with the young peregrines.

The task of the preceptor was primarily to make sure that the whole trip proceeded in accordance with the parents’ instructions, i.e. that the young men learned, made appropriate contacts, and also engaged in sightseeing. It was the preceptor who had the money allocated for the trip and regularly informed the parents in letters about what was happening to their sons. Mentors would also write diaries if the peregrines were too young. Gawarecki wrote one for the Sobieskis, and Kossowicz for the Jabłonowskis.

In addition to the guardians, servants were also taken along, which was so obvious that they were not even mentioned in the travel accounts unless they became the protagonists of some particular story.

Itineraries, Diaries & Manuals

Our knowledge about Polish voyagers and their experiences comes from the few remaining travelers’ records of a specific type. Most of them were not published (their authors did not intend to do so), and they circulated among the relatives and friends of the diarist only in the form of manuscripts, helping in the preparation of subsequent trips.

The first type of such a document was the itinerary. As Adam Kucharski noted:

[it was] simply a list of visited cities, arranged in the chronological order of their visit. Thence originated the specific type of itineraries, such as the Old Polish ones, that constituted a kind of guide for travelers. They provided an outline of the road separating the destination points, specifying the distance between the start and the finish of the peregrination. The distance was given in various units of length (usually miles as measured in a given country). Possible obstacles on the way, such as rivers or mountains, were also specified.

The second type was a diary, i.e. an account of the expedition; their authors were referred to as diarists. It was a travel journal in chronological order, with the author’s opinions and impressions about the places he visited. It contained comments on history, geography, politics but also descriptions of the sights and observations on the customs prevailing in each given country. It also included practical information. Diaries are the most valuable documents for us today, because on their basis not only can we reconstruct the routes of the journeys but we can also get to know the impressions and opinions of the peregrines. Particularly interesting are those fragments in which the authors describe not so much something typical but rather something that deviated from the norm they were accustomed to.

Yet another document was parental instructions – guidelines in which fathers (more often) and mothers (less often) wrote down their instructions: what and how peregrines were to study, how to behave, what to avoid. These were often based on the earlier experiences of fathers-voyagers. Moral admonitions and practical advice also appeared in the texts themselves. Such an instruction was written, for example, by Jakub Sobieski for his sons, Jan and Marek.

Places Visited

France – including Paris and Versailles – was undoubtedly a special place for the participants of the Grand Tour, often being its main destination. As we read in Stanisław Wierzbowski, who took his ‘bachelor tour’ in the 1680s:

I do not describe Paris, because there are so many volumes written about it. I only add that the city is full of all delicacies. Want to be a saint? You can, because you will find so many opportunities and people whose example of holiness you can follow. There are so many temples of the Lord, pious monasteries, school libraries. The Sorbonne itself gives you a doctorate. Want to be bad? There also you will more likely find the type of company to corrupt your soul and body. Do you want to delight your eyes? You have beautiful people, palaces, gardens, haberdashery, exquisite paintings, splendid and delicate works, and a subtlety of comedies and operas – especially operas and the Versailles garden – these two seduce a man’s memory.

As was already mentioned, Italy was also a permanent destination for the expeditions. Italy aroused interest due to the accumulation of works of art and the role of Rome as the capital of the Christian world. In addition, the universities in Bologna and Padua were highly esteemed. Venice was visited especially keenly during Carnival. The Apennine Peninsula was often the last stage of the Grand Tour – after that, one headed north towards the borders of the Republic of Poland.

The countries of the Reich (particularly Vienna) were also visited for political reasons – after all, a pro- or anti-Habsburg orientation was one of the vectors of Polish foreign policy at that time. Prague, then part of the Reich, was a popular choice as a place of study. Other countries were also traveled to, such as England, the Netherlands and Spain, but their importance or the time devoted to visiting them could not compare to France or Italy.

Typical Activities of a Polish Peregrine

What the young man was supposed to do during the Grand Tour was already planned by his parents in the aforementioned instructions. Peregrines combined sightseeing with studies – for example, the Jabłonowskis studied in Prague and Paris, in the latter city the subject being philosophy at the Jesuit college.

The Sobieskis, while in Paris, even had their typical days planned by their father (Jakub Sobieski). As Joanna Orzeł writes in the text The Grand Tour of Marek and Jan Sobieski (Grand Tour Marka i Jana Sobieskich), it was:

five hours of study a day: an hour in the morning, stylistic exercises in Latin; the next half hour, their correction under the supervision of a professor; an hour-long lecture by the professor, reading with a commentary on Roman history; half an hour, individual reading (a total of three hours in the morning); in the afternoon, two hours of learning French combined with French history. Paris was also where they studied fencing. Their father additionally recommended riding lessons and playing ball (on their days off). In addition, young men could decide on their own to learn to dance and play instruments.

It is worth noting that studies were perceived slightly differently than today – they did not have to be complete, regular semesters spent in one place and ending with exams, but rather listening to lectures by the most eminent professors and participating in disputes. Students often studied for several months, moving between specific academic centers.

Practical studies related to the military were an important element, which was particularly essential for the subsequent career of a young nobleman in the First Polish Republic. Anna Markiewicz, in the text Hercules Gallicus: The Educational Journey of Jerzy Stanisław Dzieduszycki (Hercules Gallicus: Podróż Edukacyjna Jerzego Stanisława Dzieduszyckiego), explained why the young man, who was traveling in the early 1790s, left Paris for the Netherlands:

The attractiveness of the country was usually associated with the possibility of convenient observation of many fortifications and territorial reinforcements located in this area, making it easier for the young nobility to acquire practical skills in the field of military art. The convenience of observing military maneuvers during numerous clashes that took place there was a practical supplement to reading and theoretical classes held at prestigious Parisian academies.

Military interests weren’t exceptional – for example, the already mentioned Wiśniowieckis pursued them. Learning foreign languages was also indispensable. For example, Jabłonowski, the father, put emphasis on this, so his sons wrote letters to him from Paris in Latin and French, which was supposed to showcase their progress in mastering these languages.

Of value apart from studying was establishing contacts, i.e. audiences at royal courts and getting to know other young people from noble and aristocratic families. In May 1685, the Jabłonowskis were introduced to Louis XIV in Versailles. They also observed the audience granted by the King of France to the Doge of Genoa, or the solemn entry of the Muscovite envoy.

On the other hand, liaising with other Polish noblemen in the specific conditions provided by staying abroad and the young age of the people getting to know each other created bonds between them, which were maintained and paid off later in life. The common experience of youth, e.g. studying in the same place, often brought strangers closer together.

These trips were also connected with … shopping. In addition to souvenirs, the newest books were purchased but also works by classical authors, which later enriched magnate libraries. In Italy, especially in the 18th century, works of art were bought, both antique and contemporary. Cityscapes depicting Italian cities, so-called vedutas, are worth mentioning here. The popularity of this genre developed especially in Venice, where these were eagerly bought by English visitors to the city. They treated them as a special souvenir – these works, after returning to London, for example, were to be a reminder of the Grand Tour taken to Italy back in their day.

Grand Tour – What For?

Preceptors’ letters to parents often contained polite requests to send money; fathers, writing to their children’s guardians, in turn pointed out that the costs of the expedition were constantly rising. We may wonder – why send young people on such expensive expeditions? The educational aspect was undoubtedly important, but the peregrine was supposed to watch, experience and gain an understanding of something – and these are very intangible experiences.

As the popularity of the Grand Tour phenomenon among the Polish elites of the 17th and 18th centuries shows, this journey was indispensable and considered worth its price. Its main assumptions have survived, in changed forms of course, to this day.

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by Joel | 28 September 2026 · 5:58 am

Polish Nobles on the ‘Grand Tour’: Intro

The concept of a Grand Tour was introduced in the 1770s by an Englishman, Richard Lassels, to describe a journey serving to supplement education, develop aesthetic taste, acquire practical skills, broaden the knowledge of foreign languages and acquire general refinement by young noblemen – this was one of the most important social and cultural phenomena in the 17th and 18th centuries. Young Polish nobles also made such journeys.

As noted by Anna Markiewicz in the book Educational Journeys in the Times of Jan III Sobieski: Peregrinationes Jablonovianae (Podróże Edukacyjne w Czasach Jana III Sobieskiego: Peregrinationes Jablonovianae), Richard Lassels ‘included in this term the meaning of the journey – it was grand because of the duration and length of the route, but it was also supposed to be a grand event, a journey of a lifetime’. In the 17th and 18th centuries, such journeys were very popular, if not common, among the richest stratum of the European and Polish nobility. From this designation, other terms were also coined, which still function today – the English ‘tourist’ being someone taking part in a Grand Tour.

The very premise of the Grand Tour was very simple. As Markiewicz wrote, the following were visited:

France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and England. A great foreign trip was then the last stage of education of European elites, undertaken in order to gain knowledge, skills, to get to know the world, foreign countries, their cultures, customs and language. Young people visited foreign universities, courts, academies and military camps.

In the 1730s, Stanisław Lubomirski explained the goals of such an expedition to his sons Aleksander and Jerzy: ‘One should [become familiar with] anything about [the functioning of] a good institution, polish wit and good spirit, and comprehend all wisdom and decorum.’

The point was therefore to see what principles of a foreign system (political or social) could be useful in Poland, to acquire knowledge and skills indispensable in public life, and also to acquire refinement and a certain ability to ‘be in the world’.

Trips in the 17th century – which needs to be emphasized – were, for social, moral and financial reasons, reserved only for young men from wealthy noble families.

However, in the 18th century, the Grand Tour underwent changes – the educational aspect (i.e. gaining specific knowledge) becomes less important, and what matters most is developing the right taste, which is why Italy becomes the most important destination. As Marek Bratuń notes in the article Grand Tour: Birth – Development – Dusk (Grand Tour: Narodziny – Rozwój – Zmierzch): ‘The main purpose of the Grand Tour in the 18th century are the broadly understood arts that contribute to the development of good taste, the most perfect forms of which were preserved under the Italian sky.’ It is also connected with the archaeological excavations of the times, in Pompeii (1738) and Herculaneum (1748), bringing a new wave of interest in the art of antiquity.

The activity of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and his work devoted to the history of ancient art, published in 1755, was also significant. The proof of this influence is the work published in 1815, titled On the Art of the Ancients, or Polish Winckelmann (O Sztuce u Dawnych czyli Winkelman Polski) by Stanisław Kostka Potocki, one of the pioneers of Polish archeology and aficionado of ancient art.

Marek Bratuń also adds that ‘it is the primacy of aesthetics in the Italian Grand Tour of the second half of the 18th century […] that will effectively transform the original educational journey into an aesthetic and tourist journey, without a preceptor; in the footsteps of the departing gentlemen, the braver ladies would also follow.’

This tendency is also noticed by Agata Roćko in the article Polish Grand Tour of ‘Fashionable Ladies’ (Polski Grand Tour ‘Dam Modnych’), writing that ‘Polish ladies have already followed on the beaten track of the Grand Tour, just like the ladies in Europe, even though their journeys were not educational and cognitive, but rather aesthetic and touristic.’ Among Polish travelers, one can mention, for example, Izabela Lubomirska née Czartoryska (she went to Italy with Kostka Potocki in the years 1785 to 1786) or Teofilia Konstancja Morawska née Radziwiłł (author of Diary of a European Journey in the Years 1773-1774 [Diariusz Podróży Europejskiej w Latach 1773-1774]).

The trips themselves over the course of time ceased to be reserved only for the aristocracy, becoming in the 19th century also available to the moderately wealthy nobility and the wealthier bourgeoisie. Thanks to this, the phenomenon has been permanently recorded in the history of the Old Continent, because it is then that modern travel around Europe begins to take shape as a typical activity consisting in going to a foreign place and visiting it, completely unrelated to a specific reason (e.g. pilgrimage, a diplomatic deployment or commercial mission). In a way, the idea of such an ‘uninvested’ trip (because its purpose was to see art and visit interesting places) continues to this day – this type of tourism is a typical cultural activity of the European middle class, and a trip to Italy remains its quintessence.