PRO-POLISH AGITATION IN GREAT BRIITAIN 1832-1867
Abstract
Poland's political fate and the plight of her exiles during the
nineteenth century evoked a mixed response from various sectors of the
British population. Five separate aspects of pro-Polish sympathy have been
analyzed. The Literary Association's efforts to raise money for the relief
of refugees resident in Great Britain were severly hampered and finally
crippled by public opinion hostile to charity for foreigners in the midst
of domestic distress. Agitation designed to place pressure on the Government
to intervene by force in order to re-establish the independence of Poland
was never sufficiently strong between 1832 and 1867 to deflect the
Government from pursuing a course dictated by national interests. This has
been illustrated by a study of public opinion and official policy towards
the restoration of Poland during the Crimean War. The attitude of several
of the more important religious denominations to the Polish question was
not uniform. Roman Catholics feared the destruction of Papal possessions
in the event of Polish revolutionary fervour reaching Italy; Anglo-Jewry
tended to be absorbed in the problem of its own disabilities while it was
difficult for the Poles as a predominantly Catholic nation to avoid giving
offence to the Established Church and dissenting sects. Anglo-Polish masonic
contacts produced a new form of passive Polonophilism quite distinct from
the conventional pattern of demonstrative sympathy for Poland but equally
futile from the political point of view. Polish experience of foreign
oppression was far more relevant for Irish nationalists than for the
English. A backward agrarian economy and the Roman Catholic religion also
drew the two nations together. Ireland, however, could offer nothing more
substantial to the Poles than moral support and in return was able to profit
from sophisticated Polish theories of insurrection.
Authors
Copson-Niecko, Maria Jane EithneCollections
- Theses [3706]