Great Emigration
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The Great Emigration (Polish: Wielka Emigracja) was an emigration of political elites from Poland from 1831–1870. Since the end of the 18th century, a major role in Polish political life was played by people who carried out their activities outside the country as émigrés. Their fate was a consequence of the Partitions of Poland, which completely divided the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Monarchy of Austria. Because of this emigration of political elites, much of the political and ideological activity of the Polish intelligentsia during the 18th and 19th centuries was done outside of the lands of partitioned Poland.
Most of the political émigrés were based in France. The most important wave of emigration came after the November Uprising of 1830–1831. These Poles later fought and provided valuable support during the 1846 and 1848 revolutions in Poland. Their resistance was not limited to Polish revolutionary activity, as they also participated in various lands during the Revolutions of 1848, including France, the small principalities of Germany and Italy, Austria, Hungary, and the Danubian principalities Wallachia and Moldavia. Additional waves of émigrés came after the failures of the attempted 1848 revolution and the January Uprising of 1863–1864.
Notable Poles of the Great Emigration living in exile:
- Fryderyk Chopin
- Adam Mickiewicz
- Juliusz Słowacki
- Cyprian Kamil Norwid
- Zygmunt Krasiński
- Joachim Lelewel
- Maurycy Mochnacki
- Piotr Michałowski
- Seweryn Goszczyński
- Jozef Bohdan Zaleski
