The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Austrian Galicia or colloquially Austrian Poland, was a constituent possession of the Habsburg monarchy, encompassing the historical region of Galicia, and also including parts of historical regions of Lodomeria and Lesser Poland. The crown land was established in 1772, after the First Partition of Poland, when Habsburgs annexed those regions, previously belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1804, it became a crown land of the newly proclaimed Austrian Empire. From 1867, it was a crown land within the Cisleithanian or Austrian half of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. It maintained a degree of provincial autonomy, and its status remained unchanged until the dissolution of the monarchy in 1918.
The domain was initially carved in 1772 from the southwestern part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the following period, several territorial changes occurred. In 1795, the Habsburg monarchy participated in the Third Partition of Poland and annexed additional Polish-held territory, which was renamed as West Galicia. That region was lost in 1809. Some other changes also occurred, by territorial expansion or contraction (1786, 1803, 1809, 1815, 1846, 1849). After 1849, the borders of the crown land remained stable until 1918.
During the World War I, it was temporarily occupied and governed within the General Governorate of Galicia and Bukovina (1914–1915). In 1918, after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, its eastern regions were claimed by the Ukrainian People's Republic, and also by the West Ukrainian People's Republic, but following the Polish–Ukrainian War the entire region became part of the Second Polish Republic. As a result of later border changes following World War II, the region of Galicia became divided between the Republic of Poland and the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union, now Poland and Ukraine.
The nucleus of historical Galicia broadly corresponds to the modern Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions of western Ukraine; while the western part makes up the bulk of the Polish Lesser Poland and Subcarpathian Voivodeships and a large part of the Silesian Voivodeship.
Name
The name of the newly created realm, selected by the Habsburgs in 1772, stems from a title used since the 13th century by Kings of Hungary, who had a long-standing claim over both Galicia and Lodomeria. The term "Galicia" is a Latinized form of Halychyna, a historical region and a medieval Ukrainian principality centered in the city of Halych. The name "Lodomeria" is also a Latinized form of the original Ukrainian name of the principality centered in Volodymyr-Volynskyi, and also known as Volhynia. The royal title "King of Galicia and Lodomeria" was created by King Andrew II of Hungary (1205–1235) during his temporary conquests of the region. Since that time, the dual title was included among ceremonial titles used by the kings of Hungary, thus creating the basis for later (1772) Habsburg claims.
Galicia was the largest part of the area annexed by the Habsburg monarchy in the First Partition of Poland in 1772, with the addition of a minor part of historical Lodomeria (the Belz region belonged to medieval Volhynia/Lodomeria). As such, the newly annexed territory was named the "Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria" to underline the Habsburg claim to those regions, as lands of the Hungarian Crown. Already in 1772, the annexed territory included a significant (southern) part of Lesser Poland, but that region was not represented in the name of the realm, for various political reasons.
In the Third Partition of Poland (1795), additional portions of the abolished Kingdom of Poland (northern and eastern parts of the historical Lesser Poland, and the most western part of historical Lodomeria) were also annexed by the Habsburgs, and renamed as West Galicia (or New Galicia), which additionally expanded the geographical reference of the term Galicia, thus omitting again Polish designations from the official geopolitical terminology.
Ceremonial name
After the annexation of the Grand Duchy of Kraków in 1846, the name of the realm, in its wider ceremonial form, was: Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Grand Duchy of Kraków and the Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator. It had equivalents in all languages spoken in the region, including: German: Königreich Galizien und Lodomerien mit dem Großherzogtum Krakau und den Herzogtümern Auschwitz und Zator; Polish: Królestwo Galicji i Lodomerii wraz z Wielkim Księstwem Krakowskim i Księstwami Oświęcimia i Zatoru.
History
In 1772, by the First Partition of Poland, the Habsburg Monarchy acquired Galicia, with parts of Lodomeria and Lesser Poland. Until then, those regions were parts of the Polish Kingdom: the Lesser Poland since the early medieval times, and Galicia-Lodomeria since the Galicia–Volhynia Wars in the 14th century, when they were annexed, and remained under Polish rule until the First Partition. The first governor, Count Johann Anton von Pergen, took his post in the autumn of 1772.
Lwów (Lemberg in German) served as the capital of Austrian Galicia, which was dominated by the Polish aristocracy, despite the fact that the population of the eastern half of the province was mostly Ukrainians. In addition, there existed a large Jewish population in Galicia, also more heavily concentrated in the eastern parts of the province.
During the first decades of Austrian rule, Galicia was firmly governed from Vienna, and many significant reforms were carried out by a bureaucracy staffed largely by Germans and Czechs. The aristocracy was guaranteed its rights, but these rights were considerably circumscribed. The former serfs were no longer mere chattels but became subjects of law and were granted certain personal freedoms, such as the right to marry without the lord's permission. Their labour obligations were defined and limited, and they could bypass the lords and appeal to the imperial courts for justice.
The eastern-rite Uniate Church, which primarily served the Ruthenians, was renamed the Greek Catholic Church to bring it on a par with the Roman Catholic Church; it was given seminaries, and eventually, a Metropolitan. Although unpopular with the aristocracy, among the common folk, Polish and Ukrainian/Ruthenian alike, these reforms created a reservoir of good will toward the emperor which lasted almost to the end of Austrian rule. At the same time, however, the Austrian Empire extracted from Galicia considerable wealth and conscripted large numbers of the peasant population into its armed services.
From 1809 to 1860
In 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars, Austria was forced in the Treaty of Schönbrunn to cede all of its third partition gains, plus Zamość and some other areas, to the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw, and some eastern areas around Ternopol to the Russian Empire. (For details, see § Administrative divisions.) In 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna returned Ternopil and a few other territories to Austria, but assigned the bulk of the formerly-Austrian territory of West Galicia to Congress Poland (Kingdom of Poland), which was ruled by the tsar. The city of Kraków and the surrounding territory, formerly also part of New or West Galicia, became the semi-autonomous Free City of Kraków under the supervision of the three powers that ruled Poland (i.e. Austria, Russia, and Prussia).
The 1820s and 1830s were periods of bureaucratic rule that was overseen by Vienna. Most administrative positions were filled by German speakers, including German-speaking Czechs. After the failure of the November Uprising in Russian Poland in 1830–1831, in which a few thousand Galician volunteers participated, many Polish refugees arrived in Galicia. The late 1830s period was rife with Polish conspiratorial organizations whose work culminated in the unsuccessful Galician insurrection of 1846. This uprising was easily put down by the Austrians with the help of a Galician peasantry that remained loyal to the emperor. The uprising occurred in the Polish-populated part of Galicia. Polish manorial gentry supported or were sympathetic to plans for an uprising to establish an independent Polish state, but peasants on the manorial estates of western Galicia, reduced to misery by poor harvests, saw little advantage for themselves in a free Poland. Instead, they seized the opportunity to rise against the institution of serfdom by killing many of the estate owners. With the collapse of the uprising for a free Poland, the city of Kraków lost its semi-autonomy and was integrated into the Austrian Empire under the title of a grand duchy. In practice, it was administered by the Austrian authorities as if it were part of Galicia.
In the same period, a sense of national awakening began to develop among the Ruthenians in the eastern part of Galicia. A circle of activists, primarily Greek Catholic seminarians, affected by the romantic movement in Europe and the example of fellow Slavs elsewhere, especially in eastern Ukraine under the Russians, began to turn their attention to the common folk and their language. In 1837, the so-called Ruthenian Triad led by Markiian Shashkevych, published Rusalka Dnistrovaia (The Nymph of the Dniester), a collection of folksongs and other materials in vernacular Ukrainian (then called rusynska, Ruthenian). Alarmed by such democratism, the Austrian authorities and the Greek Catholic Metropolitan banned the book.
In 1848, revolutionary actions broke out in Vienna and other parts of the Austrian Empire. In Lemberg, a Polish National Council, and then later, a Ukrainian, or Supreme Ruthenian Council were formed. Even before Vienna had acted, the remnants of serfdom were abolished by the Governor, Franz Stadion, in an attempt to thwart the revolutionaries. Moreover, Polish demands for Galician autonomy were countered by Ruthenian demands for national equality and for a partition of the province into an Eastern, Ruthenian part, and a Western, Polish part. Eventually, Lemberg was bombarded by imperial troops and the revolution was put down completely.
A decade of renewed absolutism followed, but to placate the Poles, Count Agenor Gołuchowski, a conservative representative of the eastern Galician aristocracy, the so-called Podolians, was appointed viceroy. He began to Polonize the local administration and managed to have Ruthenian ideas of partitioning the province shelved. He was unsuccessful, however, in forcing the Greek Catholic Church to shift to the use of the western or Gregorian calendar, or among Ruthenians generally, to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet.
Constitutional experiments
In 1859, following the Austro-Hungarian military defeat in Italy, the Empire entered a period of constitutional experiments. In 1860, the Vienna Government, influenced by Agenor Gołuchowski, issued its October Diploma, which envisioned a conservative federalization of the empire, but a negative reaction in the German-speaking lands led to changes in government and the issuing of the February Patent, which watered down this decentralization. Nevertheless, by 1861, Galicia was granted a legislative assembly, the Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria (Sejm in Polish). Although at first pro-Habsburg Ukrainian and Polish peasant representation was considerable in this body (about half the assembly), and the pressing social and Ukrainian questions were discussed, administrative pressures limited the effectiveness of both peasant and Ukrainian representatives and the diet became dominated by the Polish aristocracy and gentry, who favoured further autonomy. This same year, disturbances broke out in Russian Poland and, to some extent, spilled over into Galicia. The diet ceased to sit.
By 1863, an open revolt broke out in Russian Poland and from 1864 to 1865, the Austro-Hungarian government declared a state of siege in Galicia, temporarily suspending civil liberties. The year 1865 brought a return to federal ideas along the lines suggested by Gołuchowski and negotiations on autonomy between the Polish aristocracy and Vienna began once again.
Meanwhile, the Ruthenians felt more and more abandoned by Vienna and among the Old Ruthenians grouped around the Greek Catholic Cathedral of Saint George, there occurred a turn towards Russia. The more extreme supporters of this orientation came to be known as Russophiles. At the same time, influenced by the Ukrainian language poetry of the central Ukrainian writer, Taras Shevchenko, an opposing Ukrainophile movement arose which published literature in the Ukrainian/Ruthenian language and eventually established a network of reading halls. Supporters of this orientation came to be known as Populists , and later, as Ukrainians. Almost all Ruthenians, however, still hoped for national equality and for an administrative division of Galicia along ethnic lines.
Galician autonomy
In 1866, following the Battle of Königgrätz and the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War, the Austrian Empire began to experience increased internal problems. In an effort to shore up support for the monarchy, Emperor Franz Joseph began negotiations for a compromise with the Hungarian nobility to ensure their support. Some members of the government, such as the Austro-Hungarian prime minister Count Richard von Belcredi, advised the Emperor to make a more comprehensive constitutional deal with all of the nationalities that would have created a federal structure. Belcredi worried that an accommodation with the Magyar interests would alienate the other nationalities. However, Franz Joseph was unable to ignore the power of the Magyar nobility, and they would not accept anything less than dualism between themselves and the traditional Austrian elites.