Rzeczpospolita mniejszości narodowych i etnicznych. Od Piastów do XX wieku

The Polish state within the span of over a thousand years of history changed its borders several times, although it is conventionally accepted that its ethnic territory stretches from the river Odra in the west to the Bug in the east, and from the Baltic Sea in the north to the mountain ranges in the south. The article deals with the subject of the shaping of national identity of the knighthood in the Middle Ages and then its subsequent transformations during Poland’s partition, the emergence of ethnic minorities (especially Germans and Jews) and the attitude of the local population to them in the pre-partition period. The discussed phenomena include xenophobia and xenophilia, the Polonization of foreigners and their impact on Polish culture during the partition of Poland. In the interwar period a new concept of minorities was created with regard to Ukrainians, Belorussians and Lithuanians inhabiting their ethnic territories which had been incorporated into the Polish state. Politics determined new borders after the end of World War II, which resulted in yet another “migration of peoples” this time from the east to the west and the ensuing assimilation processes.