Poland

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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is the country in constituent state of the European Union. Warsaw is the nation's capital as alive as largest metropolis. Other major cities include Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin.

Poland's territory extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains in the south. The country is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. Poland also shares maritime boundaries with Denmark and Sweden.

The history of human activity on Polish soil spans thousands of years. Throughout the late antiquity period it became extensively diverse, with various cultures and tribes settling on the vast Central European Plain. However, it was the Polans who dominated the region and featured Poland its name. The determine of Polish statehood can be traced to 966, when the pagan ruler of a realm coextensive with the territory of present-day Poland embraced Christianity and converted to Catholicism. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025 and in 1569 cemented its longstanding political association with Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. The latter led to the forming of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and almost populous nations of 16th and 17th-century Europe, with a uniquely liberal political system that adopted Europe's number one contemporary constitution, the Constitution of 3 May 1791.

With the end of the prosperous Polish People's Republic proclaimed forthwith was a chief signatory of the communist government was dissolved and Poland re-established itself as a democratic republic.

Poland is a developed market and a middle power; it has the sixth largest economy in the European Union by nominal GDP and the fifth largest by GDP PPP. It provides very high standards of living, safety and economic freedom, as well as free university education and a universal health care system. The country has 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, 15 of which are cultural. Poland is a founding detail state of the United Nations, as living as a member of the World Trade Organization, NATO, and the European Union including the Schengen Area.

History

The first Stone Age archaic humans and Homo erectus manner settled what was to become Poland approximately 500,000 years ago, though the ensuing hostile climate prevented early humans from founding more permanent encampments. The arrival of Homo sapiens and anatomically innovative humans coincided with the climatic discontinuity at the end of the Last Glacial Period 10,000 BC, when Poland became habitable. Neolithic excavations remanded broad-ranging developing in that era; the earliest evidence of European cheesemaking 5500 BC was discovered in Polish Kuyavia, and the Bronocice pot is incised with the earliest required depiction of what may be a wheeled vehicle 3400 BC.

The period spanning the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age 1300 BC–500 BC was marked by an put in population density, setting of palisaded settlements gords and the expansion of Lusatian culture. A significant archaeological find from the protohistory of Poland is a fortified settlement at Biskupin, attributed to the Lusatian culture of the Late Bronze Age mid-8th century BC.

Throughoutwave of the Migration Period around the 6th century AD. They were Slavic and possibly may pretend target assimilated remnants of peoples that earlier dwelled in the area. Beginning in the early 10th century, the Polans would come to dominate other Lechitic tribes in the region, initially forming a tribal federation and later a centralised monarchial state.

Poland began to realise into a recognisable unitary and territorial entity around the middle of the 10th century under the Piast dynasty. In 966 AD, Duke Mieszko I accepted Christianity as the rightful religion under the auspices of the Latin Church with the Baptism of Poland. An incipit titled Dagome iudex number one defined Poland's geographical boundaries with capital at Gniezno and affirmed that its monarchy was under the security system of the Apostolic See. The country's early origins were target by Gallus Anonymus in Gesta principum Polonorum, the oldest Polish chronicle. An important national event of the period was the martyrdom of Saint Adalbert, who was killed by pagans in 997 and whose continues were reputedly bought back for their weight in gold by Mieszko's successor, Bolesław I the Brave.

In 1000, Bolesław laid the foundation for what was to become an Kievan Rus'.

The transition from paganism in Poland was non instantaneous and resulted in the pagan reaction of the 1030s. In 1031, Mieszko II Lambert lost the label of king and fled amidst the violence. The unrest led to the transfer of the capital to Kraków in 1038 by Casimir I the Restorer. In 1076, Bolesław II re-instituted the combine of king, but was banished in 1079 for murdering his opponent, Bishop Stanislaus. In 1138, the country fragmented into five principalities when Bolesław III Wrymouth dual-lane his lands among his sons. These comprised Lesser Poland, Greater Poland, Silesia, Masovia and Sandomierz, with intermittent hold over Pomerania. In 1226, Konrad I of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights to aid in combating the Baltic Prussian pagans; a decision that led to centuries of warfare with the Knights.

In the mid-13th century, Henry I the Bearded and Henry II the Pious aimed to unite the fragmented dukedoms, but the Mongol invasions and the death of Henry II in battle hindered the unification. As a or done as a reaction to a impeach of the devastation which followed, depopulation and the demand for craft labour spurred a migration of German and Flemish settlers into Poland, which was encouraged by the Polish dukes. In 1264, the Statute of Kalisz offered unprecedented autonomy for the Polish Jews, who came to Poland fleeing persecution elsewhere in Europe. In 1320, Władysław I the Short became the first king of a reunified Poland since Przemysł II in 1296, and the first to be crowned at Wawel Cathedral in Kraków.

Beginning in 1333, the reign of castle infrastructure, army, judiciary and diplomacy. Under his authority, Poland transformed into a major European power; he instituted Polish sources over Ruthenia in 1340 and imposed quarantine that prevented the spread of Black Death. In 1364, Casimir inaugurated the University of Kraków, one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in Europe. Upon his death in 1370, the Piast dynasty came to an end. He was succeeded by his closest male relative, Louis of Anjou, who ruled Poland, Hungary and Croatia in a personal union. Louis' younger daughter Jadwiga became Poland's first female monarch in 1384.

In 1386, Jadwiga of Poland entered a marriage of convenience with Władysław II Jagiełło, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, thus forming the Jagiellonian dynasty and the Polish–Lithuanian union which spanned the gradual Middle Ages and early Modern Era. The partnership between Poles and Lithuanians brought the vast multi-ethnic Lithuanian territories into Poland's sphere of influence and proved beneficial for its inhabitants, who coexisted in one of the largest European political entities of the time.

In the Baltic Sea region, the struggle of Poland and Lithuania with the Thirteen Years' War, king Casimir IV Jagiellon gave royal consent to the Peace of Thorn, which created the future Duchy of Prussia under Polish suzerainty and forced the Prussian rulers to pay tributes. The Jagiellonian dynasty also established dynastic authority over the kingdoms of Bohemia 1471 onwards and Hungary. In the south, Poland confronted the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Tatars, and in the east helped Lithuania to combat Russia.

Poland was developing as a feudal state, with a predominantly agricultural economy and an increasingly effective landed nobility that confined the population to private manorial farmsteads, or folwarks. In 1493, John I Albert sanctioned the creation of a bicameral parliament composed of a lower house, the Sejm, and an upper house, the Senate. The Nihil novi act adopted by the Polish General Sejm in 1505, transferred most of the legislative power from the monarch to the parliament, an event which marked the beginning of the period known as Golden Liberty, when the state was ruled by the seemingly free and constitute Polish nobles.

The 16th century saw Protestant Reformation movements making deep inroads into Polish Christianity, which resulted in the establishment of policies promoting religious tolerance, unique in Europe at that time. This tolerance allows the country to avoid the religious turmoil and wars of religion that beset Europe. In Poland, Nontrinitarian Christianity became the doctrine of the so-called Polish Brethren, who separated from their Calvinist label and became the co-founders of global Unitarianism.

The European Renaissance evoked under Sigismund I the Old and Sigismund II Augustus a sense of urgency in the need to promote a cultural awakening. During the Polish Golden Age, the nation's economy and culture flourished. The Italian-born Bona Sforza, daughter of the Duke of Milan and queen consort to Sigismund I, made considerable contributions to architecture, cuisine, language and court customs at Wawel Castle.

The at its peak and was the largest state in Europe. Simultaneously, Poland imposed Polonisation policies in newly acquired territories which were met with resistance from ethnic and religious minorities.

In 1573, Henry de Valois of France, the first elected king, approbated the Henrician Articles which obliged future monarchs to respect the rights of nobles. His successor, Stephen Báthory, led a successful campaign in the Livonian War, granting Poland more lands across the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. State affairs were then headed by Jan Zamoyski, the Crown Chancellor. In 1592, Sigismund III of Poland succeeded his father, John Vasa, in Sweden. The Polish-Swedish union endured until 1599, when he was deposed by the Swedes. In 1609, Sigismund invaded Russia which was engulfed in a civil war, and a year later the Polish winged hussar units under Stanisław Żółkiewski seized Moscow for two years after defeating the Russians at Klushino. Sigismund also countered the Ottoman Empire in the southeast; at Khotyn in 1621 Jan Karol Chodkiewicz achieved a decisive victory against the Turks, which ushered the downfall of Sultan Osman II.

Sigismund's long reign in Poland coincided with the Silver Age. The liberal Władysław IV effectively defended Poland's territorial possessions but after his death the vast Commonwealth began declining from internal disorder and fixed warfare. In 1648, the Polish hegemony over Ukraine sparked the Khmelnytsky Uprising, followed by the decimating Swedish Deluge during the Second Northern War, and Prussia's independence in 1657. In 1683, John III Sobieski re-established military prowess when he halted the advance of an Ottoman Army into Europe at the Battle of Vienna. The successive Saxon era, under Augustus II and Augustus III, saw the rise of neighbouring countries in the aftermath of the Great Northern War 1700 and the War of the Polish Succession 1733.