Piotr Puchalski. Poland in a Colonial World Order: Adjustments and Aspirations, 1918–1939. Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe. Routledge: Abingdon and New York, 2022. xvi + 312 PP. Cloth $180.00; Paper $54.99. ISBN: 9780367674700.
Scholars have largely agreed that European colonial movements and projects that dominated the nineteenth century underwent a major transformation with the end of World War I. Recently, they have begun to devote considerable attention to how Europe continued to exert imperial ambitions after 1918, while also expanding their analysis of empire to states that have not typically been thought of as colonial powers, including those in Eastern and Central Europe. Into this milieu enters Piotr Puchalski, whose recently published study, Poland in a Colonial World Order: Attempts and Ambitions, 1918-1939, examines the various attempts by the Polish Second Republic to extend its power and influence beyond the confines of Europe, particularly into Africa and South America. Employing a broad understanding of “colonialism” that goes beyond the traditional exercise of political power and direct influence over a foreign land and its people, Puchalski provides a fresh perspective on interwar Poland’s attempts to exert its place amid the global struggles and competitions that a rapidly changing world faced in the aftermath of the First World War. Puchalski’s skillful and deep analysis of Poland’s colonial visions and the policies it pursued to achieve them has resulted in a monograph that deftly situates the Second Polish Republic in the broader context of the economic and political challenges of the interwar period. Thoroughly well-researched and deploying of a considerable variety of primary and secondary sources, Puchalski has produced an impressive study that significantly expands our understanding of diplomacy, colonialism, and imperial practices in the twentieth century.
Post-World War I Poland has not typically been regarded as either a colonial power or a state interested in pursuing colonial policies given its lack of involvement in the nineteenth-century colonial scramble. Yet Puchalski illustrates how Poland pursued policies beyond its traditional interests, including weathering its geographic predicament at the crossroads of the European east-west axis, to focus on establishing its place on a north-south global axis as the key to unlocking economic growth and rapid modernization. The Polish government aimed to diversify commerce and trade through middlemen and settler communities overseas. Poland also sought to establish itself as an influential player on a recently reconfigured European stage. Focusing its colonial ambitions on Africa and South America, the Polish government addressed three key objectives: expanding trade and production in critical surplus and raw material markets, curbing overpopulation, and establishing Poland as a state strong enough to withstand being trapped between Germany and the Soviet Union. In South America, these efforts took the form of agrarian settlements that could expand Poland’s footprint abroad and provide critical trade surplus. In Africa, they were more targeted enterprises intended to facilitate trade and raw material production and extraction. Each of these endeavors were undertaken, Puchalski argues, “to secure as much political and economic leverage as possible” (43).
Puchalski’s central thesis that the Versailles settlement and the Wilsonian system that emerged as a result created a global environment wherein Poland could pursue global colonial ambitions as a logical consequence of the post-World War I world is particularly compelling, and he ably finds his footing in it. As much as Poland in a Colonial World Order delves into the nuances of colonial policies and fantasies, it is also firmly rooted in diplomatic history. Puchalski has utilized a diverse network of archival sources from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Poland to understand the complex challenges and problems that Polish diplomats confronted while they worked to establish Poland’s place in a new global world order. To that end, Puchalski successfully develops our understanding of the diplomatic relations of the interwar period.
In addition to its more pragmatic colonial projects, Poland also engaged in a unique form of political expansion that Puchalski identifies as “Promethean colonialism.” The term is one of the book’s most original and valuable contributions to the diplomatic and colonial history of the interwar period. “Promethean colonialism,” according to Puchalski, was a form of colonialism aimed at supporting Wilsonian nationalist impulses in regions such as Africa and the Caribbean, just as Promethianism was a means of undermining the Soviet Union and tearing it apart from within. While this policy directly countered the interests of imperial powers like the United States and Italy, Puchalski ably breaks down the complex political and diplomatic calculus that led Poland to see itself as an anti-imperialist state while also simultaneously pursuing colonial projects elsewhere. Of course, Poland’s support for self-determination in these regions was not given freely; Poland also hoped to gain certain advantages in exchange, such as exclusive access to rubber exports in Liberia or discounted coffee from Haiti.
Prometheanism also played a key role in perhaps the most controversial colonial endeavor that Poland pursued in this era: the attempt to re-settle its Jewish population in Madagascar. While acknowledging that the Polish government—regardless of who was in power—made consistent efforts to remove Jews from their traditional place in Polish society (and the Polish economy) through policies such as emigration, Puchalski pushes back on the assertion that these policies were solely racist or antisemitic and, as such, somehow directly led to the Holocaust. Instead, he argues that, like its policies promoting overseas settlements in South America and other parts of Africa, Poland was attempting to transform its Jewish population into colonial ambassadors in a manner that would be mutually beneficial to both parties. Despite his creative argument, the question of how Poland dealt with its Jewish population and its reasons for doing so in the interwar period remains an issue that historians and scholars have yet to untangle fully. It is undeniable that Poland’s desire to remove Jews from the body politic facilitated later mass death policies during World War II, but historians and scholars should avoid being overly deterministic. Puchalski adds a new perspective to this continuing debate.
Overall, Piotr Puchalski’s Poland in a Colonial World Order is a thoroughly innovative study that demonstrates how Poland, without a history of imperial pursuits overseas, came to see its ambitions in Africa and South America as a natural consequence of its desire to be an influential European power. While it is sometimes difficult to keep track of the narrative of events or fully understand all the central figures in his story, Puchalski admirably brings to light a part of Polish diplomatic and political history that has long needed further study. Even though his probing analysis requires a certain baseline of knowledge that might make this text difficult to follow for undergraduate students and non-specialists, it is certainly approachable for graduate students and scholars already versed in the field. Poland in a Colonial World Order is truly an impressive work that should be a valuable entry in European, colonial, and diplomatic historiographies for many years to come.
Matthew A. Yokell earned his Ph.D. in Modern European History from Texas A&M University in 2018. His dissertation, “The Eagle and the Dragon: Tsingtau and the German Colonial Experience in China, 1880-1918,” studies the German colony of Qingdao, China, to elucidate German ideas about empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly the creation of a German Hong Kong. In addition to teaching history at Rogers State University in Claremore, Oklahoma, Matthew serves as an analyst for the federal government, living in the Washington, D. C. area.