Poland's Peasant Heritage

Although poverty and famines were chronic in Poland, they were especially brutal in the 2nd half of the 19th century in the rural south. Underinvestment by the Austrian occupier, lack of education, and the use of primitive agricultural techniques, combined with overpopulation to create a crisis in malnutrition. As a result, there was little immunity to diseases such as cholera, typhus and smallpox resulting in an estimated 50,000 deaths in a year. In “God’s Playground: A History of Poland ( pgs. 145-147), author Norman Davies wrote that “of all three partitions, Galicia had the highest birth-rate and the highest death-rate, together with the lowest rate of demographic growth and the lowest level of life expectancy. Galicia was in a worse predicament than Ireland at the start of the potato famine. For most peasant families, emigration offered the sole chance of survival.”