Problematyka czeska w badaniach polskich historyków XIX wieku
The Czech Issues in the Research of Polish Historians in the 19th Century

State of Research and Future Perspectives

Summary/Abstract: Among Polish scholars working on the nineteenth century history we may observe a move away from Czech issues. That tendency could be seen in e.g. a small number of publications on the above mentioned topics. Thus one should think onto, what must be done, to make the research process more vivid. The need for both cooperation between Polish and Czech historians and intensification of their research on bilateral relations has been discussed many times. Among authors, who raised the above mentioned problem, were e.g. J. Macůrk, J. Chlebowczyk, J. Gruchała, P. M. Majewski and R. Baron. It is also worth emphasizing that statements, diagnosis and suggestions of the above mentioned authors are still relevant for contemporary historians, i.e. those, who conduct their research at the beginning of the twentieth first century. Historians working on Polish-Czech relations pointed out that they should be perceived in a wider historical context. They also emphasized that regional differences between Poland and Czech Republic should be taken into account, and scholars in their research ought to go beyond contacts between Warsaw and Prague. Young scholars have also to remember about both partitions of Poland and deep differences between Czech lands in the nineteenth century. Indeed, in the nineteenth century Poles and Czechs were crammed into one political organism – the Habsburg Monarchy – what gives wider research opportunities for historians working on Czech-Polish relations, yet those relations should not be reduce to Galicia-Czech relations or the „Sillesian issue”. Equally interesting might be newly designed research fields, ex. the interest of Poles inhabiting Great Poland in Czech issues. Also comparative works allow us to examine developmental similarities and differences between Czech and Poland. Doubtless within past ten or twentieth years new research possibilities for a group of historians working on Polish-Czech relations had emerged. That wide and varied range of research possibilities can have great impact on reviving those researches in Poland. Poles can not only work in Czech, Austrian or Hungarian archives. They can also work in Ukrainian and Russian ones. The archival sources could enable the verification of findings to date and writing of new works. Extended, preliminary archival research could give us a solid basis for new and systematic research and enable us to fill many gaps in our knowledge on Polish-Czech relations in the nineteenth century. At the same time it’s worth stressing that Polish historians have to do more than their Czech colleagues.

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