Rola migrantów z Galicji i Królestwo Kongresowego w Górnośląskim Okręgu Przemysłowym w XIX wieku
The role of the migrants from Galicia and the Congress Kingdom of Poland in the Upper Silesian Industrial Region in the 19th c.

Summary/Abstract: The article touches upon the role of the internal and external migrations in the creation and development of the Upper Silesian Industrial Region at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. It is emphasized that two periods can be distinguished in the Prussian policy towards migration, with threshold point the year 1885, when the so-called Prussian deportations took place – i.e. the deportation beyond the state borders of the illegal dwellers of the Polish or the Jewish nationality; from then onwards, restrictive migration policy was pursued. Such measures encountered resistance from various economic elite groups in the region. The Upper Silesian industrialists used to exert pressure on the authorities in Berlin during the last decade of the 19th c. to get them to liberalize these rules or at least shorten the so-called ’suspension period,’ during which foreign labourers could not dwell in Prussia. No sooner than in the 20th century was a new solution developed, leading to the liberalization of the migration policy towards Ruthenians / Ukrainians in the Upper Silesian Industrial Region. For this reason, prior to the outbreak of the World War 1 this was the largest foreign labourer group employed in Upper Silesian mines; still it amounted to merely a few per cent of the whole.

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