Province of Prussia
South Prussia
(
German
:
Provinz Sudpreußen
;
Polish
:
Prusy Południowe
) was a
province
of the
Kingdom of Prussia
from 1793 to 1807.
History
[
edit
]
South Prussia was created out of territory annexed in the
Second Partition
of
Poland
and in 1793 included:
The capital of the province was
Pozna?
(1793-1795) at first, afterwards
Warsaw
(1795-1806), which was added in 1795 after the
Third Partition
, but it was actually administered by the General Directory (
General-Direktorium
) in
Berlin
.
South Prussia bordered on the Brandenburgian
Neumark
region in the west and the Prussian
Netze District
in the north. After the Third Partition, the lands of Dobrzy? and Płock northeast of the
Vistula
river were transferred to
New East Prussia
, while South Prussia gained the Warsaw region of the former
Masovian Voivodeship
. In the southeast the
Pilica
river marked the border with those
Lesser Polish
territories that in 1795 became part of Austrian
New Galicia
. In the southwest it bordered on the Prussian
Silesia Province
and
New Silesia
, a smaller province including the former
Duchy of Siewierz
, which was administered from South Prussia.
Some German colonists invited to settle on the province's noble estates were known as
Haulander
, while others who settled on royal crown lands were known as
Kolonisten
. The term Haulander is a German corruption of the original Hollender who negotiated special terms of democratic rule for their settlements which came to be known as Hollendry. Many Germans still lived under the Schulzendorf style of village government and therefore were not Haulander.
The underdeveloped province was administered with fiscal profit being a primary goal. The first provincial minister Otto von Voss said that “South Prussia shall not have been bought at too high a price: it should be no burden to other provinces, it should even benefit them and the Prussian state”
[1]
Thus, while engaging in
Germanisation of Poles during the Partitions
, the Prussian state extracted more revenue than what it spent from the province and levied duties on goods from the province, which seriously discouraged its industrial development.
[2]
Following
Napoleon Bonaparte
's victory in the
War of the Fourth Coalition
and a
Polish uprising
, the territory of South Prussia became part of the
Duchy of Warsaw
, a
French
client state, according to the 1807
Treaties of Tilsit
. After the
Congress of Vienna
in 1815, it was divided between the Prussian
Grand Duchy of Posen
and
Congress Poland
, a part of the
Russian Empire
.
The General Directory records dealing with the history and genealogy of the Prussian part of Poland were taken from the Prussian archives by Napoleon Bonaparte soon after 1806 and transferred to Warsaw.
Demographics
[
edit
]
In 1806 the province had 1,503,508 inhabitants.
Administration
[
edit
]
Departments
[
edit
]
It was subdivided into the Kammerdepartements
Posen
(
Pozna?
),
Kalisch
(
Kalisz
), and
Warschau
(
Warsaw
).
Districts
[
edit
]
In 1806, South Prussia consisted of three departments (
Kriegs- und Domanen-Kammern
) divided into the following districts or counties (
Kreise
):
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Denkschrift uber die Verwaltung Sudpreussens wahrend der ersten Amtsperiode des Ministers von Voss, September 1794, in Ingeburg Bussenius, ed.,
Urkunden und Alten zur Geschichte der preussischen Verwaltung in Sudpreussen und Neuostpreussen 1793-1806
(Frankfurt a.M., 1961), document 13.
- ^
Hagen, William W. “The Partitions of Poland and the Crisis of the Old Regime in Prussia 1772-1806.”
Central European History
9, no. 2 (1976): 115?28.
JSTOR
4545765
.
External links
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12?13th century
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until 1768
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until 1793
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until 1806
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until 1815
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until 1918
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until 1939
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until 1945
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until 1975
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until 1998
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since 1999
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