Maya Jasanoff brilliantly places Conrad as a pioneer of understanding the forces that shape the modern world
Captain Korzeniowski meant to stay three years in the Congo, but after just five months of navigating the great waterways between Kinshasha and Kisangani, he resigned, chronically ill and an emotional wreck. He retired to Switzerland “in a state of psychological and moral despair” convinced of “the universal potential for savagery, and the hollowness of civilisation”.
He only narrowly avoided a nervous breakdown. But he brought back more from the expedition than dysentery and depression. The notes and jottings the captain had made on his journey infiltrated their way first into the manuscript of a novel named Almayer’s Folly that he worked on upriver to keep himself from boredom and madness; then into a short story called An Outpost of Progress; and finally, in 1899, into what would become his most famous novel, Heart of Darkness.
Joseph Conrad – the name the captain assumed when he took British citizenship – has been well served by biographers and critics; but it is hard to imagine any student of his work will produce a more strikingly original book than Maya Jasanoff’s magnificent The Dawn Watch. It is not quite a biography or a work of criticism, though it contains elements of both, and fragments of travel writing too. It is instead both a circumnavigation of Conrad’s world and a profound meditation on globalisation and colonialism, and of Conrad’s place in forming our perceptions of both. It takes us from Poland, through Marseille and London then around south-east Asia until the book’s climax, when we travel up the Congo in Conrad’s footsteps, and Captain Korzeniowski turns his hand to writing – initially, somewhat surprisingly, “when he saw that the magazine Tit-Bits ran a competition for stories by sailors”.Incidentally, whilst Captain Korzeniowski was struggling with the realities of King Leopold's empire of wage-slaves, tax-slaves, and forced labour, he met someone referred to in another post that explores the stories associated with the places along the LODE-Line at Ceann Sleibhe. It was in western Ireland, in Tralee Bay, that Sir Roger Casement, was arrested, and later executed as a traitor and terrorist following the nationalist Easter Rising of 1916. He was an Irish nationalist who worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat and later became a humanitarian activist, poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the "father of twentieth-century human rights investigations", he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in Peru. He then made efforts during World War I to gain German military aid for the 1916 Easter Rising that sought to gain Irish independence.
Maya Jasanoff's book is divided into four sections:
PART ONE: NATIONThe first chapter in Part One: Nation, is called NO HOME, NO COUNTRY and where she begins to tell the story of Conrad and his birth in the town of Berdychiv, that is now in a part of Ukraine, that was in its day, once a part of the independent Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania.
PART TWO: OCEAN
PART THREE: CIVILIZATION
PART FOUR:EMPIRE
Jasanoff begins writing about Conrad's birth, and the social, cultural and psychological environment that he was born into, and a family that reveals so much about the passion, and aspiration that is part of "being Polish" and the pain of not having a "nation", as well as the gentle pragmatism of acceptance that "that's just the way it is".
The baby's father, Apollo Korzeniowski, swelled with a sense of occasion. The birth of a first child makes history for any parent, and Apollo experienced it as profoundly political too: a moment to reflect on the destiny of his nation, Poland, which had ceased to exist as a state. Berdychiv had once been part of the independent Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but at the end of the eighteenth century the Commonwealth had been swallowed up by its neighbors in three giant gulps. Now Austria ruled the southern province of Galicia; Prussia governed the northwest; and Russia had snatched everything else, a huge tranche of land encompassing nearly all Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine - recovered lands of the Russians, said Catherine the Great; "stolen lands," said the Poles. Almost overnight, Ukraine's Poles became a pebble in the boot of Europe's most autocratic empire.
Apollo was a writer by vocation; he made the political into the poetical. He composed a song for the christening day. "To my son," he began, "born in the 85th year of Muscovite oppression":
Page 17-18 The Dawn Watch by Maya JasanoffBaby son, sleep without fear.
Lullaby, the world is dark,
You have no home, no country . . .
Baby son, tell yourself,
You are without land, without love,
Without country, without people,
While Poland - your Mother is in her grave.
"Send a letter to Berdychiv"
Jasanoff continues:
Page 19, The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff
There is an old Polish expression about the town where Konrad Korzeniowski was born on December 3, 1857. When you tell someone to "send a letter to Berdychiv," you mean "send a letter to nowhere" - you'll never reach me. The saying plays on Berdychiv's nineteenth-century position as a "somewhere," particularly for the town's then majority of Jews. Berdychiv hosted numerous trade fairs every year, making it a routine stop for peddlars with no permanent address. If they said "send a letter to Berdychiv," they meant send a letter to a place I'm going - you'll definitely reach me.
The world is made up of "nowheres" and "somewheres" - but which counts as which depends on what "where" you look from. The story of Konrad's life, and the world in which he lived, was a story of nowheres colliding with somewheres. At the time of his birth, the failure of a bank in Ohio touched off a financial panic that toppled firms in Hamburg. British troops struggled to suppress a rebellion in India. Indian troops sailed to Canton to threaten Chinese imperial officials. Chinese settlers rebelled on a river in Borneo, in a Malay state ruled by a European. European cloth and guns were traded up the Congo basin for ivory by villagers who'd never seen a white person. An American filibuster was booted out of Nicaragua. American-made steamboats plowed up the rivers of South America, and a locomotive built in Leeds pulled the first train out of Buenos Aires.
No home, no country?
For the many Poles who have made a life for themselves, their children and their neighbours, the idea of Poland, and the actuality of Poland is a very important part of everyday life.
Polonia
The Polish diaspora refers to people of Polish origin who live outside Poland. The Polish diaspora is also known in modern Polish language as Polonia, which is the name for Poland in Latin and in many other Romance languages.
There are roughly 20 million people of Polish ancestry living outside Poland, making the Polish diaspora one of the largest in the world, as well as one of the most widely dispersed. Reasons for this displacement vary from border shifts, forced expulsions and resettlement, to political and economic emigration. Major populations of Polish ancestry can be found in their native home region of Central Europe and many other European countries, as well as abroad in the Americas, Australasia, and South Africa. Polish communities are present in most Asian and African countries.
Poles participated in the creation of first European settlements in the Americas. In the 17th-century Polish missionaries arrived for the first time in Japan. Great numbers of Poles left the country in the course of foreign Partitions of Poland due to economic exploitation activities and political as well as ethnic persecution by Russia, Prussia and Austria.
A large proportion of Polish nationals who emigrated were Polish Jews, and these also make up part of the Jewish diaspora. The restored Second Polish Republic was home to the world's largest Jewish population as late as 1938 due to mass influx of new refugees escaping genocidal pogroms in the East. It was followed by the reiterated invasion of Poland from both sides. More than 3 million Polish Jews were killed in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War II. Most survivors subsequently immigrated to Mandate Palestine, since Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah without visas and exit permits at the end of the war. Many remaining Jews, including Stalinist hardliners and members of security apparatus, left Poland during the 1968 political crisis when the Polish communist party, pressured by Brezhnev, joined the Soviet "anti-Zionist" campaign triggered by the Six-Day War. In 1998, Poland's Jewish population was estimated at about 10,000–30,000.
A recent large migration of Poles took place following Poland's accession to the European Union and opening of the EU's labor market; with an approximate number of 2 million primarily young Poles taking up jobs abroad.
Most Poles live in Europe, the Americas and Australia, but Poles have settled in smaller numbers in Asia, Africa, and Oceania as economic migrants or as part of Catholic missions.
Since the fall of Communism in 1989, the nature of migration to and from Poland has been in flux. After Poland's accession to the European Union and accession to the Schengen Area in particular, a significant number of Poles, estimated at over two million, have emigrated, primarily to the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Ireland. The majority of them, according to the Central Statistical Office of Poland left in search of better work opportunities abroad while retaining permanent resident status in Poland itself.
Polonia in Ireland
After Poland joined the European Union in May 2004, Ireland was one of just three existing EU members to open its borders and welcome Polish workers (the others being the United Kingdom and Sweden). Ireland quickly became a key destination for Poles wishing to work outside the country; in 2004 a website advertising Irish jobs in Polish received over 170,000 hits in its first day. During the 2007 Polish general election, Polish parties campaigned in Ireland and three voting locations were set up; in Dublin, Cork, and Limerick.
Since the 2008 economic downturn, the number of Polish people in Ireland has declined, with some reports suggesting that 30,000 were leaving Ireland per year, and the Central Statistics Office reporting a decrease in the number of Polish people applying for PPS numbers.
The biggest Polish umbrella organization is the Polish Educational Society in Ireland (PESI) established in 2012. PESI embraces Polish supplementary schools in Ireland and widely cooperates with Polish government bodies and organisations working for the maintenance and promotion of Polish language abroad.
After Poland joined the EU, Poles acquired the right to work in some EU countries, while some of the members implemented transition periods. UK, Ireland, Sweden and Malta allowed Poles to work freely without any limitations from the start. Peaking in 2007, almost 2.3 million Poles lived abroad, mostly in Western Europe. This has been the largest wave of economic migration of Poles abroad since the Polish emigration to the United States in late 19th and early 20th century, which is estimated to have brought between about 1.5 million, and 3.5 million Poles to the United States.
Polonia in Germany
The second largest Polonia in the world, and the largest in Europe, is the Polish minority in Germany. Estimates of the number of Poles living in Germany vary from 2 million to about 3 million people living that might be of Polish descent, although many of them have lost their ancestors' identity.
According to the latest census, there are approximately 2,006,410 Poles in Germany.
Efforts to Germanise Polish inhabitants in Germany
Since the Partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795 and Poland's partial incorporation into Prussia, a large Polish ethnic group existed inside Prussia's borders, especially in the new provinces of Posen and West Prussia. Poles also settled in present-day Germany during the 18th century e.g. in Dresden and Leipzig.
During the late 19th century rapid industrialisation in the Ruhr region attracted about 300,000 Poles, especially from East Prussia, West Prussia, Poznań, and Silesia. They comprised about 30% of the Ruhr area population by 1910. Kashubians and Masurians also came. Participants in this migration are called the Ruhr Poles.
After 1870 the Poles were under an increasing pressure of Germanisation, and the Kulturkampf attacked their Catholic Church. Most Catholic bishops were imprisoned or exiled. The teaching language which had previously been Polish in the predominantly Polish-speaking areas in Prussia was replaced by German as teaching language, even in religious education where Polish priests were replaced by German teachers. However, these Germanisation policies were not at all successful. In contrast, it led to the political awakening of many Poles and to the establishment of a wealth of Polish economic, political and cultural associations which were aimed at preserving Polish culture and Polish interests, especially in the Province of Posen and in the Ruhr area. The policy of forced cultural Germanisation alienated large parts of the Polish-speaking population against the German authorities and produced nationalistic sentiments on both sides.
After the First World War, the predominantly Polish provinces had to be ceded to the newly created Polish Republic. Polish-speaking minorities remained especially in Upper Silesia and parts of East Prussia. During the 1922 to 1937 term of the German-Polish Accord on Upper Silesia (Geneva Agreement), signed in Geneva on 15 May 1922, German nationals of Polish ethnicity in Upper Silesia had judicial status as a national minority under the auspices of the League of Nations (likewise the Poles of German ethnicity in the Polish Silesian Voivodeship). After the rise of the Nazis, all Polish activities were systematically constrained, since mid-1937 also in Upper Silesia. However, in August 1939, the leadership of the Polish community was arrested and interned in the Nazi concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. On 7 September 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, the Nazi government of the 3rd Reich stripped the Polish community in Germany of its minority status. This was formally confirmed by Hermann Göring's decree of 27 February 1940.
Today the German government does not recognise German nationals of Polish ethnicity as a national minority. Polish agencies claim, that this way Germany is not recognising the right of self-determination for the group. After Poland joined the European Union, several organisations of Poles in Germany attempted to restore the pre-war official minority status, particularly claiming that the Nazi decree is void.
The position of the German government is, that after the German territorial losses after World War II, the current Polish minority has no century old roots in the remaining German territory, because Germany lost all the territories where people of German and Polish ethnicity overlapped. Since they are therefore only recent immigrants, they do not fulfill the requirements of a national minority according to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Treaty of Good Neighbourship. Being German citizens, they still retain all civil and political rights every German citizen possesses, and therefore can voice their will in the political system.
Economic reasons for Polish emigration
Primary reasons for the migration are economic. It has disproportionately affected young Poles, in their 20s and 30s. Reasons for the migration include higher wages offered abroad, and the difficult situation of young people in the Polish labour market, related to the increase in levels of unemployment during the global Great Recession of 2008. Due to a large increase in the number of Poles attending universities after the fall of communism, the supply of educated workers exceeded the domestic demand and as a result many young Poles migrated to the west. According to a survey conducted in 2011, 33% of those questioned pointed to higher wages as motivation for emigration and 31% to unemployment, with 3% stating professional development and 16% declaring family reasons.
There are concerns about the effect of long term immigration patterns on the demographics of Poland, such as depopulation of regions that do not attract young people.
Positive consequences of the migration include gains in skills and familiarity with global culture. Estimates also suggest that the emigration raised wages for those workers who stayed behind, contributing about 11% of total wage growth between 1998-2007.[23] The migration has also been associated with lowering of unemployment in Poland and remittances of approximately 41 billion euros in the Polish economy.
With better economic conditions and Polish salaries at 70% of the EU average in 2016, the emigration trend started to decrease in the 2010s and more workforce is needed in the country, so the Polish Minister of Development Mateusz Morawiecki suggested Poles abroad should come back to Poland.
Association "Polish Community" (Polish: Stowarzyszenie "Wspólnota Polska") is a Polish non-governmental and public benefit organization operating under the patronage of the Polish Senate; dedicated to strengthening the ties between Poland and Polonia - Poles and people of Polish origin living abroad. The current chairman is Longin Komołowski since June 2010.
Polonia in Australia
The first settlers from Poland arrived in South Australia in 1856 and settled in the Clare Valley region in a place later called Polish Hill River.
The first mass migration happened in the late 1940s when large groups of displaced persons who could not return to Poland under Communist control migrated to Australia after World War II, including soldiers from the Polish Independent Carpathian Brigade. Between 1947 and 1954, the Poland-born population increased from 6,573 to 56,594 people.
In the early 1980s there was further Polish migration to Australia. The emergence of the Solidarity trade union movement and the declaration of martial law in Poland at the end of 1981 coincided with a further relaxation of Polish emigration laws. During the period 1980-91 Australia granted permanent entry to a large number of Polish migrants, many arriving as refugees who soon got a reputation for being hard working.
In 1991, an independent, voluntary organisation was established to inform the Australian public about issues related to Polish history, politics, society and culture.
Back in Poland, in Gdynia, where the monument to Joseph Conrad faces out to the Baltic Sea, there is a new museum, the Emigration Museum.
IDEA
History of millions of Poles
The history of departures from the Polish lands is hundreds of years old. People traveled to different parts of the world for sustenance, in search of freedom, or for a different life.After Poland regained its independence, this situation remained unchanged. The journey was tackled on foot, by rail, aboard ships or – later – airplanes. After Poland joined the European Union, emigration became the experience of a generation of millions of young Poles. Today, almost everyone knows someone who chose emigration.
Today, there are more than 20 million people of Polish descent in the outside world. What do we know about one of the most important phenomena in Polish history? Can we save, from oblivion, the memory of millions of people who instilled their children and grandchildren with the remembrance of Poland? Can we feel what other Poles felt, as they were leaving their homes at the end of 18th century?Can we understand what it meant to emigrate at the beginning of 21st century?And what does emigration mean in the era of air travel?
The only such place in Poland
Gdynia is witnessing the birth of the first museum in the country dedicated to the history of Polish emigration.
From the initiative of the city's authorities, the historical edifice of the Marine Station – which witnessed the departures of Polish ocean liners for decades – is now seeing the birth of an institution which will recount the migrations and fates of Poles in the world in close connection to the modernity. The history of emigration is being written every day. Its multiple dimensions will be presented through our permanent exhibition.
No comments:
Post a Comment