Poles Retell Polish America's History

The appearance of Routledge's two-volume Polish American History from 1854 to 2004 by, respectively, Adam Walaszek and Joanna Wojdon, and the accompanying documents collection, Polish American Voices, co-edited by Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann and James S. Pula, is for Poles and Polish Americans alike a publishing event. Over fifteen hundred pages in total, by their size alone (and hefty hardcover price), the three books together would be noteworthy, but the sterling scholarly credentials of their authors and editors mark these volumes as a major addition to the historical literature on American Polonia.Since the beginning of the twentieth century, about twenty or so general works on American Polonia have been published, but only a dozen or so have been serious, original scholarly works, the rest being second editions or popular trade imprints.1 Not surprisingly, the earliest were two Polish-language books. At the beginning of this century-and-a-quarter-long train of publications was the much celebrated, foundational multivolume study by Rev. Wacław Kruszka, Historya Polska w Ameryce.2 Originally serialized in the newspaper Kuryer Polski between 1901 and 1904, Kruszka's study provided general discussion of Polish emigration and institutions, culture, and social and economic life, with special attention paid to Polish American colonies and their parishes. The book was, historian James S. Pula wrote, the first attempt to write a comprehensive history of American Polonia.”3 The second, more modest but still long, attempt was a more compact study by Polonia journalist Karol Wachtl, Polonja w Ameryce: Dzieje i Dorobek (1944), self-published by the author.4 The book was praised for its comprehensive coverage of the subject, if not for high standards of scholarship.5The next phase in the writing of Polonia's history commenced with the appearance of the first studies in English, marking both the acculturation of immigrant, émigré, and American-born Polish writers and signaling the assimilation of the English-speaking, even if bilingual, second generation. It also might have symbolized the tentative entry of the topic as a respectable subject of inquiry in American scholarship. Discounting the publication of the monumental sociological classic by William I. Thomas and the then-sojourning Polish scholar Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918–20), which despite the co-authorship of the latter, issued from a great American university and not from the Polish American community itself, by mid-century the first such Polish American work was Miecislaus (Mieczysław) Haiman's Polish Past in America, 1608–1865 (1939).6 Polish-born immigrant Haiman, founding curator, archivist, and librarian of the Polish Roman Catholic Union's Polish Museum and Archives in Chicago, wrote the book, paraphrasing Haiman, not as a Pole from abroad but as an American of Polish extraction, his inspiration coming, according to historian Robert Szymczak, “from reading a biography of James Fenimore Cooper.”7 Part pioneering amateur historian, part filiopietistic mythmaker, Haiman has been criticized for the latter and, for the former, canonized as the founder of a Polish American historiography.8 Others writing at this time included several émigré scholars, who came to the United States in flight from the Nazis, and who, with Haiman, Rev. Joseph Swastek of Orchard Lake Seminary, and others, organized several of Polonia's foundational scholarly institutions, including the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America's Polish American Historical Commission, precursor of the Polish American Historical Association (PAHA), and the latter's journal, Polish American Studies.9As with The Polish Peasant, historical and sociological work on Polonia overlapped, a pattern common in the study of other ethnic and racial groups. Other scholars working on Polonia during the period also were sociologists by training. Haiman believed that the émigré scholars shaped “the mind of American Polonia,” “contributed much to Polish American learning,” and “raised its prestige in American society,” but the only book-length general work that came out of this group was Stefan Włoszczewski's brief portrait of American Polonia, History of Polish-American Culture (1946), which contained some historical material but was not really a history.10 Polonia's own chroniclers were amateur historians whose short works, of varying quality and often filiopietistic or antiquarian in character, filled the pages of the early issues of Polish American Studies. The most notable exemplar of this genre was Joseph A. Wytrwal, a University of Michigan–trained Detroit public school administrator who self-published several books, including the first English-language general treatments of Polish American history written by a native-born Polish American, Poles in American History and Tradition (1969), and Behold! the Polish-Americans (1977).11 The principal aim of Wytrwal's works, and kindred others, seems to have been to establish Polish Americans’ American bona fides. For Polish Americans, an element of this motivation, or some variation thereof (like the enhancement of group esteem), probably has persisted in the collective project of Polish American history writing by Polish American authors through the present day. This probably can be said of all group-specific histories written by group members.With a thaw in the Cold War, in 1977, a Polish scholar, Andrzej Brożek, published, in Poland, Polonia Amerykańska, 1854–1939, the first book-length Polish-language history of Polonia since Wachtl.12 Apart from Wytrwal, through the 1960s, there was otherwise a dearth of Polish American histories. By the 1960s, though, the coming of age of a third generation of university-educated Polish Americans; the economic and social “arrival,” so to speak, of the southern, central, and eastern European ethnic groups; and their presence now as a market force together fed a consumer demand for group histories written in English, while the so-called new white ethnic revival fostered a publishing environment now more receptive to such work compared to earlier nativist periods. Together these changes created an opening for Polish American studies.In the 1970s, two noteworthy sociological works appeared: Theresita Polzin's The Polish Americans: Whence and Whither and Polish Americans: Status Competition in an Ethnic Group by Helena Znaniecka Lopata, a faculty member at Loyola University of Chicago and the daughter of Florian Znaniecki, who offered up a comprehensive hypothesis to explain Polish American group behavior.13 According to Wojdon, martial law in Poland delayed the appearance of a 1980 joint Polish/Polish American publication, Polonia Amerykańska: Przeslość i Współczesność, until 1988.14 In the 1980s in the United States, the University of Illinois Press issued an abridged edition of Thomas and Znanieci's classic, edited by historian Eli Zaretsky; Brożek's book came out in an English translation; and in 1987, Indiana University Press published my own book, And My Children Did Not Know Me: A History of the Polish-Americans, which explicitly rejected the filiopietism of previous decades, focused on the themes of the New Social History, and unlike the then-extant historical works also extensively discussed the Polish American ethnic experience of the postwar period through the 1980s.15 Trade presses also released a few general works on the history of Polish America, including Polish American Studies editor Frank Renkiewicz's The Poles in America, 1608–1972: A Chronology & Fact Book; émigré author W. S. Kuniczak's My Name Is Million: An Illustrated History of the Poles in America from Doubleday; and writer Rachel Toor's The Polish Americans from Chelsea House.16By the 1990s, much monographic research on Polish Americans had appeared in print, and still a few more broad general works continued to come out. A few trade presses still saw a market in Polonia. Twayne published James S. Pula's Polish Americans: An Ethnic Community, a serious but accessible scholarly work;17 Eastern European Monographs published William J. Galush's For More Than Bread: Community and Identity in American Polonia, 1880–1940, chronologically truncated but also another serious study;18 and Chelsea reissued a revised edition of its short history and soon thereafter another.19 Older books were also updated or made more accessible. A revised and expanded version of Lopata's book, co-authored by sociologist Mary Patrice Erdmans and under the new title Polish Americans, appeared; James S. Pula produced an English-language translation of Kruszka's classic history; and a second edition of my book, with a new preface, came out under the title A History of the Polish Americans.20 The coverage of general works also expanded. Especially noteworthy, meanwhile, were two general books that told Polonia's story through a study of its literature: Thomas S. Gladsky's Princes, Peasants, and Other Polish Selves: Ethnicity in American Literature, which, in the main, surveyed literature written by authors who were not part of the ethnic group; and Karen Majewski's Traitors and True Poles: Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 1880–1939, a pathbreaking examination of largely unknown authors who were group members.21What might finally be mentioned in this review is the celebrated publication of The Polish American Encyclopedia, edited by James S. Pula, with a team of associate editors, and Footprints of Polonia: Polish Historical Sites Across North America, edited by Ewa E. Barczyk, both with the assistance of numerous volunteer contributors and the support of the Polish American Historical Association.22 Though not general histories per se, the sum total of their entries created general histories of a sort. The Pula volume realized a project proposed (but never completed) by Rev. Joseph Bolek in the early 1940s, and Barczyk's book updated and expanded an earlier work, Jacek Galazka's [Gałązka] and Albert Juszczak's Polish Heritage Travel Guide to U.S.A. and Canada, distributed by Hippocrene.23This brief overview of the past literature, of course, is not meant to provide an exhaustive list or extensive critical review and assessment of the various general works on the history of Polish America. Nor should it obscure the fact that many fine scholars produced many focused monographs on various aspects of the subject. Rather, it is presented here to frame and introduce the newest entries to the list of works in Polonia's publishing pantheon that together herald a new phase in the writing of Polish American history: the Routledge volumes under review in this essay. With the aging and passing of a generation of American-born scholars of Polish descent; the fading of European ethnic groups on the American social landscape; a profound shift in public discourse (and academic publishing) from the pluralism of the mid-twentieth century, which privileged ethnic diversity, to the multiculturalism of recent decades, which privileges race; and the attendant disappearance of faculty job openings in European immigration and ethnic history that had provided the institutional support for scholarship in those sub-fields, the writing of histories of Polonia by American-born scholars may be drawing to an end. The new chroniclers of the history of Polonia likely will be Polish scholars from abroad—some transplanted as students and educated in the United States, others writing about America Polonia from academic positions abroad. Such it is with Adam Walaszek, emeritus professor of history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, author of the first volume under review in this essay, and Joanna Wojdon, professor of history at the University of Wrocław, author of the second.With several older, shorter histories of Polonia still in print, a central question that might be asked of Routledge's trio of books is why such a project should have been mounted at this time. The first volume, by Walaszek, covers the same earlier time span as the older works, devotes (however justifiably because of their small numbers) scant attention to Poles in the colonial and early national periods of American history (treatment of whom was a strength of, in the Pula and to the of the broad themes at in the earlier historical The book, is in and has updated the in the of general in immigration and ethnic and is on and not to the monographic and Polish American written both in English and in It as Walaszek historians have to as the which has to Americans and Poles from reading The may be more most or to on the subject, but the book is an addition to the literature in the of Polish American history is probably to of this not to and in the book, at the historian James first aim was to “the and of his Polish immigrant This in work and and and on two of the most and of the book, to the of the with historians the of The of immigrant life, the and is to and and Walaszek has a job here in together and a of its and on and on the and postwar and on the and the also as fine social history of the Other for and a great of if and as a much of the of the the first two the and themes of and while the and was not the of those and since the book, as an first part of a in had three other to his project or The second more of a or to America of on Polish as as their in the and new not from the of of other ethnic Walaszek here and there in the that this which in some is but this at the seems to a for such a that the Polish experience was or has made the that other ethnic in recent being the only been with “the of the this and the for their experience from beginning to that might be to might a about their to the Roman Catholic common in the literature, which the issues of the of and the of Walaszek both of these issues in the which that his with other ethnic groups is the more of that the of of this community and its the of the to were not or is to several a the and of of ethnic and racial for between Poles and others, most of the Walaszek and that which on an was at and often more Walaszek the of the and of a new by in a new environment that is and Walaszek their the Poles were their of discussion of and is and not of these as to the a that might have Walaszek write a or much will many in this volume, but if a great about the history of Polish may that is but this probably should be of a book that through a subject that has been and will here and there and and not or of much by For Walaszek the made by historians and that Polish American has the of American Polonia For some Polish American attention to this might be the most element in this volume, Polonia's of its it should be that book is a work a of research in the (and and should not a book, even a book, to more a volume a book of which the author should be the more it might be for that with more and of the first two and more and with and but whose should have been or the a more and book, with and of have been the Such so to speak, would in for the history of Polish America a in the American and a because of most with the and of Polish and and because of still often in American that to European ethnic second volume, by Joanna Wojdon, the of the Routledge from some of the same as the first volume, but the writing in general is more In to the of the first volume, the second volume so many that part of the of the book and not that should have been so to speak, the In these in the version of the book have not and through the of though, is the opening of the book, which the two for the two an of that at the beginning of the first volume and not in and not to and the book is a more of scholarship on the period in which the author the of of Polish who their and to the United States while also to their Polish Walaszek was explicitly about the about in even the subject now and in book and about In this it is that the two authors not a common to the writing of these two which as two of the same book the that its writing was a and more works, a which the Walaszek book, as it in the of a own is to Polonia's and attendant of may this the book the story of Americans of Polish of Polonia's largely who the story of the new immigration of and of the postwar period and those who were still who during the and the former, a on between the new and Polonia, by an organized a of and and several next the so-called ethnic revival of the and 1970s, which might to in so as that the of Polish American history book really on the new and a by historian Anna as for the to Poland from The first two of the book as as through largely on the still Polish Americans, who had more recent immigrant to Poland since and on their with their that was in the North in of the volume who, for of experience or may be with the story of and early economic may volume the more of the if have such to the new (and Polish immigration and a about By and even of the economic emigration will a great about the new and Polish immigrant from This should be so for such who largely and contained American with from the of from Poland, because their own Polish few or with For as as for in America's diversity, volume can a and the if literature in English on some of the the of the book on the new and Polish of the Polish emigration of the and early twentieth from the even as up the great of the Americans of Polish in the United for Wojdon, the of the of Polonia is now or largely and that only the new and and still a that the of and of the seems to that this second of Polish American history is a story and The of the book is that there is not a Polish America with a history but several Polish which might be to many group if about a In book, the if only as a those Polish Americans for whom still and to Poland and not book probably will have few who not have Polish ethnic from the but from that of the as who of the Polish immigration of the and early twentieth might be a that be from the not the of that with only to recent and of those of Polish Polish to Polish American and and and the social of being of still a ethnic with the of their as an and even an part of their to both being ethnic in America has been by is that the newest Polish as as or Polish in from the it is by those of Polish who of their own the latter may be to immigrant life, may be an to and, in may a to By and and may have with the American more and probably the all and and element in the book was as an asked the to story about from Chicago, a of from out a story of a in a by and a at who to Polish by the this in and for the author had created a (but of but for the was for its that character, probably in the would have a Polish first and not for American in that of and the only were and in 1980 only In the same there were a Did the Polish for in this the may not really the of of Polish but is a historian and not a sociologist which might be a for the and book from that of the By the it is not really about The book a job on it is the new and Polish and with will for and might even to the literature on the Polish group in the United third book under the of documents co-edited by historians Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann and James S. Pula, is a part of the Routledge by its a Pula the for the period up to and from that the book, with its a of documents and to Polish American is but as is with some and and at the of the book a list of for The and Community, and and a and a The in the and so the in that the might as might only that the editors had not included a to the of the brief such an of in English or in English in the experience of a group whose history has been from many by the of and often it should a market as material in and, in a more high school and by might the of such material from The editors were in their work by and whose an For the this book and Pula's a to group scholars have been of the general works on Polonia that their have to the in of its to book or on the Polish experience in the United the Polish American Historical Association has the on of the books in this essay, and In its for the first to three the trio of Routledge works that the subject of this essay. This would an academic focused on the history of an ethnic group in the United States the group has produced and its own community of scholars writing on the history of the group from the of the in the English is it the history of the group is as an of the history of a this the United and it the of historians from the as is the with American an major part of “the American Polonia has had native-born Polish American historians writing Polish American this may have been a and that now on the historians have up Polish American and it largely to the of a group as Polish scholars up (and Polish American history may be to the Polish ethnic experience and the in its history often in the work of ethnic that in the the Poles may provide the of both an and on a subject more central, in a to the history of Poland to the history of the United not in the of American history as American-born and historians to with Polish American (and and and to the historical of ethnic Poles and their that have Polonja w Polish often and research from the of which now In to the the to it the much the Polish in from a

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