Why didn't Prussia get all of Silesia?

After Frederick the Great conquered Silesia, why did Austria retain Austrian Silesia? Was that because Frederick the Great hadn't managed to occupy those lands, or as part of a final peace deal?
 

ingemann

Banned
After Frederick the Great conquered Silesia, why did Austria retain Austrian Silesia? Was that because Frederick the Great hadn't managed to occupy those lands, or as part of a final peace deal?

Silesia was split in several semi-autonome non-princely duchies under Bohemian suzerain, these duchies had rulers of different religion, the areas the Prussian didn't get was under ecclessial and secular Catholic rulers (including the Liechenstein dynasty), while the areas they got was mostly Protestant.
 
That and IIRC the important bits with all the coal and iron ore deposits are located in Lower Silesia which is the north-western part. Why bother taking extra land for lands sake and possibly picking up more troublesome minorities when you can get what you want and still look vaguely magnanimous for not taking all of it.
 
That and IIRC the important bits with all the coal and iron ore deposits are located in Lower Silesia which is the north-western part. Why bother taking extra land for lands sake and possibly picking up more troublesome minorities when you can get what you want and still look vaguely magnanimous for not taking all of it.

I think there still were lots of resources in Upper Silesia, including Austrian Silesia. There was still a deal of coal in Upper Silesia, and I don't think Frederick the Great (or any other pre-nationalism ruler) cared that much if he was absorbing a large minority (since before nationalism, it's unlikely to cause a really gigantic problem).
 
I think there still were lots of resources in Upper Silesia, including Austrian Silesia. There was still a deal of coal in Upper Silesia, and I don't think Frederick the Great (or any other pre-nationalism ruler) cared that much if he was absorbing a large minority (since before nationalism, it's unlikely to cause a really gigantic problem).

Agreed.
Frederick probably would consider his peasant subject's language and ethnic origin utterly irrelevant, even if at his time, there was actually some vague talk about such things, at least among academics. But I doubt the average peasant would have given a fuck. Nationality it was probably more important to Fred than to the peasant I suppose. Now, feudal allegiances again had ceased to matter much, though likely more than any vague "ethnic" feeling, for most people ("most people" meaning largely a majority of countryside peasants, seasonal workers, small tenants, serfs -Prussia still had serfdom until 1807, IIRC, and Voltaire wouldn't give a fuck-).
 
Agreed.
Frederick probably would consider his peasant subject's language and ethnic origin utterly irrelevant, even if at his time, there was actually some vague talk about such things, at least among academics. But I doubt the average peasant would have given a fuck. Nationality it was probably more important to Fred than to the peasant I suppose. Now, feudal allegiances again had ceased to matter much, though likely more than any vague "ethnic" feeling, for most people ("most people" meaning largely a majority of countryside peasants, seasonal workers, small tenants, serfs -Prussia still had serfdom until 1807, IIRC, and Voltaire wouldn't give a fuck-).

Didn't Frederick The Great abolish serfdom?
 
Actually, the Irony in Frederick the Great is that he is the rightful heir of Casimir III who planned to get Silesia just before he died, he could use his descent from Casimir III as a propaganda tool in Posen and Upper Silesia.
 

Tyr Anazasi

Banned
Actually, the Irony in Frederick the Great is that he is the rightful heir of Casimir III who planned to get Silesia just before he died, he could use his descent from Casimir III as a propaganda tool in Posen and Upper Silesia.

Could you elaborate that?
 
This map might help. Even if it shows the late 19th century, the confessional boundaries were very similar to the mid-18th century.
Upper Siliesia, the southeastern part, was predominantly catholic, even much of the Prussian part. The coal deposits were concentrated in the eastern tip of that area, around Beuthen, Zabrze, Tarnowitz, Kattowitz and Gleiwitz.

selisia2.gif
 
Could you elaborate that?

What I was trying to say is that he could use his being the direct descendant of Casimir III as a propaganda to the people of Upper Silesia and Posen, he could boast that he is the de jure King of Poland while the rulers of Galicia,PLC and Congress Poland are treated as the usurpers in his propaganda.
 
What I was trying to say is that he could use his being the direct descendant of Casimir III as a propaganda to the people of Upper Silesia and Posen, he could boast that he is the de jure King of Poland while the rulers of Galicia,PLC and Congress Poland are treated as the usurpers in his propaganda.

Poland is still a unified country here, we are talking pre-partition. Any such attempt is going to heavily antagonize the king of Poland, which happened to be Elector of Saxony as well. Might not matter much at certain points (Saxony was Austrian aligned and hostile to Prussia most of the time anyway) but when Frederick claimed Silesia, it actually could have been a problem as at that moment he were trying to get along with the Wettins.
A main Saxon concern was about connecting Poland and Saxony overland. This would have entailed getting parts of Silesia, and I suppose that the scheme where Augustus was going to receive Moravia and what would be Austrian Silesia was thought to that effect. Without Austrian Silesia, Moravia would have no border with Poland IIRC. So in 1742 it was a move to appease Saxony.
It did not matter in the end however, as Saxony switched sides and allied with Austria anyway, forfeiting attempts to link with Poland through Moravia. So Frederick might have gone for the whole thing in the Second Silesian War. I guess he did not because the extent of his claim had been defined earlier as excluding the southern counties and he was willing to renounce them to sweeten the deal with Austria (as he had considerable diplomatic pressure from Britain to do so). It did not work anyway.
In think that in SYW, there was talk about letting Saxony have a corridor to Poland through either Silesia (with the rest going back to Austria, so I assume the Northern bit) or Brandenburg.
 
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