WI Poland gained a colony during the interwar period?

Polish Palestine (it need not be all of Palestine) would be interesting.

Otherwise Polish Congo would presumably actually be Cabinda. (Portuguese Congo).
 
So why spend money on a colony when they could instead spend on making Poland better?
Indeed.

It would be very hard to maintain the colony. Poland had to build up its fleet from scratch and the Baltic Sea is easily bottlenecked, so it would be hard to project influence overseas.
 
It doesnt have to to be a particularly smart move or a profitable business, just somehow obtained piece of Madagascar, Angola or New Caledonia and a couple thousand farmers and a small town people living out there, possibly out of pure stubborness
 
The easiest would be perhaps to have Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński (1861-1896) establish a colony. He was a naval officer in the Russian Imperial navy who prepared a scientific expedition to Cameroon. He sought funds, in apparently what could have become a joint-stock company when he first proposed the idea in September 1881. He sailed on 13 December 1882 from Le Havre with some other Poles. They arrived on Mondoleh Island on Cameroon in April 1883, with Leopold Janikowski (1855-1942) building a research station on the island, whereas others including Rogoziński traveled inland reaching Lake Barombi Mbo. The territory was proclaimed a German Protectorate in July 1884, while the party was in the region however.

Apparently the Polish party had signed treaties with the local rulers. If perhaps the expedition had left earlier and the men had been able to proclaim the area a Russian Protectorate or something of the sort and sent some colonists from Russian Poland or formed a joint-stock company raising funds among Polish elites a sort of Polish colony could have been formed. There were only around 200 whites in the colony by 1900 and 1,871 Europeans in Kamerun in 1913. By 1958 there were fewer than 12,000 Europeans in French Cameroon so it was not a settlement colony by any means.
 
Is it full of cannibals or so disease-ridden that Europeans drop dead just from seeing it at the horizon?

Edit: but getting one of the larger former Kaiserreich islands would be interesting. And bring the joys of Japanese occupation to the collection.

A magical land with filled with natives so happy to see you they prepare a feast and you're the special guest?

An exotic culinary tradition that's to die for!?

On this island there is a certain something in the air that just gets under your skin.

When Europeans first set eyes upon it they know this is where they are going to live for the rest of their life?

That's what I'm hearing!

Nova Polska! Book your one-way trip Today!
 
I know that Togo was nearly given to Czechoslovakia of all places, so I'd say a Polish colony isn't truly ASB. Though, no matter what it is, I bet it will be more or less neglected, never have more than a hundred actual Poles in it, and snatched up by a major power the moment something valuable is found there.
 
The easiest would be perhaps to have Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński (1861-1896) establish a colony. He was a naval officer in the Russian Imperial navy who prepared a scientific expedition to Cameroon. He sought funds, in apparently what could have become a joint-stock company when he first proposed the idea in September 1881. He sailed on 13 December 1882 from Le Havre with some other Poles. They arrived on Mondoleh Island on Cameroon in April 1883, with Leopold Janikowski (1855-1942) building a research station on the island, whereas others including Rogoziński traveled inland reaching Lake Barombi Mbo. The territory was proclaimed a German Protectorate in July 1884, while the party was in the region however.

Apparently the Polish party had signed treaties with the local rulers. If perhaps the expedition had left earlier and the men had been able to proclaim the area a Russian Protectorate or something of the sort and sent some colonists from Russian Poland or formed a joint-stock company raising funds among Polish elites a sort of Polish colony could have been formed. There were only around 200 whites in the colony by 1900 and 1,871 Europeans in Kamerun in 1913. By 1958 there were fewer than 12,000 Europeans in French Cameroon so it was not a settlement colony by any means.
Interesring.

So, because of some shenanigans, this area becomes French protectorate instead of British and later German, and Poles are allowed to bring their colonists here. They begin with just a couple colonist a year in the beginning, but numbers of yearly immigrants grow with time, and they collect money from patriots in Poland to support "the only corner of the world where Polish flag can freely fly, something or other" so they can improve the infrastructure, build schools and missions and whatnot . During WW1 (butterfly net) Polish colonists and soldiers raised among natives take part in invasion of German Kamerun and then they are so annoying and persistent in Versailles they got another piece of it to attach to their colony which is then transferred to Poland. In the interwar some more colonist move there, and during the war Polish government officially resides there (in reality it stays in Paris and then London, closer to where the important things happen).

Edit: also Polish government in exile moves its gold reserves there and refuses to send it back to Communist Poland after the war instead using it to develop the colony
 
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So why spend money on a colony when they could instead spend on making Poland better?
To have a place that can't be gobbled up by its neighbors so easily?

Spending on the military might be better, but can Poland afford a military powerful enough to ensure they won't be partitioned again?
 

Deleted member 1487

To have a place that can't be gobbled up by its neighbors so easily?

Spending on the military might be better, but can Poland afford a military powerful enough to ensure they won't be partitioned again?
If neighbors can gobble your core territory up, you've got better things to spend money on than colonies. If Poland can't afford a military that will protect her, she cannot afford a colony.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
In general. There were many more people than there were jobs for them, so the area had a chronic poverty, unemployment, and starvation issue. In the Austrian days, it was referred to as 'Golicja I Glodomerja,' meaning 'naked and hungry.'
Would there be enough jobs in a hypothetical Polish African colony to get 25,000 Poles to move there, though?
 
The only one that ever turned a profit was Togoland, as a whole colonialism for Germany was massive waste of money for the nation.

Except they couldn't afford it and there weren't new colonies gained after WW1 besides Ethopia, which resulted in LoN sanctions, and the swapping of colonial holdings by the defeated to the victorious in WW1. Poland simply could never afford a colony, nor was the world ever going to let it have one after WW1, while it had it's own internal areas to develop and colonize; Germany-France-Britain-the Netherlands-Belgium-Italy had about developed internally as much as possible barring technological developments, so were seeking resources abroad; they were already rich nations looking for captive markets; Poland was a poor nation still struggling to establish itself and had serious internal political problems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Polish_Republic#Politics_and_government

Plus if anything the Poles were somewhat using the extreme Zionists to export Jews to Palestine and helping train them in terrorism against the British after they shut down Jewish immigration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(group)#Evolution_and_tactics_of_the_organization

It wasn't an idea for a Polish colony. Why would Britain for France just given them a profitable colony after they had conquered it??? The French and British split it between themselves in 1914 when they invaded it and incorporated it into their existing neighboring colonies years before Poland was even seriously conceived as an independent country.

It is generally true that most - there were exceptions of course, the biggest one being India which made the British into the empire they were - colonies were in financial terms not very directly profitable (although some groups did make a lot of money there, Michelin and French Indochina springing to mind). However, the reverse - colonies which were highly unprofitable - is sometimes exaggerated. The most prominent example which is generally shown concerning this is the Germans, who lost money in all of their overseas colonies save Togoland. But the Germans also engendered the fiercest resistance in their colonies with their resultant genocides in Namibia and near-genocides in Tanganyika, which made military operations there very large by African standards, and invested a lot of money into their colonies. The more typical situation is the French, who while they didn’t hit any gold mine colonies, also required their colonies to be self-sufficient budget-wise and faced few situations which required the same overwhelming deployment of metropolitan force like in the German colonies (the obvious exceptions being Morocco, Algeria, and to some extent Indochina, but none of those are directly applicable to the Polish experience). The only possible case where Poland gains an overseas colony is in the event that somebody decides to transfer a colony to them, and in that case with basic infrastructure and control already established, and Poland not planning to spend much there anyway, the Poles, while not gaining much money on their colony, would probably be able to keep it without undue expense.

So Poland could probably hold a colony somewhere, and not have this be too expensive, at most a vanishingly fraction of the budget for a prestige project, something that Poland could easily enough afford. Portugal was able to keep a relatively huge colonial empire on a much smaller population with GDP per capita levels that weren’t much different. Portugal did have some financial crises in the early 1910s, but these were more due to their internal weakness rather than the expenses in their empire, although they did face a lot of resistance conquering their empire which drove up costs.

As far as reasons for why Poland would want a colony : colonial acquisition happened for a lot more reasons than just for economic ones. A huge amount of academic ink has been spilled, and while the Hobson type argument - looking for captive markets due to excess capital at home - does have some situations where it is applicable, more often the reasons for taking colonies were political rather than economic. I’m mostly familiar with the French example, and in the case of France while there were economic supporters for imperialism (such as the French silk industry which was very vigorous in supporting French control in Syria, as an example of French municipal imperialism), more often the supporters of the French empire were driven by concerns about French politics, countering rival nations, notions of decadence and decline, and not backing down and hence losing prestige. Most of the French empire in its later stages got picked up in short operations or operations conducted with little national debate, with the only one that was a long running project which required significant military, diplomatic, and political cooperation being Morocco - which was opposed by French economic banks, who preferred that an international consortium be established to enable the exploitation of Morocco, as opposed to a direct French colony.

Similarly, Poland will have its own small share of economic interests that will dream about the profits that are to be made in a colony somewhere and will support it. However, they won't be the driving focus behind it, their dreams aside. To quote comments recorded in "Polish Colonial Ambitions in the Inter-War Period" :

We Poles, like the Italians, are facing a great problem of accommodating and em-
ploying a large population increase. We Poles, like the Italians, have the right to
demand that export markets as well as areas for settlement be opened to us, so
that we may obtain raw materials necessary to the national economy under condi-
tions similar to those enjoyed by the colonial states.'


Instead, just as OTL, the main backers behind any political drive for colonies will be figures interested in securing Polish prestige, the normal groups who believe that having colonies is necessary to prevent decline and decadence and that excess population can be sent there (which they will soon discover isn’t going to happen, just as Italy and Germany did…), and the navy. These groups have more than enough influence to push the government into lobbying on the international scene : Poland had as late as 1939 had a significant state-backed movement for colonies.

The Maritime and Colonial League, with only 80 sections and a mem-
bership of 44,000 in 1928, by 1934 had 1200 sections throughout Poland,
looo school societies, and a membership exceeding 250,000. By the begin-
ning of 1931 numerous societies called Friends of the Polish Sea had been
organized in the United States, Canada, South America, Manchukuo,
Australia, France, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany.'0

Nevertheless, the response of the Polish population to the festivities provided the League with the support and participation it needed. The numerous letters, telegrams, and reports sent to the League indicated that millions of Poles participated in the "Colonial Days." A festive spirit reigned in the country. Buildings were decorated with Polish flags and the League's placards demanding colonies for Poland.33 In all the towns special morning masses were held with appropriate statements by the priests. Thousands of people marched through the streets, representing the government and the military as well as various public, professional, labor, and youth organizations. In Poznan the number of marchers was estimated at 40,000, in Tourun' 2o,ooo. The most imposing gathering was held in Warsaw, where General Kwasniewski gave a speech outlining in detail Poland's colonial ambitions.34 According to the United States ambassador to Poland, Drexel Biddle, "Colonial Week" of 1938 was celebrated "on a larger scale and awakened more popular and official enthusiasm and support than [any such celebration] heretofore." 35


Such a movement serves a lot of benefits for Poland, as it enables them to direct political attention from their situation in Europe, and because it will demonstrate that Poland is a significant nation. Indeed, for a nation like Poland to possess colonies will be even more important as it will show that Poland is a nation on the same level as France and Britain, with its own civilizing mission, recognized by the LoN. Its a boon to Poland prestige and to their attempts to counter claims that Poland lacks its own high culture and civilization. The normal dreamers will exist about sending peasants to the colonies and using them for economics, but then that'll never work out. But once the Poles realize the colonial reality, the Polish government will not intend to make any serious money from it…

Now, as far as Poland actually getting a colony, there is no way that I can see that happening. The obvious candidates are the territories taken from the German Empire, but the British examined the options about giving those territories back in the 1930s as it stood and decided that they couldn’t for various reasons that I can’t remember right now since I don’t have The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire with me. The British did decide that giving up Cameroon might work, but then it was very easy to throw around the idea of giving away Cameroon, since it was the French that controlled it… the French did not agree with the British reasoning for why giving it away to the Germans was a good idea when they heard about the British proposal to play around with their territory. All of the same elements are at play with Poland.

If Poland gets it early enough it is possible

Edit: and as the war is becoming more and more unavoidable, many people might decide that harvesting bananas or coconuts on the other side of the world is much better idea than they had previously thought
Being economically viable decreses its chances of being sold/given/whatvere to Poland, IMO. Some ass end of nowhere would be more probable.

But anyway, such a location could also serve as the place to send Polish refugees to during the war (otl they ended in places like India, Iran, Kenya and others) and various DPs that wouldn't want to go to Commie Poland after the war, not to mention Polish soldiers, so the population could grow tenfold during the war years and immediately afterwards.

Presuming that Poland does get a colony somewhere, in general expect that very little is going to happen with it concerning establishing government in exiles or settling Polish refugees there. Most Polish refugees are going to choose to go to developed nations rather than a dirt poor Polish colony. The same situation existed with Italy and Germany : Italy did have some success in settling Italians in Libya, but it had picked up Eritrea and Somalia on the hopes of putting Italians there, and nobody went. Similarly, the German colonial empire had only a few thousand German, despite the Germans trying to settle ex-soldiers in Southwest Africa. Polish refugees got settled in African colonies during the war : the numbers who stayed afterwards look extremely small, a few hundreds at most, according to wikipedia.

Indeed.

It would be very hard to maintain the colony. Poland had to build up its fleet from scratch and the Baltic Sea is easily bottlenecked, so it would be hard to project influence overseas.

Having a fleet isn't really necessary to maintaining a colonial empire. Belgium for much of its history had no navy, yet it controlled the vast Congo. Portugal did have a navy, but it was rather pathetically small... Poland could never hope to have a navy to defend its overseas colonies, and it is entirely dependent on British or French gratitude and League of Nations rules as it stands. Presuming it gets a mandate it would be demilitarized as well.
 
Hmmm. Polish Afghanistan anyone? The British, realizing they can't hold Afghanistan against the insurrection against them, offer the Poles Afghanistan in order to annoy the Afghans and the Soviets.

'Course, I think the Poles would fall over laughing if the British ever seriously proposed this.

As others have mentioned, the most plausible options are for the Poles to be offered a German colony at Versailles. I can think of a couple of mechanisms for this:

1) The British offer the Poles a colony as compensation for accepting what the British conceive of as a "realistic" Czechoslovak border. As a happy side effect, this might mean better Czechoslovak-Polish relations from the 1920s on.

2) The Americans and the Italians, upset at how the British and the French are treating the mandate system as something that gives them more colonies/upset that the British and French aren't allowing them to get more of Austria-Hungary, spend some political capital pushing for Poland to be granted a mandate, since the Poles are "clearly more trustworthy" than the old imperialist powers.

Also, I've read a few unsubstantiated asides on wikipedia and in history books of the period that the French were considering selling Poland a colony during the 1930s. Madagascar seems to be mentioned in connection with this most often.

The French selling French Indochina to Poland could be interesting.

However Poland gained a colony, I think all investment would be coming from the Maritime and Colonial League raising money. Unless the Polish government can see a way to give unemployed people in Eastern Poland jobs in the colony and subsidize the fare and perhaps some of the infrastructure in the colony itself.

And though this is outside the original WI, it would be really cool to see a Polish colony PRE WW1. Perhaps some Polish adventurers figure that since Polish independence in Europe is unlikely, the best shot is to create a new Poland in Africa or Asia.

That could either be an independent "colony" that muddled through as a de jure independent state (like Liberia) until Poland rose from the ashes of WW1 or perhaps a joint-venture with another adventurer. Perhaps the Poles team up with Cecil Rhodes, and settle the area that OTL makes up Zimbabwe and Zambia. Or maybe they team up with Leopold II and settle in the Katanga area of Congo. Or maybe they team up with the Egyptians during their efforts to colonize Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda (this is before the Egyptians go bankrupt and end up being a de facto colony themselves, of course).

Another idea (one that is really stretching plausibility) is Germany deciding before WW1 to create a "Polish colony" in some part of their empire as a gesture to show Poles why being part of the German empire is much better than being independent (perhaps German Kamerun, seeing as it has a Polish link and doesn't have attractive lands to settle that might result in the gesture gaining substantial and difficult demographics). It might result in an interesting Polish city-state in Africa...

fasquardon
 
Norway almost got German East Africa due to influence of one of their diplomats, cannot find the link(s) today due to uncooperative G00G (lol)
 
Liberia is the obvious candidate.

Have it's government dissolved by the League of Nations on allegations of enslavement of the black population, and give the mandate to Poland. This would give Poland the only supply of natural latex rubber west of Suez, as well as plentiful timber and iron ore.

It'd make an interesting base for a Polish government in exile after the communists are installed after World War 2.
 
Now, as far as Poland actually getting a colony, there is no way that I can see that happening. The obvious candidates are the territories taken from the German Empire, but the British examined the options about giving those territories back in the 1930s as it stood and decided that they couldn’t for various reasons that I can’t remember right now since I don’t have The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire with me. The British did decide that giving up Cameroon might work, but then it was very easy to throw around the idea of giving away Cameroon, since it was the French that controlled it… the French did not agree with the British reasoning for why giving it away to the Germans was a good idea when they heard about the British proposal to play around with their territory. All of the same elements are at play with Poland.

The British portion of Cameroon (at least the Southern Cameroons) might work and isn't too much to give away.

Liberia is the obvious candidate.

Have it's government dissolved by the League of Nations on allegations of enslavement of the black population, and give the mandate to Poland. This would give Poland the only supply of natural latex rubber west of Suez, as well as plentiful timber and iron ore.

It'd make an interesting base for a Polish government in exile after the communists are installed after World War 2.

Out of Africa, Liberia seems to have had the most interest by Poland. But the United States didn't really want it to happen.
 
Out of Africa, Liberia seems to have had the most interest by Poland. But the United States didn't really want it to happen.

I've read that the Liberian government wanted to form an economic and political alliance with Poland (due to Poland being seen as being unlikely to use such an arrangement to turn Liberia into a subject colony). I've always thought that could be quite fun to explore in an ATL, to have Poland form something like a cross between NATO and the British Commonwealth without first passing through a colonial/imperial stage. So in an ATL where WW2 was avoided and Poland was a little stronger, Poland might start with a relationship with Liberia in the 30s, and then end up picking up economic alliances with some of the countries breaking away from British and French dominion in return for Poland selling those countries modern weapons say. So by the end up decolonization in such a world, Poland might have a "commonwealth" that included Liberia, Vietnam, Egypt, Angola and Mozambique (just to pick semi-plausible names out of a hat). (Other strong Eastern European states might get into the game as well, which could get very interesting.)

But in such a scenario, these countries would have full power over their internal affairs and would be able to end the "special relationship" with Poland whenever they liked, so I don't think it meets the OP's challenge. Would still be an interesting world, I think.

fasquardon
 
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_attempts_by_Poland#Second_Polish_Republic and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_and_Colonial_League on Polish intrawar attempts at "colonization" in South America and Africa. Note that they were largely pressed by private groups rather than the government, and in any event never came close to a "colony" in the legal sense. The idea of Liberia becoming a quasi-protectorate of Poland in the 1930's is intriguing --but if nothing else the opposition by Firestone and the US government make it very unlikely.
 
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