Why Are There 2 Polands?

The Ghost of Poland’s Past

The split inside the country is so stark and common on maps that Poles have an expression for it: widać zabory, “You can see the partitions”.

Why is there such a partition within the country?

You might have already seen the map below, suggesting an explanation:

The colors show the results of Polish elections. The black line represents the German Empire. Now that I’ve seen about 100 maps of Poland, I am somewhat bothered by the fact that the borders of the German Empire are not properly drawn over Poland: You can see they don’t espouse the border between orange and blue very closely. They should! Source.

This map overlays Polish electoral results with a map of the old German Empire, which lasted from 1871 to 1914. And this pattern wasn’t true for just one election. It’s been true for most of its recent democracy:

Between independence in 1990 and the early 2000s, there was less diversity in the presiding parties, and the trend was less clear, but it was already there. Some people say this is disappearing, mostly because the 2023 election was a bit more level. Most sources are from Reddit or Wikipedia.

The implication is clear: The German Empire caused the western side of Poland to be much more… something. But what exactly? And why? Election results, GDP per capita, population density, labor participation rate, religiosity, crime, air quality, urbanization, infrastructure, language… Even random things like the number of deer or boars, alcoholism, industrialization, the number of bathrooms, the age of buildings, tombstone inscriptions, AIDS… Why do old…