In recent years the works of Henryk Wereszycki - an eminent scholar dealing with nineteenth-century European diplomacy - have become the object of thorough analyses. Wereszycki grew up in Galicia at the beginning of the twentieth century to become a Polish patriot, to join the battle for Galicia as part of independent Poland, and, as an historian, to oppose the "black legend" of Galicia and defend the significance of the experiences of a liberal political system prevailing during the last twenty five years in Galician history. The characteristic feature of the first stage of his scientific approach to Galicia was a tendency towards rejecting a simplified scheme of examining the history of this particular partition area exclusively from the viewpoint of its contribution to the armed struggle for independence. On the other hand, there is the limitation of research to the "Polish" and "non-Polish" aspects: in this case, within the Hapsburg monarchy and not differentiated in an historical analysis. In quite another context Wereszycki considered the history of Galicia in his Historia polityczna Polski 1864-1918 (written at the turn of 1945), in which the point of reference for the presentation of the significance of Galicia is "the emergence of twentieth-century Poland". Wereszycki showed elements of the treatment of Galicia within the configuration of the monarchy as an exploited colony regarded as a source of army recruits. Nonetheless, he accentuated the fact that the autonomy offered a chance for the development of the positivistic so-called organic work initiatives, beneficial for the Polish population in Galicia. The new context of the Galician autonomy, according to the interpretation proposed by Wereszycki, was the game played on the inner Austrian political scene. In 1958 he proposed to study Galicia also as part of the history of the Habsburg monarchy. Emphasis on the significance of a sui generis game or a complicated configuration along the elites of the centre-the elites of the periphery axis, the subjects of the centre (Germans)-the peripheral subjects (the peasants - the "Mazurzy" and the Ruthenians), as well as the subjects and elites of the various peripheries of the empire, involved in diverse relations, appears to be a truly pioneering approach. This model was accepted in works dealing with the Habsburg monarchy. Unfortunately, Wereszycki's publications about the history of Galicia did not become part of a wider international scientific literature. Nonetheless, they do not deserve to be forgotten and can continue acting as a source of inspiration for a new view of the history of the northeastern province of a Central European empire.