Courses in Polish History for the British delegates at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919

Bibliogr. s. 168-170

In the spring of 1917 the Admiralty established a historical section whose main duty was to provide the British delegates to the Peace Conference with geographical, economic, historical, social, religious and political information regarding different parts of the world. The section prepared 174 handbooks which, due to a great interest from the British public, were issued for general and public use in 1920. One of the subjects discussed in the handbooks was the history of Poland from 1569 to the outbreak of the First World War. This subject was of great significance as the authors of the handbooks adopted historical reasoning, i.e. they believed that the origins of present-day problems and their solutions could be found through studying history. The aim of the article is to assess the knowledge of Poland's history as presented in the handbooks and to learn to what extent this knowledge influenced British policy towards Poland during the Peace Conference.