Geographical Reviews: The Atlas of Poland

Robert H. Lord reviews Eugeniusz Romer's 1916 Geographical-Statistical Atlas of Poland, praising its cartographic skill and comprehensive treatment of the Polish question and reporting that the Central Empires attempted to restrict its cross-border circulation. Compiled collaboratively with Polish specialists, it drew on statistical materials from Austrian government libraries and archives, Cracow's university library, and private collections. Its coverage extends across pre-partition Poland, East Prussia, and Prussian and Austrian Silesia. Seventy maps, diagrams, explanatory texts, and bibliographies address physical geography, history, population, nationalities, education, landholding, and economic life, with texts in Polish, French, and German. Lord highlights its treatment of partition rule, Upper Silesia, and Polish-Ukrainian competition in Eastern Galicia. He requests fuller agrarian and electoral coverage and identifies ethnography as its weakest section, linking this limitation to unreliable Russian statistics and noting that newer censuses require reassessment of Polish settlement in the east. The review announces a promised expanded edition with English, French, and Polish texts.