Reviews and reports. Geographical and statistical atlas of Poland

Antoni Sujkowski reviews Eugeniusz Romer's Geographical-Statistical Atlas of Poland, published in Warsaw and Kraków in 1916. Conceived before the war after Romer's return from Canada and Alaska, the atlas was intended as a broad specialist collaboration. Wartime disruption left Romer to complete it with eight scholars; he prepared 24 of its 32 plates himself and contributed to three others. Sujkowski describes the consistent colour scale and the Polish, German and French explanatory texts, which identify sources, explain their limitations and guide map reading. His plate-by-plate assessment covers physical geography, historical and administrative divisions, population, nationality, religion, education, publishing, landownership, agriculture and livestock. He praises the atlas while proposing corrections to boundaries, place names and statistical representations, and repeatedly challenges official Russian and Prussian statistics. The agricultural plates receive extensive attention: Romer adapted Engelbrecht's methods and reconciled uneven statistical material from the three partitions. Sujkowski examines how crop distributions, yields and grain supply reflect soils, climate, historical practices, markets and political conditions; he regards the livestock maps as valuable complements whose figures the war had already made historical. He defends interpolation in economic and cultural mapping because large administrative units, inconsistent statistics and small map scales limit reliable local detail. In comparison with Ratzel and Brunhes, he emphasizes Romer's use of cultural history to connect physical conditions with contemporary human geography. Sujkowski recommends the atlas to historians, teachers, publicists and educated Polish readers as a means of understanding contemporary Poland.