Visualization of the territorial origins of the inhabitants of the Recovered Territories (Poland) in 1950

The aim of this study was to visualize the origins of the population of the Recovered Territories. The data on the origins of the population was acquired from Kosiński’s research (Kosiński 1960). The scope of this study covered the development of a set of maps:

The area under study covered the aforementioned Recovered Lands – the territories granted to Poland during the Potsdam Conference and the territory of the former Free City of Gdansk (Marcinek 1996). The Former Lands comprise the parts of the Polish People’s Republic

PL: PRL Polska Republika Ludowa (Polish People’s Republic)

Figure 1

The main data source is “The Origin of the Population of Western Lands in 1950”. This is research which was prepared by L. Kosiński, published by the Institute of Geography of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in 1960, in Warsaw. The research paper describes in detail the population of the Recovered Territories. In the title of the publication, the author uses the phrase “Western Lands” which refers to the Recovered Lands. The publication is based upon data collected as part of the National Census conducted in December 1950 (GUS PRL 1955). This information was further filled out with data made available by Statistics Poland (SP) in the years 1957-1958. Among other things, a question was asked about place of residence in 1939. The answers to this question provided information on the volume of migration and on the origins of the inhabitants of particular parts of the Recovered Lands. Before Kosiński’s research was developed, the publications on the origin of the population of the Recovered Territories was less detailed or had an uncertain statistical basis (Kosiński 1960). Thanks to the availability of the statistical data provided by SP to the Institute of Geography, it was possible to develop more detailed analyses of the origins of the population. The data was presented at county level. Kosiński prepared tables of the origins of the population from the Recovered Territories and characterized the distribution of particular population groups.

The work includes sixteen maps:

Other source data used in this study is vector data relating to the administrative division of the Polish People’s Republic from 1946. This constituted the basis for building the main layer for each of the maps. The data was acquired from the “Ontological Basis of Building Historical Geographical Information Systems” project, financed by the National Humanities Development Programme

ONTOHGIS ontological foundations for building historical geoinformation system

Apart from vector data, raster data(i.e. old maps) were also used. Three of these are maps showing the administrative division of the People’s Republic of Poland, developed and published by MIG, in 1946, 1947 and 1948, at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Within this research a scan of the administrative map prepared by the State Cartographic Publishing Company and published in 1957 was also used. Additionally, two scans of general geographic maps of Poland, published by MIG in 1947, at a scale of 1:500,000 (the sheets of Wałbrzych and Szczecin) were used. The physical map of the Second Republic of Poland, published in 1932 by Eugeniusz Romer at the Institute of Geography, at a scale of 1:1,250,000, also constituted a source of data. Apart from this, the base map “World Imagery” available in the ArcMap 10.5 programme was also used. The legal acts of the People’s Republic of Poland from 1946-1951 were used to modify the administrative division of vector data referring to 1946. These legal acts constitute three regulations of the Council of Ministers (29.05.1946

Rozporządzenie Rady Ministrów z dnia 29 maja 1946 r. (Regulation of the Council of Ministers of 29 May 1946)

The research methodology consisted of several stages: an initial assessment of the accuracy of the input data, modification of the vector data, database design and verification of its accuracy. The last stage of the methodology was the cartographic visualization of the origin of the population of the Recovered Territories using selected cartographic presentation methods (Figure 2). All research stages were conducted in ArcMap software, version 10.5. The auxiliary program for map editing was CorelDRAW.

Figure 2

The initial evaluation of vector data quality was based on the identification of errors in the database and inaccuracies in administrative borderlines. In the case of vector data of the administrative division from 1946, the main problems were the inaccuracy of the coastline and the presence of Polish administrative units reaching beyond the Polish-German border. Another problem was the incompleteness of the vector database (lack of names assigned to some administrative units). Moreover, the vector data was not matched with the vector data relating to 1931 (a mismatch between the coastline and the southern border based on the Carpathian Mountains). The course of the coastline of both layers was modified on the basis of the “World Imagery” basemap available in ArcMap 10.5. The next stage of research was to modify the borders of the former Polish People’s Republic (vector data referring to 1946). The state borders with Czechoslovakia near Harrahov and the German-Polish border, near Świnoujście on the Uznam island, were modified. The modification was carried out on the basis of archival MIG maps. Some counties bordering on the German Democratic Republic were erroneously “sticking out” beyond the border of the People’s Republic of Poland. These borders were adjusted to the vector data of the State Borders’ Register. The next stage was to modify the administrative division of the Polish People’s Republic. This consisted of removing areas not assigned to any counties and introducing administrative changes ordered by the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland in the years 1946-1951. These modifications covered the creation of new counties and provinces and changes in their names. The modification was carried out on the basis of archival maps from 1946-1957 and legal acts of the Polish People’s Republic. The next stage was to make the vector data, namely the borders of the Second Polish Republic, consistent with the borders of the People’s Republic of Poland. This covered the consistency of land borders common to both layers: the southern border, based on the Carpathians Mountains and the eastern border near the Suwałki region.

The last stage was to design the database, based on information from Kosiński’s research. This consisted of assigning twenty-four attributes to each administrative unit of the People’s Republic of Poland located in the area of the Recovered Territories. Sixteen of these concerned the percentage of the population originating from a given area. The remaining eight attributes constituted the name of the county; the name of the province in which the county is located; the county’s population; the share of people of undetermined origin in the total population of the county; the share of indigenous people in the total population of the county; the share of incoming people in the total population of the county; a category for the degree of population mixing and a code symbolizing the dominant population group in the county. In the analysed research the share of the population coming from a given area refers only to the inflow population of a given county. In order to obtain the percentage share of origin for the total population of the counties of the Recovered Territories the values in each county were calculated. As a result, the percentage of the population coming from a given place has decreased. The smaller the percentage of inflow population in a given county, the more it has decreased. A separate database has been created for provinces located in the Former Lands. This shows the number of people who emigrated to the Recovered Territories per each province of the Former Lands. Of eleven attributes relating to the Former Territories, ten referred to the number of people who emigrated to the Recovered Territories (as migration and resettlement targets), while one represented the total number of migrants and displaced persons from a given region.

The results of this research were the development of twenty-four maps relating to the Recovered Territories:

The maps were designed in the form of single static maps, showing the dynamics of state. Most of the developed maps also have features of balance maps, showing the effect of a given phenomenon. All maps, except the last one, are designed at a scale of 1:4,000,000 . The last map presents the administrative division of the Recovered Territories and constitutes a legend for all the other maps. This map has been developed to allow easy reading of the names of the counties of the Recovered Territories. The map was designed at a scale of 1:2,500,000. Of the twenty-three remaining maps, twenty-one used the choropleth method as the main method, which shows the inclusion of a given county within a certain percentage range of the examined population group’s share in the total county population. In each case, different class intervals were used, depending on the range of the phenomenon’s values. The class intervals have been assumed to be right-closed. When delimiting the class intervals, care was taken to ensure that they were as large as possible and to ensure that the limit values of the class ranges are divisible by 10, 5 or 2.5; depending on the range of the phenomenon. If the percentage of a given population group was more than 50%, this value was the extreme value of the range. This allows one to determine which county has an absolute majority of a given population group. Each of the choropleth maps uses a single-tone convergent colour scale. The darker the hue of a given colour, the higher the percentage of a given population group in the county’s total population. In the remaining two maps - showing immigrants and displaced persons to the Recovered Territories for each province of the Former Lands - the diagram method was used. The first of these maps uses a segment diagram. Each Province of the Former Lands was assigned square segments, symbolizing ten thousand people who emigrated or were forcibly resettled in the years preceding 1950. In the second map, a summary-structural diagram map was used. The larger the area of the circle, the greater the number of people who left the given province of the Former Lands. The percentage share of each of the regions of the Recovered Territories is reflected in a section of a circle with a given angle.

The resulting maps should be compared with existing studies, both with Internet cartography and atlas maps such as the Atlas of the Republic of Poland (Gawryszewski & Kosiński 19931997). The two most important criteria for evaluating the resulting maps are the degree of detail and the accuracy of the vector data. The level of detail of the designed maps is the same as the level of detail of the maps from Kosiński’s research and the map from the Atlas of the Republic of Poland. The maps show the Recovered Lands by county, which is the most detailed division, taking into account the availability of statistical data. The resulting maps, therefore, show the social structure of the Recovered Territories in more detail than most studies so far. A more difficult comparison criterion is the accuracy of the vector data. The vector data used for the development of the maps was modified repeatedly and verified using both numerous raster data (old maps, referring to the period 1932-1957) and satellite images (“World Imagery” basemap). In addition, the results of the modification of this data were verified by comparing them to the legal acts of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) from 1946-1951. Therefore, it can be stated that the accuracy of the developed maps is at least no worse than the accuracy of previous ones.

Another very important criterion for the evaluation of the research results is their informative richness and comprehensiveness. The maps show the percentage of the population coming from sixteen areas of origin (fourteen provinces of the Former Lands, the USSR, and other countries) and the percentage of the incoming and indigenous populations. This is the most synthetic study that has been prepared so far. Even Kosiński’s maps, attached to his research, show only the origins of thirteen areas (among other places, the provinces of the Former Lands, while Olsztyn province and cities with provincial rights were not included). Other cartographic studies take into account groups of provinces or a very generalised division of the population into indigenous people, people displaced from the Eastern Borderlands of pre-war Poland, and people displaced from the Former Lands. The maps designed within this study into population origin differ significantly from Kosiński’s maps, as the percentage of a given population group is related to the total population of a given county, not to the total inflow population. This makes it easier to assess the diversity of population origin. Moreover, the resulting maps show the dominant population group in each county (Figure 7) as well as the population according to the degree of mixing, which so far has only been sketched in Kosiński’s research. Three other maps were also developed; a map of population of unknown origin, and two maps showing immigrants and forcibly displaced people to the Recovered Territories from particular areas of former Poland. In the case of the first map, the detail is at county level, while, in the next two maps, at the provincial level (Figure 3). These maps have never been developed in such detail before.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

To sum up, the greatest advantages of the developed maps include a high level of informativeness, high comprehensiveness of the study, uniqueness (development of data, not visualized so far), and high data accuracy, as well as high map readability. This research proves that there is still a lot of unprocessed historical data, which would be worth visualizing. Although editing maps has never been as simple as it is now, there are still many aspects of Polish history (even the most recent history), that require comprehensive cartographic study. It is also worthwhile addressing the subject of changing the form and methods of cartographic presentation of existing maps, e.g. sketches, which, apart from being digitally presented, can be enriched with additional assets and new solutions.