Poles in North Africa

Abstract

The paper shows how the contacts between Poland and North Africa developed from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The first Polish knights, pilgrimages and travellers came to North Africa as early as the Middle Ages. Egypt was a most often visited country on the way to the Holy Land. From the end of the eighteenth century onwards, other North-African lands were investigated as well. From that moment on, larger groups of Polish citizens would come flooding in, e.g. in Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, in the French Foreign League, in the Egyptian corps of Gen. Henryk Dembiński. From mid-nineteenth century onwards, Poles reach north Africa to settle and work there. There were attempts to propagate Polish permanent settlement. The representatives of Polish migration in West Europe put forward such projects. The same situation was in the interwar period, when Polish recruits to the Foreign League would arrive in this part of the Black Land. There came miners to the North-African phosphate and coal mines, farmers to work in French farms and members of Polish intelligentsia, who at times obtained prominent posts. First Polish organizations in that part of Africa were established then. Poles in North Africa played a prominent role during the Second World War. The Karpatian Brigade of Riflemen gained fame under Gen. Stanisław Kopański. Moreover, Polish civilian refugees came there, seeking rescue against the offensive of German army in Europe. In the post-war period a number of independent states were set up in Africa, Polish-African political and trade contacts were developed, therefore a group of Polish specialists arrived in the Black Land to develop industry and agriculture of the states of the Third World. Almost eighty per cent of trade contacts between Poland and Africa take place in North-African states, thus making the relationships with this part of the Black Land most significant.