Introduction Chicago," Sophie Nadrowska explained in a letter to her parents in Poland in 1890, "is Poland in perfection." For generations of Polish immigrants and their descendants, Illinois has been a place to call home: perhaps not always perfect, yet still welcoming. Since the early nineteenth century, Poles have made the state their home, and in turn they have shaped the history and character of Illinois. They settled in the industrial neighborhoods of Chicago and its environs, in Joliet and Rockford, in the coal-mining towns of south-central Illinois, and on farms across the state. In 2010, an estimated 1 million Polish Americans lived in Illinois, making up 8 percent of all state residents. Polish immigrants have made Illinois home for almost two centuries. Chicago has been home to one of the densest urban concentrations of Poles anywhere outside of Poland. There is a saying that Chicago is the second largest Polish city in the world, after Warsaw, Poland''s capital.

Although this is not entirely cor­rect (at least as of this writing), the popularity of this "fact" is a reminder of the outsized role played by Illinois in the conscious­ness of Poles and Polish Americans. Many of the most prominent Polish American organizations are headquartered in Chicago. In Poland itself, "Czikago" is, as much as "Nowy Jork," synonymous with America. With such a long and storied background, one would imagine a small shelf of books surveying the history Poles in Illinois or even covering the contributions of Poles to Chicago. Yet, the present volume is the first effort at writing such a history. There are many excellent specialized studies on aspects of the Polish experience in Chicago but no overall history aside from a memorial book produced for city''s centennial in 1937 and a popular history/cookbook. For Polish communities beyond Chicago, aside from parish jubilee books, there is virtually nothing. Standard histories of the state make only passing mention of the Polish presence.

Although Poles played an outsized role in shaping Chicago''s physical and cultural history, standard histories of the Windy City again provide little detail other than to note the size of the Polish population and its role in heavy industry. But perhaps this is not as surprising as it seems. The Polish presence in Illinois and in the state''s leading city is so large and so integral to the identity of the state and of Chicago that it has become invisible and taken for granted. Moreover, there is no single "Polish community" encompassing Illinois or even Chi­cago. Polish immigrants created many distinct communities in the state that were often so complete and intensive in their develop­ment that they sought and needed little input from other Polish communities, let alone their neighbors of different backgrounds. The inward focus of so many of the Illinois communities created by Polish immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made it hard for them mobilize politically and elect their members to public office. The later arrival of waves of more politically conscious Polish refugees in the second half of the twentieth century did little to change that. Despite the massive Polish presence in Chicago since the 1880s, and much to the frus­tration of those who sought to be leaders of Polonia (the Polish community in America), the city never had a Polish mayor and probably never will.

That inward focus, however, created a dense and rich world of institutions--banks and restaurants, hospitals and orphanages, churches and schools, publishing houses and recording studios, artistic societies and sports leagues, unions and social service agencies. Poles shaped the physical environment of the state from modest working-class neighborhoods to factories to massive neo-Gothic churches whose splendor rivals those of the Old World. The world created by Polish immigrants exists like a kind of parallel universe to the more familiar history of Illinois. Its history is little known outside of interested historians and history enthusiasts. Sadly, it is often little known by those whose forebears built it and breathed it into life. The task of this book is to begin to tell this story and provide a window into a rich and important but overlooked part of the state''s history. * * * Poles who have settled in Illinois came in several distinct waves from a Poland that was at the heart of modern Europe''s fiercest political convulsions. Poland is situated in the geographical center of Europe, between the southern coast of the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains.

Poles speak a Slavic dialect--a western branch of the largest ethnolinguistic family in Europe. This eth­nolinguistic core mixed freely with a host of ancient and modern peoples in central Europe--including Germans to the west and other Slavic groups to the south and east such as Slovaks, Czechs, Ukrainians, and Ruthenians. Poles had close and sometimes frac­tious historical links to Lithuanians. At one time, the country was a haven for the world''s largest Jewish populations and one of the world''s most northerly Muslim communities. Poland''s location made it a crossroads for peoples, cultures, and ideas from across Eurasia. Its culture and its predominant Roman Catholic faith tied it to the West, but throughout much of its history, Poland gazed East. A Polish monarchy emerged by the middle of the tenth century and expanded to include much of what is now modern Poland by the early eleventh century. Thereafter, a long period of feu­dal fragmentation and external invasion ensured that the coun­try remained politically divided.

Under the reigns of Wladyslaw Elbow-high (1261-1333) and his son Casimir the Great (1310-70), the Polish monarchy revived and its boundaries expanded, be­coming an important regional power. In 1386, Poland entered a dynastic union with the neighboring Grand Duchy of Lithuania, creating the largest single country in Europe, stretching from the shores of the Baltic to the Black Sea. By the early 1500s, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had developed a unique form of constitutional monarchy with limited royal power, an elective king, and a strong parliament made up of a large and diverse class of service gentry who constituted 10 to 15 percent of the population. The limited powers of the monarch ensured that in an age when kings sought to impose religious uniformity on their lands, Poland remained a place of relative toleration and provided a haven for numerous dissenter groups. While Moscow was still a provincial backwater, Polish kings, bishops, and nobles made cities like Kraków, Warsaw, Wilno, and Lwów centers for the northern Renaissance, sponsoring learning, art, literature, and architecture that combined Italian and eastern European influences. Cities such as Gdansk became centers for trade, with links to England, Holland, and beyond. Poland''s relatively small but battle-tested armies repelled invasions from her powerful neighbors and played the critical role in saving Vienna in 1683, defeating a major Turkish invasion of central Europe. By the late 1600s, the internal tensions and external threats weakened the commonwealth.

A small strata of powerful and wealthy nobles, known as "magnates," expanded their powers at the expense of the majority of lesser nobles, as well as to the detriment of cities and the peasantry. Poland''s neighbors devel­oped autocratic monarchies with a taste for territorial expansion and were increasingly able to use their money to influence Polish politics and buy candidates for the throne. As the commonwealth declined, it grew increasingly impoverished and fell under the control of a Russian empire led by tsars such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. By the mid-1700s, Polish reformers, influenced by new political winds, sought to revitalize the government but were blocked by foreign interests and their local supporters. In 1772, Russia, Austria, and Prussia annexed pieces of the commonwealth, but this did not halt the reformers. Dur­ing this period many Poles went into political exile to escape the decline at home or avoid problems with pro-Russian foes. Many journeyed to France and some to America, where soldiers like Kazimierz Pulaski (1745-79) and Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746-1817) aided the American colonists in their struggle for independence. In 1791, the Polish parliament enacted Europe''s first democratic constitution, modeled on American efforts, transforming the coun­try into a true constitutional monarchy.

This proved a direct threat to Poland''s autocratic neighbors. With an eye on revolutionary events in France, Russia and Prussia seized large swaths of Po­land, reducing the country to a mere shadow of its former self and ending the experiment in democracy. A revolt in 1794 led by Kosciuszko sought to restore Poland''s independence. Despite some initial victories, it was defeated by Russian armies, and Po­land lost her independence. For the next 123 years, Poland remained under Russian, Prus­sian (German), and Austrian occupation. Although Polish pa­triots staged periodic revolts to regain their lost freedom, none succeeded. Only with the end of World War I and the defeat of Germany and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires would Poland finally break free of foreign domination. This loss of freedom and the desire to regain it profoundly shaped Polish consciousness.

The "Polish Cause" would occupy the minds and hearts of generations of Poles. The tragic loss of independence, the suffering and repression that accompanied it, and the hope of Poland''s restoration would be a key piece of the cultural legacy that Polish immigrants brought to America. Emigration from Poland began in.