ABSTRACT
Lebensraum – the space a state believes is required for its natural expansion – has a pivotal role in the global expansion projects. Whenever this concept is discussed, it is almost exclusively reduced to the Imperial Russia’s domination of less-stately countries in Central and Eastern Europe; the British exploration and colonization of territories in Africa and Asia; the French settlements in parts of the Caribbean Islands and Africa; the German experimentation in South-West Africa, and the Dutch seaborne competing with the Spanish and Portuguese’s expansionism. Study related to Poland’s attempted acquisition of colonial territories outside Europe is rarely discussed. Drawing on the activities of the Polish Colonial Society, this article contends that the building blocks of colonization were not confined solely to European imperial powers. As colonization forged ahead in the twentieth century, Poland seemed to be the country where colonialism played a significant role in both national and transnational politics.
Acknowledgements
A version of this article was presented at the Department of European Studies, University of Economics, Krakow, Poland. The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of the staff and students during his residency. Also, the author would like to thank Ian Law, Salman Sayyid, Paul Bagguley, Konrad Pedziwiatr, Lisa Long, Jan Brzozowski, Claudia Paraschivescu, Remi Joseph-Salisbury, and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments on the first versions of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Bolaji Balogun http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7476-1708