This history of Poland starts with the disastrous aftermath of insurrection of 1863 which constituted a major watershed in Polish evolution, marking the end of the political and social supremacy of the nobility and the emergence of new forces which made possible the creation of a modern nation. Like history itself it has no end, but an attempt has been made to analyse events up to the present day. Though it is a joint work, the authors take responsibility for their own individual chapters which have been subject to minimal editorship only. R. F. Leslie (Chapters 1–3), Antony Polonsky (Chapters 4–7), Jan M. Ciechanowski (Chapters 8–11) and Z. A. Pelczynski (Chapters 12–17) express opinions which are entirely their own. Nevertheless, all the authors share certain views about the Polish past. They believe that Polish history has too often been written as if it took place in a social and economic vacuum and they have thus stressed the importance of these factors in assessing political developments. They recognize too the merits of both of the principal approaches to the political dilemma in which Poland finds itself and do not therefore align themselves with either the realist/positivist or the romantic/insurrectionary view of the Polish past.

Polish history is full of striking paradoxes. It oscillates between periods of great victories and achievements and abject defeats, between periods of concerted striving for freedom, justice and liberty and periods of humiliating and partly self-engendered decline. The authors have tried to strike a balance between a too optimistic and a too defeatist interpretation of Poland's development.