The Map of Old Wet Poland: Re-Storying Wetlands

This paper arguments that despite the historical and political contexts of the nineteenth century period and the military intentions of The Map of Old Poland’s [Karta Dawnej Polski] original creators, this source now represents not only the nationhood narrative but also a complex story of wetlands. Due to time constraints and limited resources, the authors did not index forests or other environments in this map, except from aquatic objects. Therefore, we received a rich source containing over 3,700 hydronyms in Polish, including rivers, swamps, bogs, marshes, lakes, and larger bodies of water, some of which no longer exist or are now known only by foreign names. After indexing them for a new digital edition prepared by the Spatial History Lab in the Department of Historical Atlas, this paper envisages how to study such rare cartographical data within the frame of environmental history and the renewed interest in wetland restoration across a drying Europe. Particularly, the eastern parts of the former Polish Kingdom preserved on The Map of Old Poland, stretching from north to south, offer several valuable examples that are case studied in this article.

The author examines historical knowledge about the mapping of wetlands and how these areas were discussed by comparing travelogues and geohistorical sources from both the relevant period and selected contemporary texts. Where appropriate, the author adds commentary on what happened with these mapped wet territories, how and when they disappeared, and which have survived as protected reserves. To focus specifically on wetlands as subjects of environmental history, the author applies an aquacritical theory to investigate these unbound lands of old Poland and their stories, which extend beyond what is known about the hydrological regimes of historical states (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the conquering empires of Russia, Prussia, and Austria). By recognising the ecological layer as a form of wetland sovereignty within the map, their histories and memories are restored. This approach’s ambition is to complement our patchy knowledge of the trajectories of environmental transformations and the scale of aquatic ecosystems loss.

However, this paper traces only selected wetlands through their hydronyms, meaning that the scope of the study is limited to extracting specific histories. Still, further research is needed to compare other cartographical sources from the period for a deeper overview of wet heritage and for collecting and comparing more wetland hydronyms and their cartographical representations.