|
At first, soon after 1772 and into the middle of the 19th century, the Austrians treated their newly acquired province just as a typical colonial power or a big colonial enterprise like "The East India Company" would treat a conquered land. The Austrians gave their new province the name of "Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria" which was soon nicknamed by its Polish inhabitants to "Kingdom of Golicja and Glodomeria", Kingdom of Nakedness and Starvation, because of enormous colonial exploitation of the province.
The Austrian state was very slow in implementing reforms-because it was so hard to govern, the Austrians had to pay attention to every minority in the kingdom and could not upset anyone for fear of breaking up. The Poles however, played quite a prominent part in the kingdom among these was Bandeni-who was a one time Prime Minister as well Gołuchowski who was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and some other Pole who was a Treasurer.
Incidentally Goluchowski was quite liked by the Kasier: At the Algeciras Conference assembled to settle the First Moroccan Crisis, Austria supported the German position, and after the close of the conferences the emperor Wilhelm II of Germany telegraphed to Gołuchowski: "You have proved yourself a brilliant second on the duelling ground and you may feel certain of like services from me in similar circumstances". This pledge was redeemed in 1908, when Germany's support of Austria in the Balkan crisis proved conclusive.
|