THE EARLY HISTORY OF PANNA MARIA, TEXAS ... - Repositories

disable it.
An individual member could veto any measure
before the body or could even dissolve the entire
assembly with a single vote to that effect.
In such a
situation, Poland was becoming a weak decentralized state
while its neighbors, Prussia, Russia, and Austria, were
becoming strong centralized empires.
This situation could not last indefinitely.
The
three powerful neighbors simply began slicing off pieces
of the ailing Polish kingdom for themselves.
The first
such partition came in 1773 and was followed by others in
1793 and 1795. Although a puppet state called "Poland"
continued to exist within the Russian Empire for many
years, a true separate Poland no longer stood.
The land
and people of Poland were simply divided among Prussia,
4
Russia, and Austria.
Upper Silesia, the home of the founders of Panna
4
For further reading on the history of Poland, the
following English-language sources are suggested: Francis
Dvornik, The Slavs in European History and Civilization
(New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1962),
Roman Dyboski, Outlines of Polish History (2nd ed; London:
Goerge Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1941); 0. Halecki, A History
of Poland (rev. ed. ; London: J. M. Dent & Sons" Ltd. ,
1955) ; Herbert H. Kaplan, The First Partition of Poland
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1962); Robert Howard
Lord, The Second Partition of Poland (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1915); W. F. Reddaway, e^ al.,
From Augustus II to Pilsudski (1697-1935), Vol. II of~The
Cambridge History of Poland (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge
University Press, 1941); W. F. Reddaway, et^ a]^. , From the
Origins to Sobieski (to 1696), Vol. I of The Cambridge
History of Poland (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University
Press. 1950).