Child Displacement and Internal Colonization in Prussian Poland before World War I.

Prussia's Germanization and colonization policies in its Polish territories relied on Polish farmworkers for German settlement. In the 1890s, the state joined the Pan- German League in an attempt to replace Polish workers with working-class German children, setting up a Protestant institutional network that depended on municipal welfare offices to bring destitute children from urban centers to the region. By 1914, municipalities had sent 1500 children to institutions in Poznania, to be placed in settler households as future domestic and farm workers. Most children, however, refused to stay in the region in the long run and returned to their hometowns. Municipalities also reconsidered their involvement following pressure from political rivals and the disclosure of abuses in the press. The article highlights the interplay of child welfare, municipal politics, and the social process of colonization, and contributes to the re-centering of the Polish territories in the history of the Prussian- German Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]