History
In prehistoric times future Old Polish Industrial Region was the area of flint and later iron tools. In Nowa Slupia, remnants of forty five bloomeries were found (5th - 10th century). In the Middle Ages, the region became the center of Polish industry - mining and steel mills. Various kinds of weapons were manufactured here, iron ore, copper and silver were extracted. In the 17th century, first blast furnaces were opened in the villages of Samsonow and Bobrza. By 1782, out of 34 blast furnaces in Poland-Lithuania, as many as 27 were located in Old Polish Industrial Region. Furthermore, the area was a major glass producer of the country.
First half of the 19th century was the time of rapid development of the region, due to efforts of the government of Congress Poland, and such persons as Stanislaw Staszic and Franciszek Ksawery Drucki-Lubecki. Both officials planned construction of a large metallurgical plant along the Kamienna. Those plans, however, were only partially implemented, due to lack of funds. Still, several new plants were opened at that time.
Growth of Old Polish Industrial Region stopped in the second half of the 19th century, due to two reasons. First, Congress Poland lost its autonomy and became Vistula Land, integral part of the Russian Empire. Furthermore, another industrial center of Lesser Poland, Zaglebie Dabrowskie, began to develop and compete with Old Polish Industrial Region. As a result, several plants had to close down.
The region recovered in late years of the Second Polish Republic, when Central Industrial Area was envisaged by Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski. Already-existing factories in Kielce, Skarzysko, Radom, Starachowice and Ostrowiec were modernized, new ones were als built. After World War II, industrialization of the area continued, with such plants, as FSC Star.
Read more about this topic: Old-Polish Industrial Region
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)