Ziemia

Ziemia (, Land) is a historical unit of administration in Poland. In Polish the term is not capitalized (ziemia chełmińska, not Ziemia Chełmińska).

In prehistoric Poland, this term referred to a territory controlled by a given tribe. The term appeared in medieval Poland (12th-13th centuries), after the fragmentation of Poland. Ziemia referred to a former princedom or duchy which was reunifed with the Polish Kingdom and lost its political sovereignty but retained its hierarchy of officials and bureaucracy. From around the 14th century some of the former princedoms, now ziemias, were assigned to officials known as voivodes and became primary units of administration known as voivodeships (provinces). However some ziemias were not transformed into voivodeships. In most cases they were subordinated to a voivodeship and a certain voivode, but retained some privileges and properties of a voivodeship, such as often having their own sejmik (regional parliament), and were referred to as a ziemia, not a voivodeship.

Over subsequent centuries, ziemias became increasingly integrated into their voivodeships and lost more and more of their autonomy. Today they are not units of administration, and in modern Poland are only generic geographical terms referring to certain parts of Poland.