The first cities in todays Poland, Kalisz|Calisia in Wielkopolskie and Elblag|Turso in Pomorskie at the Amber Route to the Baltic Sea, were mentioned by Roman writers in the first century after Christ, but the first Polish settlement in Biskupin in Wielkopolskie dates even back to the 7th century BC. Many cultures were present on todays Polish soil in ancient times, like the Przeworsk and Lausitz culture, the Celts, the Scyths, Sarmatians, Gotes, Avars and Slavs. Before the Polish state was formed, southern Poland was under the influence of the Great Moravian Empire in the early Middle Ages.Poland was first united as a country in the first half of the 10th century and baptized in 966 AD, with the first capitals in Gniezno and Poznan in Wielkopolskie. In the 11th century the capital was moved to Kraków in Malopolskie. Poland experienced its golden age beginning in the 14th to 16th century, under the reign of the last Piast, Casimir the Great, and the Jagiellonians, whose rule extended from the Baltic to the Black and Adriatic Seas. In the 16th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the biggest country in Europe and the capital was moved to Warsaw at the end of this century. The country attracted significant numbers of foreign migrants, such as Germans, Jews, Armenians and the Dutch, thanks to the freedom of confession guaranteed by the state and the atmosphere of religious tolerance (rather exceptional in Europe at the time of the Holy Inquisition). During the 17th and the 18th centuries, the nobility increasingly asserted its independence of the monarchy; combined with several exhausting wars, this greatly weakened the Commonwealth. Responding to the need for reform, Poland was the 1st country in Europe (and the 2nd in the world, after the US) to pass a constitution. The constitution of May 3rd, 1791 was the key reform among many progressive but belated attempts to strengthen the country during the second half of the 18th century.With the country in political disarray, various sections of Poland were subsequently annexed by its neighbors, Russia, Prussia and Austria, in three coordinated "partitions" of 1772 and 1793, and 1795. After the last partition and a failed uprising, Poland ceased to exist as a country for 123 years.However, this long period of foreign domination was met with fierce resistance. In the Napoleonic Wars, a semi-autonomous Duchy of Warsaw was created before being erased from the map again in 1813. The 29 November uprising of 1830-1831 (mainly in Russian Poland), the 1848 Revolution (combat mostly took place in Austrian and Prussian Poland) and the 22 January 1863 were clear indicators that Poland showed very little tolerance of subjugation to any of these three equally autocratic powers. Figures such as Józef Chlopicki, Michal Gedeon Radziwill, Jan Zygmunt Skrzynecki and Józef Bem and Wincenty Konstanty Kalinowski led Poland during these troublesome times. Poland regained its independence on November 11th, 1918 with the end of the World War I. Soon, in 1920-21, the newly-reborn country got into war with Czechoslvakia and, especially, Soviet Russia over territorial disputes. The attack on Warsaw was defeated on August 10th-15th, 1920 in what is remembered today as the Miracle at the Vistula (Polish: ''Cud nad Wisla'') effectively ending major warfare by October, even though the agreement was finalised the next March.After a period of relative peace and development, just as it was recovering from the great economic crisis of the 1920s, Poland was overrun by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in what became World War II. After the war it became a Soviet ally country, following the Yalta and Potsdam agreements between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. To this day these events are viewed by many Poles as an act of betrayal. The Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe were the first to immediately recognise Poland's newly imposed 1945 frontiers, which are virtually the same as when the country was born in c. 966 AD. As a result of the new frontiers, the native German popluation in the west and the north was expelled. After the brief but sometimes bloody Stalinist era of 1945-1953, Poland was comparatively tolerant and progressive in comparison to other Eastern Bloc countries. Strong economic growth in the post-war period alternated with serious recessions in 1956, 1970, 1976, resulting in labour turmoil over dramatic price rises of several goods. Another protest in the summer of 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union "Solidarity" (Polish: ''Solidarnosc'')
http://www.solidarnosc.gov.pl that over time became a political force, and by 1989 had swept the first Warsaw Pact State parliamentary elections and the presidency. A ''shock therapy'' program during the early 1990s enabled the country to transform its economy into one of the most robust in Central Europe. Nowadays, Poland is a democratic country with a stable economy and a not-so-stable political scene. Poland has been a member of NATO since 1999 and the European Union since May 2004, when it joined with 9 other countries. http://wikitravel.org/en/Poland