The Social Differentiation of the Polish Language of the Upper Silesia in the Second Half of the 19th Century

Abstract

The 19th century was the period of deep transformations in the social structure of the Upper Silesia. The abolition of serfdom and the rapid development of industry triggered a long-lasting process of people’s migration, the rise in urban populations, and the establishment of new industrial settlements. A considerably rapid increase in the number of inhabitants was noted in the Bytom district, which until 1873 also included the areas of Mysłowice, Katowice, Zabrze, and Tarnowskie Góry.1 The average density of population in this area since the beginning until the middle of the 19th century had increased more than three-fold (Michałkiewicz, ed., 1970: 90), and in years 1850–1890 it multiplied manifold in the most industrialised region. Apart from Bytom, Tarnowskie Góry, and Mysłowice, which were the largest urban population centres in this area, new big industrial settlements developed in the second half of the 19th century. Two of them, namely Katowice and Królewska Huta, were granted the city charter, and in 1890 they had 16,500 and 36,500 inhabitants, respectively. Other industrial communes, like Lipiny, Siemianowice, Zabrze, and Stare Zabrze, had around 10,000 inhabitants each. The population of Gliwice and its adjacent settlements was also increasing rapidly. This resulted in there coming into being – in the area of districts of Bytom, Katowice, Zabrze, Tarnowskie Góry, and Gliwice – of the biggest urban agglomeration in the Upper Silesia, an agglomeration of a specific vocational and social structure. A relatively small number of towns which constituted versatile and developed economic and cultural centres as well as a non-dynamic development of commerce, services, and institutions of culture in the majority of newlyestablished industrial settlements caused the vocational structure of the population of the Upper Silesian Industrial District to be rather poorly diversified. Along with places with long urban traditions, like Bytom, Gliwice, Mysłowice, and Tarnowskie Góry, it is solely Katowice that had a distinctly diversified social-vocational structure of its population, stemming from the economic multifunctionality of the city. The outskirts of Bytom and Katowice – as well as industrial settlements neighbouring them – were inhabited mainly