Josephine colonization

The Jozephine colonization (German: Josephinische Kolonisation, Polish: kolonizacja józefińska) was a state-funded settlement campaign organised under the rule of Joseph II in the 1780s, in the then-new crownland of the Austrian Empire, Galicia, and to a lesser extent, in Bukovina. The colonization reinforced the societies of Galician and Bukovina Germans.

Austrian Empire endeavored to colonize, in a similar manner, lands wrestled from the Ottoman Empire during the 18th century, giving birth to, among others, the society of Danube Swabians. The first ethnically German and Protestant settlement on the territory that would later become Galicia emerged in the middle of the 18th century in Zalishchyky. Two years after the First Partition of Poland, namely in September 1774, Maria Theresa issued a patent allowing settlement of non-Protestant artisans and traders in Lemberg, Jarosław, Zamość (which was lost to Russia in 1809) and Zalishchyky. It was, however, not followed by a meaningful influx of migrants.

After the death of Maria Theresa Joseph II issued on August 17, 1781 a patent, whose aim was to commence a settlement campaign imitating the one done by Frederick the Great of Prussia. In comparison to the previous patent it also facilitated the arrival of rural settlers, and later, by an supplementary patent issued on November 11, Protestants. The land given to the settlers was mainly that of confiscated from folwarks of the former Polish crown lands and fields belonging to liquidated monasteries. The new settlements were often founded adjacent to already existing villages, with a separate arrangement of plots.

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