Great Emigration (Polish: Wielka Emigracja), Polish political (1831–1870). Since the end of the 18th century, a major role in the Polish political life was played by people who carried out their activities outside the country, as émigrés. Their fate was a consequence of the fact that their state, annexed by and divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, was no longer in existence.

For this reason in Poland, unlike in many other countries, political and ideological activity carried out abroad, by people in exile, enjoyed wide recognition in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Most of those Polish political émigrés were based in France. The most important wave of emigration was that after the November Uprising (1830–1831), supplied with new quota of émigrés after the 1848–1849 revolutions and after the January Uprising (1863–1864).

The 1831 émigrés played a major role in preparations for the 1846 and 1848 revolutions in Poland and also supported, and frequently fought, in revolutions of 1848–1849 in France, Germany and Italian lands, Austria, Hungary, and the Danube principalities.

Notable Poles of the Great Emigration living in exile:

• Fryderyk Chopin
• Adam Mickiewicz
• Juliusz Słowacki
• Cyprian Kamil Norwid
• Zygmunt Krasiński
• Joachim Lelewel
• Maurycy Mochnacki
• Piotr Michałowski
• Seweryn Goszczyński
• Jozef Bohdan Zaleski

See also

• Hôtel Lambert