was a center of Polish exiles associated with Prince
Adam Jerzy Czartoryski.
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Close ties between the
Kingdom of France and
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were cemented in the 16th century, when
emissaries from Poland persuaded French Prince Henri de Valois to stand for election as King of the Commonwealth. Valois won and reigned for two years in Poland but abdicated after he inherited the French throne as
Henri III. The queen consort of
Louis XV and grandmother of several of his successors was
Marie Leszczyńska (1703-1768).
French Revolution and Napoleonic wars Many members of the Polish
Szlachta fled to France during the rule of
Napoleon when 100,000 Poles tried to throw off Russian rule in Poland early in the 19th century. Many had enlisted to fight in the
Grande Armée, like
Józef Antoni Poniatowski,
Ludwik Mateusz Dembowski Polish commanders of the Napoleonic Wars and
Polish legionnaires.
Great Emigration (1831-1870) , founded in 1838, was added in 2003 to
UNESCO's
Memory of the World Register. is the main Polish church of
Paris. The so-called
Great Emigration was the flood of exiles in the aftermath of both the 1830-1
November Uprising, and a generation later, the
January Uprising, made up of political élites mainly from the
Russian Partition of Poland-Lithuania between 1831 and 1870 who settled in France. was built in years 1878-1884 , among other Polish burials in the
Cimetière des Champeaux de Montmorency Interwar period Another wave of Polish migration, this time in search of manual work, took place between the two World Wars, when thousands of Poles were hired as contract workers to work temporarily in France. Numerous Polish farmers emigrated to the southwest of France in the 1920s, as the mass casualties of World War I left that region critically short of farm labor. After the outbreak of
World War II Polish refugees also fled German or Soviet occupation.
Polish resistance during the Nazi occupation in France During the Nazi occupation of Poland, a specific Polish Resistance group,
Polska Organizacja Walki o Niepodleglosc – Organisation Polonaise de Lutte pour l’Indépendance (POWN), was created on September 6, 1941, by the Polish general consul in Paris,
Aleksander Kawalkowski (code name
Justyn), and fought alongside the
French Resistance. There were also other Polish Resistance movements in France, most notably former soldiers from the
Jaroslaw Dabrowski Brigade who had fought in the
International Brigades during the
Spanish Civil War went on in th eir struggle against
Fascism in the
FTP-MOI. Since 1941
PPS activists in Northern France had also founded two resistance movements,
Organisation S and
Orzel Bialy (White Eagle). In 1944 Polish Committees for National Liberation (PKWN) were set up to support the Communist Polish army. There were clashes between POWN resistants, under the authority of the London-based
Polish government in exile, and the Communist FTP-MOI resistants.
French Poles after WWII When the Communists took power in Poland, several thousand French Poles decided to go and live in the "Socialist paradise", as some
Armenians in France moved to the
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. There are estimates of 100,000 to 200,000 Poles living in
Paris, and many EU program guest workers live in regions of the south, including
Arles,
Marseille and
Perpignan.
From the year 2012 The number of new Poles who migrated to France has multiplied, many are students and traders and other percentage are displaced workers who come from Poland to work in France. Poles are well integrated into French society. The number of new Polish citizens in France amounts to 350,000 in 2012. == Notable people ==