The colonial status of eastern Europe has received increasing attention as of late, whether as Prussia’s Polish borderlands, liminal Habsburg space, or the adjacent colonizations of Russia’s land empire. There was however an “in-betweenness” in how eastern Europe fit into the global hierarchies of colonialism, due first to physical proximity to the Great Powers, and perhaps more importantly, to the skin color of these colonized subjects. Raymond Patton has now added a fascinating element to the field by analyzing the colonial travel literature of Poles themselves, both in their journeys to classic lands of colonization, from Australia to Cameroon, as well as to their own adjacent eastern colonial space of the borderlands, the kresy. Patton is able to complicate and reveal elements of colonizer/colonized identities in this enjoyable read.

To many in colonial studies who are becoming increasingly interested in this relatively new field, the “colonized European,” Patton’s opening nine-page introduction is a treasure trove of ideas and loaded footnotes. It is here that he begins to lay out the argument that Polish travelers were always strategically employing their “in between” position. On the one hand, they were the colonized, the oppressed within Europe, and could thus “ally” with an oppressed African. On the other hand, they were simultaneously “white” while in Cameroon and could at any moment claim a position of authority, ally with and act alongside the French, and reinforce the ugliest of racial hierarchies. I would have enjoyed, both in the literature review as well as occasionally in the text, some serious engagement with perhaps the most famous European example of this Polish position: the Irish, colonized by the British, yet wandering the streets of Delhi in British uniform. Another issue, both in this section and the book as a whole is the continued almost complete focus on race and ethnicity as the lens through which to study these complicated colonial hierarchies. Patton disrupts this trend with a wonderful chapter on gender, a white Polish woman as travel writer, but the crucial identity of class is almost completely absent. For one brief moment Russian peasants are discussed as colonized (98) but the (to me) obvious manner in which all working class Europeans mimic elements of this Polish story is absent. They were white, weak, dismissed, oppressed and downtrodden, and simultaneously possessed status and power when walking alongside the aforementioned Irish soldier in Delhi.

Most chapters focus on the evolution of one traveler’s work and to some extent style of literature (romanticism, the gothic) and how these authors would put their own spin on what ultimately repeats with each chapter: the shift from oppressed victim to high and mighty colonizer-adjacent adventurer. Only Ch. 1 focuses on three authors, and to great effect, as Henryk Sienkiewicz, Paul Strzelecki, and Sygurd Wisniowski, all in some way blame the colonized for not understanding imperialism, and all employ elements of the “Vanishing Race” trope in their accounts. It is the very complexity of these authors’ positionality that reveals even more complicated layers of colonization in the places they visit, be that among the re-located African-Americans colonizing Indigenous Africans in Liberia, or the once colonized Spanish now fighting Arabs in the Rif. While the Arabs appear to be suffering under the colonization of the Spanish, they simultaneously claim to have brought civilization to Iberia (and of course are standing on North African ground they themselves conquered and colonized in the eighth century). Indeed, most of the Polish authors do not come from the “simple” in-betweenness of say, Krakow or Warsaw, but are themselves from the kresy. Here Patton makes some of his most interesting comparisons, such as how and when Poles render Ukrainians/Tatars/Russians as colonizer/colonized among the many “nesting orientalisms.” This all climaxes with Ferdynand Ossendowski’s description of the “unsound” Roman von Ungern-Sternberg ruling Mongolia like Mr. Kurtz.

The more one studies the global history of colonialism, the more one sees an endless story of conquest and colonization. When my students of Irish descent claim that Ireland was the first British colony, I ask them “who” exactly conquered Ireland? Were there in fact any Britons in the mix of Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and Normans who had themselves colonized Britain over the centuries leading up to that “first” British “overseas” colonization? But Patton closes with a warning against a simple conflation of Poland with Cameroon in the history of colonialism. My earlier plea for an inclusion of the role of class in these layers of colonization cannot ignore the crucial factor of skin color. Patton is correct to point out that passing, code switching, mimicry, all the hallmarks of postcolonial studies, are different when the colonized have white skin. He finishes the book by referring to the manner in which victim narratives of layers of colonization and oppression in eastern Europe are now used as excuses for oppression of others. For the manner in which this work continues to complicate and develop our understanding of the history of imperialism and colonialism, and especially its focus on such “in between” interlocutors as the Poles, Patton’s work is a wonderful addition to the field.