Law, Religion, and Decolonization

This series aims to explore the roles of colonialism and decolonization in the interaction of law and religion.

Religion and religious institutions can be employed by the state to support its imperial expansion and facilitate the loyalty and cultural homogenization of colonized territories and populations. Historically, these processes are often combined with proselytizing the imperial religion. They can, however, also preserve some religious freedom or autonomy for the domestic population.

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Communist Law and the Protection of Religious Freedom in Poland

Piotr Szymaniec is a professor at and the director of the Institute of Socio-Legal Studies, Angelus Silesius University of Applied Sciences, in Wałbrzych (Poland).

For 123 years, between 1795 and 1918, maps of Europe contained no independent Polish state. In the second half of the nineteenth century, former Polish lands were subject to quasi-colonial policy (with the exception of Galicia, which gained autonomy within Austria-Hungary). This policy was reflected in enforceable law; legal orders of all states ruling Polish lands defined crimes against religion, the most serious of which was blasphemy. The Austrian Criminal Code of May 27, 1852; the German Code of May 31, 1870; and the Russian Code of 1903 all introduced the crime of blasphemy.

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