Region in southeastern Poland and northwestern Ukraine. Galicia existed as a crown land of the Habsburg Empire from the time of the first partition of Poland in 1772 until the end of World War I in 1918. (The name Galicia, or Galizien, was derived from Halicz, a city with nearby salt mines.) It included the districts of Zamość, Sandomierz, and Chełm until these were annexed to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1809. During the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), Austria gained back the regions of Tarnopol (Ukr., Ternopil’) to the east, which it had ceded to the Russian Empire in 1809, and Kraków to the west. Kraków itself gained the status of a free city and remained so until after the Polish uprising of 1846, when it became an Austrian territory.
