After great land losses due to the first partition of Poland in 1772, Polish monarchs struggled to rebuild their kingdom and once again solidify it as a regional power. King Stanisław August Poniatowski, reigning from 1764 to 1795, spent the latter years of the 1780s enacting projects intended to revitalize the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and prevent any further conflicts. His largest achievement in these efforts was the signing of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, which sought to bridge economic and political gaps between nobility and common folk by placing the latter under the government’s protection. Unfortunately, the adoption of this Constitution only led to further tensions between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and their surrounding powers. Intimidated by the liberal direction of the Polish Monarchy, the Russian Empire sent troops to invade the Commonwealth, followed soon by Prussia, also wishing to take Polish land. The Second Partition of Poland occurred when Russia and Prussia signed a 1793 treaty dividing over 300,000 square kilometers of Commonwealth land between themselves. 

This committee takes place directly after the Second Partition. Delegates will act as members of King Poniatowski’s Cabinet, working to restore Polish power and prevent hostile neighbors from attacking the kingdom again. Delegates must consider both internal conflicts, such as that between nobility and the newly powerful peasants, and external conflicts, such as relations with the Russian Empire and the struggle to regain lost land. The primary goal of this committee is not to incite territorial wars with Poland’s neighbors but to fix internal problems and encourage diplomacy with surrounding kingdoms with the objective of stabilizing the Commonwealth.  

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