It was established when the French ceded a part of Polish territory to the Russian Empire following France's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars.

The predominant religion was Roman Catholicism and the official language used within the state was Polish until the failed January Uprising (1863) when Russian became co-official as a consequence.

The Kingdom of Poland effectively came to an end with the Great Retreat of Russian forces in 1915 and was succeeded by the Government General of Warsaw, established by the Germans.

In 1917, part of this was renamed as the short-lived Kingdom of Poland, a client state of the Central Powers, which had a Regency Council instead of a king.

The kingdom was created from parts of the Polish territory that had been partitioned between Austria and Prussia which had been transformed into the Duchy of Warsaw by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807.

Following the defeat of the November Uprising its separate institutions and administrative arrangements were abolished as part of increased Russification to be more closely integrated with the Russian Empire.

However, even after this formalized annexation, the territory retained some degree of distinctiveness and continued to be referred to informally as Congress Poland until the Russian rule there ended as a result of the advance by the armies of the Central Powers in 1915 during World War I.

The majority of ethnic Poles within the Russian Empire lived in the Congress Kingdom, although some areas outside its borders were also inhabited by strong Polish and Roman Catholic minorities.

The Kingdom of Poland largely re-emerged as a result of the efforts of Adam Jerzy Czartoryski,[17] a Pole who aimed to resurrect the Polish state in alliance with Russia.

Theoretically, the Polish Kingdom in its 1815 form was a semi-autonomous state in personal union with Russia through the rule of the Russian emperor.

The state possessed the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland, one of the most liberal in 19th-century Europe,[17] a Sejm (parliament) responsible to the king capable of voting laws, an independent army, currency, budget, penal code and a customs boundary separating it from the rest of Russian lands.

[citation needed] In reality, the kings had absolute power and the formal title of Autocrat, and wanted no restrictions on their rule.

Alexander I's successor, Nicholas I was crowned King of Poland on 24 May 1829 in Warsaw, but he declined to swear to abide by the Constitution and continued to limit the independence of the Polish kingdom.

In relation to Poles, those ideas meant assimilation: turning them into loyal subjects through gradual religious and cultural conversion.

The rule of Nicholas also meant the end of political traditions in Poland; democratic institutions were removed, an appointed—rather than elected—centralized administration was put in place, and efforts were made to change the relations between the state and the individual.

This was formalized through the issuing of the Organic Statute of the Kingdom of Poland by the Emperor in 1832, which abolished the constitution, army and legislative assembly.

In theory, Congress Poland possessed one of the most liberal governments of the time in Europe,[17] but in practice, the area was a puppet state of the Russian Empire.

The viceroy exercised broad powers and could nominate candidates for most senior government posts (ministers, senators, judges of the High Tribunal, councilors of state, referendaries, bishops, and archbishops).

On 7 March 1837, in the aftermath of the November Uprising earlier that decade, the administrative division was reformed again, bringing Congress Poland closer to the structure of the Russian Empire, with the introduction of guberniyas (governorate, Polish spelling gubernia).

In 1867, following the failure of the January Uprising, further reforms were instituted which were designed to bring the administrative structure of Poland closer to that of the Russian Empire.

Since agriculture was equivalent to 70% of the national income, the most important economic transformations included the establishment of mines and the textile industry; the development of these sectors brought more profit and higher tax revenues.

A large and profitable investment was the construction of the Augustów Canal connecting Narew and Neman Rivers, which allowed to bypass Danzig (Gdańsk) and high Prussian tariffs.

[30] These small and initially insignificant settlements later developed into large and multicultural cities, where Germans and Jews were the majority in the population.

[citation needed] Most notably, Warsaw, being associated with the construction of railway lines and bridges, gained priority in the entire Russian market.

Although the economic and industrial progress occurred rapidly, most of the farms, called folwarks, chose to rely on serfs and paid workforce.

[31] In 1899, Aleksander Ginsberg founded the company FOS (Fabryka Przyrządów Optycznych-"Factory of Optical Equipment") in Warsaw.