A Slavophile, he became known for his ethnographic field research and theories about the ancient Slavs, which did not convince academics but have influenced Polish cultural life.

[3] His interest in ethnography followed the models established by the early 19th-century Society of Friends of Learning, which had studied folklore and became the centre of the Slavic movement in Poland.

'Thoughts on Political Equilibrium in Europe') that the ancient Greek, Roman, Germanic and Slavic cultures had been superior to the Christian nations that succeeded them.

[4] In 1813 or 1814,[5] Chodakowski began to travel to collect folk songs and other folklore material from rural areas in hope of finding traces of ancient Slavic culture.

A scholarship from Adam Jerzy Czartoryski allowed him to do ethnographic studies in Lesser Poland from September 1817 to June 1818.

[9] Chodakowski established several major themes that would occupy the Polish Romantics, notably a focus on Slavic identity and paganism, an anti-Latin sentiment and an identification with the geographical north.

This is contested by Mieczysław B. Biskupski, who argues that Polish nationalism as it exists originated in the political landscape created by the failed January Uprising of 1863–1864.

It thus belongs to a separate era from Chodakowski's works, in which a culturally Polish nationalism only appears within the context of a broader Slavophilia.

[11] In 1973, a collection of Chodakowski's folk songs was published as Śpiewy sławiańskie pod strzechą wiejską zebrane (lit.