Private Menageries and the Limits of the Empire: The Case of Polawin Park (1901–1918)

This research project investigates the history of private animal collections, environmental management, and imperial science in East-Central Europe in the early twentieth century. The project centers on Pilawin Park, a private menagerie and game reserve founded in 1901 by Count Józef Mikołaj Potocki on his family estate in the Volhynia region—then part of the southwestern frontier of Tsarist Russia. It examines Pilawin Park as a site where national, imperial, and colonial networks intersected to shape zoological knowledge and practice. Combining the history of science and decolonial perspectives, the research analyzes the park’s role in broader debates around species acclimatization and reintroduction, and environmental control in East-Central Europe. It interrogates how such practices intersected with imperial imaginaries and concepts of geographical belonging and animal mobility, contributing to shifting ideas of nature, heritage, and empire.