Who owned Galicia in the early- late 1800s?

Question

I have family from Galicia ( the European country In-between Poland and Ukraine) They would be my Great-Grandparents. My great-grandfather's half of the family is from the town Bursztyn. My great-grandmother's half of the family is from Tarnopol (ternopil). Both sides of my familiy have lived in "their" town from 1875 and earlier. Now and days both of these towns are Ukrainian owned. My question is would around this time were these parts of Galicia, Polish owned or Ukrainian owned and would it make them tied to one of the previously mentioned countries?

By the way they were Jewish (both of them)

Would like to know for ethnicity sake.

Thanks a lot in advance. =)

Answer 1

Poland was partitioned between Prussia (which later joined the German unification), Russia (East Prussia) and the Empire of Austria-Hungary. Galicia was the southern/south-eastern part. It included parts of Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania and the Ukraine. Most of the southern part of what we now consider Poland was Galician.

The immigration history of each area is also different. The Germans gave "their Poles" the most travel liberties. Any Poles emigrating in 1860-1875 were Prussian Poles. They were actually recruited to go to the US by labor organizers. If they would agree to go to a lumber camp in Michigan or a coal mine in Pennsylvania and sign a contract for a certain time frame, the company would pay their passage and give them money for their families to live on until they earned enough money to send for the rest of the family.

Galicians were the second group to emigrate. Most came over between 1875-1918. They wanted out of Europe after all the wars, but Austria wasn't willing to let them go so easily. They lived on tiny postage-stamp sized farms and had difficulty sustaining their families on the land. But the Austrians wanted them to mine and create industry in Poland/Ukraine. When it became clear that they were going to starve and become a burden on the Empire, Austria relented and allowed the labor organizers to offer passage to the US and Canada.

The Russians were the worst. They didn't allow their Poles/Lithuanians/Ukrainians any liberties. They were treated as slaves and suffered frequent "pogroms". It wasn't until the 1890s that the first trickle of Russian-Poles were allowed to leave. The biggest wave of Russian-Pole immigration was from 1908-1940.

The borders in that region were moved a couple of dozen times in the last 300 years. It's not that anyone so muched "owned" the land as it would be to say they "controlled" the people.