Galicia (Ger. Galitzien, Pol. Galicya), a crownland or province of the Cisleithan division of the Austro-IIungarian empire, now comprising the kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, the duchy of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) and Zator, and the grand duchy of Cracow. It lies between lat. 47° 40' and 50° 50' N, and Ion. 18° 54' and 26° 35' E., and is bounded N. by Russian Poland, from which it is in part separated by the Vistula, E. by Russia, S. by Bukowina and Hungary, being separated from the latter by the Carpathian ridge, and W. by Austrian and Prussian Silesia; area, 30,309 sq. m.; pop. in December, 1872 (estimated), 5,629,361. Its S. part is occupied by the N". branches of the Carpathians, which in some parts rise to a height of 6,000 ft., and in some peaks above 8,000. The central region is hilly; the northern belongs to the great Polish plain. From the Carpathians and their offshoots descend all the rivers which cross the country, flowing mostly in a N. and partly in a S. E. direction. Those flowing 1ST., the Biala, Sola, Skawa, Ra-ba, Dunajec, Wisloka, San (which divides the country into two unequal parts), and the Bug, are tributaries of the Vistula; the Pruth and the Dniester flow S. E., the former to the Danube, the latter, with its affluents the Stry, Sered, and Podhorce, to the Black sea.

There are some marshes in the N. E. part of the plain, and numerous mountain lakes, called eyes of the sea," in the Carpathians, some at heights of 3,000 to 4,000 ft. The climate is healthy but cold, the country being exposed to the winds from the east and north, and closed against those from the south; the winters are long. The soil is varied, only the lower region, where loam and sand prevail, being productive, and in some places fertile; the mountains are rocky and sterile, or wooded. Tobacco and all the common grains, fruits, and vegetables are raised. There are few vineyards, and these yield no wine. The pine prevails in the forests, but the oak and beach also grow to an imposing size. Honey and wax, potash and tar, are made in large quantities. The rivers are rich in various kinds of fish. The chief mineral productions are iron, which is found along the whole line of the Carpathians; salt, mostly from the celebrated rock salt mines of Wieliezka and Bochnia in the vicinity of Cracow, and partly from saline springs in the eastern parts of the country; sulphur, produced chiefly at Swosowice; coal, in the territory of Cracow; and naphtha. Lead, copper, zinc, silver, and gold are also found.

The inhabitants belong mostly to two Slavic tribes, the Poles and the Ruthenians, the former predominating in western (86 to 4 per cent.), the latter in eastern Galicia (67 to 20 per cent.), the remainder being Germans and Jews. In the whole country the Poles are about 43 and the Ruthenians 45 per cent. The nobility are mostly of Polish descent, vivacious, warlike, and ardently attached to their nationality; the peasants are hardy, rude, sluggish, and slavish; the Jews, who are very numerous in the cities, of which they often form half the population, are distinguished by a peculiar half oriental dress, and an unpleasant German jargon. Education, agriculture, and industry are backward; wealth is rare; excessive misery, especially among the Jews and mountaineers, is frequent. Distilleries abound in the villages, and stores and trading shops in the town quarters of the Jews, who before the revolution of 1848 were excluded by the government from both cities proper and villages. Manufactures are making considerable progress; the chief articles produced are linen, woollens, paper, wooden utensils, tobacco, leather, imitation jewelry, sugar, potters' ware, and glass. Commerce is limited and carried on mostly by Jews, the chief commercial cities being Cracow, Brody, and Lem-berg, the capital.

The chief exports are cattle and horses, grain, salt, timber, potash, skins and hides, and wool. Brody is an emporium for the transit trade with Russia. The Roman Catholics, about 2,600,000, have bishops at Przemysl, Tarnow, and Cracow, and an archbishop at Lemberg; the members of the Greek united church, about 2,350,000, mostly Ruthenians, have an archbishop at Lemberg and a bishop at Przemysl; the non-united Greeks, about 1,400, mostly Moldavians, belong to the bishopric of Czernowitz in Bukowina; the united Armenians, 2,100, have an archbishop at Lemberg; the Protestants (34,000 Lutherans, 5,800 Reformed) have a superintendent in the same city; the Jews, about 580,000, have no hierarchical centralization. Only 30 per cent. of the children of school ago attend any school. There are two universities, at Lemberg and Cracow. The Polish students (554 in Lemberg and 632 in Cracow) number nearly three times as many as the Ruthenian (430 in Lemberg and 14 in Cracow). The number of literary productions has of late largely increased, and the Ruthenians are making great efforts to dislodge the Polish as the literary language in their districts, but as yet with very little success. (See Language and Literature of Poland, and Rutbenians.) At the head of the administration is a stadtholder or governor, to whom are subordinate the political magistracies of Lemberg and Cracow and 74 BezirJcshauptmannschaften. There are supreme courts of justice at Lemberg and Cracow. The diet consists of the provincial marshal, the 3 archbishops and the 3 Catholic bishops (the see of Cracow has long been vacant), the rectors of the universities of Lemberg and Cracow, 44 deputies of large landed estates, 4 of the capital, 3 of the chambers of commerce and industry (Lemberg, Cracow, and Brody), 16 of the towns and industrial places, and 74 of the rural communities.

Galicia is the only large division of the empire which has no regular fortress; transportation of troops, however, is facilitated by good roads, as well as by extensive railway lines, which connect Cracow and Lemberg with each other and with all the principal cities of the empire.-The earliest regular settlement of Galicia was by the Ruthenians (Pol. Rusini), who now occupy the eastern division, also called Red Russia. This was occupied toward the end of the 9th century by the Magyars, then passing to Hungary. Lo-domeria, E. of modern Galicia, and then connected with it, was subdued by the Russians at the beginning of the 11th century. Various principalities, the chief of which was Halicz (from which the present name of the country is derived), were subsequently formed under the protection of the kings of Hungary. About the middle of the 13th century Galicia was annexed to Lithuania, in the early part of the 14th to Moscow, and after the death of the last prince of Halicz (1340) to Poland under the reign of Casimir the Great. From that time it shared the destinies of the latter country, down to the time of the first partition of Poland in 1772, when it was taken by the empress Maria Theresa, on the ground of the old claims of the crown of Hungary. It received the title of kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, though Lodomeria was in the possession of Russia. Bukowina was in 1777 united with it, and remained so until made a separate crown-land in 1849. The last division of Poland (1795) brought new fragments of that country into the possession of the Hapsburgs, and the province was divided into E. and W. Galicia. A part was ceded in 1809 to the duchy of Warsaw, and was afterward annexed to Russian Poland; another part was converted by the treaty of Vienna into the republic of Cracow (1815), and was annexed to Austria after the Polish rising of February, 184G, which was suppressed in Galicia through a frightful slaughter of the nobility by the peasantry.

Insignificant attempts at insurrection were made in the spring of 1848 at Cracow and Lemberg. The constitutional regime which began in that year was short-lived; several conspiracies, aiming at the restoration of Polish independence, were detected and severely punished. A return to a liberal policy took place in 1860, and Galicia received its representation in the Vienna Reichs-rath under the constitution of 1861, and again under that of 1867. In this body, however, the Polish representatives generally sided with the Czechs and other federalists, in opposition to the German majority, which aimed at preserving the unity of Cisleithan Austria. Various attempts to conciliate them by special concessions proved futile, and the Reichsrath finally baffled this opposition by the electoral reform law of 1873, which substituted direct elections to the Vienna assembly by districts for elections by the provincial diets. This at once divided the Galician representation, as in the elections toward the close of that year the Ruthenians carried a number of districts in direct hostility to the Polish national interest.

The policy of abstention, in which the Poles formerly followed the Czechs, was abandoned. (For further historical details, see Austria, Cracow, and Poland.)