Russia tried both of these alternately. The lands of the Commonwealth taken by Russia were originally divided up into two categories: the large strip of Lithuanian, Belorussian and Ukrainian lands were incorporated into Russia as the Western Gubernias, while the rest, the Kingdom of Poland, was treated as a separate administrative and political entity. Between 1815 and 1830, and to a lesser extent between 1855 and 1863, Russia delegated its administration to the Poles themselves. For the rest of the century it ruled the area directly, with varying degrees of harshness. There were moments when the Western Gubernias were shunted closer to the Kingdom administratively, and others when the Kingdom itself was abolished and turned into a province of the Russian empire. This lack of consistency served Russian interests poorly. And in economic terms, the Kingdom on the whole profited from arrangements meant to disadvantage it.
The transformation of the Congress Kingdom from a predominantly agricultural economy began after 1815. Stanisław Staszic, who had been appointed Director of the Department of Industry in 1816, encouraged the development of mining and reactivated the production of steel in the Old Polish Basin around Kielce. He built the first zinc mills and the first steel-rolling mill, and organised a Mining Corps run on semi-military lines with a remarkable system of compensation and pensions. The production of iron, copper and zinc increased. Coalmining, which began to use steam power for pumping, doubled its output between 1824 and 1836. The 1830s and 1840s saw continued development in spite of political problems and a new smelting centre was developed in the Dąbrowa Basin, whose Huta Bankowa was one of the largest steelworks in the world.
The process was masterminded by Franciszek Ksawery Drucki-Lubecki. In 1821 he took over the Treasury, which became the leading entrepreneur. He sought to build up Poland’s economy in such a way as to make it industrially self-sufficient. His efforts were cut short by the 1830 insurrection, but some of his creations, such as the Bank of Poland established in 1828, carried on his programme. He brought new ideas to the Polish economic scene, including direct intervention, credit and protection. In 1825 he set up the Land Credit Society, which enabled private estates to clear debts and fund improvements or new ventures. Chief among these were sheep-rearing, distilling and the production of sugar-beet which, with the building of the first sugar refinery in 1826, opened up an important new avenue of agricultural industry.
The most spectacular product of Lubecki’s policies was the Polish textile industry. In 1821 the government assisted the establishment of a weaving centre in the village of Łódź. By 1830 Łódź had over 4,000 inhabitants and a number of steam-powered spinning machines. The production of wool tripled between 1823 and 1829, and the production of cotton quintupled between 1825 and 1830. Łódź exported to Russia and even China, and by 1845, when it was linked by rail to Warsaw, it had become the principal supplier of the Russian market. By then Łódź had 20,000 inhabitants, although it was now in competition with new textile centres at Białystok and Żyrardów, started in 1833. Between 1865 and 1879 the number of power looms in Łódź increased twenty-fold. The value of production of cotton rose from five million roubles in 1869 to 25 million in 1889. By 1900 Łódź had 300,000 inhabitants and over 1,000 factories.
This industrial revolution was unspectacular by European standards, yet the pace was breathtaking. The number of steam engines in use increased twenty-five times between 1853 and 1888. Overall industrial production increased by over six times between 1864 and 1885. Centres such as Łódź, Warsaw (which reached over half a million inhabitants in the 1880s) and the Dąbrowa Basin employed a workforce which doubled over the twenty years after 1860 to some 150,000. Fortunes were made and lost in the speculative ventures to which the boom gave rise. Foreign capital, often brought in by entrepreneurs who came to settle, flooded in from France, Germany, England, Belgium and Italy, accounting for up to 40 per cent of the entire industrial capital. A new class of Polish tycoons sprang up, mostly from the Jewish population of the cities. Families like the Kronenbergs, Rotwands, Wawelbergs and Epszteins amassed wealth, became assimilated into Polish society and married into the aristocracy.