Halychian

The Halychians were the East Slavic people of Halychian Rus', Red Ruthenian lands around Halych and Lviv, in present western Ukraine and south-eastern Poland. Brought under Kiev by Vladimir the Great in 981, their lands were divided after 1084 among Rostyslavych princes, whose heirs united them and moved the capital to Halych in 1141, where a strong nobility and citizen body chose and expelled princes in a politics of contract.

In 1199 Roman the Great merged Halych with Volhynia to create the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia. When the dynasty died out in 1340, the Galicia-Volhynia Wars ended with Casimir the Great of Poland taking Galicia; it became the Ruthenian Voivodeship centred on Lviv, and four centuries of settlement reshaped its towns.

Tatar and Cossack wars, including the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648, battered it before the First Partition of 1772 gave it to Austria as Galicia and Lodomeria.