Kashubian

The Kashubians are the West Slavic people of Kashubia, the Baltic coastland between the mouths of the Oder and the Vistula. They descend from the Slavic Pomeranian tribes of the Migration Period, once vassals of Polish and Danish rulers. They alone kept their Slavic speech when medieval German settlement transformed the rest of Pomerania.

In 1337 their lands were divided: Pomerelia had been seized by the Teutonic Order in 1308, while western districts passed to the Duchy of Pomerania in 1317. German burghers took the towns, but villages stayed Kashubian.

After the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 Pomerelia became Royal Prussia under the Polish crown, until the partition of 1772 handed it to Prussia as West Prussia. Lutheran pastors printed religious books carrying Kashubian words from 1586, and in the 1820s scholars such as Christoph Mrongovius began to record the language as Germanization pressed on the villages.