Poland became a recognizable ethnic and political entity in the mid-10th Century AD under the Piast dynasty of kings its modern history begins in 966 when the first Piast king, Mieszko I, was converted to Christianity. For hundreds of years afterward, Poland's fortunes waxed and waned at the hands of powerful neighbors and invaders, from the German Teutonic Knights to the Mongol Golden Horde to the Soviet Union's forces. Even in times of national crisis, however, Polish ideals of revolution and independence remained strong. Those ideals, carried abroad by Polish expatriates such as Pulaski and Kosciuszko, informed the American and French revolutions. The Polish constitution of 1791 AD, the oldest in Europe, incorporated those same democratic ideals. Restored as a free nation in 1918 but ravaged by two world wars, few peoples suffered as much in the 20th Century as the Poles.
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