A world-class researcher in anthropology, cultural studies, sociology and ethnography, she made her academic career at Oxford, chiefly through her field research in Siberia. An emancipator and a Polish patriot, she is a figure as eminent as she is now largely forgotten.

Maria Czaplicka: The Beginnings of Her Intellectual Formation
Maria Antonina Czaplicka was born in Warsaw’s Praga district, most probably in 1884. Her father came from the impoverished landed gentry bearing the Lubicz coat of arms. She was named after her mother, Maria née Zawisza, and had numerous siblings.

From her early youth, she was passionate about scholarship, access to which in the Russian partition was severely restricted for Poles, and especially for Polish women. This was the result of repressive measures introduced after the January Rising of 1863. Czaplicka attended the illegal Flying University (the famous “women’s university”, in the words of the historian Bogdan Cywiński, the answer of the suffragette generation to the positivist slogan of women’s equality). She was also a student of the Towarzystwo Kursów Naukowych (Society for Educational Courses) – the first open Polish institution of higher education since the liquidation of the Main School in 1869 – registered in 1906 by the tsarist authorities.Later, she herself became an organiser of clandestine teaching.

She developed her interests under the influence of Wacław Nałkowski, a geographer, publicist and writer. It was he who first directed her attention to “human geography”. She was also friends with his daughter Zofia – later the author of “Medallions”. Together they shared a passion for literature. Between 1910 and 1911, she published poems in the Warsaw magazine “Odrodzenie”. She also maintained contacts with a circle of left-wing Polish émigrés in London, centred on the antiquarian Michał Wojnicz (Voynich), who became famous for bringing to light a medieval manuscript that has become one of the world’s most enigmatic artefacts.

Maria Czaplicka’s Career in the United Kingdom
In November 1910, Maria arrived in London, where she enrolled to study anthropology at Bedford College for Women. She attended classes with the pioneer of modern social anthropology Bronisław Malinowski, later the author of the famous study “The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia”. Her career accelerated when she was offered the opportunity to complete her studies at Oxford. Here, in 1915, she received a doctorate in anthropology, becoming the first woman in Europe – and only the second person in general – to hold such a degree. At the university, she met Russian specialists in the peoples of Siberia, who inspired her to pursue further research on the remote regions of Eurasia.

In 1912, she obtained a degree in anthropology. Numerous scholarly articles and studies date from this period, including work on the beliefs of Indigenous Australians. She also joined the Royal Anthropological Institute and supported the suffragette movement.

The Siberian Expedition of Maria Czaplicka
However, alleys, libraries and lectures were not enough. In May 1914, Maria Czaplicka set off on an expedition that would secure her place in the scholarly world. The team comprised four people: the British women Dora Curtis, a photographer and painter, and Maud Haviland, an ornithologist; the American Henry Usher Hall, a student of anthropology; and Maria Czaplicka, a Polish anthropologist from Oxford. Together, they set out to investigate the culture of the Evenks in the Yenisei valley in southern Siberia, a region and people still poorly understood by Europeans.

Today, we would describe it as an extreme expedition. They departed from Charing Cross station in London and travelled to Moscow via Warsaw. They then took the Trans-Siberian Railway to Krasnoyarsk and continued north down the Yenisei by steamer for three weeks to the settlement of Golczycha. From there, they travelled further on foot, by ship and boat, and on reindeer. In total, they covered some 5,000 kilometres of Siberian wilderness.

The Results of Czaplicka’s Research in Siberia
In August 1914, the Great War broke out. Curtis and Haviland decided to return to England, while Czaplicka and Hall continued their expedition in extreme conditions, with winter temperatures dropping to minus 60 degrees Celsius. The press in America and Britain, however, was chiefly interested in the fact that an unmarried woman and an unrelated man were sharing a single tent.

The expedition, which lasted a year, yielded a wealth of material: interviews, photographs, observations, artefacts and a significantly deepened body of knowledge about Indigenous Siberian peoples, including in relation to shamanism, spirituality and sexuality. The expedition also resulted in Maria Czaplicka’s book “My Siberian Year”, written in English and published in Britain and the United States in 1916. The publication not only shed new light on the peoples of Siberia, but was also distinguished by its narrative style. The author wrote in the first person, not shying away from personal reflections, digressions and vivid descriptions of her many adventures. The combination of engaging adventure narrative and solid anthropological material was something of a novelty at the time. In the opening lines of the introduction, the author also bore witness to the Polish struggle for freedom:

“When, as a child, I heard the word “Siberia”, it meant only one thing to me: a deadly threat to the bodies and painful torture to the souls of those bravest, wisest and most independently thinking representatives of our nation. Were not thieves and robbers also sent from Poland to Siberia? If I knew or remembered such cases at all, it was only as a disgrace added to the sufferings of brave men and women condemned to exile from their beloved country; an exile shared with criminals. I could not help remembering that in one year alone, 1863, 15,000 to 20,000 young men ‒ the flower of Polish youth ‒ were driven in chains through the Siberian outback; most of them died there [...].”*

“My Siberian Year” is a highly interesting work which to this day has not appeared in a Polish translation.

Maria Czaplicka’s Activity for Poland 
After 1918, Czaplicka fought against propaganda hostile to Poland, writing articles and essays for the British press and giving lectures and talks. In 1919, she visited Poland and met Józef Piłsudski, who thanked her for her publications. Unfortunately, she lost her post at Oxford and had difficulty finding a permanent position. In the academic world she too often had to give way to male colleagues.

Nevertheless, she remained active in numerous scholarly and social organisations. At the same time, she gave lectures on Siberia, wrote journalistic articles in connection with the revolution in Russia, took part in discussions on the League of Nations and the status of Danzig and compiled confidential reports for the Historical Section of the Foreign Office. The Siberian expedition, however, plunged her into debt.

In 1921, she was hoping for a prestigious Albert Kahn travel grant. However, she received a rejection. At the same time, news reached her that Henry Hall had married in the United States. She did not receive an invitation to the wedding. It was to him – the companion on the expedition with whom she had been through so much – that she dedicated her book “My Siberian Year”.

Tragic Death and the Memory of Maria Czaplicka
It is likely that professional failures, combined with romantic disappointment, led Maria Czaplicka to her tragic death. She was only thirty-seven years old when she ingested mercuric chloride on 27 May 1921, having previously made a will. She entrusted the manuscript of her Siberian report and other materials to Henry Hall to complete, which he never did. Most of the memorabilia from the Siberian expedition is held in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. In accordance with her last will, she was laid to rest in Wolvercote Cemetery.

The gravestone is located in the north-eastern part of the necropolis and is largely neglected. A cross with a difficult-to-read inscription in English has fallen over and now rests within the grave plot. Maria Czaplicka’s eternal resting place is surrounded by a stone border. Unfortunately, it is apparent that the grave is not cared for on a regular basis. The inscription on the base of the cross reads:

IN MEMORY OF
MARIE ANTOINETTE DE CZAPLICKA
BORN AT WARSAW OCT. 25.1884
DIED AT BRISTOL MAY 27.1921

Wojciech Kwilecki