the Great, in an effort to populate his sparsely populated kingdom, settled around 300,000 colonists in all provinces of Prussia, most of which were of a German ethnic background, and aimed at a removal of the Polish nobility, which he treated with contempt.

He likened the newly conquered West Prussia to a Prussian Canada and its inhabitants (which were German and Polish) to the Iroquois, who he saw as equally uncivilised. Under Prussian rule, Poles were subject to a