stylistic:tone
Administrative divisions

While the term "Poland" was also commonly used to denote this whole polity, Poland was in fact only part of a greater whole – the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which comprised primarily two parts:

The Commonwealth was further divided into smaller administrative units known as voivodeships (województwa). Each voivodeship was governed by a Voivode (wojewoda, governor). Voivodeships were further divided into starostwa, each starostwo being governed by a starosta. Cities were governed by castellans. There were frequent exceptions to these rules, often involving the ziemia subunit of administration.

The lands that once belonged to the Commonwealth are now largely distributed among several Central and East European countries: Poland, Ukraine, Moldova (Transnistria), Belarus, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Also some small towns in Upper Hungary (today mostly Slovakia), became a part of Poland in the Treaty of Lubowla (Spiš towns).

Other notable parts of the Commonwealth, without respect to region or voivodeship divisions, include:

Commonwealth borders shifted with wars and treaties, sometimes several times in a decade, especially in the eastern and southern parts. After the Peace of Jam Zapolski (1582), the Commonwealth had approximately 815,000 km area and a population of 7.5 million. After the Truce of Deulino (1618), the Commonwealth had an area of some 1 million km (990,000 km) and a population of about 11 million.