In the 1700s, while some Amish families traveled west from Germany and Switzerland in their quest for religious freedom in Pennsylvania, others would venture to Central and Eastern Europe. In 1781, the Austrian emperor Joseph II invited German farmers to move to Galicia, after seizing the region (which today lies in southeastern Poland and Western Ukraine) in the First Partition of Poland. Other Amish however settled the area of Włodawa, which was then still part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (see Nolt, A History of the Amish, p. 64-65).