Rather than being a complete history of Galicia this is more a history of the Ukrainian portion of Galicia where my ancestors originated.
In Roman times the region of Galicia was populated by various tribes of Celto-Germanic admixture. After the fall of the Roman Empire various groups of nomadic people invaded the area including the Scythians in the 2nd-5th centuries, the Huns in the 4th-5th centuries, the Slavs in the 6th-8th centuries and many others. Overall the Slavs came to dominate the population.
The region of Red Ruthenia (now Eastern Galicia/Western Ukraine) was subject to a territorial dispute between the Kingdom of Poland and the Kievan Rus' in the tenth century with both claiming rights to the land. It's known that in 981 Vladimir the Great of the Kievan Rus' captured the region with Poland taking it in 1018 before it was annexed back to Rus in 1031. The Principality of Halych was established around 1124 to rule the region. The Kievan Rus' collapsed following Mongol invasions in 1240. At this point the Kingdom of Halych-Volynia came to rule this region with Danylo being crowned king in 1245 with Pope Innocent IV's approval. Under Danylo's reign, Galicia-Volhynia was one of the most powerful states in east central Europe. Following Danylo's death in 1264 the kingdom passed to his son Lev who moved his capital to Lviv and strengthened his alliance with the Mongols. This led to him fighting with Lithuania, Hungary and Poland which expanded his territory somewhat. His grandsons would then forge alliances with Poland and Lithuania to fight the Mongols which led to them dying without leaving any heirs. The power void led to the return of Polish rule under Casimir III.
The region was part of the Ruthenian Voivodeship (administrative division) in the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1366 to 1772. 1772 brought the First Partition of Poland as Austria, Prussia and Russia reached agreements to divide the territory of Poland. Austria gained the Galician land along the southern borders of Poland which formed it into a crownland known as the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. The Kingdom was about 60% Polish and 40% Ukrainian which would have serious implications for the Ukrainian population. Austrian rule brought some reforms that were beneficial to the population including the right for peasants to marry without their lords permission, the right to appeal to the imperial courts and defined labour obligations. At the same time Austria extracted considerable wealth from Galicia and conscripted large numbers of peasants into the army. During the Russo-French War the Russians occupied Galicia and in 1809 Napoleon gave Russia the region surrounding Ternopil. It was returned to Austria by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
1848 brought revolutions to the Austrian Empire with Polish and Ruthenian councils forming in Lemberg (Lviv) before the Imperial troops put down the revolution. To placate the Polish population a Polish count was appointed as Viceroy and he quashed the Ruthenian attempts to partition the province. In 1861 Galicia was granted a Legislative Assembly which initially was divided fairly evenly between the Ukrainian & Polish peasants and the Polish aristocracy but grew to be dominated by the Polish aristocracy. The Ruthenians began to feel more and more abandoned by Vienna and began to turn towards their ethnic brothers in Russia, which in turn were developing a national identity led by people such as the poet Taras Shevchenko. In 1867 the Austrian Empire was reformed into the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Polish aristocrats in Galicia used this development to press for more autonomy which they gained to a large extent. By 1890 the Ukrainians gained some concessions such as the partial Ukrainianization of the schools in eastern Galicia. Beginning in the 1880s a mass emigration of Galician peasantry occurred. It started as a seasonal migration to the newly unified Germany and then grew into a large scale exodus to the United States, Brazil and Canada totalling several hundred thousand people prior to the First World War.
During the First World War the Russian army overran most of the region in 1914 before being pushed out in the spring and summer of 1915 by a combined German and Austro-Hungarian offensive. In late 1918 the Ukrainian population briefly declared independence as the "West Ukrainian People's Republic" bringing together the Ukrainian populations of eastern Galicia, northern Bukovina and Transcarpathia. The republic ran into issues partly because it included the city of Lviv which had a largely Polish population. An uprising began in that city almost immediately with Poland jumping to support their people. Thus began the Polish-Ukrainian War which ended in nine months with Polish forces taking control. The Polish annexation was recognized by the League of Nations in 1923. In 1939 the former eastern Galicia was annexed by the USSR. In June 1941 the Nazis occupied the region as part of Operation Barbarossa. The Yalta Conference in February 1945 saw the postwar borders of Poland and the USSR set with eastern Galicia included in the USSR. It would be part of the Ukrainian SSR with the USSR until the formation of a new independent Ukraine in 1991.
981-1018 – Kievan Rus
1018-1031 – Poland
1031-1240 – Kievan Rus
1240-1340 – Galicia-Volhynia
1366-1772 – Poland/Polish-Lithuanian Common
1772-1918 – Austrian Empire/Austria-Hungary
1809-1815 (Ternopil region) – Russia
1918-1919 – West Ukrainian People's Republic
1919-1939 – Poland
1939-1941 – USSR
1941-1945 – Germany
1945-1991 – USSR
1991-present – Ukraine