What exactly is Galicia?

I have been doing research to find my ancestor who came from Poland to the U.S. I have been searching through the ellis island records and found a prime canidate whose time and age matches what i believe it should be named Stanislaw Guzior. In researching this more the records say that he lived in a region named Galicia. I have done some research into it but i don't quite understand. Is this a region of heavy Polish influence? Also, it lists on the people on his ship as "Austria, Polish". since it is "austria" not "austrian" that means he isn't part austrian but what exactly would that mean. If anyone has researched about finding ancestors and knows a little bit more about how to get more information from the ellis island website it would be appreciated as i want to learn about my past....

Galicia belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for over 500+ years.


That means that those lands belonged to Austria but that he was Polish. Poland got divided betwen Austria/Russia/Prussia in the late 18'th century.

Galicia is a region in the Eastern Europe which is subdivided into Western and Eastern Galicia. The former was/is populated predominantly by Poles and the latter was/is predominantly populated by Ukrainians. The Galicia in general has the Lemko people who are autochtone to the region; many of them forcefully deported by Polish commies in 1947. It doesn't necessarily means your ancestor was Polish. I think you have to dig deeper and find out more about the religion professed by Stanislaw, his family background, village etc.

I am fairly certain that he is of Polish decent, but yeah i think researching more of his village can help me. Thanks for the advice and information.