Money, Prices And Power In Poland, 16th-17th Centuries: A Comparative Approach (variorum Collected Studies)

The first articles in this volume focus on sources for the history of Baltic commerce and the evaluation of their data on prices. In most cases, though, surviving data is hardly adequate for any extensive quantitative analysis of Polish economic history, and many of these articles endeavour in different ways to use comparitive approaches to help overcome this lack of substantial statistical base - hence the set of studies on the economy of travelling and the observations of travellers. Professor Maçzak then turns to the structures of power in Poland and elsewhere in late renaissance Europe, looking in particular at informal power relationships and patterns of patronage. In terms of the Polish-Lithunaian state, he would hold that centralized government was already critically weakened in the late 15th century, and the 16th century saw the creation of a new power structure, based on local self-government, and dominated by the nobility. The first articles in this volume focus on sources for the history of Baltic commerce and the evaluation of their data on prices. In most cases, though, surviving data is hardly adequate for any extensive quantitative analysis of Polish economic history, and many of these articles endeavour in different ways to use comparitive approaches to help overcome this lack of substantial statistical base – hence the set of studies on the economy of travelling and the observations of travellers. Professor Maçzak then turns to the structures of power in Poland and elsewhere in late renaissance Europe, looking in particular at informal power relationships and patterns of patronage. In terms of the Polish-Lithunaian state, he would hold that centralized government was already critically weakened in the late 15th century, and the 16th century saw the creation of a new power structure, based on local self-government, and dominated by the nobility. Cover 1 Series 3 Half Title 4 Title 6 Copyright 7 Contents 8 Introduction 12 Acknowledgements 16 Baltic Commerce 18 I The balance of Polish sea trade with the West, 1565—1646 18 II Sir Francis Drake’s Prussian prizes. Risks and profits from the Gdansk-Iberian commerce about 1589 54 Money and Prices: Comparative Approaches 70 III Development levels in early modern Europe. The evidence of synchronic comparisons of prices and wages 70 IV Un voyageur temoin des prix européens à la fin du XVIe siècle 94 V Observations on wealth and economic development in Renaissance and baroque travel literature 104 VI Money and society in Poland and Lithuania in the 16th and 17th centuries 118 Political and Economic Power 154 VII Confessions, freedoms, and the unity of Poland-Lithuania 154 VIII From aristocratic household to princely court. Restructuring patronage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 172 IX Vicissitudes of feudalism in modern Poland 186 X Executio bonorum and reduktion: two essays in solutions of the domain-state dilema 201 XI Poland 217 XII Tacitus, Aristotle and the Polish polity in the later Renaissance 234 XIII The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania in the late seventeenth century: an essay in interpretation of space 246 XIV The structure of power in the Commonwealth of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 260 XV The conclusive years: the end of the sixteenth century as the turning-point of Polish history 286 Index 304 Risks,and,profits;,Money,and,society;,Vicissitudes Risks and profits,Money and society,Vicissitudes This work offers a detailed view of money, prices and power in Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries. It covers sea trade, monetary economics, political economy and social factors. It concludes with an analysis of the end of the 16th century, showing it as a turning point in Polish history.