Money, Prices and Power in Poland, 16th–17th Centuries : A Comparative Approach

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.

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.