Money, Prices and Power in Poland, 16th-17th Centuries: A Comparative Approach / Edition 1

by Antoni Maçzak

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780860784784
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/1995
Series:	Variorum Collected Studies , #487
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 8.81(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Contents: The balance of Polish sea trade with the West, 1565-1646; Sir Francis Drake’s Prussian prizes. Risks and profits from the Gdan;sk-Iberian commerce about 1589; Development levels in early modern Europe. The evidence of synchronic comparisons of prices and wages; Un voyageur témoin des prix européens á la fin du XVIe siècle; Observations on wealth and economic development in Renaissance and baroque travel literature; Money and society in Poland and Lithuania in the 16th and 17th centuries; Confessions, freedoms and the unity of Poland-Lithuania; From aristocratic household to princely court. Restructuring patronage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; Vicissitudes of feudalism in modern Poland; Executio bonorum and reduktion: two essays in solutions of the domain-state dilema; Poland; Tacitus, Aristotle and the Polish polity in the later Renaissance; The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania in the late seventeenth century: an essay in interpretation of space; The structure of power in the Commonwealth of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; The conclusive years: the end of the sixteenth century at the turning-point of Polish history; Index.

Editorial Reviews

Examines Baltic commerce, comparative approaches to money and prices, and political and economic power in late Renaissance and baroque Poland. Among the specific topics are privateering by Sir Francis Drake, observations on wealth and economic development in contemporary travel literature, restructuring patronage from the aristocratic household to the princely court, and the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. The 15 papers are reproduced from their original publication between 1970 and 1992; one is in French. Distributed by Ashgate. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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