STUDIES ON THE AGRARIAN HISTORY OF POLAND (BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE MAGAZINE “KWARTALNIK HISTORYCZNY” OF THE END OF THE 19th – BEGINNING OF THE 20th CENTURY)

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to reveal how the process of formation and development of Polish agrarian history studies was refl ected in the pages of the journal “Kwartalnyk Historyczny” in the general context of historical and economic research – a new research direction for Polish historiography at that time. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, systematicity, scientifi city, verifi cation, authorial objectivity, moderate narrative constructivism, as well as the use of general scientifi c (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and special-historical (historical-genetic, historical-typological, historicalsystemic ) methods. The scientifi c novelty is that, for the fi rst time in historiography, an attempt was made to reconstruct the process of formation and development of research on the agrarian history of Poland on the pages of the journal “Kwartalnik Historyczny” (1887–1918). Conclusions. The study of the publications of the journal “Kwartalnik Historyczny” shows that the history of the Polish economy has long been closely connected with the refl ection on the past of Polish society and the state system. Demarcation of issues in many points was simply impossible, since the state system conditioned socio-economic relations, on the other hand, the impulses of changes in the fi eld of law and administration were dependent on society. Historians specializing in these fi elds had to take all these factors into account. This entailed the need to expand the view of the problems of the past and move to another level of research - from positivist micrographic studies to generalizing, synthetic studies, which, in turn, led to the modernization of existing models of historical knowledge and brought historical science to a higher, more generalizing level of understanding the past.