The View from Afar: The Polish Economy Between the Golden Age and the Partitions (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries)

Abstract

Sixteenth century was the Golden Age of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. Then, due to inefficient institutions, resource-based economy, and continuous wars the political and economic power of Poland declined. The chapter provides concise overview of factors that contributed to a decline of the Polish state between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and introduces concepts applied by the author to the analysis of crucial social and economic processes and to the formation of modern Polish society, nation, and economy. In the following chapters, the author presents the state of the economy and society, ideas of modernization that farmed the politics enforced, as well as their actual outcomes. Particular attention is paid to internal and external politics, territory, demography, society, and economic development.