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Abstract
This article argues that the business alliance between the Polish nobility and the Jews was central to the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth’s overcoming the economic crisis of the mid-seventeenth following the decline of grain exports. The leaseholding agreements by which the nobles entrusted the management of their landed property and monopoly rights to the Jews allowed the exploitation of local markets as the main outlet for grain production while the reshaping of the river trade’s organisation supported new products’ exports as well as those of grain. In contrast, the article explains how, by virtue of their integration into the management of the nobles’ estates, Jewish communities remained entangled in the meshes of the Polish feudal system, and exposed, as a symbol of its oppression, to antisemitic attacks. The ‘philosemitic mercantilism’ pursed by the nobles did not come to guarantee the Jews a tolerance based on the rule of law. The price was a brake on economic growth.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the participants of the Liberty Fund Conference “Liberty and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth” (April 2019), Franco Amatori, Luca Mocarelli, and Luca Andreoni, for their insights and suggestions. Special thanks go to the anonymous referees for their valuable comments. Full responsibility for the content of the article is on the author.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributors
Stefania Ecchia is a researcher in Economic History at the Department of Political and Communication Sciences of the University of Salerno. She was visiting scholar at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has published studies on the economic development of Palestine at the end of the Ottoman Empire and the economic relations between Italy and the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th century. Her current project focuses on the impact of tolerance in the long run and from a comparative perspective.
Notes
1 Regarding the debate about the ‘Little Divergence’: De Pleijt and Van Zanden (Citation2016).
2 For two contrasting viewpoints of the Polish noble republicanism, see Grześkowiak-Krwawicz (Citation2012), Lukowski (Citation2010), and Roháč (Citation2008) offers an institutional viewpoint on the liberum veto.
3 Polish government also granted non-territorial autonomy to other minority groups considered useful for the state economy, such as Armenians, Scots and Italians. In this respect, the Jews were ‘tolerated’ no more or less than other groups in the society, as far as they were expected to regulate their own community and to function as part of the general ‘estate’ system of the country (Bartal, Citation2006).
4 The Jews formed the largest religious-ethnic minority group in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and they accounted for an estimated 5.35% of the country’s population in the late eighteenth century (about 750,000 according to the first Jewish census in 1764). The Jewish population was concentrated in the eastern and southern provinces: only 12% of the Jews lived in Great Poland and 17% in Little Poland, whereas 27% lived in Lithuania-Belarus, and 44% in Ukraine-Ruthenia (Hundert, Citation2004, p. 20); 40–50% of the Jews were town-dwellers (Topolski, Citation1992, p. 47).
5 Besides having its roots in the corporative structure of the feudal society, religious toleration in Poland-Lithuania was a corollary of the noble democracy’s principle, stated at the Warsaw Confederation in 1537. It granted to all the members of the nobility the same rights, regardless of their property, education, language and also religion. This principle had the effect of preventing an episode similar to the Night of San Bartolomeo.
6 In 1539 the Sejm passed a law giving estate-owners exclusive dominion over all Jews who lived under their jurisdiction.
7 The nobles may have shared negative stereotypes on the Jews but, given their aversion to any encroachment on their freedoms by the Church, they hardly adhered to the anti-Judaic principles of the canon law: economic and not religious reasons shaped the legal status of the Polish Jewry on their territories (Kaźmierczyk, Citation2018). Unfortunately, with the advent of the Counter-reformation, acts of intolerance were repeatedly recorded despite the traditional patronage of the nobility towards the Jews. About the debate on tolerance during the last phase of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth see Butterwick (Citation2021).
8 Jewish entrepreneurial activity counteracted the negative effect of the decline in efficiency of serf labour but, in this way, contributed to the preservation of the manorial serf economy (Hundert, Citation2004, pp. 32–38).
9 Considering that many sources concerning the economic activities of Jews in Poland were destroyed during the Second World War, some pre-war studies based on lost sources are of enormous value, and among them are: Dzieje handlu żydowskiego na ziemiach polskich (Schiper, Citation1937); Pinkas ha-Medinah (Dubnow, Citation1925); Pinkas Va’ad Arba’ Aratsot (Halperin, 1945; second edition, 1990). With regard to other collections of sources relating to Jewish history in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth see: Horn (Citation1984), Kaźmierczyk (Citation2001), Michałowska-Mycielska (Citation2003), Michałowska-Mycielska (Citation2006), and Goldberg and Kaźmierczyk (Citation2011).
10 The Sieniawski-Czartoryski magnate family employed many Jewish agents to manage their estates in Podolia, as documented by Rosman (Citation1990) who studied the archives’ family located in the Biblioteka Czartoryskich (Cracow). In particular, Elżbieta Sieniawska employed Yisrael Rubinowicz for four decades as general manager on her estates. Rubinowicz collected rents and taxes from her estates, supervised contracts with low-rank nobles, townspeople, peasants, and intervened with local authorities in her name. Sieniawska also used another Jew, Moses Fortis, as her personal physician and business agent who purchased luxury goods for her and conducted land negotiations (Rosman, Citation1990, pp. 147–174). More examples of families belonging to the Jewish economic elites in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania can be found in Cieśla (Citation2012, Citation2013, Citation2015).
11 The Jews went into this field as a result of the long period of inflation and monetary devaluation, called ‘the price revolution’. In such conditions, their medieval occupation of moneylending became increasingly unprofitable. In addition, legal restrictions on Jews possessing land made it difficult for them, when noblemen defaulted on mortgages, to take possession of the estates put up as security. To solve these problems, instead of giving mortgages on estates, Jews would lease the lands (Teller, Citation2018, p. 589).
12 At the end of the eighteenth century more than 20,000 Jews (about 10% of the entire population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania) lived on the Radziwiłł estate. The Ickowicz brothers’ lease included Mir, Krzyczew, Birże, Biała, and Słuck: these lease-holdings opened them up access to the international Baltic markets of Gdańsk, Riga and Könisberg through, respectively, the rivers of Vistula, Dzwina, and Niemen. They also cultivated business ties with Russia and Prussia. The story of the Ickowicz brothers was narrated by Adam Teller in his study (2016, pp. 73–105) based on the Radziwiłł archive whose documentation is mainly located at the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw. Copies of the brother’s real estate contracts, between 1733 and 1737, are preserved in Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XXIII, 55.
13 entrust The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ‘Leaseholding’, by Judith Kalik.
14 Income from the sale of vodka as a percentage of the total income on royal estates rose from 6.4% in 1661 to 40% in the second half of the eighteenth century. On the vast Zamoyski estates, in the Lublin region, alcohol sales returned a net profit of 124% on production and retail costs. The percentage of total revenues derived from sales of alcohol reached 46.2% in 1791 (Hundert, Citation2004, p. 37; Polonsky, Citation2010, p. 101); in Opatów, a town situated between Cracow and Lublin, in the region of Little Poland, and owned by the magnate families of Sanguszko e Lubomirski, the value of the arenda on vodka climbed from 8,000 to 10,000 zloties in the first two decades of the eighteenth century to 28,000–38,000 in the 1780s. Hundert (1981, pp. 64–66) based his calculation on the documents collected in the two magnate families’ private archives and preserved in the Archiwum Państwowe w Krakowie (Cracow).
15 A collection of this kind of contract can be found in Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XXIX, 5-11 (1745–1764).
16 This is the picture that emerges from Hanna Węgrzynek’s study of the Jews’ economic role in the landed estate of the noble family of Zamoyski in the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries.
17 Rosman (Citation1990, pp. 64–68) was the first to oppose the prevailing opinion that the relations between the Jews and the magnates were based on rank exploitation, being rather based on mutual interests.
18 Elżbieta Sieniawska (née Lubomirska) was prominent in the enterprise to build fleets shipping grain from the Red Ruthenian region to Gdańsk, via the San and Vistula rivers. She permitted Jewish merchants to rent space on them for their products and to bring supplies for the local market. These cash payments tipped the balance between profit and loss for Sieniawska’s annual grain trade. Jewish merchants in her cities (Shklov, Pulawy, Medzhybizh) also provided an alternative market for noble-produced grain when low prices or wartime dislocation made sale to Gdańsk difficult. On occasion, Sieniawska required them to purchase surplus grain so that the merchants had to find local outlets or take the risks of selling them in distant markets (Stone, Citation2001, p. 299).
19 Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XXIX, 9, 26/5/1760; V, 15467, 18/12/1756.
20 For the trade of hemp and flax, see, Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XXIX, 11 (18/8/1763); V, 12424 (II), (6/4/1764; 24/2/1764).
21 Regarding the Jewish merchants who shipped freight on the Radzwiłł family flotilla along the Niemen river, they contributed a proportion of the family’s income for some 40% to above 60%, in the years 1738-1760 (for shipments from Könisberg to Lithuania only), Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XX, 19; 20.
22 Jewish merchants from Opatów traveled regularly to Germany and Silesia to sell textiles and furs, and to purchase luxury goods for the magnate court of the Lubomirskis and Sanguszkos. They also traded extensively with Russia (Stone, Citation2001, p. 299). Jan Sobieski settled Jews in his private cities, especially Zholkva near Lviv, giving Jewish merchants tax relief for ten years. He also developed his private city of Brody as a center for the Turkish trade, including the manufacture and sale of Turkish-style embroideries and metalwork. In 1704, Sobieski’s heirs sold Brody to the Potockis, who helped it develop further. The largely Jewish city of Leszno (Lissa), founded by the Leszczynskis and later sold to the Sulkowski family, replaced Poznan as the center of Great Poland trade. Leszno specialized in importing cloth and skins from Silesia and Saxony and selling them to Jewish merchants throughout the Commonwealth for domestic use or export to the east. Leszno merchants also handled silks, spices, wool, cotton, and metal goods (Stone, Citation2001, p. 303).
23 Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XXIII, 9 (14/8/1755); XXIX, 9 (18/4/1759).
24 In order to facilitate their trade networks, Polish Jews developed innovative credit instruments: the mamran, a promissory note in the form of a bearer bond; the heter-iska, which allowed Jews to extend to each other mercantile credit without transgressing the halakhic prohibition on lending money to another Jew (Hundert, Citation1987, p. 273).
25 Pinkas ha-Medinah (Dubnow, Citation1925): n. 16, 21, 24, 25, 29, 72 (1623); n. 173, 174, 177 (1628); n. 328, 330, 331, 333 (1637); n. 371, 372 (1639); n. 926, 931 (1719/1720).
26 The rabbi himself was required to pay the magnate, through the kahal, a license fee when he was appointed by the Jewish community. A magnate could even intervene in community elections to put their own Jewish candidates on community councils, choosing those willing to pay more for the license.
27 For the increasing price of the arenda, see Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XXIX, 9 (25/12/1756; 12/12/1758).
28 The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, Hazakah, by Tamar Salmon-Mack; Fram (Citation1997, pp. 270–314).
29 Pinkas ha-medinah (Dubnow, Citation1925): da n. 73 a n. 78 (1623); Pinkas Va’ad Arba’ Aratsot (Halperin, 1945): 148, n. 352 (1676); Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XXIX, 9 (9/10/1758; 29/6/1760); XXIX, 11 (22/2/1764).
30 Archiwum Radziwiłłów, V, 15467 (7/6/1756); XXIX, 9 (18/6/1758; 25/9/1759; 1/10/1760).
31 The loans contracted from the clergy bore an interest that could not generally exceed the low annual rate of 7%, while the nobility lent at a rate of 10% (Kalik, Citation1998, pp. 102–122; Michałowska-Mycielska, Citation2016, p. 225). The most representative document about the involvement of the Church in the Jewish debts was drafted during the economic conference in Tykocin, convocated by the Royal Treasury in 1787 (Archivum Głowny Akt Dawnych, Zbiór Kapicy Milewskiego, Księgi ziemskie tykocińskie, 40/141).
32 The incomes of the local Jewish communities were based on a capital tax paid by each householder in order to pay the salaries for the officials of the Jewish councils, the rabbi and other lay members employed in the communities, and to support the communal infrastructure (synagogue, mikveh, cemetery, school,…); on the kropka, a form of indirect transaction on the sales of kosher meat, later extended to cover all business transactions; on philanthropic donations used to provide welfare services for the communities.
33 Hundert found that in Opatow, between 1728 and 1758, there was an increase of 185% in the credits obtained by the community but an increase of only 23% in the amount required annually for the servicing of the debt (Hundert, Citation1992, p. 105).
34 Pinkas ha-Medinah (Dubnow, Citation1925): n. 273 (1633); n. 296 (1634); n. 307 (1637); n. 369, 390 (1639); n. 419 (1644); n. 648- 650, 652, 654 (1670); n. 684, 725 (1673); n. 768 (1679). Regarding a series of anti-Jewish provocation in Opatów, during the second half of the seventeenth and the first two decades of the eighteenth centuries, see Hundert (Citation1992, pp. 40–45).
35 An example of how the Jewish communities, in the specific that of Lublin, although heavily indebted, could not be allowed to fail by the Church (hence, the continuous rescheduling and moratorium of their debts), can be found in the Regional State Archive in Lublin, Ksiegi Grodzki Lubelskie (Record books of the Lublin administrative center), 21104/143-21142/188, for the period 1700-1796 (Rosman, Citation1998, pp. 166–183).
36 The magnates often intervened in favor of the Jews in order to restructure and improve the terms of the loans, but they also imposed that any community which wanted to borrow money from the Church seek their permission, with the purpose of avoiding the likelihood of bankruptcies. The practice of rescheduling debts served to maintain a high level of Jewish participation in the country’s economic life (Hundert, 1981, p. 269; Kalik, Citation1998, pp. 118–119).
37 Pinkas Va’ad Arba’ Aratsot (Halperin, 1945): n. 56, 57, 640, 642 (1739).
38 From 1717, Jewish communities began to play a direct role in army financing since the Jews’ poll taxes – that remained fixed from 1717 to 1764, 220,000 florins for Poland and 60,000 for Lithuania (Hundert, Citation2004, p. 95) – were earmarked to pay the army and the State Treasury issued payment orders (assignments) to the individual military units who collected the money themselves in lieu of salaries and expenses. For a more detailed and comprehensive history of changes in the tax system affecting the Jewish community, see Kalik (Citation2009).
39 Textile production was usually financed by Jewish merchants and performed by the peasants through the putting-out system. Clothing, food-processing and munitions factories were founded by Jews after 1785 (Stone, Citation2001, pp. 304–305). Magnates founded factories to produce luxury goods, such as the Radziwiłł glassworks and porcelain manufactures (a special fond on these factories is situated in Archiwum Radziwiłłów, XIX), or Potocki ornamental textiles, but few of them achieved profits because the demand for luxury goods was limited and it was too expensive to hire western European technical experts (Stone, Citation2001, pp. 307–308).