Development of Economic History Research in Poland

Abstract

The article traces the formation and development of economic history in Poland from the first interest in economic phenomena at the end of the eighteenth century to the mid-1960s. Against the background of the general modernization of historical research, economic history is presented as a field increasingly connected with economics, sociology, and social history. The aim of the study is to explain how this field gradually became an autonomous discipline and to identify the main stages, schools, methods, and directions of Polish historiography. The analysis is based on a broad synthesis of scholarly literature, monographs, source editions, specialized journals, and the institutional development of research centres. Particular attention is given to agrarian history, research on towns, industry, trade, prices, and population, as well as to the growing use of statistical methods and the study of mass economic phenomena. The author emphasizes the decisive role of Franciszek Bujak and Jan Rutkowski in the institutionalization of the discipline in the early twentieth century and in the formation of the Lwów and Poznań schools. After the disruption caused by the Second World War, economic history expanded rapidly through the growth of scientific institutions, the widening territorial and chronological scope of research, and, in the author’s interpretation, the spread of historical materialism, which broadened research questions and changed patterns of causal explanation. The article concludes that a distinct Polish school of economic history emerged from earlier traditions and gained a significant position in international scholarship. Further progress, however, requires more systematic comparative research, more precise statistical methods, and closer integration between economic history and economic theory.