Usefulness of the History of Prices in Economy. Research of the Late-Feudal Poland

Abstract

The history of prices in late-feudal Poland has generated substantial research since the late eighteenth century, culminating in the eleven-volume Bujak price series published in the interwar period. The methodological foundations and limitations of this series have been assessed in divergent ways - most recently and critically by Witold Kula, whose remarks in The Economic Theory of the Feudal System (1962) risk discouraging researchers from using the material.

This article evaluates the usefulness of the Bujak price series for economic research on late-feudal Poland, supplements Kula's critique with information about the conceptions and methods underlying individual volumes, and reviews the ways in which Polish and foreign historians have made substantive use of the price materials.

The assessment draws on the eleven volumes of the Bujak series (covering prices in Lwów, Cracow, Warsaw, Lublin, and Gdańsk from the 16th to the early 20th century), on critical reviews by Rutkowski, Szwankowski, and Lebrun, and on the subsequent uses of the series by Kula, Wyczański, Rychlikowa, Slicher van Bath, Supple, and Braudel and Spooner.

The analysis shows that the Bujak price series, despite recognized shortcomings, constitutes the main achievement of Polish price history research and provides a rich body of nominal prices and their silver-equivalents covering 1500-1914. Kula himself used the series to compute group indices, to investigate secular and short-term price movements, and to calculate terms of trade for particular social groups. Wyczański exploited it to analyze price formation in manorial estates and costs of living; Rychlikowa applied it to study commodity production and market conditions in Little Poland. Foreign historians including Braudel and Slicher van Bath incorporated Polish price data in European syntheses. Price materials are shown to be most valuable for research into market mechanisms and the connections between home and international markets in the late-feudal period.