From Interest Lenders and Merchants to Estate Managers: Changes in the Economy and Demography of Jews in Poland–Lithuania 1500-1850

This lecture discusses the dynamics of demographic distribution and the peculiar occupational structure of the Jews in Poland-Lithuania during the early modern period. While documenting and explaining the shift from Jewish residence in royal cities to private noble-owned urban settlements, and the shift from moneylending to property management, it shows the profound influence of the exogenously defined legal and institutional framework on Jewish mode of settlement and occupational structure. Consequently, it argues that Jewish adjustment to and symbiosis with the peculiar legal and institutional system in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth fueled the overall economic structure and demographic distribution of Jews in Poland-Lithuania from 1550 until the collapse of property rights structure circa 1850, about 50 years after the partitions of Poland-Lithuania.