Table of Contents

Introduction. Backwardness: The peasant family as an economic unit in the Polish feudal economy of the eighteenth century; Between submission and violence: peasant resistance in the Polish manorial economy of the eighteenth century; The Polish economy and the evolution of dependency; Could a Polish noble become an entrepreneur? Mentality, market and capital; The economy of the Polish Kingdom: a question of dependence; Globalization and Eastern Europe: 1870-1914, 1970-2000; Poland and the West: in or out? Modernization: Transition to market in a comparative perspective: a historian's point of view; Reforming weak states and deficient bureaucracies; Modernization from above: the end of the road? Leviathan exhausted: ideas on the state of the post-communist transformation; New solidarities? Market change and social cohesion in a historical perspective; Incomplete demise: reflections on the welfare state in Poland after communism; Trajectories of East European transformation: global influence and local legacies. Index.

About the Author

Jacek Kochanowicz is Professor of Economic History at Warsaw University, Poland.