The balance of polish sea trade with the west, 1565–1646

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Abstract
The balance of trade is generally regarded as a major item only on an obsolete mercantilist agenda where it is discussed rather as an element in an abstract doctrine than as a real economic problem. Polish historians would follow the same line as their colleagues elsewhere if the economic situation of the Polish Commonwealth at the beginning of the seventeenth century did not compel them to lay emphasis on a supposed change in money flows. It has been established beyond doubt that the early seventeenth century was a most crucial period in Polish economic and socio-political development; its importance for Poland was much greater and more portentous than Ruggiero Romano has shown it to be for Western Europe.1 A deep crisis in the serf-labour economy, Polish towns and cities generally checked in their development, the state weak against external foes and its own magnates—these signa temporis were to continue to characterise Polish history until the final days of independence in the late eighteenth century. The Polish experience was uniquely acute because the structural crisis of her economy and the political crisis of the state coincided with the general European depression. In his discussion of the period 1619-1622 Romano stressed the role played by the money market and the credit system, both so highly developed in the leading countries of the West: in Polish commercial relations, however, while the turnover of goods was lively, the money market retained rather primitive forms.2 In this context an important change in what had been a highly favourable trade balance must have caused deep disruption to the economic life of the country.

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    Published by Springer Nature ,1958