Social Science Research Council

"Between Amsterdam and Riga: Networks of Jewish Merchants in Warsaw, 1750-1815"

In my dissertation, I will discuss the commercial networks created by Jewish merchant families in Warsaw between 1750 and 1815. I will argue against the long-prevailing narrative of a decline of Polish Jewry in the eighteenth century and demonstrate that Jews played a crucial role in the Polish economy as merchants and suppliers. Presumably, Jews contributed significantly to the transformation of the Polish economy towards industrialization. By exploring the commercial networks, as well as the role of merchants as political and cultural agents, I want to go beyond the question posed by Max Weber and Werner Sombart nearly a century ago: were religion in general, and Judaism in particular, crucial factors for the emergence of capitalism?

This is a historical project that will rely upon archival material and library collections in a number of archives in Germany, Poland, the Ukraine, Latvia and the Netherlands, as well as archives in Israel. I will explore five different themes based on examples from a number of important merchant families in Warsaw. The first will consider the prosopography of Jewish family and commercial networks and explore their ties to the Polish king, Polish nobles and non-Jewish merchants. In the second theme, I will look at the political involvement of Jewish merchants in questions of Jewish reform and emancipation that emerged at the end of the eighteenth century. The third will be the influence of the religious attitudes and observance of Jewish merchants on their commercial activities. In the fourth area, I will examine the transfer of culture through merchants and trade. Finally, I will interpret the commercial activities of Jewish merchants in Poland in light of the general economic development and the beginning of industrialization at the turn of the nineteenth century. In this way, my dissertation will make a contribution not only to Jewish history, but also to general European economic and social history.