Poland is presented as an example of how Eastern Europe’s integration into expanding Western markets could strengthen landlord power and intensify peasant labor obligations. The book uses changes in work owed at Korczyn to show how an export-oriented market economy could coexist with, and reinforce, coercive rural institutions.

Place in the East–West Divide

In the aftermath of the Black Death, landlords in Eastern Europe began taking over larger tracts of land, while towns remained weaker and less populous than those in Western Europe. Workers’ demands for greater freedom therefore met a different balance of power: rather than gaining room to maneuver, they saw existing freedoms encroached upon. Poland is situated within this broader regional contrast, not treated as an isolated case.

The political structure of Poland-Lithuania helps explain that contrast. Its powerful Szlachta, the elite class that even introduced elections for kings, exercised authority in a society dominated by rural serfs with little freedom of movement or economic opportunity. The book characterizes this as an extractive form of elite rule: the existence of elections for the monarch did not mean that the rural majority shared political power or economic freedom.

Export Demand and Labor Obligations

After 1500, Western European demand for agricultural goods, including grain and livestock, expanded. The scale of that trade connected Eastern European production to distant markets: 80 percent of Amsterdam’s rye imports came from the Elbe, Vistula, and Oder river valleys, and soon half of the Netherlands’ booming trade was with Eastern Europe. As Western demand rose, landlords tightened their control over labor in order to increase production.

Korczyn, Poland, gives this process a concrete measure. In 1533, all work performed for the lord there was paid. By 1600, nearly half of that work had become unpaid forced labor. The shift was not simply a change in the volume of trade: it marked a change in how the gains and burdens of agricultural production were distributed, as expanding demand was met through growing landlord control over workers.

The Second Serfdom and Its Significance

The book places Poland’s experience within the Second Serfdom, a system that became distinct from and more intense than serfdom’s earlier medieval form. Across Eastern Europe, landlords increased taxes on tenants’ own plots and claimed half of gross output; elsewhere, labor dues also rose sharply. Poland’s change at Korczyn thus forms part of a regional pattern in which agricultural exports supported market activity while workers bore increasingly coercive obligations.

By 1600, the divergence between Western and Eastern Europe had become profound. Western workers were increasingly free of feudal dues, fines, and regulations and were becoming part of a booming market economy. Eastern European serfs also produced for that market, but under coercion. Poland’s place in this account captures the central contrast: participation in commerce did not by itself create inclusive institutions, and Western demand could help deepen the systems of labor control that kept Eastern rural populations unfree.