ABSTRACT
Foreign settlers, principally Germans, but Flemings and Walloons and Jews as well, all contributed in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the acceleration of progress with regard both to the volume of production and to the quality of urban life. The foreign immigrants were not evenly distributed in the Polish lands. The first founding act provided only for the appointment of a scultetus and exempted settlers, usually but not always foreigners from Polish law which remained binding on the native inhabitants of the settlement. The early charters were a far cry to the charters establishing a municipal self-government. The changing pattern of urban occupations, the development of crafts and trading, the transformations of the social structure of the burghers and the influence exerted by foreign town charters, brought about a far reaching reform in the layout of Polish towns.
