ABSTRACT
The main factor which shaped the economic and social development of East-Central Europe in the Early Modern period was the manorial-serf economy. Witold Kula developed an idea that the main cause of long-term changes in the Polish economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were trends in international commerce and prices. In spite of regional differences the economic choice made by the Polish nobility to develop the manorial-serf economy is quite understandable. The transition from the money rent economy to the manorial-serf economy brought about a significant change in the distribution of the national income to the advantage of the nobility. Coerced labour was becoming an increasingly valuable source of income. This improvement in the economic position of the Polish nobility during the sixteenth century was one of the necessary conditions for the development of the parliamentary system and of the bloom of the Renaissance culture in Poland.
