ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the seventeenth century the long-term agrarian boom came to an abrupt end. Prices had been going up for decades. Land was cleared, farming was intensified, territory was reclaimed from the sea, and agriculture in the east of Europe was reorganized. Trade turnover accelerated and the trading area expanded. Ever-growing quantities of grain from the Vistula basin and increasing numbers of cattle from the land bordering the corn belt flowed into the cities of the west. A fièvre agricole, as d’Avenel put it (1894-1926, 1:28) seized our ancestors during the last years of the boom. The supply of farm produce began to approach the demand. A few good harvests - in the years 1598, 1599 and 1600 - were enough to bring in a prolonged fall of prices. 1
