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Title: $Mojżeszowicz, Gordon, Ickowicz: The Jewish Economic Elites in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century)
Abstract: The Jews formed the largest religious-ethnic minority group in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; 1 it is estimated that they accounted for circa 9 per cent of the country's population in the late eighteenth century.They mostly formed part of urban populations, with a share of 40 per cent to 50 per cent among the country's burghers.The Jews played a signifi cant part in the economic life, monopolising the taproom income leaseholds in private estates, and holding a strong position in trading operations.The history of the Commonwealth's Jewry has enjoyed increasing interest in the last dozen-or-so years, yielding studies on the minority's history and culture, and on its functioning within a Christian society. 2 Yet, even if read cursorily, these studies attest that the Jews 1 Jerzy Topolski, 'On the Role of the Jews in the Urbanization of Poland in the Early Modern Period', in Andrzej K. Paluch (ed.),The Jews in Poland (Cracow, 1992), 47; Jakub Goldberg, Juden in Polen und Litauen.Warum und auf welche Weise geht man ihrer Geschichte nach (Leipzig, 1996).I have not included the Greek-Catholic Ruthenians among the religious-ethnic minorities.For more on the Commonwealth's religious-ethnic minorities, see Józef Gierowski, 'Rzeczpospolita wielu narodów i wyznań', in idem, Na szlakach Rzeczypospolitej w nowożytnej Europie (Cracow, 2008), 81-6.2 On the development of Jewish historiography, see Moshe Rosman, 'Między koniecznością a modą.Uwagi nad przeszłością i przyszłością badań nad dziejami Żydów w Polsce', in Marcin Wodziński and Anna Michałowska-Mycielska (eds.),