Agricultural Productivity in the Western Borderlands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Second Half of the Sixteenth Century)
Maciej Kwiatkowski
University of Bialystok
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ORCID: 0000–0001–8889–8086
Hungarian Historical Review Volume 13 Issue 3 (2024): 431-445 DOI 10.38145/2024.3.431
The purpose of this article is to determine the grain yields in the royal manors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th and 17th centuries. The manorial system in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania appeared with the land reform in the mid-16th century (Volok Reform), when the three-field system was introduced here. However, there were far fewer manor farms in Lithuania than in Poland, but they were very large. Most of them produced grain for export based on peasant labor force. The inventories of the royal estates give account on the seed demand and yields of the most important cereals: rye, oats and wheat. The analysis of more than a dozen manors showed varying yields in Lithuanian estates (Grodno Starosty, Brest Ekonomy and Kobrin Ekonomy), which were due to natural environmental conditions, as well as elemental disasters or human activity.
Keywords: grain yield, productivity, 16‒17th-century Lithuania, volok reform, manors