Adam Teller, Money, Power, and Influence in Eighteenth-Century Lithuania: The Jews on the Radziwiłł Estates, Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press, 2016. 360 p. ISBN 978-080-4798-44-0

Abstract

in the 18th century. It is divided into six chapters, which can be separated into two different parts. The first three chapters deal mainly with demographic trends among Jews, the policy of noblelandowners towards Jewish settlements, the general urban landscape, and the economic institutions on the estates. Its main conclusions are that the landowners, members of the Radziwiłł family, were keen to bring Jews to their estates and to urban locations; the growth of the Jewish population corresponded well with the growing wealth and power of the Radziwiłł family; and the Jews became major wealth creators for the family's private towns, and instrumental in the complex administrative system that the family had set up.The next three chapters, which are the main part of the book, analyse different sectors of Jewish economic activity in the latifundia: estate and monopoly rights leases, together with trading activities. The uncommon leasing of estates to Jews is described in an almost micro-history approach, through the story of two Izckowicz brothers, Szmojło and Gdal, and their unrivalled success with the members of the Radziwiłł family. Teller describes skilfully the relationship between the two sides, showing how personal affections and economic opportunism could have put Jews almost at the same table with the mighty Radziwiłłs. Leasing monopoly rights (arenda), as the most common Jewish economic expertise in the latifundia,