The shifting attitudes to sources and traditional paradigms of social history and history of the early modern period culture, and to problems of individuals and groups, are considered here. The author indicates discussion fi elds and specifi c results of work carried out by research groups (mainly French and German ones). He indicates trends and tendencies in discovering individuals in presenting historical events from the perspective of a collective hero

Among Gierowski's research, an important place was occupied by works on the past of Silesia. He started Silesian studies that fit into socio‑economic history. He also published syntheses and source editions devoted to the history of Silesia. His research was continued by Józef Lesz-czyński and Krystyn Matwijowski. Leszczyński continued and developed his reflection on the social and legal history of Silesia. Among them, he examined the problems of peasant revolts, the situation of the poorest in Silesia during the Thirty Years' War and after its end. He studied Polish‑Silesian relations in the 17th and 18th centuries. Matwijowski conducted research on the history of Pietism and the history of everyday life in Silesia and works devoted to the past of Lower Silesian towns. Gierowski's research is inspired by Jerzy Maroń, the author of a book devoted to the Thirty Years' War in Silesia, Leszek Ziątkowski, authors part of the history of Wrocław and books about the past of Jews in Silesia. Jacek Dębicki deals with the history of culture in Silesia. Daniel Wojtucki develops studies on socio‑cultural phenomena in Silesia and Lusatia.

The article is the first presentation of Professor Gabriele De Rosa and his view of Italian socio-religious history. As it is the very first article about De Rosa to appear in Poland, it contains basic biographic information and an overview of the most important of his ideas.

The aim of this article is to present the understanding of social history of Jerzy Topolski, from the theoretical side and as it was used in practical research work. The source basis, aside from the few direct quotes from the historian from Poznan on social history, are mainly analyses of his selected original works and works edited by him. The article also takes note of the discussion surrounding the term ‘social history’ itself and the research scope of social history as a historic discipline or sub-discipline which took place in the second half of the 20th century, which is the period in which Topolski published his works.

The aim of this paper is to partially capture the state of theoretical debate amongst Polish historians on their own discipline in the second half of 20th century. To achieve this we analyse the content of the first twenty five volumes of journal Historyka published in the period when Celina Bobińska was its editor-in-chief (1967–1995). We assume that Historyka – the only journal dedicated to the theory of history and history of historiography – was situated in the centre of exchanges on academic historical practices. We do not treat its content as a reflection of contemporary studies in the theory of history, but as a dominant position in the self-understanding of the discipline competing with other utterances. The paper is a reconstruction of this offer, which is composed of the definitions of subjects of historical studies, descriptions of productive methods, hierarchy of masters of historical writings and their influential books.

This article concerns the mutual expanding and enriching influence of the social history and historical demographics research issues, visible in popular historiography, at least since the end of the 20th century. The author uses selected achievements of international historiography as a backdrop for a presentation of the main achievements of Polish historical demographers, who conducted modern studies into the forms and living patterns in the territory of Poland ranging from the late mediaeval times up to the 20th century, on a larger scale than ever in the past. The article highlights the presence of new sociocultural and demographic issues such as areas of solitary females, location and significance of the elderly, occurrence of the life cycle servants phenomenon in the Old-Polish society.

The article presents the author’s perspective on the achievements of Polish historiography in the field of economic, social and historical demography of the pre-industrial period. It also suggests new directions of research that would relate to trends, methods and theories prevalent in world historiography.

The article attempts to evaluate Polish historiography dealing with the early modern period, published since 1989, the date marking the political transition in Poland. The transition has affected the way in which history has been practised in recent years, with a clear alteration in the subjectmatters and topics dealt with. Political history and the history of towns/cities and the bourgeoisie are beyond the scope of this discussion and assessment.

The article describes features of Jerzy Topolski’s narrative in economic history. It focuses on four important threads and moments in his research on this field: great manor property, estimation of national income in the history of Poland, the birth of capitalism in Europe, social dependencies in the manor economy system.