Abstract

"Databasing Industrial Elites: Reconstructing the Manufacturing Networks of Russian Poland, 1904–1911"

Piotr Koryś, University of Warsaw (pkorys@uw.edu.pl), Tomasz Zarycki, University of Warsaw (t.zarycki@uw.edu.pl) and Szymon Talaga, University of Warsaw

This paper presents a relational database of the manufacturing industry and its owners in the Kingdom of Poland—the westernmost part of the Russian Empire—during the first decade of the twentieth century. Based on eight volumes of the Address Book of Factory Industry (1904–1911), the database transforms a highly heterogeneous source into structured prosopographic and economic data linking enterprises, owners, and managers. The databasing process re-vealed major challenges in connecting business registers with genealogical materials from other sources: the identification of individuals was often uncertain, their roles within compa-nies ambiguously defined, and their wealth difficult to assess. By integrating formal indicators such as capital and employment with relational dimensions of ownership, kinship, and mana-gerial ties, the project highlights how cooperation and competition together structured indus-trial networks. Preliminary analyses reveal the concentration of large-scale production in War-saw, Łódź, and the Dąbrowa Basin, and the emergence of a multinational bourgeoisie of Jew-ish, German, and Polish origin—both noble and non-noble. More broadly, the project demon-strates how prosopographic databasing can reconstruct the family-based structures of busi-ness elites and their relations with broader social and political elites. Of particular importance is the context of an autonomous region within a larger empire, whose economic role remains a matter of debate. The paper also underscores the interpretive challenges posed both by the fragmentary nature of historical evidence and by the inherent subjectivity of databasing itself—including the problem of presentism, that is, the tendency to project contemporary categories and hierarchies onto the past.