Path to Central Bank in Poland: The Duchy of Warsaw Background and Purpose

The Duchy of Warsaw was client state of French Empire. A lot of studies are already devoted to the Duchy of Warsaw, but they are still some branches of history that requires additional studies – one of them is economic area which include my research topic – central banking. This thesis investigate legal proposal of central bank in the Duchy and because of insufficient amount archival documents that are missing due to being destroyed in II world war, I am also building proper background in different areas that could help explain the reasons why there was an idea to establish central bank in the duchy and how it could be possible. In order to answer that I described economic situation of the Duchy from domestic and international perspectives, which include economic condition of the Duchy and the Duchies citizens. French influence which I do believe was crucial to inspire such an idea, which not only include independence of Poland from partition in 1795 but also social, legal and administration changes. On the other hand being French client state forced the Duchy to participate in the Continental Blockade and participating in two wars (1809 and 1812) which eventually transfer Duchy into Russian control and after 1815, it became Congress Kingdom with personal union with Russian Empire. In order to get right picture of such complex issue, I used various sources from economic analysis to understand state perspective of unstable economic situation of the Duchy but also to show those condition form regural citizen perspective , through history of legislation to bring the concept of continuity of the law from the Duchy of the Warsaw to the Congress Kingdom, which include legal acts brought by Napoleon to the Duchy like Code de Commerce or Code Civil. By knowing the background of why the idea for central bank was created in the Duchy as well as knowing other political and social factors and compare it to the first central bank in Poland – Bank of Poland (1828), it can be told how advanced this project was and what make it different from other proposition in this thesis. This research, I do believe also create base for further research about central banking and banking relations in Europe.