18th century
Abolition of the Council of the Four Lands
1764·Pologne
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Jewish autonomy suppressed by the Diet, poll tax henceforth levied head by head, direct fiscal persecution
The Convocation Diet abolished the Council of the Four Lands, the assembly that had represented the Jewish communities of the Crown for two centuries and distributed the poll tax among them. The measure was fiscal before it was political: the treasury wished to collect the tax head by head, without going through an institution that negotiated its amount and spread its burden. The Jews of Poland lost in it the body that arbitrated their disputes, ordered their finances, and carried their voice before the king. What remained of the kehillot was left in the hands of creditors and starostes, and the indebtedness of the communities, already heavy, became beyond remedy.
- Period :
- 18th century
- Type :
- Persecution
- Region :
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Country :
- Pologne
Israel Halpern, *Pinkas Va'ad Arba Aratsot* ; Simon Doubnov, *Histoire des Juifs de Russie et de Pologne* ; Gershon David Hundert, *Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century*.