Public defence of thesis: The art of being someone in 17th century Gdansk
Michal Salamonik has spent four and a half years searching through archives and libraries around Europe, building up a picture of Francesco De Gratta, a royal postmaster, trader, and careerist in early-modern Europe.
Gdansk in the 1600s: a flourishing trading post in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with one of the Baltic Sea’s most significant ports. This is where Francesco De Gratta lived from 1613 to 1676. He was born in Gdansk but was a second-generation immigrant, with a father from the northern part of what is now Italy. It is this De Gratta that Michal Salamonik’s doctoral thesis, “In Their Majesties’ Service: The Career of Francesco De Gratta (1613-1676) as a Royal Servant and Trader in Gdansk” is about.
“This thesis is about Francesco De Gratta’s financial and administrative career. How he climbs, both in his career and socially. How he gets more and more power, how his fortune grows – and which strategies he uses to get there,” says Michal Salamonik, researcher in history at Södertörn University.
A tour of European archives
In the hunt to paint a picture of Francesco De Gratta, his career and the legacy he left to his children, Michal Salamonik has travelled to a great number of archives and libraries around Europe. He has examined family archives, read private correspondence and royal charters, gone through accounts, estate inventories and inheritances, read official documents about the mint and postal authorities – to take just a few of many examples. He has studies handwritten 17th century documents in Polish, German, Italian and Latin.
“It’s been a long process, but also really fascinating. Starting to look through an archive is a really special feeling, you don’t know what you’re going to find,” says Michal Salamonik.
Postmaster De Gratta
The royal postal service in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was very important to Francesco De Gratta. He started a career as a postmaster in 1649. Five years later, De Gratta was named head postmaster in Gdansk and, in 1661, he became postmaster general for four provinces in Poland-Lithuania (Royal Prussia, Courland, Semigallia and Livonia).
“The postal service was a vital instrument for De Gratta when it came to creating a large social network and important contacts. Among other things, he came into close contact with, and helped, Polish kings and queens, and he became a significant person in Gdansk for the court,” says Michal Salamonik.
Loans and potash
Francesco De Gratta used a number of other strategies to achieve success and root himself and his family among the elites of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He founded an extensive credit business in the 1660s. De Gratta loaned out funds that were used to build up a functioning mint authority in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, thus making sections of the nobility and royal family dependent on him.
He was also determined to ensure that his daughters would marry the “right people”. In the 1660s, De Gratta became an agent for a successful company in the international potash trade, which was owned by the merchant Jan Wawrzyniec Wodzicki. When his daughter, Anna Maria, eventually married Wodzicki, Francesco De Gratta became a part-owner of the company.
“De Gratta earned a lot of money from trading. He was a very rich man when he died,” says Michal Salamonik.
Salamonik has also studied Francesco De Gratta’s legacy and how it influenced his heirs’ social status – among other things, De Gratta’s were taken into the Polish nobility shortly after his death.
Salamonik has also studied Francesco De Gratta’s legacy and how it influenced his heirs’ social status – among other things, De Gratta’s were taken into the Polish nobility shortly after his death.
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