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> The Arenda System
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The terms arenda, arendar, arrendator remain undefined in most English language dictionaries, includings Webster's Unabridged.
One defintion (from Encyclopedia Polska, Kluszczynski publ., Krakow, 1996 - info-poland's translation].
Arenda (lat. arrendare) - lease of estates, farmland, mills, hunting or fishing rights, etc. At times this term was used for the rights to collect taxes and dues. The arenda contracts were usually for three years, which corresponded to the system of triannual field rotation. During the 16-18th Centuries it referred primarily to the rental of whole estates or complexes of estates. In time the term arendar became limited in common parlance to Jews renting inns.
Arendar or Arrendator The individual leasing the property.

Another definition (from the Modern Jewish History course at the University of Virginia):
Arenda: The arenda has been defined by the University of Virginia in its course on European Jewry as a system of leasing property in early modern Poland in which in exchange for a predetermined rent the lessor agreed to transfer to the leasee control over property or rights; thus, enabling the lessee to pocket any income produced from the leased property or rights. The arenda provided a livilhood for a significant proportion of Polish Jewish families.
Arendars: An arendar, or sometimes called an arendator, was the leasee in an arenda contract.

In practice, the arenda was a sort of no-holds-barred lease for three to five years of landholdings, mills, estates, inns, whole villages, towns or even groups of towns. Although the subject is hardly remarked upon in histories of Poland, during its hayday in the 16th through the 18th Centuries, the arenda system likely played a large role in the development of relations between the Jewish and the Polish or Ukrainian communities.

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4,790 words The impetus for the site was the writing of an article on the subject. It has transmuted into a project in progress under the following headings:
  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Jews Who Were Arendars or Magnates
  • 3 Magnates’ Estates
  • 4 Arenda Enterprises
  • 5 Arenda Socioeconomic Impacts On Jews
  • 6 Clues For Identifying Ancestral Arendars
  • Appendix A Definitions
  • Appendix B Examples of Arendas
  • Appendix C References
2,270 words Enblish translation of a book written in the 1970s by a faculty member of the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv. Published in 1999, the book is enquiry into the reasons for the Khmelnytsky (Polish: Chmielnicki) rebellion of 1648 in the Ukraine. The principal one, according Shestopal was imposition of the arenda contract, of which one instance is reproduced, upon the Ukrainian population.
825 words Article from the Encyclopedia Judaica
400 words In the linked section, the role of the arenda system in generating resentment of Jews by the Ukrainina population is discussed.
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