Losing Influence: The Changing Role of the Merchant Community of Danzig in the Timber Value Chain (1919–1939)

Abstract The article highlights the changing role of the merchant community of Danzig after the establishment of the Second Republic of Poland and the Free City of Danzig. The research question is both economic and political-institutional. It tries to understand how the merchants’ community reacted to a different political and institutional framework after 1918, which limited many initiatives of the economic and business actors of the Free City. While until World War I, local merchants controlled and directed the whole timber value chain, after 1918, they were just the final ring of a long chain in the hands of Polish forest owners, including the State administration. Despite their professionalism and experience, their autonomy was reduced to their long-term contacts with business partners in Great Britain.