In: K. Brzechczyn (ed.), Idealization XIII: Modeling in History (Poznań Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, vol. 97), pp. 231-268. Amsterdam/New York, NY: Rodopi, 2009. Krzysztof Brzechczyn THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF CENTRAL EUROPE IN LIGHT OF THE CASCADENESS OF THE HISTORICAL PROCESS 1. Introduction Economic dualism in modern Europe has been considered one of the greatest paradoxes in the history of the European continent in the late 16 th and the early 17 th century, and one that has permanently influenced the contemporary shape of Central Europe. However, distinct features in the development of Central European countries such as Poland, Bohemia and Hungary came into existence as far back as in early feudal times, i.e., from the 9 th to 12 th centuries. Feudalism in those countries followed a different course from that in Western Europe. Central European societies remained outside Roman influences and the Carolinian succession, where private ownership of land and the system of suzerain-vassal dependencies were formed. Instead, a system of prince’s law developed in Central Europe, under which the peasantry was inferior to the ruling class by virtue of public (prince’s) and not private law. 1 In the 12 th and 13 th centuries that system started to disappear gradually in all Central European countries. By way of bestowing immunities first upon the Church and then upon individual feudal lords, the prince’s authority granted land together with peasants living on it. It followed that the prince gave up his economic and legal interests in the land and the peasantry. In the course of such processes, the feudal class, typical of Western European societies, came into existence in that region. From the 13 th to 15 th centuries both parts of Europe, eastern and western, developed analogically: towns expanded, the monetary economy prevailed over kind economy, compulsory service was being replaced with rent, and the feudal control over the peasantry lessened. But since 1 Modzelewski (1975) and (1987).