Antoni Mączak

Antoni Mączak (30 March 1928 in Lwów – 6 March 2003 in Warsaw) was a Polish historian specializing in the economic, political and social history of Poland and history of Europe.

Antoni Maczak was born to Lwów in 1928. During the Second World War he fought in the Gray Ranks paramilitary Boy Scout units of the Polish resistance against the Nazis, and in the ranks of Home Army. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944. Captured, he remained a prisoner until Germans surrendered in 1945. He then studied at the University of Warsaw. In 1981 he achieved the rank of professor. From 1981 to 1987 he was director of the History Institute of the University of Warsaw. Fellow of Collegium Invisibile.Corresponding Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has lectured at many academic centers in the world, including at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Notre Dame, McGill University.

Antoni Maczak has written much about economic history of Poland and on comparative history of Poland and Europe. He also wrote on the systems of authority in Europe, especially between the 15th and 18th centuries, and on the clientelism in history. His 1980s book Governing and governed (Rządzący i Rządzeni) was considered one of the most important historical texts in contemporary Poland, breaking with the past Marxist look on history that until than dominated in historiography in the People's Republic of Poland. In the English speaking world he is best known for his Travel in Early Modern Europe (Życie codzienne w podróżach po Europie XVI–XVII wieku) (by Antoni Maczak and Ursula Phillips).