Uwagi Tygodniowe Warszawskie ku powszechnemu pożytkowi przełożone o pomnożeniu ekonomii w Królestwie Polskim [Weekly Warsaw Comments Dedicated to the General Benefit and the Multiplication of the Economy in the Polish Kingdom] was the first Polish periodical fully dedicated to the subject of agricultural development. 52 weekly issues were published between December 7, 1768 and December 23, 1769. Prior to this, agricultural development received only scattered attention in the Polish press.

Uwagi Tygodniowe Warszawskie  carried articles dealing with land cultivation, plants, agricultural botany, mechanization of agriculture, and agricultural economics. It occasionally covered beekeeping and veterinary medicine, but never discussed animal husbandry. In a number of articles, the author(s) advocated crop rotation over the outdated three-field crop, recommended the use of green fertilizers (calamus, vetch, clover) and the use of sowing meadows. Similar to contemporary almanacs, the journal provided a detailed schedule of farm activities for the whole year.

The publisher and author of the articles used the pseudonym Sincerus. He was a foreigner who had lived in Poland for several years prior to the publication of Uwagi Tygodniowe Warszawskie and knew the state of its agriculture very well. Sincerus is believed to have been a Frenchman, Stefan Chardon de Rieule/Reule (d. 1785), a military man and a member of the Masonic lodges. He originated from a French Huguenot family which settled in Saxony. He arrived in Poland during the rule of August III (1733-1763). In 1759 he was appointed a colonel of the Polish Crown Army and three years later was promoted to the rank of major general. During the reign of Stanisław August Poniatowski (1764-1795), he was in charge of buildings and manufacturing plants on the royal estates. He published works on agricultural topics that resembled articles in Uwagi Tygodniowe Warszawskie. He also published Mémoire de l’agriculture en général et de l’agriculture de Pologne en particulier [About Agriculture in General, and Especially about Agriculture in Poland] (1764) which was also issued in a Polish translation: O gospodarstwie ziemiańskim w powszechności, a osobliwie o gospodarstwie ziemiańskim w Polszcze (1767). The book dealt with botanical and agricultural ideas and terminology and was introduced in Polish schools. In 1777,  the king awarded Rieule with a medal for foreign contributors to the work of Poland's National Commission on Education.  

Uwagi Tygodniowe Warszawskie , which was published in a rectangular format in 4º, was only the second periodical in Poland to include an illustration. A diagram of a plow was pictured on an inserted page in issue number 8 (25 January 1769).

The bound volume now in the holdings of the New York Public Library was acquired in 1949. It is the oldest Polish periodical in the NYPL’s collection. It carries the handwritten notes of the previous owner(s) and some parts of the text are underlined in red pencil.

For further reading:

• Gomółka, Bolesław. "Stefan Chardon De Rieule jako prekursor fizjologii roślin w Polsce," Wszechświat no. 6 (1979): 132-133.
• Hayto, Ligia, "Posiedzenia naukowe Zespołu Historii Nauk Rolniczych," Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki 19:3 (1974): 618-619.
• Hryniewiecki B., Stefan Chardon de Rieule i jego prace przyrodniczo-rolnicze (Warszawa, 1947).
• Kamińska, Dorota. "The Design of 18th Century Polish Popular Science Magazines,"  Visnyk L'vivs'koho universytetu. Seriia knyhoznavstvo, bibliotekoznavstvo ta informatsiini tekhnolohiï no. 11/12 (2017): 150-164.
• Wołoszyński, R. "Chardon de Rieule Etienne," in: Polski Słownik Biograficzny 31:2 [129] (1988): 294-296.