Already in the interwar period, the Polish school of social and economic history was born, whose founders were Franciszek Bujak and Jan Rutkowski, and whose mainstay became the journal Rocznik Dziejów Społecznych i Gospodarczych (Social and Economic History Annals), published by them since 1931. In part, it was the fruit of the original thought of the creators, and in part it drew inspiration from the French experience of the Annales school, established a little earlier, created by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, and taking its name from the journal "Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale," founded in 1929.

The journal was founded in Lviv in 1931 and was published there until 1938. Later it was published in Poznan, and from volume 56/57 (1996/1997) in Warsaw.

The publisher of the journal has been the Poznań Society for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences throughout the post-war period. Since 2004, the journal's co-publisher has been the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences.