Serfdom
Serfdom was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed during late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century and became the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems.
Unlike slaves, serfs could not be bought, sold, or traded individually, though they could, depending on the area, be sold together with land. Actual slaves, such as the kholops in Russia, could, by contrast, be traded, abused with no rights over their own bodies, could not leave the land they were bound to, and marry only with their lord's permission.
Serfs who occupied a plot of land were required to work for the lord of the manor who owned that land. In return, they were entitled to protection, justice, and the right to cultivate certain fields within the manor to maintain their own subsistence. Serfs were often required not only to work on the lord's fields, but in his mines and forests and to labour to maintain roads. The manor formed the basic unit of feudal society, and the lord of the manor and the villeins, and to a certain extent the serfs, were bound legally: by taxation in the case of the former, and economically and socially in the latter.
The decline of serfdom in Western Europe has sometimes been attributed to the widespread plague epidemic of the Black Death, which reached Europe in 1347 and caused massive fatalities, disrupting society. Conversely, serfdom grew stronger in Central and Eastern Europe, where it had been less common. In Eastern Europe, the institution persisted until the mid-19th century. Serfdom in Russia gradually evolved from the usual European form to become de facto slavery, though it continued to be called serfdom; one way or another, reforms were carried out to reduce powers of the landowners. In the Habsburg monarchy, serfdom was abolished by the 1781 Serfdom Patent. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. Prussia declared serfdom unacceptable in its General State Laws for the Prussian States in 1792 and abolished in 1807, in the wake of the Prussian Reform Movement. In Finland, Norway, and Sweden, feudalism was never fully established, and serfdom did not exist; in Denmark, serfdom-like institutions did exist in the stavnsbånd, between 1733 and 1788 and its vassal Iceland.
Also in countries outside Europe there have been descriptions of serfdom. James Lee and Cameron Campbell describe the Chinese Qing dynasty as also maintaining a form of serfdom. Melvyn Goldstein described Tibet as having serfdom until 1959 but this is contested. Bhutan is described as having officially abolished serfdom by 1959.
The United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery prohibits serfdom as a practice similar to slavery.
History
Social institutions similar to serfdom were known in ancient times. The status of the helots in the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta resembled that of the medieval serfs. By the 3rd century AD, the Roman Empire faced a labour shortage. Large Roman landowners increasingly relied on Roman freemen, acting as tenant farmers, instead of slaves to provide labour.These tenant farmers, eventually known as coloni, saw their condition steadily erode. Because the tax system implemented by Diocletian assessed taxes based on both land and the inhabitants of that land, it became administratively inconvenient for peasants to leave the land where they were counted in the census.
Medieval serfdom really began with the breakup of the Carolingian Empire around the 10th century. During this period, powerful feudal lords encouraged the establishment of serfdom as a source of agricultural labour. Serfdom, indeed, was an institution that reflected a fairly common practice whereby great landlords were assured that others worked to feed them and were held down, legally and economically, while doing so.
This arrangement provided most of the agricultural labour throughout the Middle Ages. Slavery persisted right through the Middle Ages, but it was rare.
In the later Middle Ages, serfdom began to disappear west of the Rhine even as it spread through eastern Europe. Serfdom reached Eastern Europe centuries later than Western Europeit became dominant around the 15th century. In many of these countries serfdom was abolished during the Napoleonic invasions of the early 19th century, though in some it persisted until mid- or late- 19th century.
Etymology
The word serf originated from the Middle French serf and was derived from the Latin servus. In Late Antiquity and most of the Middle Ages, what are now called serfs were usually designated in Latin as coloni. As slavery gradually disappeared and the legal status of servi became nearly identical to that of the coloni, the term changed meaning into the modern concept of "serf". The word "serf" is first recorded in English in the late 15th century, and came to its current definition in the 17th century. Serfdom was coined in 1850.Dependency and the lower orders
Serfs had a specific place in feudal society, as did barons and knights: in return for protection, a serf would reside upon and work a parcel of land within the manor of his lord. Thus, the manorial system exhibited a degree of reciprocity.One rationale held that serfs and freemen "worked for all" while a knight or baron "fought for all" and a churchman "prayed for all"; thus everyone had a place. The serf was the worst fed and rewarded. However, unlike slaves, they had certain rights in land and property.
A lord of the manor could not sell his serfs as a Roman might sell his slaves. On the other hand, if he chose to dispose of a parcel of land, the serfs associated with that land stayed with it to serve their new lord; simply speaking, they were implicitly sold in mass and as a part of a lot. This unified system preserved for the lord long-acquired knowledge of practices suited to the land. Further, a serf could not abandon his lands without permission, nor did he possess a saleable title in them.
Initiation
A freeman became a serf usually through force or necessity. Sometimes the greater physical and legal force of a local magnate intimidated freeholders or allodial owners into dependency. Often a few years of crop failure, a war, or brigandage might leave a person unable to make his own way. In such a case, he could strike a bargain with a lord of a manor. In exchange for gaining protection, his service was required: in labour, produce, or cash, or a combination of all. These bargains became formalised in a ceremony known as "bondage", in which a serf placed his head in the lord's hands, akin to the ceremony of homage where a vassal placed his hands between those of his overlord. These oaths bound the lord and his new serf in a feudal contract and defined the terms of their agreement. Often these bargains were severe.A 7th-century Anglo Saxon "Oath of Fealty" states:
To become a serf was a commitment that encompassed all aspects of the serf's life. The children born to serfs inherited their status, and were considered born into serfdom. By taking on the duties of serfdom, people bound themselves and their progeny.
Class system
The social class of the peasantry can be differentiated into smaller categories. These distinctions were often less clear than suggested by their different names. Most often, there were two types of peasants:Lower classes of peasants, known as cottars or bordars, generally comprising the younger sons of villeins; vagabonds; and slaves, made up the lower class of workers.
Coloni
The Colonus system of the late Roman Empire can be considered the predecessor of Western European feudal serfdom.Freemen
Freemen, or free tenants, held their land by one of a variety of contracts of feudal land-tenure and were essentially rent-paying tenant farmers who owed little or no service to the lord, and had a good degree of security of tenure and independence. In parts of 11th-century England freemen made up only 10% of the peasant population, and in most of the rest of Europe their numbers were also small.Ministeriales
were hereditary unfree knights tied to their lord, that formed the lowest rung of nobility in the Holy Roman Empire.Villeins
In England, after the Norman conquest of 1066, an unfree tenant who held their land subject to providing agricultural and other services to their lord, was described as a villein. Villeins had limited rights and were tied to their lord. However they did havemore rights and were of a higher status than the lowest serf. They had to work on the demensne in return for receiving small plots of land, to support their family.
Villeins were not freemen, for example they and their daughters were not allowed to marry without their lords permission.
They could not move away without their lord's consent and the acceptance of the lord to whose manor they proposed to migrate to. Villeins were generally able to hold their own property, unlike slaves.Villeinage, as opposed to other forms of serfdom, was most common in Continental European feudalism, where land ownership had developed from roots in Roman law.
A variety of kinds of villeinage existed in Europe in the Middle Ages. Half-villeins received only half as many strips of land for their own use and owed a full complement of labour to the lord, often forcing them to rent out their services to other serfs to make up for this hardship. Villeinage was not a purely uni-directional exploitative relationship. In the Middle Ages, land within a lord's manor provided sustenance and survival, and being a villein guaranteed access to land, and crops secure from theft by marauding robbers. Landlords, even where they were legally entitled to do so, rarely evicted villeins because of the value of their labour. Villeinage was much preferable to being a vagabond, a slave, or an unlanded labourer.
In many medieval countries, a villein could gain freedom by escaping from a manor to a city or borough and living there for more than a year; but this action involved the loss of land rights and agricultural livelihood, a prohibitive price unless the landlord was especially tyrannical or conditions in the village were unusually difficult.
In medieval England, two types of villeins existed – villeins regardant that were tied to land and villeins in gross that could be traded separately from land.