Others 1 an Economic Analysis of the Organization of Serfdom in Eastern Europe

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An Economic Analysis of the Organization of Serfdom in Eastern EuropeAuthor(s): Robert MillwardSource: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Sep., 1982), pp. 513-548Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2120604

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An Economic Analysis of the

Organization of Serfdom inEastern Europe

ROBERT MILLWARD

The rise of serfdom in the sixteenthcenturyundoubtedlyhas politicalexplana-tions, but the form that it took has economicexplanations.In particular, t tookthe form of forced laboron enlargedmanorial arms.The economicexplanation,buttressedwith evidence fromthe period, is thatan enserfed aborforce must bewatched more than free renters and the watching is best done in a manorialframework.The modelis statedformallyandits implications omparedpoint-by-point with the voluminousevidence for Polandand neighboring egions.

INTRODUCTION

T HE primaryconcern of this paper is with three questions. First,what explains serfdomin Eastern Europein the sixteenth, seven-

teenth, and eighteenthcenturies and in particularwhy did it take theform of corvee labor?Second, is there an economicexplanation or thecoexistence of productionby serf laboron demesne land with rents (inkind and in money), wage labor,andextensive peasant marketsales ofgrain?Third, in what way, if at all, is the organizationof serfdominEastern Europe connected with productionfor the market,and espe-cially for the exportmarket? t should be emphasized hat theconcern isnot with the causes of enserfment, whichprobably ie in a political and

sociologicalanalysisof thecohesiveness of the nobilityand the relationsof the nobility to territorialprinces andpeasants.The concern is ratheron the form serfdom took. The focus is on some of the majorgrain-producing parts of Eastern Europe, namely, East Elbian Germany(defined here as Brandenburg,Pomerania,Mecklenburg,Silesia), Prus-sia (usingthat term in the restrictivesense of WesternRoyalPrussiaandEasternDucal Prussia), the centralprovinces of Poland (GreatPoland,Masovia, Little Poland), and with less detail the rest of the Polish-Lithuanianstate. The growingevidence now available

and on whichthepaperdraws relates mainly to centralPolandand Prussia.The questionof why serfdomtook the form of corvee labor has rarely

been posed. One or two writers have explicitly recognizedthat on the

Journal of Economic History, Vol. XLII, No. 3 (Sept. 1982). ? The Economic HistoryAssociation. All rightsreserved.ISSN 0022-0507.

The authoris Professor in the Departmentof Economics, University of Salford,Salford M54WT,GreatBritain.Thanks or commentsandsuggestionsaredue to participants t theUniversityof Salford'sEconomics ResearchSeminarand at the Universityof Manchester'sModernHistory

Workshop,andto Donald N. McCloskeyin his editorialcapacity.

513



514 Millward

face of it an alternative to demesne-serf production could have beensimply increased rents in kind or money. Why not extract the profit

from forced immobility as a rent? Why is unpaid demesne laborassociated with enserfment?Zytkowicz has stated that demesne farm-ing was more profitable han what he calls "feudal rents" but does notexplain why.' Kula raises the issue and speculates that an increase inmoney rent was inhibited by the primitive degree of commercialexchange in the Polish economy; and in the same vein Rusinski andZytkowicz have suggested that money rents persisted or grew in areaswhere local markets were well developed.2 There are two problems

here. One is the evidence to be reviewed later. Many enserfed peasants,required now to pay labor dues rather than rents, in fact participatedextensively in marketsales of grain.Whererents did persist and grow-as in Royal Prussia or in areas near to towns-there are indicationsthatthese were paid by free peasants, not as demanded n the RusinskiandZytkowicz argumentby the serfs. Another problem s the logic: even ifit were the case that enserfed peasants paid money rents when localmarkets were well developed, in other areasa rent in kind mighteasily

have been extracted;the commercializationargument, n other words,cannot by itself explain what didhappen, namelythe growthof demesneproduction.

One further line of thought,and one which is exploredin this paper,stems from the element of work supervisionassociated with serfdom.Kay states that "demesne production ensured a greater degree ofcontrol over cereal production or exports."3This is suggestivebut notconclusive; what was therein production hat needed to be supervised?SimilarlyRusinski's suggestionthat the feudal lord's superiorityrelativeto wholesale merchants n largermarketswas due to his exemptionfromtolls and tariffs and his access to servile labor in transportcannot beused as an explanation of demesne production.4Why did lords notsimply act as merchants, exploitingthe largeincentivesinherent n self-directed peasant productionbut drawing both rents and merchantingprofits?Thatcertain advantagesaccruedto lordswith largeestates hasbeen extensively documented by Maczak and Kula.' But these are

l LeonidZytkowicz, "The Peasant'sFarmand the Landlord'sFarm n Poland rom the 16th othe Middleof the 18thCentury,"Journalof EuropeanEconomic History, 3(Spring1972),p. 137.

2 Witold Kula, An Economic Theoryof the Feudal System: Towardsa Model of the Polish

Economy,1500-1800 London, 1976),p. 61. W. Rusinski,"Some Remarks n the Differentiationf

AgrarianStructure n East Central Europe from the 16th to 18th Century," Studia Historiae

Oeconomicae,13 (1978),89-90; Zytkowicz, "The Peasant's Farm," p. 142.

3 CristobalKay, "ComparativeDevelopmentof the EuropeanManorialSystemand the Latin

AmericanHacienda System," Journal of Peasant Studies, 2 (Oct. 1974),p. 76.4 Rusinski,"Differentiation f AgrarianStructure,"p. 90.5 AntoniMaczak, "Export of Grainandthe Problemof the Distribution f NationalIncome n

the Years 1550-1650," Acta Poloniae Historicae, 18 (1968), 86-90; idem, "Agriculturaland

LivestockProduction n Poland:Internaland ForeignMarkets,"Journalof EuropeanEconomicHistory, I (Winter 1972),674; Kula,Economic Theoryof the Feudal System, pp. 119-26.



Serfdom in Eastern Europe 515

issues connected with the concentration of ownership of estates, notwith the organizationof production.All the Polish scholars agree thatthe methods of agriculturalproductionon the demesne-serfestate weresimilar to those on peasant land. Fenoaltea acknowledged that thesimilarity n methods in the East conflictedwithhis hypothesis concern-ing agriculturalproduction with supervised labor.6 Fenoaltea believedthat in Western Europe, where it is supposed that methodsdifferedondemesne and peasant land, serfdom entailed work methods that inher-ently required supervision (such as joint production) or that wereinnovative and required supervision duringthe learning process. In

EasternEurope,he claimed,the formof serfdom(namely,corvee laborservices) was a mere exercise of authority o undermine he bargainingstrength of the peasant class. Although the argumentcannot be ruledout, it is claimed here that the organizationof serfdomcan be explainedby more straightforward conomic interests of the noble class.

Currentanswers to the question of how corvde labor could coexistwith more "modern" forms are unsatisfactory. The suggestion by,among others, Zytkowicz, Makkai, Kula, Malowist, and implicitly

Wallersteinthat wage labor was "costly" and (as some writersgo on tosay) was found thereforeonly where the land was particularly ertile andnear to markets (compare Royal Prussia) s analyticallyunconvincing.7Serf labor on the face of it can alwaysundercut aborpaida free marketwage above subsistence, independentof the productivityof land and thesize of transportcosts. Analogously, the propositionthat proximitytomarkets fostered a free rent-payingpeasantry s dubious: again, enserf-ment can raise the lord's income whether or not local markets aredeveloped. This is not to deny a quite separate point-which is notelaborated in this paper-that the growth of towns created havens ofescape for .runawayserfs.

The view thatserfdom s more likelyto be foundwherelabor s scarce(compare Domar, Wallerstein) s not without some analytical founda-tion.8 It will be shown, however, that labor scarcity at most puts in

6 StefanoFenoaltea,"Authority,Efficiency,and AgriculturalOrganizationn MedievalEngland

and Beyond:A Hypothesis," this JOURNAL, 35 (Dec. 1975),713-17.7 Zytkowicz, "The Peasant's Farm," p. 140; Laszlo Makkai, "Neo-Serfdom:Its Originand

Nature in East CentralEurope," Slavic Review, 34, part 2 (June 1975), 237; Kula, Economic

Theoryof the FeudalSystem, p. 180;MarianMalowist, "The Problemof Inequalityof Economic

Development n Europe n the LaterMiddleAges," EconomicHistoryReview,2nd ser., 19, no. 1

(1966), 26; Malowist, "Problemsof the Growth of the National Economy of Central-Eastern

Europe in the Late MiddleAges," Journalof EuropeanEconomicHistory,3 (Fall 1974), 342;

ImmanuelWallerstein,TheModern WorldSystem:CapitalistAgricultureand the Originsof the

EuropeanWorldEconomy in the SixteenthCentury London, 1974), pp. 87-114. See also Jerzy

Topolski, "The ManorialSerf Economy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 16thand 17th

Centuries,"AgriculturalHistory,48, part3 (July 1974), 347.

8 Wallerstein,Modern WorldSystem: CapitalistAgriculture;E. D. Domar, "The Causes ofSlavery or Serfdom:A Hypothesis," this JOURNAL, 30 (March1970), 18-32.



516 Millward

Dobb'swordsa premium nenserfment.9t is not a sufficient ondition,and the growing rejectionof the labor scarcity hypothesisis notsurprising.Finally, it is frequently upposedthat the rise of laborservicespartly temmed rom he impactof thefifteenth- ndsixteenth-century nflations n the real value of moneyrents.'0Thesuppositioncarries the implication hat a change in money rents is difficult,presumably ecauseof theircustomary ature,butthat he introductionor increase n laborservices s not difficult, ven though hey too werecustomary.

The proposition hat EasternEuropecereal exportswere closely

connectedwiththe rise of serfdomnthesixteenth entury till retainssome influence. It is beingquestionedon empiricalgrounds,withevidence hatthe demesnesproduced lso for the domesticmarket ndthat marketsales involvedconsiderable mountsof grainoriginatingfrompeasantplots. The precise ogicalconnection etweenenserfmentandmarket ales, includingxports,has not, however,beenexamined,and since a significantproportion f demesneproduction n the six-teenth and seventeenthcenturiesdid involve the export crop (rye),

someexplanation f the connections required.

THE THEORY OF FREE MARKET RENTS

A modelof freely contracted ents, aborservices,andwage abor snow developedwith two aims n mind.One is to providean analyticalbenchmarkromwhich he organizationaleaturesof serfdom anlaterbe developed.Theother s to provide nexplanation f many-though,

as will be noted later, not all-of the main elementsof agriculturalorganizationn EasternEuropeby the earlyfifteenth entury,on theeve of enserfment.Consider hereforean economicregionwith thefollowing eatures:

1. The requirements f the productionmethodof the mainoutput,cereal, can be met from peasantfamilieseach working argelyas

MauriceDobb, Studies in the Developmentof Capitalism,rev. ed. (London, 1963),p. 67.

10F. L. Carsten,The Originsof Prussia (Oxford, 1954),pp. 107-8; Malowist, "The Economicand Social Developmentof the Baltic Countries rom the Fifteenth o the SeventeenthCenturies,"

EconomicHistoryReview, 12, no. 2 (1959), 182;Malowist, "NationalEconomyof Central-EasternEurope," p. 342;Hans Rosenberg, "The Rise of the Junkers n Brandenburg-Prussia410-1653,"

American Historical Review, 49 (1943/44), 231; Maria Bogucka, "The MonetaryCrisis of the

XVIIthCenturyand its Social and PsychologicalConsequences n Poland,"Journalof EuropeanEconomicHistory,6 (Spring 1975), 145-46.

" Malowist, "Economic and Social Development of the Baltic Countries,"p. 186;Malowist,

"Inequality f EconomicDevelopment n Europe," p. 28; Topolski,"EconomicDeclinein Poland

from the Sixteenthto the EighteenthCenturies," n Essays inEuropeanEconomicHistory, 1500-

1800,ed. PeterEarle (Oxford, 1974),p. 138;Topolski, "ManorialSerf Economy," p. 350;Maczak,

"Export of Grain," p. 76; Makkai, "Neo-Serfdom: Originand Nature," p. 237; Rusinski,"Differentiation f AgrarianStructure,"pp. 87-88.




separate units within open fields, a more individualized orm of produc-tion than the communal and sometimes shifting cultivation associatedwith earlier Slavonic tribal organization.

2. Land ownership is vested exclusively in a noble class, access towhich is strictly limited and enforced by territorial governments.Production yields vary geographicallybecause of climate andsoil. Eachlord is free to use the land as he pleases, except thathe cannotsell it topeasants.2

3. Peasants are free to move andmakecontractualarrangementswithlords for access to land, and indeed are free to move outside the

economic region.4. Marketed production s smalland largely localized.5. The lords have a demand for products, over andabove cereals, in

the form of housing, travel, and so forth.The latterpartof the paperwill addonly two morefeatures, supposed

to characterize early modern Poland: that serfdom becomes possible insome areas and that there is an exogenous increase in the demand forcereal exports.

Income maximization by lords and peasants would under theseassumptions lead to a system of free market rents, as follows. In theshort run the population of peasants in the region is fixed and it isassumed temporarily hat not all land is occupied. Suppose that on theleast productive land that is occupied the expected annualoutputof apeasant is Qmwhere o signifies "occupied" and m "marginal."On thebest unoccupied land production would have been lower, at Qu (inwhich u signifies "unoccupied"), while on a typical piece of intramar-

ginal land production s higher, at Q0 in whicho is, again, "occupied").It is important to understandthe notation, used extensively in thesequel.

Since peasants cannot buy landtheywillwish to hireit, and to the endof maximizingtheir own income would therefore bid up rent offers forthe better land. At the limit an intramarginal lot would be bid up to arent in kind or in money equivalent to Q0- Quq he whole additionaloutput available from occupation. In leasing his land the lord or hisbailiff will be involved in a certain amount of costly administration nd

monitoring. In anticipation of the importance of supervision underserfdom, I shall formally denote these costs as No defined in cerealunits. Thus the lord's income is Q0- No - Quqwhich is lower the lessproductivethe occupiedlandorthe less efficienthis administration f it.Marginal and earns no net rent. Therefore on the least efficient leasedestate and on marginal land the rent would, in the long run with a

12 The monopolizationof land ownershipis thus, followingA. Kahan ("Notes on Serfdom n

Westernand Eastern Europe," this JOURNAL, 33 [March1973],86-99) treated as a significantdeterminant f the workingsof agriculturen Eastern Europe.



518 Millward

sufficientnumberof lords,be just sufficient o offsetthe supervisioncosts, leaving no net rent. That is, recalling hat the superscriptmsignifies"marginal,"

QO No -Qu = 0. (1)

Onunoccupiedand he rentcanbetreatedas zero:the peasantgetsallthe output. Further, he peasant,competingwith others, can get nomore. His incomeis drivendown to Qu.If the peasantcould moveto other regionswhere expectedearnings reY he earnsa surplusofQu- Y from ocatingn thisregion.Thepeasant'sncome s of course

inverselyrelated o thesize of the population.Therental ncomeof thenoble class is smaller he smaller s the ratioof labor o land.The morepeasantson anacreandthe moreacresunder ultivation,he better orthenoblesandthe worse for the peasants.

The lordcannotset renton occupied andsuch as to expropriate nyof thepeasant urplus slongasthepeasants freeto moveandproducesucha surpluson unoccupiedand.The noble class could extract hesurplus f they behaved ogetheras a cartel,restrictinghe amountof

land eased.To someextent hiswasthe caseinthe tenth,eleventh,andtwelfthcenturies,sincethe territorial rinces n EasternEuropecon-trolledandgrants o lords.WithGermanolonizationn the twelfthandthirteenth enturies,withGermanizationnderPolishownershipnthefourteenth nd atercenturies, ndwiththe increase n allodialpropertyfrom the fourteenth enturyonwards,competition etween ords fortenantswas presentandgrowing.

To be sure, peasantswill differ n theirefficiencyand innovativecapabilities, o thatin practiceproductivityn any given typeof landwill tendto varywiththese capabilities. o whatextentwoulda lordbeable to seize the additional urplusesarisingfrom innovationandsuperior efficiency?Probablynot very much. As long as there iscompetitionbetween landlords,a ceilingon rents on any particularpiece of land s set at the difference etweenpeasantproductionnthatlandandpeasantproduction n unoccupiedand.Peasantswillbe ableto retain he fruitsof theirdifferentialnnovation ndefficiency.

Peasantproductivity,t shouldbe noted, is monitoredby other

peasants. If a peasant lies about what he is able to produce-andthereforewhat he is ableto payin rent-other peasants tandready otakeuphisholding.Thepeasant hereforemustproduce he maximumamounteasible:f hedoes not hisrentpaymentwillnotfall,sinceotherpeasantscompete;rather,hisown consumptionwill fall.

RENTS IN EASTERN EUROPE AT THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES

Although here are some important ualificationso be noted later,the evidence on the major orm of agricultural rganization y the




beginningof the fifteenth century is consistent with the theory of theprevioussection. Germancolonizationof theprevioustwo centurieslefta heritageof free peasant familiesoccupyingstandardizedholdings.Theprince or grand-dukeclaimed ownership of all unoccupied land andsettlement was everywhere on land of which a lord or prince was thesuperiorowner receiving the rents and dues, though some accrued tothe original organizerof the settlement. A fee was sometimes paid bythe peasant for settling and the tenure was heritableand saleable. Whythe annual quitrentswere sometimes payablein kind in the form of rye,barley, or oats ratherthan in money payments-which were increas-

ing-and why this was supplementedby dues payableduring differentseasons of the year are not issues central to the present argument.It ispossible that they constituted a saving in the transactionscosts of thelord's consumption pattern.'3Of more significance s that these obliga-tions showed signs of reflecting the scarcity of land: fees tended toincreasewith the pace of colonizationandthere is evidenceof rents anddues being higher on late foundations and on land near Elbing andDanzig.14 In Poland thereis evidence of money rents being raised when

prices rose.'" New settlements were often divorced fromany manorialframework, but even on many of the manorialestates, old or newlyestablished, the demesnes were either leased out for rents or were ofsuch a small size that they were workedessentiallylike a large-peasantholding. The Cistercians, for instance, were importantcolonizers andinnovators but over time their farms were let out for rent. The princesestablished many estates for knight's service, but again the primaryincome was in the form of peasant rents and dues. Many of thedemesnes of the Slavonic lords were broken up for settlement andcolonization. The organizerof the settlement was often grantedmoreland, of higher qualityand free fromdues, thanthe averagepeasantbuthe too often put tenants on his land.

For Silesia and Brandenburg,Carsten has suggested that in mostvillages Brandenburgof the fourteenth centurythere was no manorialfarmand in othervillagesthere was seldom more thanone, andthat wassmall.16

In Prussia settlement duringthe thirteenthand fourteenth centuries

13 DouglassNorth and RobertP. Thomas, The Rise of the WesternWorld:A New Economic

History (Cambridge,1973).'4 H. Aubin,"The Lands Eastof the Elbe andGermanColonizationEastwards," n Cambridge

EconomicHistoryof Europe, vol. 1, TheAgrarianLifeof theMiddleAges, ed. M. M. Postan,2nd

ed. (Cambridge,1966),pp. 467, 471.

15 J. Rutkowski, "Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary," in Cambridge Economic History of

Europe, vol. 1, The AgrarianLife of the Middle Ages, ed. M. M. Postan, 2nd ed. (Cambridge,

1966),p. 503.16 F. L. Carsten, Originsof Prussia, chap. 6. See also H. Wunder "PeasantOrganizationnd

Class Conflict n East and West Germany,"Past and Present, no. 78 [Feb. 1978],pp. 48-50) forEast ElbianGermanygenerally.



520 Millward

under heorganization f the TeutonicKnightswas extensivelyassoci-ated with rentalarrangements,he "census" being the mainpeasantdue.Thelayknightsdid not work hedemesnesbut livedoffrentsanddues from villagesassigned o them by the Order.ThePrussian erfswere treated eparatelyn the initialphase n statusandobligations, utduring he fourteenth entury hey also formedpartof the settlementmovementandby the end of the centuryhad become ntegratedwithGermanization."7ettlementunderGermanaw in Poland, ncludingRuthenia,occurred hrough he fourteenth nd fifteenth enturiesandthe Germanization f Polish villages continued nto the sixteenth

century.Thetypicalone wioca(about40 acres)holdingof the settlerinvolvedamoneyrent o thelordaswellas occasional ues n kind uchas eggs, chickens,cheeses, and honey;andtherewerespecial ees forhunting, ishing,and cuttingtimber.The settlementorganizers,whooftenbecamevillageheadmen,hadmoreandbetter andbutoften et itto tenants or rent. Manorialarmswere of no greatsignificance,ndeven by the early sixteenth centurythe typicalmanorialholding,includinghouse,buildings, nd farm,was small(about160acres or 4

wioca) with revenue coming mainly from rents and the income of mills,ponds,inns andso forth.'8

HIRED LABOR AND CONTRACTED LABOR SERVICES

The advantages o lords of this self-directed easantcultivation fcereals lay in the incentivesto the peasants o raiseproductionorthemselves and thereby for the lord in the absence of substantial

supervision.Thepeasant's ncomewasprecisely elated o hisoutput-that s, grossagriculturalroductioness the rent akenbythe lord-andthepeasant'sproductivity nd ts relationshipo incomewasmonitored,as alreadynoted, by marketpressuresromotherpeasants.

The other productsof this economycould not be organizedn thesameway. In view of thesimilarityo supervision nderserfdom,t isworth considering hem in some detail. The productswere, first,domestic ood,comfort,and eisureof thelordandhisretinue, upplied

by personalattendants, ooks, falconers,and the like. These involvedteamwork mong aborers,withexpensive ools. So toodidtheproduc-tion of housing, that is, repairand handicraftwork on manorialbuildings.Andtransportndcommunicationnvolved eamsof messen-gers and cartersandtools, wagons,and horses.Second,therewerespecializedagriculturalctivities uchas kitchengardens r theraisingof animals,whichrequiredlose attention ndsupervision,n Mecklen-

17 Carsten, Originsof Prussia, pp. 68-69.

18P. Skwarczynski,"The Problemof Feudalism in Polandup to the Beginningof the 16thCentury,"Slavonicand East EuropeanReview, 34 (June 1956), 304.




burg and Silesia and on the knights' demesnes in Poland. Third, therewas the grinding of grain in mills, the running of inns, and thedevelopment of fisheries-all involving large pieces of equipment.Finally, even the peasant holding would in some cases require somesupplementary-and supervised-labor, especially of course at harvest.

The production method for such products naturallyentailed supervi-sion. The teamworkand the joint use of a large tool impliedthata singleworker's output was not readily dentifiable.It was natural hat there bea supervisor to monitor work performance and relate the worker'sincome to his performance.'9 Special attention was often necessary,

again making a supervisor natural.In other words, where the worker'smarginalproduct is not readily dentifiable here is inadequate ncentivefor full work effort, and the worker'sinput has to be monitored,becausehis output cannot.

Wage labor would be the naturaloutcome here.20The form this tookin Eastern Europe can be explained by the introductionof a furtherhypothesis, namely, that self-directedwork is preferredby the peasantto workingunder supervision. In other words, gang work is desirable or

productivity but peasants do not like it. This dislike implies that for thesame man-hoursa higher wage is required f supervision s involved. Italso impliesthat the paymentto the workercould partlytake the forjnofaccess to a landholding.Further nsightis providedby drawinga formalanalogy with the rent-paying peasant. Under the contracted laborsystem the peasant spends some or all of his time underthe supervisionof the lord. Suppose for simplicitythat, notwithstandinghe wide rangeof products made at the manor, the peasant's outputundersupervision

is measured in cereals and denoted as Qd (d for "demesne"). Thepeasant is given a holding, and the time which is effectively left to himafter work on the demesne allows an output of, say Qh (h for "hold-ing"). Thus the peasant's total productionis the total of these twoitems, Qd + Qh. He may receive a wage income for workingon thedemesne, W, measuredin the same units. The lord's income consiststherefore of the peasant's output whileworkingundersupervisionnet ofwages and net of supervision costs, called Nd. While most estatescontaineda mixture of peasantrenters, cottagers,and wage labor, it isinstructiveto imagine an estate without rents. On a marginalmanagedestate just breaking even it would be the case that the lord's incomewould be, signifying marginalvalues by a superscriptm,

Q- N - W = 0. (2)

In other words, as peasants compete for laboring obs the wage rate is

19 CompareArmenAlchianandHaroldDemsetz, "Production, nformationCosts and Econom-ic Organization,"AmericanEconomicReview, 62 (Dec. 1972).

20 CompareRobertMillward,"The Emergence of Wage Labour in EarlyModernEngland,"Explorations n Economic History, 18 (Jan. 1981),21-39.



522 Millward

driven down in the long run to the level of output net of supervisioncosts on the marginalmanagedestate. The precise amountof employ-ment in the economy as a whole that this implies will depend in part onhow much the peasant prefers to work for himself rather than assupervised labor. As supervised labor his income consists of the wageplus the product of his own plot. On rented estates the least efficientpeasant's income is Qu, his output on unoccupied (and unsupervised)land. Under the assumptionthat self-directedwork is preferred,such apeasant would require an income greater than Qu if he were to workfulltimeunder supervision. The income would have to exceed Qu by a

premiumwhich would differacross peasants, partly because of varyingdislikes for laboring work and partly because of varying abilities inunsupervised work on the peasant's plot. The average premiumwouldtherefore tend to be bigger the larger the level of employmentin anygiven peasant population. Of course, the small plot of land grantedtothe contracted labor provides some offset to this. Let the premiumrequired by the least efficient peasant be denoted as a. It follows thatthe wage rate would have to be such thathis overall income, wage plus

output on his holding,W + Qh, is no less thanQu + a. If it were less hewould move to unoccupied and, raising he W the lordwouldbe willingto offer for the labor remaining.In other words, the wage wouldtend toa level

W = QU + (a -Qh). (3)

In the case of fulltime laborQh is zero because all workingtime is usedby the lord. The smaller s the proportionof the peasant'stime spentassupervisedlaborthe smaller s W, the smaller s a, andthe larger s Qh.

Note that at the extreme the absence of a wage is consistentwith somesupervisedwork. The peasantwould be providingunpaid abor servicesbut the time left on his own land is such that the resulting productionand income, Qh, would be better (to the tune of a) than the incomewhich would accrue, Qu, when operating on a holding which had nolabor service obligations.

The implications of wage labor for the lord can be illustrated bycomparing he marginalrented estate with the marginalmanagedestate.

The three equationsabove simplifyto:

Qd +Qh -QO=a+ Nd -

That is, the higheroutputon the demesneis matchedby highercosts ofsupervisionandby the premium in wages) forganglabor.Even thoughmanaged estates, or indeed supervised labor on mixed estates, mayhave a productivityadvantageover rentedestates, theirproliferationslimited by the increase in supervision costs and by the peasant's

preference for self-directedwork. Thatthe preference or self-directionwas significant is suggested by the small number of cases in whichunpaid labor services were contracted by a free peasant with a large




holding. In fourteenth-centuryPolandthe peasant holding of standardsize carried an obligation of work for the lord in the fields, in haycutting, in transporting imberfromthe forest, and in furnishing he lordwith conveyances for his journeys, but this was onlyfor some two to sixdays each year.2' There is evidence of labor services in Brandenburgnthe fourteenth and early fifteenth century connected with plowing,though never apparentlyexceeding six days per year.

Since the premiuma is bigger the more innovatingand efficient thepeasant, it is to be expected that the managed estate, or supervisedlabor more generally, would be more profitablethe smallerwere the

workers' alternativeincomes and hence that the bulkof wage-laborersand cottagers would originate from a low income stratum. This is the

case, In practice the hired labor was parttimeandsometimes migratory.Migratory abor is recordedin fourteenth-centuryBrandenburg,possi-bly working in some cases as servants, as did peasant children.22 nPolandthe village headmen, knights, and the standardpeasantholderemployed workers in their farmwork, paying them in money or amixture of payment in money and in kind. There is evidence of the

knights'need for money for repairsand improvements o buildingsandponds, which is suggestive of the paymentof wages.23Hiredplowmenwere known in Prussia on the estates of the Teutonic knights whoexcelled in their agriculturalmanagementand yields.

The majorsource of labor was neitherfulltimenorseasonallyhired. Itwas the cottagerwith his own plot and working parttime or the lord.24This suggeststhat the preferencefor self-directedwork is strongenoughto ensure that part of the laborer'sincome takes the formof access toland. The cottagersreceived a grantof a smallplot of land(three acres)but with some wage in money or in the form of keep. In Poland thevillageheadmensettled gardenerswithsmallplotsof land. In addition otheirpaid work, these gardeners n some cases had laborobligationsof asimilarnature but lighter than the standardpeasant landholder. Somecraftsmenworkedparttimefor the richerpeasantsand since they werehoused in cottages with small gardens were classed as gardeners.InPrussia settled gardeners appearin the recordsfrom 1305. Aubin notesthat the threshing gardener on the Silesian ecclesiastical manor was

workingin intensive arablefarmingon good black earthsoil.25Cottag-ers in Brandenburgperformed similar labor services to peasants inadditionto their paid work.26

21Rutkowski,"Poland, Lithuania,andHungary," p. 504.22 Carsten,Originsof Prussia, p. 79.23 Skwarczynski,"Problemof Feudalism n Poland," p. 307.24 Aubin, "Lands East of the Elbe," p. 418.25 Ibid., p. 479.

26 In all this there is a precise analogywith the militaryrequirements f the prince.Defense and

wars involvedsupervisedteamworkand were organizedeither in the form of conscriptedunpaidmilitary aborservices of the peasantsor in the formof mercenaries-that is, wage laborfinanced

ultimately rom the money land taxes of the peasants.



524 Millward

Three qualificationsare necessary to the evidence presented above.First, the model predicts that hired labor, including cottagers, will beused when work supervision is necessary. Otherwise the land would belet out for rent. In some cases, however, the evidence is not alwaysexplicit about the type of work. Thus some of the village headmen inPoland were described by Rutkowski as farmingtheir own land in thestyle of a big landowner, that is using hired labor, but precisely whatkindof agriculturalwork is involved is not clear.27

Second, the whole of Eastern Europe was neither completely Ger-manizednor free. There was colonizationunderSlavonic lords or under

Polish law where only a partialtransformation ook place, where claimsto services were not forsaken by the lord, and there were estates ofSlavonic lords where no transformationook place and where the lordsretained the right to extend their demesnes. In such cases while theservile workforce undertook duties that included those performedinotherplaces by the free wage laborersandcottagersthey also undertooka wider range of agriculturalwork.28

Third, by the early fifteenthcentury Lithuaniahad been affectedby

colonizationand Germanizationonly in its towns. Podlasiabecametheexception in the latterpart of the fifteenth and early sixteenthcentury,but the agriculturalsystem that developed by then included corvee.EarlierLithuaniawas characterizedby a more communal orm of agri-culture, with the tenement containing often several peasant families.29By the end of the fourteenth century the majority of peasants werefree, the relatively small demesnes on crown and privateestates beingworked by bondslaves, debtors, andsome free men withsmall holdings.The major form of dues of the peasants appears to be levies of theCrown, one in the form of grainand the other an annualmoney tax.

THE ANALYSIS OF ENSERFMENT

In Eastern Europe from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth centurylarge numbers of peasant families were effectively prevented from

27 Rutkowski, "Poland, Lithuania,and Hungary,"p. 503.28In Brandenburg here were servile domestics and the seasonal teamworkof dependent

tenants, supplementedby a class of gardenerswith a scrapof land and characterizedby theirSlavoniclabel, kossaten; an even more indicative abel for their type of work is the term used inMeissen, handfroner, the handservers(Aubin, "Lands East of the Elbe," p. 478). There areexamples in Brandenburg f villageswith Wendsrendering ervicesandalso in Silesia of servileholdingswithin Germanvillages. Laborservices in only partially ransformed ettingswere to befound n the fourteenth entury n Germanvillages in Prussia on demesnesof the Orderproducingfodder orherdsof cattle and horses) in the delta of the Vistulaon old Slavsoil, as well as on someestates of private andlords.Similarly n Polandby the fifteenthcentury therewere still cases ofonly partlyassimilatedvillages withdues similar o those underGerman aw butwithotheraspectsof the legal position basically Polish. Some villages in the East were completely unchanged,retainingprecolonialmanorialdues andcustoms (Rutkowski,"Poland,Lithuania,and Hungary,"

p. 505)." CompareKarl von Loewe, "CommerceandAgriculturen Lithuania,1400-1600,"EconomicHistoryReview,2nd ser., 26 (Feb. 1973),23-37; Rutkowski, "Poland, Lithuania,andHungary";




leaving their holdings without the lord's permission, deprived of allrights in the location, quantity, and disposition of their labor time, anddeprived of all property rightsin theirholdings. Whiletherewere manylocal variations, these threeattenuationsof peasant rightsconstitute thekey features of serfdom. The legislation to this effect, largely of thesixteenth century, is not always a good guide to their presence orstrength. During the fifteenth century the nobility were active inpreventing peasants from leaving their estates, in pressing the townsand others for the return of runaways, and in flouting contractualarrangements or labor services.30There is evidence in the sixteenth

centuryof nobles buyingout peasant holdingsat an "estimated"priceprior to any legal authorization of this practice.3' Even by the eigh-teenthcenturythe labordraftof peasantchildrenwas not specified as aseparate legal obligationin Poland, Mecklenburg,and Swedish (West-ern) Pomerania since the lord had sufficient authority to exercise italready.32

The economic implications may be analyzed initially by consideringthe erstwhile rent-paying peasantry in the context of the previous

model. The immediate implications are several. On intramarginalandthe peasant's expected outputwas Q. and the maximum he lordcouldextract as rent was Q. - Qusince the peasantcould previously alwaysleave and produce Quon unoccupied land. Since the peasant could nolongermove to unoccupied land the lord could now extract more than

Q. - Qu from him. On the other hand, the lord's knowledge beforeserfdom of the maximumrent that he could extract was not based on aclose monitoringof productionbut on the rent offers he received fromotherpeasants. These now disappearedunderserfdom,so that the lordhadto devise an alternative mechanismfor acquiringknowledgeof themaximumhe could extract from the peasant.

Under a free rent system any differentialproductivityof peasantsarising from differences in efficiency and innovative capacities waslargelyretainedby the peasants, because the more innovativepeasantcould always exercise his skills on unoccupied land. Such differentialincome could now be expropriated by the lord, because the peasantmovement to unoccupied land was restricted. On the other hand since

the inducementto innovate andbe efficientdisappears,such differentialproductivity might be lost under enserfment. It is possible to imaginethat the lordmight provideinducementsto innovate-since this is in his

and R. A. French, "The Three-Field System of Sixteenth-CenturyLithuania," AgriculturalHistoryReview, 18, part2 (1970), 106-25.

30 Carsten, Originsof Prussia, chap. 8; Blum, "The Rise of Serfdomin Eastern Europe,"AmericanHistoricalReview, 62 (July 1957), 820-21.

31 Makkai,"Neo-Serfdom:Originand Nature," p. 232.

32 Blum, The End of the Old Order n Rural Europe (Princeton,1978),p. 58. For skepticismonthe role of legislation,see R. Rosdolsky, "The Nature of PeasantSerfdom n Centraland Eastern

Europe," Journal of CentralEuropeanAffairs, 12 (July 1952),128-39.



526 Millward

own self-interest.I presumein what follows, however, that the produc-tivity differentialdisappears.

The maximumadditional income that the lord can extract from apeasantconsists of two components. One is the differencebetween theoutput on "frontier" land within the region (Qu),and the income thatthe peasant couldpreviously have expected to earnby migrating utsidethe region (Y). The expropriationof this surplus,it should be recalled, isnot unique to enserfment,whichmeanttherefore n EasternEurope thatthe nobility could dispense with the alternative of a rent-fixing andcartel.33Second, and independentof the level of Y, the income of the

peasant mightbe drivento a subsistence level (S). Thus in total it is thescarcityvalue of labor above subsistence thatconstitutesthe maximumpotential additional ncome of the lord.34 f this were the only issue thelord could simplyraisepeasant paymentsto Q. - S on intramarginalandand to Q' - S on marginaland. Suppose, however, that the lorddecidesto exact this in the form of a money payment.The old money rent(andentry fees) corresponded to the maximumthen extractable as revealedby competition by peasants for access to this holding. No such

independentestimates now exist. Perhapsthe lord instead mighttakehis income in the form of produce, a paymentin kind. Q0and Q' werethe maximumamounts producible by the peasantin a context where hehad every inducement to produce the maximum and where marketpressures revealed what partthe lord could exact as a rent in kind.Thelord thereforehas two problems:knowingwhatproduction evel is justsufficient to sustain the peasant family and discoveringthe maximumamountproducible.Let it be assumed for the momentthat the lowestlevel of consumption, S, consistent with subsistence is known by thelord who would thereforebe expropriatingany productionabove S andthereby providinga complete disincentiveto the peasantto producethemaximum amount, Q0 or Q'. The lord's problemresolves in such acontext to knowing how much of a surplusabove S could be exactedand whatorganizationalrameworkwould maximizethe surplus.In sumthe lord cannot expect in the long run to maintainrents within the oldorganizationalframework because the system relied on competitionbetween peasants for land and peasant mobility. A paymentcould be

exacted but the lord can no longer be sure this correspondsto whatpeasantswould freely offer for use of the land;even less can he expectto exact higherpayments without close monitoringof peasantproduc-tion and hence a change in the organizational ramework.

3 The two are precisely equivalent if each of the given peasant populationshas the sameprospective income in other regions (Y) or if the rent-fixingcartel can discriminatebetweenindividuals.

3 Ignoringconspicuous consumptionand extra peasant man-hours, he latter omission beingconsistent with the concentration in this paper on the extensive margin. Compare Stanley

Engerman,"Some ConsiderationsRelating o PropertyRights n Man," thisJOURNAL, 33(March1973),46.




The evidence suggests indeed that the lords' incomefrom enserfmentdid not take the form of a simple increase in rents in money or in kind.There is clear evidence for enserfed peasants of quitrents being com-mutedin Brandenburg rom 1540, and being cancelled in Rugenin the1570s and in mainland Pomeraniain the 1580s.35 n Polandduringthesixteenth century money rents were allowed to fall in real value in theface of inflation,andit has been estimatedthatby the endof the centuryonly 15 percent of the production of a self-sufficientserffamily accruedto the lord as rent and related services.36The contraction of moneyquitrentsin response to the mid-seventeenthcentury monetarycrisis

was not offset by rents-in-kindbutby otherobligations.37Thereis someevidence for the Tapiau estate in Ducal Prussia, covering the period1550-1695, that the grain rents that did remain, far from varyingproportionatelywith the size of peasant production,were proportion-ately biggerthe poorerwas the harvest.38Data referring o 100 Galicianvillages for the period 1785-1789 indicates that only 380 out of 6,487tenancies involved obligations solely in produce or money, and Ros-dolsky estimated that the obligations in money or kind of the class of

serfs with the largest landholdingwere equivalentto only one-sixth oftheir other obligations to the lords.39The reorganizationand standard-ization of land and serfdom in the reforms in Lithuania of the 1560sinvolved the recognitionof differentclasses of serf;one of these classeshad obligations primarily n money or produce, but over time there isevidence of its decline relative to other groups, and by the end of theeighteenth century servile peasants paying quitrents were not thecommon pattern.40Similarly, evidence from the accounts of severallarge estates in East Prussia indicates that by the end of the eighteenthcentury dues in kind were neither burdensome nor a source of com-plaint,and thoughthere was a money paymentit seems to be dwarfedby the peasant'sotherobligations.4' None of this is to suggestthatrentswere insignificantin Eastern Europe but, as will be argued later, thehigh rentswere paidby peasantswho retainedtheirfreedomthroughoutor whose enserfment was unprofitable.

The analysis so far is, however, insufficient o explainthe corvde. All

35 Carsten, Originsof Prussia, pp. 156-62.3 Skwarczynski,"PolandandLithuania," n New CambridgeModernHistory,vol. 2, Counter

Reformationand Price Revolution1559-1610, ed. R. B. Wernham Cambridge,1968),p. 379;L.

Zytkowicz,"The Peasant's Farm," p. 148.

37 Bogucka, "The MonetaryCrisis," p. 146.38 A. Maczak, "Money and Society in Poland and Lithuania n the 16thand 17thCenturies,"

Journalof EuropeanEconomicHistory,5 (Spring 1976),p. 96.

39 R. Rosdolsky, "The Distributionof the AgrarianProduct n Feudalism,"this JOURNAL, 11

(Summer1951),262-63.4 French, "Three-FieldSystem"; Loewe, "Commerceand Agriculturen Lithuania."Blum,

"Rise of Serfdom,"p. 832;Blum, End of the Old Order,p. 53.

4' Guy S. Ford, "The PrussianPeasantrybefore 1807,"AmericanHistoricalReview,24 (July1919),372-73.



528 Millward

it does suggest is that in order to acquire knowledge of productionpossibilitiesthe lord or his stewards would have to monitorproductionon the peasantholdings,monitor marketprices of grain,andthen exactthe payment in money or in kind. There would be no expansion ofdemesne or labor services. The organizationof productionwoulddifferfrom the rental system only in the considerably enhanced role forsupervision. But therein lies a problemand its solution, since with noother change in the basic characteristics of the peasant holding andcultivation supervision of all the labor time of the peasant would benecessary even though a large part of the resultant produce would

accrue to the peasant. A saving in supervision time wouldtherefore bemade if some of the inputsto productionwere clearlymarkedoff as dueto the lord so that only those inputs need be supervised. This is thesolutionto the problem.

Priorto exploringthe empirical mplications t is useful at this stagetobriefly tie the analysis with the earlier formal model of free renting.Because of the incentive and informationproblems of serfdom, addi-tional supervision will be involved as compared to the freely rented

estate. Consider for comparisonthe estate of the lordon marginalandwhojust broke even, as indicated by equation (1) above. Assume nowthatthe same level of outputis only possible if the estate is reorganizedwithenhanced supervisioninvolving increasedcosts of Cm.Theprocessof enserfingthe peasantswould therefore raise the lord's incomeby anamountto be denotedas Et where:Et (for "expropriation")s the sumof the two expropriationsof serfdomminus its greatercost of supervi-sion (the subscriptt signifies "tenant" as the class enserfed):

Et = (QU-Y) + (Y -S) -Cmt.That is,

tEt QU -S -Ct * (5)

This is the income accruingto the (least efficient) ord on marginaland.On intramarginal and income would be higher but the differencecorrespondsto the rent thatwouldin any case have been received undera free market. Thus Et is the profitabilityof enserfinga rent-payingpeasant, irrespective

ofthe

typeof land. A smaller

population wouldraise the reference level of production Qu (because productivity perheadwould rise with fewer handsandwith less use of inferior and)andhence would involve with a free peasantry a smaller proportion ofproductionaccruingas rent. Hence laborscarcitydoes in Dobb's wordsput a "premium" on enserfment; it does affect the profitabilityofenserfment.But it need not make enserfmentactually profitablesincethis will depend on the quality of land and technology (affectingtheproductionsurplusQu- S) relative to the level of enforcementcosts.42

42 Similarly while considerationsrelating to the size of the productionsurplus (compare

Engerman,"PropertyRights in Man") would suggest that serfdomwill be associatedwith an




THE EVIDENCE ON REORGANIZATION

The empirical mplicationsthat follow fromthe economicsof supervi-sion may be analyzed under the assumptionthat the compositionandsize of the demand for cereal outputis unchanged.The predictionsare:first, a growth in the ratio of demesne to peasant land and theappearance or rise in labor services requiredper standardizedunit ofpeasant holding reflecting the form in which expropriation of thepeasant is exacted; second, a transfer of landfrompeasantoccupationto demesne status and a fall in the average size of peasantholding, both

features being more likely the smaller the amount of unused, butprepared, land that could be brought into the demesne; and third, aconsolidation of demesne strips in the open fields with newly estab-lished serf-workeddemesnes located in self-containedfields or blocks,the better to supervise the work.

There is no comprehensive data on the changing ratio betweendemesne and peasant land for Eastern Europe. Consistent with such achange, however, is the evidence of the increase in the absolutesize ofdemesne land and a fall in the average size of peasant holdings.Thatdemesne landgrew in EasternEurope fromthe early sixteenthcenturyto the late eighteenth century, albeit at different rates in differentregions, is universallyaccepted. Carstenhaspointedto the rapidgrowthin demesnes in East Elbian Germany and Prussiaduringthe sixteenthcentury with, for example, the 347 villages in his data for the MiddleMark showing an increase of 12 percent in the number of units ofdemesne land from 1450 to 1570and by over 50 percent from 1570to1624.43There seems generalagreementthat demesne acreage increased

in Poland in the sixteenth century, especially in Little Poland andMasovia." The estimate by Wyczanski that the demesne acreagewasequivalent to only 36 percentof the acreageof peasant-occupiedand inRoyalPrussiaby the 1560s,as comparedto 48 percentin GreatPoland,57 percentin Masovia, and 57 percent in Little Poland,is suggestiveof

extension of the margins of cultivation, the presence of enforcement costs vitiates any suchconclusions.Thus undera free rentalsystemany exogenous increases n population re absorbed

by the economy as long as the peasant surplus is positive. Once the point is reachedwhere thesurplusdisappears, furtherpopulation increases would lead to emigration,as peasant incomewould be less thanwhat can be earnedelsewhere. A serf economy would absorb his second roundof population ncrease as long as the marginof Y over subsistence income levels exceeds theincremental nforcement osts. If, however, the incremental ost is greater hanY-S then not eventhe firstroundof populationncrease would be wholly absorbedby the serfeconomy:either somepopulation s allowed to emigrateor serfdom s abandoned n favor of marketrents. Analogouslythe lengthof day that is workedby serfs wouldexceed that freelydone by a rent-paying easantryonly if marginalenforcement costs are negligible-quite apart from the possibility that theinnovating fficientpeasant would have greater nducements o work longer.

43 Carsten,Originsof Prussia, p. 149; dem, "The Originsof the Junkers,"EnglishHistorical

Review, 62 (April 1947),164-65.4 Skwarczynski, "Polandand Lithuania," p. 379; Maczak, "Exportof Grain"; Zytkowicz,

"The Peasant's Farm."



530 Millward

the association of demesne land with enserfment, considering hat therewere more free peasants in Royal Prussia than in any of the other PolishCrown territories.45n Lithuania he reformof the 1560swas very muchconcerned with the expansion of demesne on royal estates, but onnoncrown estates also there is evidence of demesne cultivation ncreas-ing, with demesne land rising from some 25 percent of peasant land inthe sixteenth century to 50 percent in the seventeenth century.46 n theseventeenth century an increase in demesne landin Polandseems moreprobable for the second half; over the whole period 1500-1750 Kulapresumes the demesne area increased.47

Examples of transfer of land from peasants to lords are pervasive,indicating that even when unoccupied land was available for thedemesne, there were costs in preparing t for cultivation.Evidence thattransfers of land rather than opening up of new land were sensitive tothe scarcity of land is more inferentialthan explicit. Populationdensitygenerallywas lower the furthereast one moved. Towardsthe endof thesixteenth century, for example, the populationdensity was higher inGermany hanin Poland and the numberof people per squarekilometer

has been estimated at 24 in Masovia, 19 in Great Poland, 12 in theLublinPalatinateof Little Poland (though 23 in the Cracow Palatinate),7 in Volhynia and Podolia, and 3 in the Ukraine.48The opening up ofnew land for demesne was of course more common the further east,with the continuing colonization movements into Little Poland, Ruthe-nia, and the Ukraine,the lords usually following closely on the heels offree peasants. Some of the initial transfers of land in EasternEuropetook the form of buying up peasantland at an estimatedpriceinfavor ofthe lord, and its recognition in law seems to have been earlierin thewestern regions (Brandenburg 1531, Mecklenburg 1572, Pomerania1616).49Indeed it was mainly East Elbian Germany that witnessedoutrightpeasant eviction. The legislationof 1540-1572 n Brandenburgconfirmed he Junkers'rightto peasantevictionandevidenceof the latesixteenth century indicates that this extended to the appropriationoferstwhile grazing meadows, while in Western Pomeraniasome of thetowns rivaled the nobilityin their eviction of peasants.50 n contrast,inPolandthe expropriationof landforthe demesneinvolved a reduction n

45 A. Wyczanski,"TentativeEstimatesof PolishRyeTrade nthe 16thCentury,"ActaPoloniaeHistoricae, 4 (1961), 121-22.

4 Loewe, "Commerceand Agriculturen Lithuania,"p. 27.4 Zytkowicz,"An InvestigationntoAgricultural roduction n Masovia n the First Half of the

17th Century," Acta Poloniae Historicae, 18 (1968), pp. 102-4; Kula, Economic Theoryof theFeudal System, p. 117.

4 Irena Gieysztorowa, "Research into the DemographicHistory of Poland:A ProvisionalSumming-Up," Acta Poloniae Historicae, 18 (1968), Table 1; Skwarczynski, "Poland andLithuania,"p. 377. See also AndrzejWyrobisz, "SmallTowns in 16thand 17th-Centuryoland,"Acta Poloniae Historicae, 34 (1976), 153-63 on urban populations.

49 Makkai,"Neo-Serfdom:"Originand Nature," p. 232." Carsten, Originsof Prussia, pp. 158-62; Rosenberg, "Rise of the Junkers,"p. 232.




the size of a peasant's holding or the transfer of peasants from oneholding to another, as occurred also in the Lithuanianreformof the

1560s; there were only sporadic cases of peasant eviction.5'The decline in the average size of holdingof the formerrent-paying

peasant is well documented for Poland. Whether this decline wasproportionately bigger in areas with a smaller land-laborratio is notclear; the issue is in any case complicated because peasant activitiesaway fromthe demesnewere not so closely monitoredby the lordor hisstewards. For central Poland before the sixteenth century a 1-wioca(41.5 acres) holdingwas deemed to be sufficientfor the standardsize

peasant family. By the end of the sixteenth century farmingmanualswere prescribingonly half a wioca and the average size approximatedthat figure, even thoughthere is no evidence of a compensatingrise inyields. The once importantstratumof rich peasants, such as those onthe estates of the Bishop of Cujavia (Eastern Great Poland) with 2wioca, had disappeared by the seventeenth century except in Royal.Prussia. Frominventories of the largeestates of the Plock episcopate, itappears that in Masovia the proportionof peasants holding 1 wioca or

more fell from 37 percent in 1595 to 19 percent in 1650. Similarlytheindependent peasants formed on average about 70 percent of thepeasants in 176 royal villages of the Palatinate of Cracow in LittlePoland in 1564. But by the first half of the seventeenth century thisfigure had fallen to 58 percent and to 40 percent by 1660. Theindependentpeasants on the propertiesof the ChapterandBishopric ofChelm were on average about 83 percent of the ruralpopulation n theearly seventeenth century, 64 percent by mid-century,and 60 percentby the 1660sand 1670s.In 12villages of the crownestate of KorczyninRoyal Prussiathe numberof independentpeasantshalvedin 1600-1660though most of this was in the 1650s. By the end of the eighteenthcentury the number of half-wloca holdings had grown considerably.This could suffice for an average-sized peasanthousehold only in a goodyear, but by this periodthe quarter-wlocaholdingwas a "proper"size.It has been estimated that about 80 percent of the peasant populationhad no more than half a wioca each. The tenancies of the standardpeasantholder in the 1785-1789sampleof Galicianvillages referredto

earlier averaged 25 acres but this was a more land-abundantarea.Similarly n the Lithuanianreformof i550s the standardpeasantholdingwas about 60 acres thoughthese had all but disappearedby the end ofthe eighteenthcentury.52

5' Makkai,"Neo-Serfdom:OriginandNature," p. 232; French,"Three-FieldSystem," p. 109;Zytkowicz, "The Peasant's Farm," pp. 138-39; A. J. Kaminski, "Neo Serfdomin Poland-Lithuania,"Slavic Review, 34 (June 1975), p. 261.

52 For all this paragraph ee French, "Three-FieldSystem," pp. 108-9;Blum,Endof the Old

Order,p. 53;Maczak, "The SocialDistribution f LandedPropertyn Poland romthe 16th o the18thCentury,"Third nternationalConferenceof EconomicHistory:Munich1965 Paris, 1%8),p.



532 Millward

There are several examples of the consolidation of demesne land,though whether this process was pervasive is not clear.53In central

Poland the expropriationof peasant land often took the formof takingparcels of holdings and reallocating peasants from one holding toanother, which is consistent with the development of more adjacentdemesne strips.54 n the three-fieldsystems of East ElbianGermanyandPrussia by the eighteenthcentury the demesne stripswere not alwaysscatteredand indeed there was a markedtendency in the east towardsconsolidated holdings The large-scale reorganizationand standard-ization of holdings associated with the 1560s reforms of Sigismund

August in Lithuaniashow the best examples of consolidationand aresuggestive of similar patterns elsewhere in that they are thoughtto bebased on Polishexperience. Followingthe compulsoryexchangeof landbetween peasants and the crown each peasantholding consisted of onestripof about 20 acres each in each of the three fields. "Generallythemanorial demesne had its own three fields and for them the best landwas chosen. Out of 24 royal manors with demesnes, described insurviving cadastres, only 4 were in the same fields as the peasant

holdings."56The demesne was worked largely by a class of peasantswhose obligations were mainly in labor service and it is worth notingthat the class of peasants paying money andproducewas often locatedwell away from the manor. The work of the reform was apparentlycompletein the threeprincipalprovincesof Lithuaniawithin a periodof12 years. Evidence of the late eighteenth century suggests that thedemesne was usually still separate from the land of peasants. In theconquered Russian provinces the system was gradually brought induring the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, thoughphysical impediments such as the swampy areas in the basin of thePripyatprecludedthe same uniformity,so thatrents andolder forms ofruralorganizationpersisted for some time.57

469;Maczak,"Exportof Grain,"p. 78;Zytkowicz,"Agricultural roduction nMasovia,"p. 110;Zytkowicz,"The Peasant'sFarm,"pp. 150-51;Kaminski,"Neo Serfdom n Poland-Lithuania,"pp. 264-65; Rosdolsky, "Distributionof the AgrarianProduct," pp. 262-63; Skwarczynski,"Polandand Lithuania,"p. 379.

53

Ifall landon anestatewas of the samequality hedemesnewouldpresumably e locatednearto themanorhouse, the locationof whichwould be affectedby suchnonagriculturalonsiderationsas defense. If land was not uniformthere would be furthersavings of supervision ime if thedemesnewere locatedon the betterland as in the Lithuanianwioca reform.

54 Zytkowicz,"ThePeasant'sFarm," pp. 138-39;Makkai,"Neo-Serfdom:OriginandNature,"p. 232.

55 Ford, "PrussianPeasantrybefore 1807,"p. 367; A. Spiesz, "Czechoslovakia'sPlace in theAgrarianDevelopmentof MiddleandEastEuropeof ModernTimes,"StudiaHistoricaSlovaca, 6(1969),25. See alsoSpiesz, "Czechoslovakia,"p. 22forreferences o theconsolidation f demesneon the best landin Livonia.

56 French,"Three-FieldSystem," p. 110andfootnote.57

MariaB. Topolska,"Peculiaritiesof the EconomicStructureof EasternWhiteRussia in theSixteenth-EighteenthCenturies," Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, 6 (1971), 37-49; French,"Three-FieldSystem," pp. 106-18;Blum,Endof the OldOrder,p. 157.




The now well-documentedappearanceandrise of labor services overthe period suffers not so much from a lack of standardizationwith

respect to the size of holding, but rather from the difficultyof knowingthe length of the year over which the obligations of so many days perweek should extend and the size of peasant families affected. But therise in labor time per peasant family using the holding of the self-sufficientearly sixteenth-centurypeasantas benchmark s not in doubt.Nor is its early appearance n the fifteenthcentury.In Brandenburghecustomarysix or seven man-days per year were showing some signs ofan increase while in Prussia there were complaints by freemen and by

Prussians about uncustomary labor services. There is evidence fromcentral Poland of labor services being extended to one day per week,and in Lithuania towards the end of the century there were new landgrants allowing one day per week in contrast to the 14 days per yearrecorded on service estates for the earlier part of the century. By theend of the fifteenth century and early sixteenth century some landgrants in Lithuania were allowing two days per week and there isevidence of two to three days per week on some private manors.The

statutes of the early sixteenth century in Polandset a standardobliga-tion of one day perweek but practicewas tending towardstwo to threedays per week by the middle of the centuryas it was in Brandenburg.The 1550sand 1560s saw high norms establishedin Silesia, thoughtheactualpracticewas much lighter.Decrees of the 1570sallowedunlimit-ed services in partsof Brandenburg;here is evidence in the Priegnitzofunlimiteddemandsin practice; in the Zechlis in the second half of thesixteenth century three days per week was standard as it was inMecklenburg.Duringthe last partof the century practiceof six days perweek is recordedin Pomeraniaand in Poland, yet there is also the viewthat two to three days was still more common for Poland. In theLithuanianreform of the 1550s labor service was set at two days perweek but it was not long before this rose to three.58

The evidence is not so clear for the seventeenth century. The earlypart of the century saw Pomeranian regulations allowing unlimitedservices and the Margrave'scourtdecidingthat all peasantswere liablefor unlimitedservices unless they could prove otherwise. By the late

eighteenth century three days per week was still standard n Branden-burg and was recognized as lower than in other parts of East ElbianGermanyand in Prussia. By the 1760sin Upper Silesia Polishpeasantsowed five to six days perweek in summerand threeto fourperweek in

58 On this paragraph ee French,"Three-FieldSystem," p. 112;Blum, "Rise of Serfdom,"pp.830-32; Skwarczynski,"Polandand Lithuania," p. 379; Zytkowicz, "The Peasant'sFarm," p.148;Topolski, "ManorialSerf Economy," p. 350;Carsten,Originsof Prussia, pp. 104-5, 109-10,157-58, 162; B. H. Slicher van Bath, "Serfdom in Eastern Europe," in CambridgeEconomic

Historyof Europe,vol. 5, TheEconomicOrganisation f EarlyModernEurope,ed. E. E. RichandC. H. Wilson (Cambridge,1977), chap. 2(5), p. 118; Loewe, "Commerce and Agriculture nLithuania";Kaminski,"Neo Serfdom n Poland-Lithuania," . 265.



534 Millward

winter. In Mecklenburgthe obligation was six days per week on someprivate estates, slightly less on sovereign land, while some peasanthouseholds in Swedish Pomeraniahad to supply two people every day.On private estates in the Ermeland district near Koenigsburg, threedays per week for two people was common. In other parts of EastPrussiathe lords demanded two people for six days. For Poland it hasbeen suggested that five days per week was standardn the Vistulabasinin the first part of the seventeenth century; by the late eighteenthcentury there is evidence of a full holding carryingan obligationof twopeople for three days per week in Lithuaniaandin some private estates

of central Poland four to six days, scaled down for smallerholdingsandslightly less on Churchand Crown land.59

PRODUCTIVITY UNDER SERFDOM

The organizationof the corvdeis accountedfor, then, by the absenceunder serfdom of independentestimates of extractable rents and theexcessive supervision costs that would be associated with a scattered

location of peasant work for the lord. The overall effect of mereenserfment on agriculturalproductivity,excluding for the momentthetime and activities still left on the peasant's own land, consists of therise in costs associated with greater supervision and the loss of thedifferentialproductivity of the innovative peasant. The expropriationofthe scarcity value of labor is an offset to the firstonly for the lord;fromthe point of view of national productivityit is a redistribution.Suchmight be an explicit set of arguments to support the widely expressed

belief that serfdomis inherentlyunproductive.'Yet team productionor particularattention to productqualityoffers

productivity gains, limited only by rising supervisioncosts and by thepremium or gang workdemandedby free men. Thus serfdompermitsamove away from peasant methods to more productive methods. Itfollows that it would also be profitable o the lords. Thismaybe seen byconsideringthe enserfmentof the wage laborer on the managedestateand comparingthe result with the earlier result on enserfment of the

rent-payingpeasant.The worker on the managedestate received a wageincome plus the product (Qh) of whatever holdinghe had. The productin practice was always small. To be more precise it will now bepresumedthat the product of this plot is not big enoughto sustain hisfamily, leadinghim to work for wages. It follows that enserfment heretakes the form of settinga compulsory wage (Wf)below the level of the

5 Kaminski,"Neo Serfdom n Poland-Lithuania," . 257; Blum,End of the Old Order,pp. 53-54; Carsten,Originsof Prussia, p. 158.

1 For example, Topolski, "Economic Decline in Poland," pp. 138-39; Maczak, "SocialDistribution f LandedProperty," p. 469.




free marketwage. For the managedestate thatjust broke even it is nowassumed that the same level of output is possible under serfdom if thelord incurs a rise of CQ'n supervision costs (note the subscript f forfamulus, or "wage worker"). Enserfing the wage workers wouldtherefore raise the income of the lord by an amountto be denoted as ET(E again for expropriation), where EW s the expropriation rom a lowwage minus the greater cost of supervision:

ET = (W-Wf)-QCT. (6)

This is the income accruing to the least efficient lord using the least

efficient peasant on marginal land. The incomes accruing to moreefficient lords or better land are higher, but only to the extent of theprofits that would in any case have been received by them under a freewage labor system. Thus EfP epresents the profitabilityof enserfinganagriculturalwage laborerirrespective of the quality of land or entrepre-neurship. Note that Wf would be set such that the enserfed wage plusthe income from the holding Qh) equaled bare subsistence; or, turning taround,

Wf = S - Qh (7)

Consequently, the profit advantages of runninga managedserf estaterather than one that uses the same productionmethodsas the peasantfarm may be seen by comparing Ef' with E' in equation (5). Usingequation (3) to eliminateQu fromequation (5) andusing equation (7) toeliminateWffrom equation (6), the differenceis:

ETm EtM a + Ctm- CT.(8)

In other words managed estates involve a higher productivity, byassumption, but in a context of freely negotiated contracts theirproliferationat the expense of rented estates is limitedby the increaseinsupervision costs and by the work premium (a) involved in market-determinedwage rates. With serfdom the productivity advantage ofmanaged work accrues, on the margin, to the lord rather than as theworker's premium;moreoverthe total supervisioncosts areunlikelyto

be significantly bigger than where enserfment involves no change inproductionmethods. Thus the incrementalsupervisioncosts in movingfrom free to compulsory wage labor, Cf, are likely to be less thanthoseinvolved in enserfing a rent-paying peasantry, Ce'. The limits to theproliferationof estates with extensive joint productionor other super-vised production methods are much less with serfdom. It is notsurprising herefore that labor systems which are not freely negotiatedofteninvolve supervised teamwork,sometimeswithlarge capitalequip-

ment.Thus the bondedworkersof EasternEuropebefore the coloniza-tionmovementwere invariablyused in suchwork. Beforethe sixteenth-



536 Millward

century reforms in Lithuania, the principal workforce of the manorconsisted of slaves livingat the manorandreceiving subsistence rationsand, if we can judge fromthe work of theirpost-reformsuccessors, theylooked after the kitchen gardensand livestock and did day-to-dayworkabout the manor.61 Bondsmen on the larger estates of twelfthandthirteenth-centuryPoland were part of the manor'spermanentbody ofservants employed as personal attendants of the lord's family, inkitchengardens and cattleshed, and as artisans, apartfromworkin thefields.62Moreover the slaves and tied cottagers(compare he Kossatiiinthe Marks of Brandenburg)who remained n the fifteenthcenturyseem

invariably o have been involved in teamservices in transport,domesticservice, and seasonal teamwork on the land.63Moregenerallytherearethe examples of slave sugarplantationsclosely involved with the use ofprimitivecapital equipment,the integratedteamwork for cotton in thesouthernUnited States, and the indentured abor on SoutheasternAsianrubber plantations.'4 The new production methods, to which compul-sory labor systems can readily be adapted, could involve such animprovement as to offset the loss from greater supervisionand less

incentive to work hard. On a priori grounds, enserfment need notinvolve a fall in productivity in the conventionalway in which that ismeasured.

Onewouldexpect in EasternEuropea growth n the proportionof theserf class whose landholdingsand dispositionof labor time correspondclosely to those of the cottager. This can be expected for two reasons.One is that the erstwhilerent-payingpeasantwould be spending ess ofhis time on his own land and more undersupervision,and the land thathe would be able to cultivate would be smaller, approaching hat of acottager.The otherreason is thatthe expropriationof the scarcityvalueof laborof the cottagerneed involve few disruptive andtransferssinceit can take the formof a reductionin wages in money, kind, or keep. Inotherwords, an easy way of raisingthe ratio of demesne to peasantlandwould be to settle people on terms analogousto the enserfedcottager.Thus the numberof smallholders and cottagers in Poland is generallythought to have increasedfromthe sixteenth to the eighteenthcentury.The fall in the proportion of the self-sufficientpeasants in the rural

populationof the sampleof royalvillages in the Cracow Palatinate rom1564 to 1660 and in the bishopricand chapterof Chelm from the earlyseventeenthcenturyto the 1660sand 1670swas matchedby a rise in theproportionof tiny farmsand small kitchengardens.Similarlywhile thenumberof independentpeasantsin the 12villagesof the crownestate of

61 French, "Three-FieldSystem," p. 111.62 Rutkowski, "Poland, Lithuania,and Hungary," pp. 491-92.63 Aubin, "Lands East of the Elbe," p. 478.

6 See for example, Wallerstein, Modern WorldSystem: Capitalist Agriculture,pp. 87-114;Engerman,"PropertyRights in Man," pp. 49-50.




Korczyn was falling, the number of smallholdersrose from 107in 1600to 234 in 1660.65Other indicationsof the size of the smallholdingclass

by the late eighteenth century are available, though without directcomparisonwith earlier periods. Of the 6,487 tenancies in Rosdolsky's100 Galician villages in 1785-1789 only 2,012 belonged to the largerlandholdingpeasants, while there were 3,239 peasants owning a smallpiece of land adjacentto the house and, in addition, 1,236cottagers witha vegetable garden. Similarly by the second half of the eighteenthcentury in East Elbian Germany and Prussia a considerable part ofestate labor (at least a half on some estates) came from cottagers, with a

gardenand a customary wage, as well as wholly landlessday laborers.In the Kurmarkprovinces of Brandenburg here is evidence of small-holders and cottagers accounting for over half of the landholdingpeasants, though its full significance is qualified by the demographicupsurge during the century and by the changes in agricultural ech-niques towards the end.66

A second prediction would be that the old rent-payingpeasant wouldnow be spending more time on new tasks under supervision.There is

some evidence of this: peasant childrenwere increasinglydraftedintodomestic service; the peasant himself was involved in carting, cuttingtimbers, guarding he lord's harvest, transportingwood, andworking nthe lord's mills, breweries, distilleries, leadworks.67But in the basicagriculturalwork most of the evidence is that the same productionmethods were used as those on the peasantfarm.The peasanttook hisown draft animals and tools with himand workedon plowing, planting,tilling, harvesting,andthreshingon the demesne in the sameway as onhis own land, with yields per acre if anythingslightlylower on demesneland.' Despite the impression given by phrasessuch as "efficientlyrunlatifundia," "efficiently administeredestates," and in some cases byreferences to active participationn work supervisionby the landlordorhis stewards, there is no evidence that the supervision involvedproductivity improvementsin the use of agriculturalaborand land.

A thirdprediction is that the line between cottagerand landholdingpeasantshould be blurred. Since the basic peasantclass came to work

65

Kaminski, "Neo Serfdom in P~pland-Lithuania,"p. 264-65; Zytkowicz, "The Peasant'sFarm," pp. 150-51; Aldo De Maddalena,"RuralEurope 1500-1750,"in Fontana Economic

Historyof Europe,TheSixteenthand SeventeenthCenturies, d. C. Cipolla Glasgow,1974),chap.

4, p. 288.' Rosdolsky,"Distribution f theAgrarianProduct";Blum,Endof the OldOrder,p. 105;Ford,

"PrussianPeasantrybefore 1807," pp. 371-72.

67 CompareD. Molenda, "Investments in Ore Miningin Polandfrom the 13th to the 17th

Centuries,"Journalof EuropeanEconomic History,5 (Spring1976),151-69;J. Leskiewicz,"Les

Entraves Sociales au Ddveloppementde la 'Nouvelle Agriculture'en Pologne," Deuxieme

Conference nternationaled'HistoireEconomique:Aix-en-Provence,1962(Paris,1965),p. 241.' Kaminski,"Neo Serfdomin Poland-Lithuania," . 261; Ford, "PrussianPeasantrybefore

1807," p. 372; Kula, Economic Theoryof the Feudal System, pp. 116, 149;Leskiewicz, "LesEntravesSociales," p. 238.



538 Millward

under supervision they became in that sense on a par with the cottagers.There was therefore no reason why the cottagers' work should notextend to the traditionalagricultural asks as well as the more special-ized work alluded to earlier. Thus increasingly over time there isevidence of cottagers performing abor services, that is "unpaid"workadditional o that for which theirwage was officialcompensation.Thusby the second half of the eighteenth century in Brandenburgpeasanthouseholdswith substantialholdingshad to do threedays a week withateam of draft animals, but cottagers with only a house or yard hadalsoto do three days, and in the Uckmarkfour to six days.69 n the Galician

villages of the 1780s the annual number of days of forced labor withanimals and of hand services averagedout for the smallholdingpeasantat 93 or only some 15 percent less than the obligationof the largerlandholding peasant, while the cottagers and labor serfs averaged 32days.

A final implicationof the incentive structurerelates to the activities ofthe peasant on his own land. The organizational eaturesof serfdom inEastern Europe had two importantcorollariesfor peasant production.

First, the lord had to estimatethe maximumquantitiesof land and labortime to leave to the peasant for his sustenance. Kula particularlyhasstressedthe greatdifficulties n doingthis andthe gradualencroachmentof peasantland to which it led, as well as the surplus manpowerthat itsometimesleft on peasant land.70Second, however, peasant productionandsales in connection with theirown time were not monitoredclosely.Whatever and and labortime he finishedup with the peasanthadeveryincentive to be highly productiveandevery incentive to sell any surplusover consumption.The scale of peasant productionandof peasantsalesto the market has long been a puzzle, apparently nconsistent with thenonprogressive characterof enserfment.7'Perhapsthe explanation iesin the necessary crudeness with which the lords adjustedthe peasants'time to their needs.

Zytkowicz's data from the 1595 and 1650 inventories of the Plockepiscopate suggest thata peasant family of 7.5 equivalentadultswithanofficiallyrecordedholding of 1 wioca and with average yield from seedof 22/3:1would not be able to sustainitself.72Aftermakingprovisionfor

seed corn, meeting manorialtributesof 7.5 bushels of grain per wioca,and church dues of about 10 percent the balance would not be enoughfor the family's normalconsumption requirements.Indeed half-wlocapeasantfamilieswould producea surplusof productionover consump-tion, seed, and manorialobligationsonly in yearsof good yieldsof 4:1or

69 Blum, End of the Old Order,p. 54.70 Kula, Economic Theoryof the Feudal System, pp. 49-50.71 CompareKula,Economic Theoryof the Feudal System, p. 135.72

Zytkowicz, "Agricultural roductionnMasovia,"pp. 112-18.See alsoTopolski,"EconomicDecline in Poland," p. 132.




more and 1-wlocafamilies when yields were 3:1 or more. In factpeasants nibbled away at vacant plots, rooted up thickets, harrowedunplanted and, and tilled pasturesand meadows not used intensively.They could underfeedthe draft animalsused primarilyon the demesneand could manuretheir own land betterthan the demesne. Some wouldwork outside agricultureas craftsmenor as wagoners. Thepeasant plotswould be intensively cultivated as fruit gardens and for raisingpigs andpoultry. Evidence from Masovia from the sixteenth century suggeststhat if we allowfor the produce surrenderedo the Church,which wouldthereafter often be sold, some 30 percent of peasant grainproduction

finished up as market grain sales and 85 percent of total market salesinvolved grain produced on peasant land.73Nor can it be argued overthe longtermthat these activities can be explained solely in terms of thepeasant's need to finance manorialdues in cash, since the cash incomewas spent in other ways. A survey of royal estates in Poland showedthat the revenue from alcohol sales in the landlords' nns accounted foronly 0.3 percent of manorial money income in 1564 and 6.4 percentin1661, but this had risen to 37.6 percent in 1764 and 40.1 percent in

1789.74

THE LABOR MARKET

One of the implications of enserfmentjust noted is the imbalancebetween the supplyand demand for labor. It can be discussed in termsof the formal model. If free rents on one estate happenedto be lowerthan rents on another estate, the lord being equallyefficientand the land

equally productive, a movement in the long run of peasants from oneestate to the other would equalize the rentalpayments.Likewise, whenpopulationrose in one region of the whole area andfell in another,wewould predict a movement of peasants. The same applies to thebenchmarkcase of the lord rentingmarginal and to the least efficientpeasants. Peasant movement would ensure that on each estate the rentwas equalized and just sufficient to cover administration osts for theleast efficientlords, as in equation (1) above. To the extent thatpeasant

income from the plot, Qu,exceeds what can be earnedoutside the area(Y) then in the even longer run some immigrationwould be expected,given enoughlandand lords, thereby changingthe location andidentityof the marginalestates.

Enserfment stops immigrationand forecloses the other equalizingtendencies. With a given population of peasants, Et in equation (5)

73 The church ithewas oftenlevied as a percentageof the crop and hence leftan incentive o the

peasantsto maximize production,even thoughpeasantincome was reduced,other things being

equal, relativeto activities whichdid not carrysuch a tax.74 Kula, EconomicTheoryof the Feudal System, p. 139.



540 Millward

constitutes the profits of enserfing the tenants on the benchmarkmarginalestate. There is no reason to expect thatit will be the same forall lords andlands of the same productivitysince it wouldvarywiththelocal costs of subsistence and the particularorganizational eatures ofenserfment. Thus profits from serfdom will be higherin some placesthan in others. Even if they were not different initially, rises inpopulation n one region and falls in others would have a similareffect.Thus even witha constantaggregatepopulation he economicvalueof aserf will be higher in some estates andregions thanin others. The valuein the case of the benchmarkestate is simplyEm.An analogousproblem

of imbalanceapplies for labor used in teamwork. Movement of freepeasant labor would have ensured the same wage rate for comparablework circumstances,tendingto the level of net output on the marginalmanagedestate, as shown by equation(2). The profitsto the lord fromthe enserfment of the agricultural aborer,EFr n equation (6), are likelythereforealso to vary. To the extent that EmandEFT aryacross regionsor activities there are sectoral imbalances between labor supply anddemand. To the extent that they are positive, thereis an overallexcess

demand for serf labor.The immediateimplicationof this analysis is thateconomic pressureis likely to exist for the growth of marketsin serfs whose annualhiringrateswould be bidup towardsETandEm, he pricebeingthecapitalizedvalues of these amounts. Sales of serfs didoccur in EasternEurope,butsuch a debasement of the peasant's rightto remain n his home villagewas not widespread. What the analysisdoes suggest,however, is thatifsales of serfs did not grow sufficientlyto exhaust the excess demandsimpliedin Emand ET', hen residual economic pressureswouldexist forothersolutions. Such pressures can perhapsexplainthegrowingmarketin freely contracted wage labor (to make up the misallocations ofserfdom), the resilience of free marketrents in some regions, and thehighly active land market (if one cannot buy serfs, one can buy theland).

There are reports of sales of serfs in EasternPomerania n the latesixteenthcenturyandby that time the law in Lithuaniaallowedlords tosell theirpeasants, but in generalthe sale of serfs seems to have been a

phenomenon of the seventeenth and especially the eighteenthcentury.In Brandenburga 1681 law allowed the sale of serfs, but despite someauthenticatedcases the trade does not seem to have been large. InMecklenburgthere was an active open trade in serfs from the mid-seventeenth century even though this was not officiallysanctionedbythe govermentuntil 1757.There were governmentbans on sale in 1773in East Prussia and in 1759 n PrussianSilesia, thoughreportsof sales inthe latter continuedto 1795.They were common in SwedishPomerania,

where as late as the 1780s legislation specifically permittedthe sale ofserfs without land as well as mortgagingand exchangingthem. Eight-




eenth-century urists decided that despite the silence of the law, Polishlords could sell serfs. The evidence suggests much of the trade waslocal, though there were some long-distance sales and even some toGermany.75

Such transactionsappear,however, to be dwarfedby the reportsofusage of free-wage labor. To explain why some agriculturalaborwasnot enserfed is outside the scope of the paper.That free wage labor isoftenfoundin Prussia is symptomaticof the prevalenceof free peasantsin thatregion, as are the reports of the use of day laborersnear some ofthe largertowns (to which threatened free peasants often migrated).76

Whatthe analysisdoes suggest, however, is that the priceor annualhirerate for serfs, or the incrementalsupervisioncosts, couldbe such as torender serf labor no more profitablethan free wage labor. The twosystems exhibitedby equations(2)and(6)could coexist if the additionalsupervisioncosts entailedin the enserfmentof free labor,CY',were highenough or if the hiring rate approachedthe level of BEV,he expropria-tion yielded by theirenserfment.Thus it has already been notedthatbythe late eighteenth century a considerable part of the labor of some

estates (up to half in some) in East ElbianGermanyand Prussia camefrom a group embracing landless laborers and cottagers. On someestates the number of day laborersequaledthe numberof landholdingpeasants.77 t has been estimatedthat in the Kurmarkof Brandenburgby the end of the eighteenth century there were three times as manylandless peasants as there were peasants with holdings.78 n Prussiainthe sixteenthcenturythe nobility, towns, andlargepeasantfarms hiredservants, milkmaids,oxherds, and numerousseasonal workers, manycomingfrom Masovia (whence laboralso migrated o Silesia). Most ofthe wage was a payment in kind. Maczak's calculationof wage rates inPolandand Prussiafor the late sixteenth century, suggestingrelativelyhigherrates near to towns and in Prussia, supportthe propositionthatthe incidence of wage labor ratherthan serfdomcannot be explainedsimplyin terms of the degree to which wage labor is costly. The growthof day laborershas been seen as partof the expansionof Royal Prussiain the sixteenth century.79 n the seventeenth centurythere is evidencethat the farms of the nobilityemployedmoreday laborers hanserfsand

that recovery from the depressionof the mid-seventeenthcenturywaspartlybased on such labor supplies.80By the eighteenthcenturythere

" Blum, "Rise of Serfdom," p. 832; Carsten, Origins of Prussia, p. 162; Ford, "PrussianPeasantrybefore 1807," p. 365;Blum, End of the Old Order,pp. 41-42.

76 Zytkowicz, "The Peasant'sFarm," p. 140;Ford, "PrussianPeasantrybefore 1807," p. 359;Topolski, "La Refdodalisationdans 1'economie des grands domaines en Europe centrale etorientate XVIe-XVIIIe ss)," Studia HistoriaeOeconomicae, 6 (1971), p. 59.

77 Ford, "PrussianPeasantrybefore 1807," pp. 366-67.78 Blum, Endof the Old Order,p. 106.

79Maczak, "Export of Grain,"pp. 94-95; idem, "Money andSociety," pp. 99-101.80Topolski, "EconomicDecline in Poland," pp. 134-138.



542 Millward

were many thousands of landless in Prussia earningtheirliving as farmlaborers.It has been estimatedthat in East Prussiaas earlyas 1700the

69,231 peasants with holdings were outnumberedby 72,611 landlessfarm laborers. In generalthe free wage laborof EasternEuropeof theeighteenth century dwelt in huts, sometimes rented, sometimes in thequartersof other peasants. If they marriedand took a plot they mergedwith the cottage class with all its obligations.8'

The existence of free labor is to be explainedin two ways: thereweregroups who for reasons not explored here were not enserfed andenserfment itself involved its own costs so that in some cases it was no

more profitablethan free wage labor. Likewise rents could persist forsome free peasants, and other rent-paying peasants would escapeserfdomwhen the costs to the lord outweighedthe expropriationof thescarcity value of labor.

The prevalence of free peasants in Prussia is partly traced to theGerman freemen of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centurieswho were granted Culmic law by the Teutonic Knights. In the fifteenthcenturythe Bishopricof Ermlandwas separatedfromPrussiaandwas

not secularizedlater, remaininga district with a strong peasantry.82Theroyal domains were also important;by the 1570s they are estimated toaccount for about 10-15percent of all villages in Poland, but in RoyalPrussia were 32 percent, or 49 percent of all taxable peasant land.Moreover, of all Polish crown provinces, large noble estates in RoyalPrussia showed the weakest growth and were the last to develop.83Inthe sixteenth centurythere was a growthin peasant farmingby plowingof wastelands and by enlargementof farms. The latter was especiallynoticeablein the fertileregionsof the Vistulaestuarywheretherewas afree land market and where by the end of the century many peasantfarms had grown to 60 hectares, twice as big as those in the UpperVistula.84By the early seventeenth centurythe peasantfarmsin RoyalPrussia still retainedtheirindependence.There were no demesnesin thewidespreadpossessions of the cities of ElbingandGdansk,whose landswere mostly leased for rents. In DucalPrussia t has been estimatedthat15percentof all landwas owned by the Colmer.The recoveryin RoyalPrussia after the mid-seventeenthcenturywas based on tenantfarming

and rents as well as the day labor noted above, and the stratumof freepeasants in Prussia was also being enlarged by Dutch colonists.85

81Blum, End of the Old Order,pp. 105-10. This surely accountsfor Kaminski'spuzzle ("Neo

Serfdom n Poland-Lithuania," . 266) that many landlesslaborersdid not takeup the life of thecottagereven though there was enough land.

82 Carsten,Originsof Prussia, pp. 160-64.83 Maczak, "Social Distributionof Landed Property," p. 458; Zytkowicz, "The Peasant's

Farm," p. 138.

4 Maczak,"Export of Grain," pp. 94-95.

85 Carsten, Originsof Prussia, p. 161; Topolski, "EconomicDecline in Poland," pp. 134-38;Zytkowicz, "The Peasant's Farm,"pp. 141-42.




By the eighteenthcenturythe term Colmerwas beingused through-out East ElbianGermanyand East Prussiafor free peasantsthoughtheystill predominated n East Prussia. They could still sell their land, butwere increasingly liable to dues when they were on royal and nobleestates, and needed to obtain the superiorowner's consent for alien-ation. Nevertheless it is estimated that by 1798twenty-one percentofpeasant holdings in East Prussiabelonged to free peasants.86Nor wasPoland as a whole by that stage much different;of one millionholdingsat the end of the eighteenth century some 20-30percentwere held byfree men.87Many were immigrants,especially runawaysfromPomera-

nia and Silesia, welcomed by Polish landownerswho were content withquitrents. Otherswere residents of towns, holding landon free tenureson the basis of city privilegesgrantedin the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies.

The evidence of Eastern White Russia is less clear. It has beensuggested that one of its most characteristicfeatures, as part of thePolish-LithuanianState, was the delay in the execution of the wiocareforms.Associated withthis was a low proportionof demesne landand

of corvee at least until the latter part of the seventeenth century.Manuscriptsrelatedto the estates aroundSzklow suggest that peasantsales of hempflourished,thatmills, distilleries, rents, andtributeswerethe dominantform of income for the magnateclass up to the 1670sandthat the numberof cottagerswas small.88Apparently he administrativeandorganizational osts of enserfmentmeant a slow developmentof thedemesne-serfeconomy.

Finally, it is notable that a highly active market in landpredatedthemarket n serfs. If the landwas settled with serfs, as opposedto simplyvacantland, sales are consistent with the thesis of aneconomic pressurearisingfrom imbalances in the supply and demand for serfs, lackingdirect sale of the serfs. Maczak has pointedto incessantpropertysalesinvolving cash and credit in sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuryPo-land.89Data from the voivodship of Cracow suggest that on averagethree to four manors changed hands each year and in some years thenumber was very large. More generally the whole colonization move-ment to the East in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesinvariably

involvedpeasant settlersfollowed by Polish noblesrather han the otherway around.

8 Blum, "Rise of Serfdom," pp. 358, 370 fn; idem, End of the Old Order,p. 30.87 Blum Endof the Old Order,pp. 30-32) suggeststhatthe proportion f peasantswhowere free

at the end of the eighteenthcentury was higher n East than West Germanyand higher n Polandand the Danubianprincipalities han in all the servile lands.

8 Topolska, "Eastern White Russia," p. 43.89 Maczak, "Export of Grain," pp. 86-90. For Polish colonizationof the Russian ands see P. I.

Lyashchenko,"WhiteRussiaand the Ukraineunder he Polish Yoke ofSerfdomduring he 14th o17thCenturies,"History of the National Economy of Russia, (New York, 1970),chap. 14.



544 Millward

MARKET GRAIN SALES AND EXPORTS

Some of the major features of the corvee in Eastern Europe cantherefore be explained withoutinvokingthe traditionalexplanation,therise in demand for cereal exports. The analysis has demonstrated hatserfdom can be profitableto the lords independent of any exogenousincreasein marketdemand.Indeedthere is some directevidence thatinGreat and Little Poland in the sixteenthcentury75 percent of landwasownedby the middlegentry,who continued to use theirsmalldemesneslargely to satisfy the needs of their own households and servants.

Similarlyin Eastern White Russia in 1645 in the 45 Szklow villagesleased by the middle gentry demesne accounted for some 19 percentof land, and the manors produced mainly goods consumed by theowners.' There is nothingin the logic of corv~e to suggestthatmarketgrain sales or exports would be uniquelyassociated with demesne-serfproductionor that demesne grain sales would be restricted to exports.Nor does the increasingbody of evidence for EasternEurope suggestitwas so. Grainsales, and in particular heirincreasein the sixteenthandfirst half of the seventeenthcentury, were not uniquelyassociated withdemesne production.Indeed the demesne is possibly not even prepon-derant. The evidence from the 1585 and 1650inventories of the Plockepiscopate in Masovia indicatedthat while 24 percentof demesnegrainwas sold, rather than consumed, the figure for peasant land was 26percent; as noted earlier, of total grain sales 85 percent involved theproduce of peasantland. While the percentageof grainoutput account-ed for by the commercialcrop, rye, rose during1595-1650proportion-ately more on demesne land than on peasant land, it did nevertheless

rise on peasantlandfrom 60 to 70 percent.9'It has been estimatedthattowards the end of the sixteenthcenturyin RoyalPrussiathe proportionof production hat was sold was higher (at 50 percent)thanin the otherPolish Crown territoriesand yet, as already noted, this was a regionwith the highest proportionof free peasantsand the lowest percentageof land under demesne.92

Moreover, neitherexports in total nor their increasein the sixteenthand first half of the seventeenth century was uniquelyassociated with

demesneproduction.It is recognizedthat in RoyalPrussiaanimportantpart of the export increase over 1580-1650 was met by peasantclearance of wastes and peasant sales.93Grainexports throughGdanskareknown to have been dominatedby rye andthe evidence of the PlockEpiscopateis that the proportionof sales accountedfor by exportswas

90Topolska, "EasternWhiteRussia," p. 42; Kaminski,"Neo Serfdom n Poland-Lithuania,".261.

9' Zytkowicz, "AgriculturalProduction n Masovia," pp. 117-18.

92 Wyczanski, "Polish Rye Trade," p. 118; Maczak, "Export on Grain," pp. 91-94.93 Maczak, "Export of Grain," pp. 94-95.




twice as big for rye (40 percent) as for other grains.94Since about 30percentof peasantrye production n Masoviawas sold it is highlylikely

that some ended up as exports.95It is known that lords bought uppeasant grain. Similarly the evidence from the river registers for thesecond half of the sixteenth century suggests that merchants, whoboughtcorn frompeasants, accountedfor 10percentof the Vistulagraintrade from Little Poland, 16 percent Ruthenia and Volhynia, and 33percent Masovia, all of which areas were associated with the exportincrease.' More generally the evidence indicates that the TeutonicKnightswere great exporters in the fourteenthcenturybut theirgrain

came frompeasant rents in kindas well as fromdemesnes. In anyeventthe early date of the rise of corvde in East ElbianGermanyandPrussiahas cast doubt on its empirical association with the rise in exports.97And sales fromdemesne-serfestates were not restricted o exports. It isnow agreedthat in Poland it was demand in the domestic marketthataccompaniedthe initialexpansion of demesne in the centralprovinces.In Silesia big farms grew up in the fifteenth century catering for thedomestic market. In Western Pomeraniademesne production for the

marketgrew at the end of the fourteenth century, respondingto theurbandemand from Stettin.98

The analysis so far has ignoredthe fact that enserfmentby definitioninvolves a redistributionof real income from peasants to lords andhence a change in the pattern of consumptiondemand. Consider anextreme case where initiallythe free peasant is not engagedin marketsales; part of production s consumed andthe restforms a rent in kindtothe lord who (to take again the extreme case) consumes all of it.

Enserfment nvolves a ceterisparibus reduction n peasantconsumptionand an increase in produceavailableto the lord. Assume that the lordwishes his increasein real income to take a formother thanthe previousproduction pattern. He either so directs the serf that the range ofproducts is changed (which no doubthappenedto some extent, but willhere be ignored) or he attempts to sell the produce and buy newconsumption goods. The direct implication, then, is that as long asenserfment nvolves extra supervisioncosts its profitabilitywill depend

9 CompareMaczak, "The Balance of PolishSea Tradewiththe West, 1565-1646,"Scandina-vian EconomicHistoryReview, 18 (1970), 107-42; W. Rusinski,"TheRole of Polish Territoriesnthe EuropeanTrade in the Seventeenthand EighteenthCenturies,"Studia HistoriaeOeconomi-cae, 3 (1969), 115-34; and Wyczanski's ("Polish Rye Trade") estimatethat 90 percentof grainexports were rye.

95This can be deduced from Zytkowicz's figures ("AgriculturalProduction n Masovia," pp.117-19).

96Maczak, "Export of Grain," Table 2. See also Wyrobisz, "SmallTowns in Poland," for the

activitiesof merchants.

97Carsten,Originsof Prussia, chap. 8; Rosenberg,"Rise of the Junkers,"p. 234.9 Zytkowicz, "The Peasant's Farm," pp. 137, 14445.



546 Millward

on the terms of trade, including transport costs, between demesneproduce and the new consumption goods.

Whether or not the extra demesne produce is sold will thereforedepend in part on the initial real income levels of lords and theirconsumptionpreferences.The evidence does suggestthat the increasedreal income of the lords took the form in part of market purchases.During the first half of the seventeenth century, for example, theproductionof the commercial crop rye on the demesnes of the Plockepiscopate in Masovia rose from 39 percentof totalgrain production o47 percent.99Evidence fromthe Vistularegistersfor 1555-1576suggests

that good harvests in Great and Little Poland, Ruthenia,and Volhyniaelicited a proportionately larger increase in river transportof grainbelonging to merchants, clergy, and the middle gentry than for thecategory embracingmagnates and rich gentry.'0?The first part of theseventeenth century witnessed also a considerable rise in imports atGdanskof finertextiles and "colonialgoods."'0' Furthermoret is clearthat market demandwas influenced very much by exports. They havebeen estimated to be of the order of 25-45 percent of rye sales

throughout the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. 02 Whatever themargins of error in such figures, exports were clearly an importantcomponentof demand andthe evidence is thatexportdemandwas priceelastic, absorbing many of the variations in local harvests.'03 Theevidence thatgrainprices in Polanddeclinedas one moved inlandfromGdansk is thereforesuggestiveof a relatively competitivesettingwherecosts of productionvariedgeographicallybecause of the transportcostsratherthan other costs. 104

It is thereforeanalyticallypossible thatthe profitability f enserfmentwas determined n some places or periods by the profitability f exports.This has two implications. Of two estates differentiatedonly by theiraccess to markets,one mighthave demesne serf production or marketsales while the othermighthave a free peasantrypayingrents. A secondimplication s that thereare special advantagesto lordswho areengagedin the marketto extend theirenserfmentto transportduties, and indeedto use all their noble power to obtain advantageousterms of trade.

99Zytkowicz, "AgriculturalProduction n Masovia," pp. 113-18.'? Maczak,"Export of Grain,"Table 2.

Maczak, "Balance of Polish Sea Trade."102 Kula, Economic Theoryof the Feudal System, pp. 92-93; Wyczanski,"Polish Rye Trade,"

p. 130.103 Kula,Economic Theoryof the FeudalSystem, pp. 93-100; Bogucka, "Merchants'Profits n

GdanskForeignTrade n the First Half of the 17thCentury,"Acta PoloniaeHistoricae,23(1971),73-90; Bogucka, "The Role of Baltic Tradein EuropeanDevelopmentfrom the XVIth to theXVIIIth Centuries,"Journal of EuropeanEconomicHistory (Spring 1980), p. 7. On this wholeparagraph ee also W. Abel, AgriculturalFluctuations in Europefrom the Thirteenth o theTwentiethCenturies New York, 1980), part 2.

104Maczak, "Agricultural nd Livestock Production,"p. 675; Kula, EconomicTheoryof theFeudal System, p. 127 and fn.




There is clear evidence of the extensive use of serfs in cartingdemesne produce and of course in the involvement of lords in rivertransportand in obtainingspecial commercial privileges at the expenseof urbanmerchants. The evidence of periods whenexports were clearlydecisive in encouragingenserfment is not so clear-cut. That exportingestates in Masovia, Ruthenia,andLittle Polandwere on the river routesand that in the more Easternregionsthey were located near to the riversBug and San could simply be indicating that grain-sellingdemesneswhose producewas exported had better access to long-distancetrans-port. It has earlierbeen recorded, moreover, that there were demesne-

serf estates which sold to local markets, and some that catered largelyfor the lord's own consumption. The proposition that marketdemandfor grain was decisive in affecting the profitability (as opposed topossibility) of enserfmentdoes not imply that, in the absence of such arise in demand,demesneestates wouldhave been catering or the lord'sconsumption.It implies that enserfmentwould not have taken place atall. By extension, the proposition that export demand was decisiveimplies that enserfmentwould otherwise not have taken place on many

estates and estate income would have been based largelyon the rents offree peasants. In the Eastern regions there is some basis for thinkingthat in the more remote areas the unattractiveness of exports wasassociated with a delayed process of enserfment,but this needs firmerdocumentationthan appearsto exist at present.

CONCLUSION

At the beginningof the fifteenthcentury EasternEuropehad a freepeasantry. The model developed here shows how, in the context of anoble monopoly of land ownership, the basic productionprocess ofpeasant graincultivationyields maximum ncome to lords andpeasantsunder a system of rents, and the evidence is consistent with that. Inadditionit has been demonstratedthat insofar as they requiresuper-vised productionprocesses, the other productsof this economy-nobleleisure, housing, specializedagriculturalproducts,andso forth-would

yield a set of contractualrelationships nvolvingwage laborof one formor another.

Eastern European serfdom of the sixteenth to eighteenth centurieswas defined in terms of its attenuationof peasant rights.By extension ofthe above model it was then shown that, in the central activity ofpeasant grain cultivation, a reorganizationof production would berequired n order to minimizethe supervisioncosts inherentlyassociat-ed with enserfment. It is this consideration that explains the rise of

corvee, the rise in the ratio of demesne to peasant land, and that alsopredicts an element of demesne strip consolidationfor which there is



548 Millward

some evidence. It was shown also that, by its inherent nvolvementwithsupervision, the use of serf labor in work methods, which even underfreely contracted arrangementswould have involved supervision, be-comes especially profitablebecause of its expropriationof work premi-ums and its low incrementalsupervision costs. The use of serf laborindomestic work, distilleries, lead mining, mills, and so forth followsnaturally, though an unsolved question is why this did not apparentlylead to any improvements in the use of agricultural abor and land.

Some writers have explainedthe incidence of free wage labor and freemarketrents in EasternEurope of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

in terms of the fertility of particular areas and their proximity tomarkets.It is shown in this paper that such propositionsareanalyticallyunsound and that the incidence of free systems of labororganizationareto be explainedon the one hand simply by the fact that some peasantsnever became enserfed, and on the other, given the prospectiveimbalancesbetween labor demand and supplyinherentto serfdom,freewage labor and market rents could be as profitableas serf agricultureinsofar as the latter involved significantsupervision costs or significant

hiringrates for serfs.Finally, it has been demonstrated that any decisive connectionbetween exports and enserfment would have to rest first on serfdomhaving significant supervision costs and second on exports being aparticularlyprofitablepart of marketgrain sales. There is inadequateevidence availableat presentto suggestthatexportshadsuch a decisiveeffect in the sense of there being switches from free peasantry toserfdom which would not have happened but for the rise in exportdemand.

Others 1 an Economic Analysis of the Organization of Serfdom in Eastern Europe

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