Yet money economy, taken in the sense of town life and [[360]]commerce, did sometimes affect the condition of the rural classes. Such was the case in Italy where, in the 13th century, the wealthy commercial cities took an active part in the emancipation of the serfs. Florence especially strongly encouraged their enfranchisement. In 1257 this city even went so far as to set free all the serfs in the surrounding country, indemnifying the lords. The city government pretended to act from Christian and philanthropic motives. “But” adds our informant “though the city governments of Central Italy were the first to pronounce themselves in favour of the personal freedom of the peasants, they by no means countenanced the idea of leaving the land to those who had held it for centuries. On the contrary, the citizens endeavour to acquire landed properties, and when they have got them they put an end to the hereditary tenures and replace them by tenancies.” Many of the former serfs had to leave the lands of their ancestors and augmented the number of proletarians in the towns. They were replaced by leaseholders[160].
The disappearance of serfdom was thus accelerated by the measures of the Italian cities. How much of sentiment there was in these measures, and how much of self-interest, we do not know. But at any rate serfdom must already have been drawing to an end before the cities meddled with it. For a firmly established system that discharges an important economic function is not uprooted by mere sentiment. And so far as the self-interest of the citizens induced them to replace the serfs by free tenants, the latter system must have been economically more useful than the former, which was probably only kept up by the landlords because they were accustomed to it. Times had changed and the old system of cultivation had become obsolete; and the citizens of the towns, whom no personal relation bound to the serfs, expelled them and let the land to free tenants. Before their intervention there must already have been at work an internal cause, which effected that cultivation by serfs was no longer the most profitable mode of managing landed properties.
We do not mean to say that there was no internal connection [[361]]between the transition from serfdom to freedom and the simultaneous rise of town life, commerce and manufactures. We think there was such a connection. But we cannot agree with the theory that the disappearance of serfdom was a consequence of the commercial development of Western Europe. It seems to us that the rise of commerce was not the cause of the decline of serfdom, but that both were effects of the same principal cause, the relative scarcity of land which made itself felt towards the end of the Middle Ages. As soon as people had to shift on a limited area, the use of commerce, which enables each district to produce what it is most fit to, and so enhances the productiveness of labour, became more apparent than it had been at a time when there was plenty of land. In the same sense, Malthus remarks: “The great cause which fills towns and manufactories is an insufficiency of employment, and consequently the means of support in the country; and if each labourer, in the parish where he was born, could command food, clothing, and lodging for ten children, the population of the towns would soon bear but a small proportion to the population of the country”[161]. Lange also says that poverty of the masses is a condition of the rise of manufactures[162]. Besides these economists, we may quote the eminent geographist Ratzel, who observes, that in a country with a growing population the soil finally cannot any longer feed the whole of the people and so an ever increasing part of the population devote themselves to manufactures and commerce[163]. That this occurs even in primitive civilization, follows from what Krieger tells us about the natives inhabiting the small islands adjoining New Guinea, especially Berlin Harbour and Dallmann Harbour. The goad of necessity, he remarks, has urged them to a progress in the arts of life. The want of room rendered extension of the plantations on their islets impossible and so they began to manufacture carved work and pottery, which they exported to the continent in exchange for food[164].
As for the medieval history of Europe, Inama-Sternegg observes that the increase of the population, requiring an [[362]]extension of the means of subsistence, led to the rise of towns and manufactures[165].
But however this may be, we are certain that the rise of money economy cannot have been the sole, or even the chief cause of the disappearance of servile labour. This is sufficiently shown by the fact that before the emancipation of the Negroes a system of servile labour on a large scale prevailed in the United States and the West Indies, i.e. in countries working for export.
Hildebrand’s theory has been accepted by some writers on economic history. Ochenkowski repeatedly asserts that the change in the condition of the rural population was the effect of money economy. Inama-Sternegg, in one passage of his excellent book on the economic history of Germany, expresses the opinion that in the early Middle Ages natural economy, defined by him as the absence of regular commercial intercourse, made astriction of the labourers to the soil necessary. Professor Cunningham, in his book on Western Civilization, ascribes the changes which in the history of ancient Greece and Rome took place in the status of the labouring classes to the prevalence of natural economy and money economy respectively[166]. But none of these writers give any new argument in favour of the theory.
Our conclusion is that the rise of money economy was not the cause of the disappearance of serfdom. We shall inquire now whether Wakefield’s theory, with which we agree, can further our understanding of the economic history of England and Germany.