Slavery as an industrial system

by H. J. Nieboer

All land was now held as property; consequently the land was more and more held by free tenants and worked with free labourers dependent on wages, whereas serfdom gradually died out.

In the 15^th century, however, according to both Lamprecht and Inama-Sternegg, serfdom and even slavery reappeared.

Lamprecht, after speaking of the raising of rents by the landlords, adds: “But more disastrous in its consequences than all this was the manner in which the landlords dealt with the increasing surplus population of the farms occupied by their villeins. Formerly, younger sons of villeins, as well as children of free parents, had removed to the woods for the purpose of clearing them; and it was with their help that the landlords had in the course of the 12^th and 13^th centuries extended their landed properties. In later times such younger sons had often gone to the towns or the newly colonized districts of Eastern Germany. Now there was a stagnation among them as well as among the small remainder of the free population. There remained no other alternative but to divide the farms of the villeins. But the interest of the landlord was opposed to this. He had no security of receiving rent and services from farms parcelled out into small allotments. Therefore he did not, as a rule, divide the farms into more than four parts; and those of the servile population who could not secure the use of such a small holding were regarded as slaves. This institution, the origin of which went back to the first half of the 12^th century, had till then been almost entirely foreign to the development of Germany. Together with a rural proletariat destitute of nearly everything, a real slavery came now for the first time into existence on German ground.… And this new slave class went on continually [[381]]increasing; in the first half of the 15^th century they already formed a considerable number, about whose fate patriots were very uneasy.… Nor did the evil stop here. The term slavery, used first with regard to villeins who occupied no farm, was soon applied to all villeins, in order to tax them more and more heavily and dispute their right of succeeding to the farms of their parents, which had been established at least since the end of the 12^th century. Finally the landlords came to regard even free tenants as slaves and slavery as the only status of the rural population”[246].

We can easily understand that the lords designated these proletarians by the most contemptuous name they could devise. But were they really slaves? A slave, as opposed to a free labourer, is not allowed to leave his master. Now it is remarkable that Inama-Sternegg, describing the condition of the rural population in the different states of Germany, though he states that in the newly colonized eastern parts of Germany the peasants, who had been free, were restricted in their right of leaving their lords, mentions no such particulars of Western Germany[247]. And the chief aim of the peasants, in their revolts at the end of the 15^th century, was not to acquire personal freedom, but to retain the use of the commons, which the lords were appropriating[248].

The peasants were, indeed, obliged to more services in the 15^th than in the 13^th and 14^th centuries. But we cannot regard this as a mark of returning serfdom or slavery; for Inama-Sternegg explicitly states that the greater oppression of the rural classes in the 15^th century was chiefly due to the increase of the services required by the rulers of the several German states. The services exacted by the landlords had rather diminished[249].

The same writer, recapitulating his conclusions as to the condition of the rural population at the end of the Middle Ages, begins by saying that the cultivators, who formerly had had an hereditary right to the land on condition of paying a fixed sum, were now far more heavily taxed and had little security [[382]]of remaining on the land[250]. We think that this is what the statements of our informants about the reappearance of slavery mean. The cultivators were not slaves, but impoverished and despised tenants at will and agricultural labourers.

At any rate, in the 16^th century eviction of peasants, which is the reverse of astriction to the soil, became of frequent occurrence. Ashley, who has consulted some of the best literature, states that “the Bavarian code of 1518 laid down that the peasant had no hereditary right to his holding, and not even a life interest unless he could show some documentary evidence. In Mecklenburg a decree of 1606 declared that the peasants were not emphyteutae but coloni, whom their lords could compel to give up the lands allotted to them, and who could claim no right of inheritance even when their ancestors had held the land from time immemorial. In Holstein, again, a great number of the peasants were expelled from their holdings, and such as remained became tenants at will”[251].

Serfdom, in Southern and Western Germany, thus died out towards the end of the Middle Ages, at a time when population had become numerous and land scarce.

The eastern parts of Germany had quite another agrarian history. Here serfdom was not common before the 16^th century. From this time, however, and especially after the Thirty Years’ War, it became more and more general. As this is quite a separate history we shall not speak of it any further[252]. [[383]]

We think the above remarks on England and the older parts of Germany may suffice to show that our theory can throw some light on the agrarian history of Western Europe.