Serfdom and Corvée Labour in the Baltic Area 16th-18th Centuries (original) (raw)
Related papers
a cura di Simonetta Cavaciocchi Firenze University Press 2014 Schiavitù e servaggio nell'economia europea. Secc. XI-XVIII = Serfdom and Slavery in the European Economy. 11 th -18 th Centuries : atti della "Quarantecinquesima settimana di studi", 14-18 aprile 2013 / a cura di Simonetta Cavaciocchi. -Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2014. (Atti delle Settimane di Studi e altri Convegni, 45) http://digital.casalini.it/ ISBN (online) ISBN (print) La Settimana di Studi è stata realizzata con il contributo di: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali La Fondazione Datini si dichiara fin d'ora disponibile ad assolvere i suoi obblighi per l'utilizzo delle immagini contenute nel volume nei confronti di eventuali aventi diritto.
Abolition of Serfdom in the Baltics – a Demand Dictated by the Modern World
2020
The abolition of serfdom in the Baltics is evaluated rather controversially by scholars of the history of Latvia and the history of law. Previously, historians mostly concentrated on the outcome of the abolition of serfdom, highlighting the fact that the peasants, as they acquired personal freedom (becoming vogelfrei), lost their lands, which remained the property of the nobility. Until now, the causes of the abolition of serfdom have seldom been the focus of attention. Why did the tzar agree to abolish it earlier in the three Baltic provinces/governorates (1816 in Estonia, 1817 in Courland, 1819 in Livonia)? The answer to this question is crucial because it concerns not only the abolition of serfdom, but also the evaluation of the Baltic German aristocracy as a whole. It is also a question about the extent to which the Baltics remained integrated in the Western European (especially German) cultural, legal and economic space, even while being a part of the Russian Empire.
Slavery in the Eastern Baltic in the 12th-15th Centuries.
L’argomento del saggio è la schiavitù in Livonia (regione corrispondente alle attuali Estonia e Lettonia) dal XII al XV secolo. La caratteristica originale della schiavitù, che la fece perdurare in queste terre per tutto il Medioevo, era il suo stretto legame con il fenomeno delle crociate. Certo, la schiavitù esisteva nella società anche prima delle crociate, ma il numero degli schivi non era allora probabilmente molto importante. Gli schiavi provenivano prima di tutto dalle campagne militari che avevano come uno degli scopi proprio la presa di prigionieri. Si tratta di spedizioni di crociata e di guerre di conquista condotte in Estonia, Lettonia e Prussia nel XIII secolo e dell'azione bellica mantenuta durante tutto il XIV secolo contro la Lituania pagana. L’ultima menzione di schiavi (drelle in basso tedesco) proviene dall’anno 1455. Si tratta di una data piuttosto tardiva per l’Europa del Nord: in Scandinavia, la schiavitù perdurò il più lungo in Svezia, dove scomparve nella metà precisa del XIV secolo. Sebbene la schiavitù avesse una base giuridica, rappresentata dall’atto di cattura, i prigionieri potevano comunque essere scambiati o riscattati dalle loro famiglie. I prigionieri di guerra furono distribuiti tra i partecipanti alla spedizione e poi venduti, alcuni persino nelle loro terre d’origine, dove la loro provenienza non offriva affatto la garanzia di una liberazione. Il numero dei prigionieri catturati nel corso di una spedizione militare variava da pochi sventurati sino a centinaia di persone, ma, dopo la divisione di prigionieri tra i guerrieri e il riscatto di alcuni, un singolo proprietario non ebbe sotto il suo potere che pochi schiavi. L’utilizzo economico degli schiavi è documentato nei castelli dell’Ordine Teutonico, ma degli schiavi domestici si trovano anche nei feudi delle campagne e nelle città. La scomparsa della schiavitù si spiega con la fine delle spedizioni regolari contro i Lituani, avvenuta dopo la conversione della Lituania nella fede cattolica a cavallo tra il XIV e il XV secolo. Con il contributo della difficile crisi demografica dell’inizio del XV secolo, gli schiavi di origine straniera si fusero insieme con il nuovo strato sociale dei servi della gleba della Livonia. Esistono delle fonti anche sulla liberazione testamentaria degli schiavi. The paper discusses slavery in Livonia (modern Estonia and Latvia) in the 12th to 15th centuries. The special feature of Livonian High and Late Medieval slavery was its close connection with the Crusades, which resulted in the relative longevity of this social and legal institution in the region. Slavery existed in the local pre-Crusades society; the number of slaves was, however, quite small here. The main source of slaves was captives taken during numerous military raids. There were Crusades and other wars in Estonia, Latvia, and Prussia in the 13th century, and continuing warfare by the Teutonic Order against pagan Lithuania in the 14th century. The last known occurrence of slaves (Middle Low German drelle) in Livonian sources dates to 1455. This is quite a late date in Northern Europe; in Scandinavia for instance, slavery disappeared in Sweden in the middle of the 14th century. Some captives were ransomed or exchanged by their families or communities. The captives were divided between participants in raids; others were sold. Captives could also be sold in the country of their origin, where they could remain slaves. Hence the permanent legal status of a slave originated from the fact of taking him or her captive. The number of captives taken during the military expeditions of the Teutonic Order in the 14th century reached from a few to several hundred. Taking into account the fact of the separation and ransoming of captives, the number of slaves belonging to one owner could not have been large. Their economical utilization is proved in the castles of the Teutonic Order and also as domestic slaves in private manors and urban households. The disappearance of Baltic slavery coincides with the end of regular anti-Lithuanian crusading after the Christianization of Lithuania at the turn of the 14th to 15th centuries. This was also the time of the development of Livonian serfdom, and alien slaves probably became incorporated into the local unfree peasantry. The severe demographic crisis of the rural population in the same period may have intensified this process. There is also some evidence of the manumission of slaves by will.
in S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), Slavery and Serfdom in the European Economy from the 11th to the 18th Centuries. Florence, Firenze University Press: 689-693., 2014
a cura di Simonetta Cavaciocchi Firenze University Press 2014 Schiavitù e servaggio nell'economia europea. Secc. XI-XVIII = Serfdom and Slavery in the European Economy. 11 th -18 th Centuries : atti della "Quarantecinquesima settimana di studi", 14-18 aprile 2013 / a cura di Simonetta Cavaciocchi. -Firenze : Firenze University Press, 2014. (Atti delle Settimane di Studi e altri Convegni, 45) http://digital.casalini.it/ ISBN (online) ISBN (print) La Settimana di Studi è stata realizzata con il contributo di: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali La Fondazione Datini si dichiara fin d'ora disponibile ad assolvere i suoi obblighi per l'utilizzo delle immagini contenute nel volume nei confronti di eventuali aventi diritto.
The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, 2015
In the 16th-19th centuries (until 1861) the term second serfdom is not applied in the investigations of the economic organization of Lithuania. However, the theory of the neo-Marxist capitalist world system (CWS) of the most famous and influential American comparative historical sociology representative I. Wallerstein offers to look at the phenomenon of the second serfdom from a global perspective emphasizing external causes and to consider it a manifestation of peripheral capitalism in Central Eastern Europe. In his fundamental work The Modern World System, the Polish and Lithuanian social economic order in the 16th-18th centuries is treated as the periphery of the CWS at that time. The goal of this article is using the access of modern comparative historical sociology to answer the question of whether the term second serfdom is applicable (and if so, when) to describe the economic organization of Lithuania in 1557–1861. The article states that in view of the economic development o...
Early Baltic historiography was rather emotional in its presentation of manor-peasant rela-tions in the Baltic provinces during the first decades under Russian rule. No doubt it was influenced by the case of the so-called Rosen Declaration of 1739, an exceptionally well-known document in which the Livonian nobility justified their harsh and repressive rights over the local peasantry. The article argues that, without a careful contextualization and detailed examination of materials from the archives of central institutions, it is not possible to critically assess or characterize either Livonian serfdom or the Rosen Declaration. The central St Petersburg institution responsible for overseeing the issue of serfdom in the Bal-tic province was the Justice College for Livland and Estland Affairs. Its archives have sur-vived mainly in Moscow, partly in Tartu and in Helsinki, but have never received the at-tention they deserve. They show that, up until the reign of Catherine II, the Russian ad-ministration showed little interest in serfdom in its provinces of Livland and Estland. Dur-ing the 1730s and 1740s the rights of the peasants were discussed several times in the Justice College, although only in the context of a concrete complaint or a case. Compared to Otto Fabian Rosen’s statement with other similar explanations sent to the capital, Rosen’s view was considered quite routine in St Petersburg. All such statements regarding serfdom made by the Baltic provinces were taken seriously by the Justice College for Liv-land and Estland Affairs. However, this does not mean that Rosen’s memorial had any wider legal consequences. The local nobility saw their power over their peasants as some-thing very absolute; but this was not unique to Livonia, being a quite typical attitude for landlords in the East Elbian region.
Berghahn, 2014
This book is about the evolution of labor and labor institutions in Russia compared with Europe, Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean between the sixteenth and the early twentieth centuries. It questions common ideas about the origin of labor institutions and market economies, their evolution, and their transformation in the early modern and modern world. Since the eighteenth century at the latest, comparative analyses of labor institutions and labor conditions in Russia have been made as if the boundary between free and unfree labor were universally defined. Free labor in the "West" is thus contrasted with serf labor in Russia and Eastern Europe. This book intends to call that view into question and to show that Russian peasants were much less bound and "unfree" than usually held. On the other hand, in most "Western" countries labor was similar to service, and wage conditions resembled those of domestic servants, with numerous constraints imposed on work mobility. In turn, this situation gave rise to extreme forms of dependency in the colonies, not only under slavery, but also after it (indentured labor in the Indian Ocean and obligatory labor in Africa). Unfree labor and forms of coercion were perfectly compatible with market development; in Russia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean, economic growth between the seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth century made wide use of bondage and legal constraints on labor. This was so not because population was lacking, but because consistent economic growth took place all over Eurasia between the seventeenth and the nineteenth century. This