Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage

Description

Serfdom and Slavery compares the two forms of legal servitude in cultures in Western civilization, in Europe and the New World from ancient times to the modern period. Within a tightly controlled framework of general contextual chapters followed by specific case studies, a distinguished team of scholars offers 17 specially written essays that illuminate the nature, development, impact and termination of serfdom and slavery in European society. While the case studies range form classical Greece to early modern Brandenburg, and from medieval England to nineteenth-century Russia, the volume as a whole is closely integrated. It makes an important contribution to a topic of increasing international interest. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface Part One: Comparative studies of serfdom and slavery 1. Introduction Slavery Serfdom 2. Slavery, serfdom and other forms of coerced labour: similarities and differences Slaves and serfs: similarities Slaves and serfs: differences Other labour systems Acquiring and using labour Differing forms of coercion Ending slavery and serfdom Concluding remarks 3. Some controversial questions concerning nineteenth-century emancipation from slavery and serfdom The coming of emancipation The process of emancipation The aftermath of emancipation Part Two: Themes and case studies on slavery 4. Continuity and change in Western slavery: ancient to modern times Slavery in the Roman Republic and Empire Medieval European and Islamic slavery Slavery in the Americas 5. The origin and establishment of Ancient Greek slavery Slaveholding in the worlds of Homer and Hesiod The development of slavery between c. 700 and 500 BC 6. The hierarchical household in Roman society: a study of domestic slavery Linguistic distinctions Legal distinctions Ritual and other symbolic distinctions The ideology of the household 7. Emancipation in Byzantium: Roman law in a medieval society Christianity and slavery From Rome to Byzantium The process of manumission Why not emancipate? Protecting the established order 8. New World slavery, Old World slavery 9. Slave exploitation and the elementary structures of enslavement Dimensions of slave exploitation Slavery and development 10. Slave emancipations in modern history Part Three: Themes and case studies on serfdom 11. Serfdom in medieval and modern Europe: a comparison Personal serfs and servile tenures The world of the serf Serfdoms harsh and lenient The rise and fall of serfdom The significance of serfdom Closing remarks 12. On servile status in the early Middle Ages Problems of text, terminology and numbers Recent analyses When did serfdom begin? Outside the mainstream What changed? Postscript 13. The rises and declines of serfdom in medieval and early modern Europe Serfdom and the economic reproduction of lords The rise and first decline of serfdom: the limits of classicalfeudalism or banal lordship Overcoming the weaknesses of decentralized lordship: the rise of the centralized tax/office state Overcoming the weaknesses of decentralized lordship: the second rise of serfdom, via the centralized feudal state, in England and Catalonia The second decline of serfdom: England and Catalonia The third rise of serfdom: lordly self-centralization in Eastern Europe Conclusion 14. Memories of freedom: attitudes towards serfdom in England, 1200–1350 The evidence Attitudes to serfdom The King Economic Attitudes Social Memory Conclusion 15. Subject farmers in Brandenburg–Prussia and Poland: village life and fortunes under manorialism in early modern Central Europe Historiographical traditions and prevailing interpretations Rethinking the manor-village relationship in Brandenburg Towards a reconceptualization of the Polish case Conclusions on language and causation 16. The serf economy and the social order in Russia 17. When and why was the Russian peasantry emancipated? The efficiency of serf labour The process of peasant emancipation The vestiges of serfdom Conclusion Notes on contributors Index