Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T12:20:17.418Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Economics and History: Analysing Serfdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2022

By
Sheilagh Ogilvie
Edited by
Richard Bourke  and
Quentin Skinner
Richard Bourke
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Quentin Skinner
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
Get access

Summary

This chapter considers the widely hypothesized antithesis between economics and history, and argues that the two disciplines are not substitutes but complements. It develops its argument through demonstration, by exploring how economics and history together provide complementary approaches to analyzing a specific historical institution: serfdom. To draw out general implications of such disciplinary complementarities, it scrutinizes three scholarly controversies about serfdom – how it shaped peasant choices, how it constrained these choices, and how it affected entire societies. To resolve these controversies, it shows, economics and history each brings special expertise, which have proven most productive when used jointly. The essay uses these debates about serfdom in particular to draw implications concerning the mutually reinforcing capacities of economics and history in general. It concludes that by working together, economics and history have improved our understanding of pre-modern society to a much greater extent than either discipline could have achieved in isolation.

Keywords

Economicshistoryserfdom
Type
Chapter
Information
History in the Humanities and Social Sciences , pp. 329 - 353
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, R. C. 2000. ‘Economic Structure and Agricultural Productivity in Europe, 1300–1800’, European Review of Economic History, 4: 1, pp. 1–25.Google Scholar
Allen, R. C. 2001. ‘The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War’, Explorations in Economic History, 38: 4, pp. 411–47.Google Scholar
Becker, G. S. 1968. ‘Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach’, Journal of Political Economy, 76: 2, pp. 169–217.Google Scholar
Brenner, R. 1976. ‘Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe’, Past & Present, 70, pp. 30–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broadberry, S. 2016. ‘When and How Did the Great Divergence Begin?’, paper presented to the Fifth Asian Historical Economics Conference, Seoul National University, Seoul, September 2–3, 2016.Google Scholar
Broadberry, S., Campbell, B., Klein, A., Overton, M. and Van Leeuwen, B.. 2015. British Economic Growth, 1270–1870. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Broadberry, S. and Gardner, L.. 2015. ‘Economic Development in Africa and Europe: Reciprocal Comparisons’, Revista de Historia Economica/Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 34: 1, pp. 11–37.Google Scholar
Broadberry, S., Guan, H. and Li, D. D.. 2018. ‘China, Europe, and the Great Divergence: A Study in Historical National Accounting, 980–1850’, Journal of Economic History, 78: 4, pp. 955–1000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broadberry, S. and Gupta, B.. 2006. ‘The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800’, Economic History Review, 59: 1, pp. 2–31.Google Scholar
Brunner, O. 1968. ‘Das Ganze Haus und die Alteuropäische Ökonomik’ in Neue Wege der Sozialgeschichte, ed. Brunner, O.. Göttingen.Google Scholar
Campbell, B. M. S. 1984. ‘Population Pressure, Inheritance and the Land Market in a Fourteenth-Century Peasant Community’ in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, ed. Smith, R. M.. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Campbell, B. M. S. 2005. ‘The Agrarian Problem in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Past & Present, 188, pp. 3–70.Google Scholar
Carus, A. W. and Ogilvie, S.. 2009. ‘Turning Qualitative into Quantitative Evidence: A Well-Used Method Made Explicit’, Economic History Review, 62: 4, pp. 893–925.Google Scholar
Cerman, M. 1996. ‘Proto-industrialisierung und Grundherrschaft: ländliche Sozialstruktur, Feudalismus und proto-industrielles Heimgewerbe in Nordböhmen vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (1381–1790)’. PhD thesis, University of Vienna.Google Scholar
Cerman, M. 1999. ‘Gutsherrschaft und untertäniges Gewerbe: die Herrschaften Frýdlant und Liberec in Nordböhmen’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 47: 1, pp. 2–19.Google Scholar
Cerman, M. 2008. ‘Social Structure and Land Markets in Late Medieval Central and East-Central Europe’, Continuity and Change, 23: 1, pp. 55–100.Google Scholar
Cerman, M. 2012. Villagers and Lords in Eastern Europe, 1300–1800. Basingstoke and New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chayanov, A. V., Thorner, D., Kerblay, B. and Smith, R. E. F.. 1966 [1925]. The Theory of Peasant Economy. Homewood, IL.Google Scholar
Cook, P. J., Machin, S., Marie, O. and Mastrobuon, G., eds. 2013. Lessons from the Economics of Crime: What Reduces Offending? Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Coppola, M. 2010. ‘The Biological Standard of Living in Germany before the Kaiserreich, 1815–1840: Insights from English Army Data’, European Review of Economic History, 14: 1, pp. 71–109.Google Scholar
Czap, P. 1978. ‘Marriage and the Peasant Joint Family in Russia’, in The Family in Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Research, ed. Ransel, D. L.. Urbana.Google Scholar
Dennison, T. 2006. ‘Did Serfdom Matter? Russian Rural Society, 1750–1860’, Historical Research, 79: 203, pp. 74–89.Google Scholar
Dennison, T. 2011. The Institutional Framework of Russian Serfdom. Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennison, T. and Ogilvie, S.. 2007. ‘Serfdom and Social Capital in Bohemia and Russia’, Economic History Review, 60: 3, pp. 513–44.Google Scholar
Dyer, C. 1980. Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Dyer, C. 2007. ‘The Ineffectiveness of Lordship in England, 1200–1400’, Past & Present, 195, pp. 69–86.Google Scholar
Enders, L. 1995. ‘Individuum und Gesellschaft: bäuerliche Aktionsräume in der frühneuzeitlichen Mark Brandenburg’ in Gutsherrschaft als soziales Modell: vergleichende Betrachtungen zur Funktionsweise frühneuzeitlicher Agrargesellschaften, ed. Peters, J.. Munich.Google Scholar
Figes, O. 1989. Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917–1921). Oxford.Google Scholar
Fogel, R. W. and Elton, G. R.. 1983. Which Road to the Past? Two Views of History. New Haven.Google Scholar
Freeze, G. L. 1976. ‘The Disintegration of Traditional Communities: The Parish in Eighteenth-Century Russia’, Journal of Modern History, 48: 1, pp. 32–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagen, W. W. 2002. Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers 1500–1840. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hatcher, J. 1981. ‘English Serfdom and Villeinage: Towards a Reassessment’, Past & Present, 90, pp. 3–39.Google Scholar
Hatekar, N. 2003. ‘Farmers and Markets in the Pre‐Colonial Deccan: The Plausibility of Economic Growth in Traditional Society’, Past & Present, 178: 1, pp. 116–47.Google Scholar
Hilton, R. H. 1975. The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford.Google Scholar
Himl, P. 2003. Die ‘armben Leüte’ und die Macht: die Untertanen der südböhmischen Herrschaft Ceský Krumlov/Krumau im Spannungsfeld zwischen Gemeinde, Obrigkeit und Kirche (1680–1781). Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Hoch, S. 1996. ‘The Serf Economy and the Social Order in Russia’ in Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage, ed. Bush, M. L.. Harlow.Google Scholar
Hodgskin, T. 1820. Travels in the North of Germany: Describing the Present State of the Social and Political Institutions, the Agriculture, Manufactures, Commerce, Education, Arts and Manners in that Country Particularly in the Kingdom of Hannover. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Homans, G. C. 1941. English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century. New York.Google Scholar
Jensen, P. S., Radu, C. V., Severgnini, B. and Sharp, P.. 2018. ‘The Introduction of Serfdom and Labor Markets’, CEPR Discussion Paper DP13303.Google Scholar
Klein, A. 2014. ‘The Institutions of the “Second Serfdom” and Economic Efficiency: Review of the Existing Evidence for Bohemia’ in Schiavitu e servaggio nell’economia europea. Secc. XI–XVIII/Slavery and Serfdom in the European Economy from the 11th to the 18th Centuries, ed. Cavaciocchi, S.. Florence.Google Scholar
Kula, W. 1972. ‘La seigneurie et la famille paysanne dans la Pologne du XVIIIe siècle’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 27: 4–5, pp. 949–58.Google Scholar
Levett, A. E. 1938. Studies in Manorial History. Oxford.Google Scholar
Little, I. M. D. 1982. Economic Development: Theory, Policy, and International Relations. New York.Google Scholar
Markevich, A. and Zhuravskaya, E.. 2018. ‘The Economic Effects of the Abolition of Serfdom: Evidence from the Russian Empire’, American Economic Review, 108: 4–5, pp. 1074–1117.Google Scholar
Melton, E. 1988. ‘Gutsherrschaft in East Elbian Germany and Livonia, 1500–1800: A Critique of the Model’, Central European History, 21: 4, pp. 315–49.Google Scholar
Mironov, B. N. 1990. ‘The Russian Peasant Commune after the Reforms of the 1860s’ in The World of the Russian Peasant: Post-Emancipation Culture and Society, ed. Eklof, B. and Frank, S.. Boston and London.Google Scholar
Moon, D. 1996. ‘Reassessing Russian Serfdom’, European History Quarterly, 26: 4, pp. 483–526.Google Scholar
North, M. 2014. ‘Serfdom and Corvee Labour in the Baltic Area 16th–18th Centuries’ in Schiavitu e servaggio nell’economia europea. Secc. XI–XVIII/Slavery and Serfdom in the European Economy from the 11th to the 18th Centuries, ed. Cavaciocchi, S.. Florence.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, S. 2001. ‘The Economic World of the Bohemian Serf: Economic Concepts, Preferences and Constraints on the Estate of Friedland, 1583–1692’, Economic History Review, 54: 3, pp. 430–53.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, S. 2005. ‘Communities and the “Second Serfdom” in Early Modern Bohemia’, Past & Present, 187, pp. 69–119.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, S. 2014a. ‘Choices and Constraints in the Pre-Industrial Countryside’ in Population, Welfare and Economic Change in Britain, 1290–1834, ed. Briggs, C., Kitson, P. and Thompson, S. J.. Woodbridge.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, S. 2014b. ‘Serfdom and the Institutional System in Early Modern Germany’ in Schiavitu e servaggio nell’economia europea. Secc. XI–XVIII/Slavery and Serfdom in the European Economy from the 11th to the 18th Centuries, ed. Cavaciocchi, S.. Florence.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, S. 2014c. ‘Slavery and Serfdom in the European Economy: Contribution to Tavola Rotunda’ in Schiavitu e servaggio nell’economia europea. Secc. XI–XVIII/Slavery and Serfdom in the European Economy from the 11th to the 18th Centuries, ed. Cavaciocchi, S.. Florence.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, S. and Carus, A. W.. 2014. ‘Institutions and Economic Growth in Historical Perspective’ in Handbook of Economic Growth, ed. Durlauf, S. and Aghion, P., vol. IIA. Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Ogilvie, S. and Edwards, J.. 2000. ‘Women and the “Second Serfdom”: Evidence from Early Modern Bohemia’, Journal of Economic History, 60: 4, pp. 961–94.Google Scholar
Pallot, J. 1999. Land Reform in Russia, 1906–1917: Peasant Responses to Stolypin’s Project of Rural Transformation. Oxford.Google Scholar
Plakans, A. 1973. ‘Peasant Families East and West: A Comment on Lutz K. Berkner’s “Rural Family Organization in Europe: A Problem in Comparative History”’, Peasant Studies Newsletter, 2: 3, pp. 11–16.Google Scholar
Plakans, A. 1975. ‘Seigneurial Authority and Peasant Life: The Baltic Area in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5: 4, pp. 629–54.Google Scholar
Polanyi, K. 1957. The Great Transformation. Boston.Google Scholar
Popkin, S. 1979. The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam. Berkeley.Google Scholar
Raftis, J. A. 1996. Peasant Economic Development within the English Manorial System. Stroud.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rasmussen, C. P. 2014. ‘Forms of Serfdom and Bondage in the Danish Monarchy’ in Schiavitu e servaggio nell’economia europea. Secc. XI–XVIII/Slavery and Serfdom in the European Economy from the 11th to the 18th Centuries, ed. Cavaciocchi, S.. Florence.Google Scholar
Razi, Z. 1980. Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen 1270–1400. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Razi, Z. 1993. ‘The Myth of the Immutable English Family’, Past & Present, 140, pp. 3–44.Google Scholar
Redfield, R. 1956. Peasant Society and Culture: An Anthropological Approach to Civilization. Chicago.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven.Google Scholar
Seppel, M. 2020. ‘The Semiotics of Serfdom: How Serfdom was Perceived in the Swedish Conglomerate State, 1561–1806’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 45: 1, pp. 48–70.Google Scholar
Shanin, T. 1971. ‘Introduction: Peasantry as a Concept’ in Peasants and Peasant Societies, ed. Shanin, T.. London.Google Scholar
Smith, R. M. 1974. ‘English Peasant Life-Cycles and Socio-Economic Networks: A Quantitative Geographical Case Study’. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Stanziani, A. 2014a. Bondage: Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries. New York.Google Scholar
Stanziani, A. 2014b. ‘Russian Serfdom: A Reappraisal’, Ab Imperio, 2, pp. 71–99.Google Scholar
Štefanová, D. 1997. ‘Herrschaft und Untertanen: ein Beitrag zur Existenz der rechtlichen Dorfautonomie in der Herrschaft Frýdlant in Nordböhmen (1650–1700)’ in Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften im europäischen Vergleich, ed. Peters, J.. Berlin.Google Scholar
Štefanová, D. 1999. Erbschaftspraxis und Handlungsspielräume der Untertanen in einer gutsherrschaftlichen Gesellschaft: die Herrschaft Frýdlant in Nordböhmen, 1558–1750. Munich.Google Scholar
Stone, D. 1997. ‘The Productivity of Hired and Customary Labour: Evidence from Wisbech Barton in the Fourteenth Century’, Economic History Review, 50: 4, pp. 640–56.Google Scholar
Van Bavel, B. J. P. 2008. ‘The Organization and Rise of Land and Lease Markets in Northwestern Europe and Italy, c. 1000–1800’, Continuity and Change, 23: 1, pp. 13–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whittle, J. 1998. ‘Individualism and the Family–Land Bond: A Reassessment of Land Transfer Patterns among the English Peasantry’, Past & Present, 160, pp. 25–63.Google Scholar
Wolf, E. R. 1969. Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York.Google Scholar
Wunder, H. 1985. ‘Der dumme und der schlaue Bauer’ in Mentalitat und Alltag im Spatmittelalter, ed. Meckseper, C. and Schraut, E.. Göttingen.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×