Agricultural History Review, Volume 50 Part 1 (2002), pp. 51–68

This study examines the administration of common land and rights in northern Burgundy (now the d@artement of the C6te d'Or). Based primarily on court cases heard and fines handed out in a sample of seigniorial courts, it argues that the glue holding communal farming together was a vigilant local court system assisted by a few inhabitants co-opted each year by the community to work as field guards. The everyday working of communal agriculture involved chronic rule breaking, sneaking, policing, fining and litigation in a constant struggle between the village as a community and each villager as an individual. In their attempts to describe class struggle and fights between lords and villages over commons, French historians have underestimated the extent of everyday conflict that was inherent to the system. 

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