Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 1 (2013), p. 180

The historiography of lord-peasant relations in east-central Europe has been transformed over the past 30 years to reveal societies much more dynamic, complex, and contested than hitherto expected. This has partly been because of the emergence of new approaches, notably that of the Potsdam group in Germany, and many more micro-historical studies of communities and regions, a development that also embraces Denmark and especially southern Sweden. It also reflects the wider availability and better sharing of information and ideas since the region’s post-1989 political transformation. Historians of western Europe have not always kept up with these developments, frequently relying, insofar as they seriously consider eastern Europe at all, on a very small amount of Anglo- or Francophone (although not necessarily written by British or French historians) literature that was integrated into wider models of European development in the 1970s as part of a model of the ‘second serfdom’. The idea of the ‘second serfdom’ itself dates back to late nineteenth-century German historiography and the institutional preoccupations of the time, but has been falling out of favour among German historians for some time.

Markus Cerman’s slim book squarely takes on the idea of a second serfdom. Indeed, he also takes on the notion of ‘serf’ as a broadly useful category of analysis, pointing out that the real burdens and limitations associated with that status, if it was applied at all, often retained more freedom for manoeuvre than traditionally acknowledged. Cerman argues that different versions of ‘subjecthood’ were far more common, and serfdom should be held distinct from this, narrowing the definition of the latter down to a degree that would, indeed, exclude a large number of any of the people, in east to west, to whom it has ever been applied. Indeed, what Cerman also demonstrates clearly that that contemporary definitions of status, in a variety of languages, were rather fluid and of uncertain legal standing themselves. Thus he writes, ‘Under no circumstances and for no territory, therefore, can we speak of the whole of the early modern period as an age of a second serfdom’.

As a more realistic alternative to serfdom, Cerman offers a model of ‘demesne lordship’ a translation of the more usual German term for East Elbian society, Gutsherrschaft. This denoted a variably restricted status, linked to the tenure of often substantial farms clustered around the demesne that provided either labour or cash rents to the lordly estate. Cerman also points out the widespread existence of rather secure property rights. This link to tenure, whilst certainly significant in many cases, can also be confusing, because many peasants were in fact subject to the lord’s court by dint of residency, not tenure. A crucial aspect of the rise of central states, and associated room for peasants’ action, was the emergence of more centralized legal systems that were to some degree autonomous of the power of local lords. The fact that in many parts of eastern (and not just eastern) Europe nearly all jurisdictional power, as well as landlordship, might remain almost entirely vested in one person and sometimes a single curia seems rather significant to this reviewer (unlike the situation in England for example where one might be subject as a tenant to the manorial court of a Crown manor but could use the royal courts for other cases). Thus it is a shame that only one page is devoted to ‘courts and the legal system’; and one sentence to the fact that in post-1518 Poland, for example, villagers on noble estates could not appeal to royal courts. Demesne lordship was frequently not limited to tenurial concerns, although with regional variation, and this aspect of what it was like to live under it perhaps deserves more space.

Cerman’s primary interest is in the direct economic consequences of lord-peasant relations, and thus the second part of the book is devoted to the rise and characteristics of the demesne economy and demesne lordship. The stress here is on regional variety and the lack of a characteristic ‘east Elbian’ trajectory. Cerman examines, and succinctly skewers, a range of explanations that have been provided for the expansion of demesne farming and labour rents in parts of the east: whether allegedly as a result of export-driven commercialization, the aftermath of the Thirty Years War, or the alleged weakness of the central state. If anything, his arguments point to continuities from late medieval developments. The book then offers a short but wide-ranging survey of data on farming, yields, incomes, and social structure. While brief this demonstrates clearly the complex mosaic of experience in east Elbia, and provides a rich source for further investigation – albeit at risk of being one thing after another.

Cerman’s final hypothesis is that historians’ default position in assessing the rural economy of Europe should be to assume similarity, then teasing out local or regional variation from micro-studies, rather than launching into research using a priori categories. He is rather more a Bacon than an Aristotle. A problem is that this eminently reasonable argument is hemmed in by the structure of the book. It is entirely about East Elbian Europe, and offers very little comparison with anywhere else (even West Elbian Germany). Given that, it cannot develop very far new analytical categories by which to transcend the old; and when all is said and done, the book can explain little about the fact, clearly set out in its own data, that large parts of eastern Europe developed demesne economies, using labour rents and degrees of un-freedom, quite unlike anything found in most of the post-medieval west. Equally, because the book is devoted to undoing the hypothesis of the second serfdom, its effectiveness as a guide to Eastern Europe peasant society is somewhat diluted. It sets out to be a refutation, not an introduction, and ‘demesne’ farming and lordship for example are used without explanation for many pages. Nevertheless the breadth of scholarship in a wide range of languages is hugely impressive, and the quality of argument to be commended. Cerman teases out convincingly the complexity of the relationships examined (such that, for example, in some circumstances it was the peasants who preferred and demanded labour rather than cash rents). This book remains a must-have for anyone interested in the rural economy of medieval and early modern Europe.