1 Introduction
Over the last three decades an intensive scholarly discussion has taken place in European historiography about the so-called second serfdom in the territories east of the river Elbe; that is, the early modern re-establishment of peasant bondage in the context of market production and economic globalisation.1 The results of these debates and of a wave of empirical research questioned the previous hegemonic concept of “agrarian dualism,” that is, the distinction between a long-term trend towards peasant emancipation in Western Europe and the opposite trend in the east, as well as the assumption of absolute power of estate owners over their peasants.2 By contrast, more recent research has stressed the high regional diversity within “the East” and painted early modern East-Elbian agrarian relations in a more positive light, ascribing more room for manoeuvre to peasant serfs and portraying them as having a more balanced relationship to their lords.3 In this context, the form of bondage known
2 The stabilisation of Peasants’ Life Courses in Western and Central Europe
I start with a brief and simplistic glance at Western European developments. The long-term transformation of feudal domination in Western and Central Europe throughout the early modern period had a profound impact on the life courses of peasants and on social mobility in rural societies. The relative freedom and independence of peasants in the management of daily work routines and the trend towards hereditary possession stabilised both the individual life courses of peasants and the class barriers between the peasantry and the – rapidly growing – sub-peasant social groups of smallholders, cottagers and agricultural labourers.
In early life phases, this is reflected in the decrease of life-cycle service of sons and daughters of peasants. When the institution of life-cycle service emerged in the Middle Ages, presumably already in the ninth century, it represented an exchange of children between peasant households of a more or less homogeneous peasantry.5 Farmhands and maids were the sons and daughters of peasants, who were not needed in their own families or who were required or forced to serve in the manor or in another farm. The growing social differentiation of early modern rural societies changed the social origins and the status of servants. Leaving one’s own family at an early age and working and living in the household of an employer for many years became the typical life course trajectory of landless people’s children.6 Sons and daughters of land-rich
The typical life course pattern of children of sub-peasant classes, by contrast, would consist of leaving their families of origin and entering into service at an early age, and working as single live-in farmhands or maids into their twenties or early thirties. When they left service, they usually married and settled down as cottagers and casual day labourers. Servants in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, for instance, “were sons and daughters of labourers, destined to become labourers themselves.”9
3 Life Course Regimes in East-Central and Eastern Europe
In most early modern Eastern European regions, agriculture was embedded in feudal manorial systems. In these regions, like in the West, peasant families and households were the basic units of production. However, they had to dedicate considerable parts of their labour power to demesne land, and various degrees of dependency vis-à-vis their manorial lords existed: from relative autonomy in practical labour issues to full serfdom and personal bondage. With respect to life courses, roughly three different types may be distinguished.
Secondly, in the eastern fringe of today’s Poland and in Belarus and Ukraine a household’s labour force consisted almost entirely of a peasant’s family and relatives, while life-cycle service was an exception.17 The same is true for rural southern Russia, which was characterised by large and complex multigenerational peasant households, which “were entitled to a share of communal land which was periodically (partially) redistributed.”18 In this system, the size of the land allotted to a family was the flexible variable which was enlarged or downsized by the village community in accordance with the size and composition of each individual family.19 Therefore, there was no need for an adjustment of the household’s labour force by taking in servants or by employing agricultural labourers.20
4
A third and very distinct pattern prevailed in the Baltic region. The three Baltic governments of the Russian Empire, namely Estland (today’s northern Estonia), Livland (today’s southern Estonia and northern Latvia, both of which were under Russian rule from 1721) and Kurland (Courland, today’s southern Latvia, included in the Russian Empire in 1795), represent a very special case. The agrarian labour relations in this region were characterised by a commercial manorial economy (Gutswirtschaft) based on personal bondage until well into the nineteenth century. The provinces were ruled by a German Baltic nobility whose estates were split up into demesne land and land leased to peasant serfs of Estonian or Latvian ethnicity who were “hereditarily servile” (erbuntertänig) and regarded as the property of the landowners.21 Peasants had no property rights at all on “their” land nor any right to move, and were obliged to perform demesne labour.22 The focus of the manorial economy was the export-oriented production of grain, particularly rye. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, grain was exported to Western Europe by water, via several ports, the most important ones being Riga, Tallinn and Pärnu. In the eighteenth century, under Russian rule, the production of rye brandy (vodka) and its export to the Russian lands became dominant.
There has been a long tradition of research on household structures and labour relations in the Baltic region. Research on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been stimulated by the existence of excellent historical sources. These include head-tax censuses, so-called “soul revisions,” which had been implemented by Tsar Peter i, as part of his state reforms. From 1722 until 1858, ten soul revisions were held more or less uniformly throughout the Russian Empire. In Estonia and in Livonia, the soul revisions of 1782 and 1795 were carried out particularly precisely and thoroughly by the Baltic German nobility, listing the entire population (both genders and all ages) in the German language, and the same is true for Kurland’s first census in 1797.23 Manorial lords registered all their serfs, village after village and farmstead after
Such sources are well suited for the partial reconstruction of individual and family life courses. Most research, however, has done a cross-sectional analysis of one (or more) soul revisions, simulating aggregated life courses on the basis of age. There have only been a few attempts, so far, to follow single individuals over successive revisions, thus partially reconstructing actual life courses.25 In addition to nominal population listing, there is also a rich ethnographic literature dating from the eighteenth century onwards, starting in the 1770s with August Wilhelm Hupel’s “Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland” (Topographic notices from Livonia and Estonia).26
5 Peasant Life Courses in the Baltic Provinces: A Local Case Study
This chapter examines how serfdom impacted the life courses of the various groups of the peasant population. For a detailed analysis of how life courses and social mobility were intertwined, I selected a number of Estonian parishes. One of these is the parish and estate of Sangaste (Sagnitz) in the Livländische Gouvernement (in northern Livonia, today’s southern Estonia), half-way between Riga and lake Peipus. Sangaste was located in an area of extensive export-oriented agricultural production. It became famous in the eighteenth century (and is still known) for its brandy made from winter rye.27 Its flourishing demesne economy was based on relatively large peasant farmsteads. The
The social hierarchy which estate owners (or their staff or the parish priest) had in mind when they carried out soul revisions – in Sangaste as well as in the whole region – consisted of three major groups. The highest rank in the serf population was held by the head of each farmstead, the Wirt (or Wirth), and – although to a minor extent – the members of his family.28 The Wirt was responsible towards the lord of the manor for the functioning of the farmstead and particularly for the provision of demesne labour.29 He had no personal rights vis-à-vis his lord and no property rights to “his” farmstead, but he exercised authority over the members of his family and over the servants, including the right to corporal punishment.30 Among Sangaste’s serf population in 1816 about 50 per cent were registered as belonging to the family of the Wirt, who represented the core of the estate’s labour force.
The second group were male and female servants, Knechte and Mägde, and, when they were married, their children. About 90 per cent of all households included male and female farm servants, with roughly four servants per household. Together with their children they made up about 35 per cent of the estate’s labour force, which is a very high proportion compared to the rest of Europe. Servants were the sons and daughters of peasants, of married servants or of Lostreiber (see below), who were shifted between farmsteads according the will of their lord.31 Servants were usually hired for one or more years and, in addition to food and lodging, they received a small amount of money, and sometimes even a tiny piece of land for their own use.32 However, they were not allowed to move to another Wirt of their own accord. A Livonian manor law of the 1790s, for instance, stipulated that servants were only allowed to ask
The size of the household and the large portion of servants in Sangaste reflects the requirements of the demesne economy.34 To master the burdens of demesne labour and to produce enough food for a large peasant household, a labour force of about four adult men was required on average, usually consisting of two members of the peasant’s family – the head (Wirt) himself and an adult son or brother – and two male servants (Knechte).35 The number of servants was flexible and directly proportional to the number of workable members of the head’s family. Some servants were very young, from four years upwards, and the age group from ten to twenty was relatively large. However, the bulk of male servants was between twenty and fifty years old, with hardly any variation in that wide age range. Service in Sangaste was certainly not life-cycle service.
In all, 44 per cent of the male servants were married, which amounts to almost all of the male servants in the higher age groups.36 Most of them lived in their peasant’s farmstead together with their wives – who worked as maids – and their children, before they became servants themselves elsewhere.37 Being married, however, did not mean that servants had a household of their own. Eighteenth-century Estonian farmhouses usually consisted of only one large room with one common hearth where meals were cooked for all household
The third and lowest social group within the serf population were the so-called Lostreiber, Badstüber and Einwohner.39 This was a heterogeneous group of landless serfs, most of whom were in the higher age groups, with the men being aged between forty and seventy or beyond, whereas the women were in their thirties and upwards. Many of them were widows or widowers or single persons, but there were also married couples with children. They lived as lodgers in farmhouses or in sheds of their own, or in the village’s steam bath hut or in the hut for drying flax – when these were not in use for their proper purpose. Both socially and economically, and sometimes also geographically, Lostreiber lived at the fringe of the demesne economy. They had no access to land or only to tiny plots and were obliged to work on demesne fields or on farmsteads when needed, and when physically able to do so, particularly in times of peak labour demand during summer. Five per cent of Sangaste’s population were counted as Lostreiber, along with a few persons labelled as beggars.40
At first glance, this social hierarchy and classification looks similar to social structures in early modern Western and Central European rural populations. The combination of a peasant family as the stable core of the labour force with servants as an element of medium-term flexibility and a floating group of potential labourers on demand seems to be functional for market-oriented agricultural family production in various contexts. However, there are two major differences. Firstly, the bulk of the labour force consisted of peasant families and servant families. The group of Lostreiber was too small, too old and often not physically suited to fulfil the work of agricultural labourers. Secondly, in the Baltic commercial demesne economy neither the position of Wirt nor that of servant was stable. The social hierarchy of the village population was counterbalanced by the fact that all three groups were serfs without any personal or property rights and that they were equal in that respect vis-à-vis their lords.41 The ambivalence between social distinction on the one hand, and collective
6 Life Courses and Enforced Social Mobility in a Micro-historical Perspective
The following partial reconstruction of life course patterns is based on the linkage of the soul revisions from 1782 and 1795 of the parish of Ambla (Ampel) in northern Estonia, about sixty kilometres southeast of Tallinn. In 1782, this parish consisted of thirty estates (Erbgüter und Beigüter).43 For the following investigation I selected six estates with a total of 2,049 inhabitants, whose owners registered their serfs particularly accurately; and for closer inspection I concentrated on two of them: for close reading, I focused on a rather small one, Reesna, with only 124 souls; and for a minor statistical analysis, I examined the three united estates of Tois, Regaffer and Porrick.44
That personal bondage was prevalent in all these estates becomes visible in entries in the soul revisions about serfs who were no longer there in 1795 or, vice versa, who had come to the estate after 1782, and is particularly evident in the way in which the writers of the soul revisions explain why somebody left and somebody else showed up. The main reason was, besides death, the will of the lord. Over and over again, one reads entries such as the following: “A domestic servant, given to me by my father”; “A cook, pledged to the colonel”; “Daughter of the Wirt, given as a gift to Miss Müller”; “Daughter of the Wirt, sold to Major Wrangel in Reval” (Tallinn); “The whole family given to me as a gift by Kurro estate”; “Son of the coachman, now owned by the assessor in the city of Waremsberg, sold to the assessor”; “Wirt, bought from Jämper estate”; or, simply “Wirt, was sold, his wife now Lostreiber”; or “Wirt, was bought from xy.”45 However, quite a large number of mainly young serfs, be it daughters or
Female life courses reveal a further aspect of bondage, namely an exchange of women for marriage between estates, be it daughters or widows of Wirte or of servants. Frequently, one finds entries such as: “married into Noemküll estate” or vice versa “his wife, from Reesna estate” (“nach Noemküll verheiratet”; “Weib, vom Gut Reesna”). One has the impression that a kind of mutual exchange of young women took place between two estates.47 In farmstead number five of Koik & Arro estate, in 1782, lived a servant aged forty and his wife, aged thirty, and a younger single servant aged twenty-three. Sometime after 1782, the older servant had died and his widow “was married into Korkus estate” (“ist auf dem Gut Korkus verheiratet”). The Wirt of this farmstead also lost his position sometime after 1782 and was transferred to a Lostreiber hut (“jetzt Lostreiber”), presumably after the death of his wife. The younger servant (aged thirty-six in 1795) became his successor as Wirt and received a wife from Korkus estate (aged twenty-nine) (“29, Weib, vom Gut Korkus”). Our sources do not tell us whether such marriages were forced or voluntary. However, as the mobility of serfs was strictly limited to an estate, and as many of these bride exchanges involved estates further away and not even from the same parish, one might assume that involuntary unions were more likely and that particularly women were shifted between estates, whether they liked it or not.
As already mentioned, I chose Reesna estate to illustrate the life courses of the various groups of serfs. This estate was owned as a hereditary estate (Erbgut) by the “Lieutnant Gustav von Müllern” in 1782 and was pledged to
If we look, first, at the sixteen heads of the peasant households (Wirte) in 1782, we see that six of them were no longer alive in 1795 – an expression of high mortality. Another six had kept their position as Wirt. Most interesting are those four Wirte who changed their position: the first one was transferred to the manor to serve as a herdsman and a coachman (Viehhüter und Kutscher) together with his wife, who was now registered as a herdswoman (Viehhüterin). This couple replaced the previous coachman and his wife, who had been designated for the position of Wirt in a newly established farmstead (neugepflanztes Gesinde). The second Wirt and his wife were demoted and went to work as servants (Knecht and Magd) in another farmstead. The third one was moved, after the death of his wife, to one of the new Lostreiber sheds. The fourth Wirt and his wife remained in their farmstead but handed over the headship to their son, who became the new Wirt. One might see this as a kind of retirement. The retired couple was aged forty-eight (husband) and fifty-three (wife) in 1795, their son and successor was twenty-eight, and his wife was thirty years old. If we include the six deceased Wirte, a total of ten changes in headship took place at Reesna estate between 1782 and 1795. Six of these new Wirte were sons of Wirte, but only two of them became Wirte on the farmstead of their fathers; the other four became Wirte at different farmsteads. Two of the remaining four new Wirte were former servants, one was the coachman mentioned above, and one (and his wife) had been bought from another estate. This shows that servants did have chances to become Wirte, even if the sons of Wirte seemed to have better ones. However, the majority of Wirte’s sons ended up as servants on the estate, were sold to other estates or remained in their father’s or brother’s farmsteads until they reached a higher age. They were usually married and had children of their own.
In 1782, we find only ten male servants in Reesna, two of them “boys” (Jung) aged nine and thirteen, and eight Knechte aged twenty to forty-nine. In 1795, three of these male farmhands were deceased, two had become Wirte, two were now servants on farmsteads other than where they had been working in 1782, two had become Lostreiber, and one had been sold to another estate. Looking at the social background of the same number of servants in 1795, we find one
Reesna is certainly too small a sample to allow generalisations. However, the group of the three estates of Tois, Regaffer and Porrick (including Arrohof), which were pledged to and jointly managed by Friedrich Adolph Baron of Dellinghausen in 1795, is large enough for modest quantification. In 1795, the population of this group of estates consisted of seven “free persons” (freie Leute), among which were a “governess from Hamburg” and a “chambermaid from Arensberg” (Gouvernante, Kammerjungfer). Among the 742 serfs there were seventeen “Hofdomestiken,” who lived and worked in the manor house, mainly domestic servants and maids, but also a cook, a coachman and some herdsmen. All others belonged to the different categories of “peasants” (Bauern), even if some of them practised a trade. The soul revisions registered three weavers, three cabinet makers, a gardener, a shoemaker, a miller, a “windmiller,” a smith and a tanner – which points to a remarkable amount of non-agricultural activities.
To analyse these individuals’ social mobility and life course trajectories from 1782 to 1795, I restrict myself to those (male) categories, which are most clearly defined: Wirte (as heads of peasant farmsteads), sons of Wirte, and male servants on farmsteads. The results essentially confirm the observations already made in connection with the Reesna estate. These concern, firstly, the very high mortality in this period and region. Of the seventy-one Wirte in 1782, only forty-seven were still alive in 1795; almost a third (32.4 per cent) had died within these thirteen years. Sons of Wirte show lower death rates, even though this category included very young children (twenty individuals out of 117 died, which is 17.1 per cent). One has to keep in mind, however, that children who were born and died between the two soul revisions were not recorded. Servants (Knechte) showed the highest survival rates (three out of thirty-seven died, 8.1 per cent), which is certainly due to the fact that this category included neither very young children nor elderly persons.
Table 2.1 summarises the position changes of the surviving Wirte, sons of Wirte, and Knechte (male servants). In these estates, too, social positions were not stable. Hardly two-thirds of Wirte kept their status, and there was a real risk
Social mobility in the parish of Ampel (Ambla, Estonia) 1782–1795 (only surviving males): Tois (Pruuna), Regaffer (Rägavere), Porrick and Arrohof (Pöriki and Aru) estates
Wirte |
Sons of Wirte |
Servants (Knechte) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
remain or become Wirte |
65.9 |
27.8 |
26.5 |
remain sons of Wirte |
--- |
39.2 |
--- |
remain or become servants |
12.8 |
28.9 |
67.6 |
become Lostreiber |
4.3 |
4.1 |
--- |
become others |
17.0a |
--- |
5.9b |
N 1782 (= 100) |
47 |
97 |
34 |
In addition to these status changes, soul revisions reveal the clear impact of age on work status in the case of very young and very old serfs. Below age fourteen, almost all farmhands were not denoted as “servants” (Knecht or Magd)
7 The Impact of Peasant Liberation on Social Mobility and Life Course Transitions
The period 1782–1795 has been characterised as “the height of Baltic serfdom”50 (Erbuntertänigkeit; Leibeigenschaft). What changed with peasant emancipation? The abolition of serfdom in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire was a complicated and lengthy process, which started in 1816 (Estonia), 1817 (Courland) and 1819 (Livonia), and was not completed before 1863.51 There were two main obstacles to full freedom, which were only gradually let go of: firstly, “all the farmland remains in the ownership of the landlords.”52 Peasants’ access to land became regulated by lease contracts, which still forced them to spend a considerable part of their labour power on manor land. Secondly, their freedom of movement remained strictly limited and was only extended step by step over several decades: first, they were granted free movement within the parish; then within the court district; then within the entire province (in Estonia with the exception of towns and cities); and, finally, in 1863 they were granted the right to move freely in the whole Russian Empire. Nevertheless, the family-land bond became strengthened during this long period of transition and, from 1849 onwards, peasants were entitled to buy land from their landlord and to acquire full ownership.53 What did this mean for the social mobility and life courses of peasants and servants?
Social mobility in the parish Sangaste (Sagnitz, Livonia), 1816–1834 and 1834–1850
1816–1834 |
1834–1850 |
|
|---|---|---|
Wirte-couple (head and wife) N 1834 = 321 |
||
remain Wirte |
51.7 |
73.2 |
become servants |
6.8 |
2.6 |
become Lostreiber |
11.8 |
0.9 |
become othersa |
29.7 |
23.3 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
|
Sons of household heads (Wirte) N 1834 = 387 |
||
remain sons or become Wirte |
55.9 |
86.6 |
become servants |
44.1 |
13.4 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
|
Male servants (Knechte) and their sons N 1834 = 513 |
||
become Wirte |
23.0 |
8.2 |
remain or become servants |
77.0 |
90.8 |
100.0 |
100.0 |
To sum up: the sources used in this chapter, and the application of a life course perspective, indicate that the form of bondage known as “Baltic serfdom” was no myth. Oppressive serfdom shaped social relations in the rural societies of the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire well into the nineteenth century. This implied an insecure social position for peasant Wirte, who lived under the threat of becoming downgraded to the position of servant or Lostreiber, if they did not meet the expectations and demands of their lords. However, this also implied chances for upward mobility for farmhands (Knechte), who might gain the position of peasant head of a farmstead (Wirt). Both shifts in position, however – reflecting both downward and upward mobility – depended primarily on decisions by the lord of the manor and only secondarily – if at all – on the individual aspirations of serfs. The peasant liberation of the nineteenth century, in sharp contrast to the previous period, stabilised individual life courses as well as social class inequalities.
I am grateful for the support of the International Research Centre “Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History” at Humboldt University Berlin (re:work).
Markus Cerman, Villagers and Lords in Eastern Europe, 1200–1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1–3, 14.
Many examples of diversity are presented in Jan Peters, ed., Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften im europäischen Vergleich (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), especially in the chapters by William W. Hagen, “Die brandenburgischen und großpolnischen Bauern im Zeitalter der Gutsherrschaft 1400–1800: Ansätze zu einer vergleichenden Analyse,” in Peters, Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften, 17–28; and Edgar Melton, “Gutsherrschaften im ostelbischen Deutschland und in Rußland: Eine vergleichende Analyse,” in Peters, Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften, 29–44. Of course, high regional diversity also characterised many, if not most other parts of Europe. Furthermore, in some regions, free peasants might have coexisted with tenants, and various forms of bondage may have occurred alongside each other. See, for instance, for Sweden, Christina Prytz, “Life-Cycle Servant and Servant for Life: Work and Prospects in Rural Sweden c. 1670–1730,” in Servants in Rural Europe, 1400–1900, ed. Jane Whittle (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017), 99–100.
Marten Seppel, “Die Entwicklung der ‘Livländischen Leibeigenschaft’ im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 54, no. 2 (2005): 174–75.
Michael Mitterauer, Why Europe? The Medieval Origins of its Special Path (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010), 59.
For an illustrative example, see Jürgen Schlumbohm, “Micro-History and the Macro-Models of the European Demographic System: Life Course Patterns in the Parish of Belm, Germany – Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries,” The History of the Family 1, no. 1 (1996): 85.
This assertion, of course, does not apply for tenants with short-term leases.
In the early modern rural world, retirement meant the withdrawal of a peasant (whether a widow, a widower or a married couple) from the headship and ownership of farmstead by leaving or selling it to a successor in exchange for accommodation, board and care on the farm for the rest of his/her life. On early modern rural retirement practices in East-Central Europe, see Hermann Zeitlhofer, Besitzwechsel und sozialer Wandel: Lebensläufe und sozioökonomische Entwicklungen im südlichen Böhmerwald, 1640–1840 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2014); and, more generally, Josef Ehmer, “Life interest,” in Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, ed. Friedrich Jaeger (Leiden: Brill, 2019) – even if the translation of the German term “Ausgedinge” into the English term “Life interest” is somewhat misleading.
Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 10.
For the East Elbian regions, see Edgar Melton, “Gutsherrschaft in East Elbian Germany and Livonia, 1500–1800: A Critique of a Model,” Central European History 21, no. 4 (1988): 315–49; Melton, “Gutsherrschaften,”; Hagen, “Bauern”; and, generally, Peter Kriedte, Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists: Europe and the World Economy 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
The most important recent contribution to the prevalence of life-cycle service in early modern East-Central Europe stems from Mikolaj Szoltysek, Rethinking East-Central Europe: Family Systems and Co-Residence in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, vol. 1 (Bern: Peter Lang), 2015. His comprehensive study on family systems in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth covers a large part of this state, which included most parts of today’s Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, and the western parts of today’s Ukraine. Szoltysek’s analysis is based on a large number of population listings mainly from the last decade of the eighteenth century, which include almost twenty-seven thousand peasant households from various parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; see, particularly, 113–117 and 125.
Szoltysek, Rethinking East-Central Europe; and Eduard Maur, “Das Gesinde in Böhmen nach dem Soupis poddaných podle viry aus dem Jahre 1651,” in Soziale Strukturen in Böhmen: Ein regionaler Vergleich von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Gutsherrschaften, 16.–19. Jahrhundert, ed. Markus Cerman and Hermann Zeitlhofer (Vienna and Munich: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik/R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2002), 111–25.
Szoltysek, Rethinking East-Central Europe, 312.
Szoltysek, Rethinking East-Central Europe, 312.
Jürgen Kocka, Arbeitsverhältnisse und Arbeiterexistenzen: Grundlagen der Klassenbildung im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: J. H. W. Dietz, 1990), 158 (for East-Holstein around 1800).
On Gesindezwangsdienst see Cerman, Villagers, 72; Maur, “Gesinde,” 120–121; Jan Peters, “Ostelbische Landarmut – Statistisches über landlose und landarme Agrarproduzenten im Spätfeudalismus,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 10, no. 1 (1970): 217, 227–230; Klaus Tenfelde, “Ländliches Gesinde in Preußen: Gesinderecht und Gesindestatistik 1810–1861,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 19 (1979): 197–99, 222–24.
Szoltysek, Rethinking East-Central Europe, 306–10.
Kersti Lust, “How Permanent were Farms in the Manorial System? Changes of Farm Occupancy in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Baltic Provinces of Estland and Livland,” Continuity and Change 35 (2020): 217.
Peter Czap, “‘A large family: the peasants’ greatest wealth’: Serf Households in Mishino, Russia, 1815–1858,” in Family Forms in Historic Europe, ed. Richard Wall, Jean Robin, and Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 105–51.
Michael Mitterauer and Alexander Kagan, “Russian and Central European Family Structures: A Comparative View,” Journal of Family History 7, no. 1 (1982): 125–27.
Andrejs Plakans, “Peasant Farmsteads and Households in the Baltic Littoral, 1797,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17, no. 1 (1975): 9.
The clear ethnic distinction between peasant and lord resembles patterns of colonial rule outside Europe.
Plakans, “Peasant Farmsteads,” 5–7; Juhan Kahk and Halliki Uibi, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte der Entwicklung des Bauernhofes und der Dorfgemeinde in Estland in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Familienstruktur und Arbeitsorganisation in ländlichen Gesellschaften, ed. Josef Ehmer and Michael Mitterauer (Vienna: Böhlau, 1986), 37.
This analysis, and parts of the following paragraphs below, are based on my own work with these sources, which I conducted at the Estonian Academy of Sciences in Tallinn during the winter of 1977/1978. The soul revisions are kept at the Estonian National Archives in Tartu: Eesti nsv – Riiklik Ajaloo Keskarhiv (ensv raka).
The most important work in this area is by two Estonian scholars, Juhan Kahk and Halliki Uibu, who already in the 1980s, linked the soul revisions of 1816, 1834, and 1850; see Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte.” My own unfinished research (see below) links the soul revisions of 1782 and 1795.
August Wilhelm Hupel, Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland. Vols. 1–3 (Riga: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1774/1777/1782).
All details are from Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte”.
In the following paragraphs, I give preference to the terms “Wirt” and “Lostreiber,” which appear in the sources, over translations such as “peasant” or “inmate/cottager,” as these might hide the very specific meaning of these status groups under the conditions of Baltic serfdom.
Jürgen Freiherr von Hahn, Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse auf den herzoglichen Domänen Kurlands im xvii. und xviii. Jahrhundert (Karlsruhe: G. Braunsche Hofbuchdruckerei und Verlag, 1911); Elina Waris, “The Family and Marriage in Southern Estonia,” in Family Life on the Northwestern Margins of Imperial Russia, ed. Tapio Hämynen, Jukka Partanen, and Yuri Shikalov (Joensuu: Joensuu University Press, 2004).
Hupel, Topografische Nachrichten, vol. 3, 625; Kahk and Uibi, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 58, 70.
Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 85–63.
Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 65–67; Hahn, Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse, 58.
Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 59.
For another Livonian estate, Pinkenhof, in 1816, see Andrejs Plakans and Charles Wetherell. “Family and Economy in an Early Nineteenth-Century Baltic Serf Estate,” In The European Peasant Family and Society, ed. Richard L. Rudolph (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), 172–73.
Kahk, and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 55; Waris, “Family and Marriage,” 342.
Married servants also existed in other parts of Europe, for instance in the Austrian Alpine regions, but they were a clear exception. Moreover, married servant couples were usually not allowed to live together. They served at different farmsteads, visiting each other on Sundays or holy days; see Michael Mitterauer, “Gesindeehen in ländlichen Gebieten Kärntens: Ein Sonderfall historischer Familienbildung,” in Historisch-anthropologische Familienforschung. Fragestellungen und Zugangsweisen, ed. Michael Mitterauer (Vienna: Böhlau, 1990), 233–56.
See Heldur Palli, “Estonian Households in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Family Forms in Historic Europe, ed. Richard Wall, Jean Robin, and Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Plakans, “Peasant Farmsteads,” 10; Andrejs Plakans, “Identifying Kinfolk beyond the Household,” Journal of Family History 2, no. 1 (1977): 7; Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 48–50.
For descriptions of this group, see Hupel, Topographische Nachrichten, vol. 1, 54–55, 61; vol. 2, 127; vol. 3, 632; Hahn, Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse: 61ff.; Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 68–69.
The remaining 10 per cent of Sangaste’s serf population do not clearly fit into a particular category. They are registered as domestic service staff in the manor house, craftsmen, orphans, foster children, widows, and others.
Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 58ff.
Waris, “Family and Marriage,” 347–49.
Kirchspiel Ambla/Ampel,
ensv raka F. 1864, nim 2, su. V-52.
In the original German: “Aufwärter, ist mir von meinem Vater geschenkt”; “ein Koch, dem Obristen verpfändet”; “Tochter des Wirts, an Fräulein Müller geschenkt”; “Tochter des Wirts, ist nach Reval an Major Wrangel verkauft”; “Sohn des Kutschers, gehört jetzt dem Assessor in der Stadt Waremsberg, ist an den Assessor verkauft”; “Wirt, vom Gut Jämper gekauft”; and “Wirt, ist verkauft, sein Weib jetzt Lostreiberin”; “Wirt, von xy gekauft.” Late eighteenth-century Baltic authors, such as Hupel, who were committed to the spirit of the Enlightenment, no longer took the right to purchase and sell individuals or whole families for granted or viewed it as legitimate. Nevertheless, they justified this practice by means of demographic and economic arguments. They argued that an estate might otherwise suffer from a lack of peasants, while another estate, by contrast, might suffer from an abundance of people. See, for instance, Hupel, Topographische Nachrichten, vol. 3, 625, 632–33: “Dem Verkauf einzelner Personen oder ganzer Familien, so sehr sie auch die Menschheit herabwürdiget, muß dennoch für einige Zeit noch nachgesehen werden […] da in einigen Gebieten schon ein lästiger Ueberfluß an Menschen sich äußert, in anderen hingegen wohl die Hälfte der Bauerstellen noch wüste liege. Bey solchen Umständen ist die Freiheit, Menschen zu verkaufen, noch das einzige Mittel, diesem dem Staat nachtheiligen Fehler einigermaßen abzuhelfen”.
For the practice of running off (“Läuflingswesen”), see Hahn, Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse, 29–32.
This practice seems to have had a legal basis. Hupel, Topographische Nachrichten, vol. 1, 590, quotes an eighteenth-century Livonian law, which confers on a peasant serf the right to marry a farm servant from another estate: “Kein Hof darf einem fremden Gebietsbauern eine zur Ehe begehrte Magd verweigern, um so viel mehr, als eben das Recht den Abgang bald wieder ersetzen kann. ” See also Plakans, “Identifying,” 8.
Degradations (Absetzungen) were justified both in contemporary discourse and in later historiography with the argument that lazy or inefficient peasants must be replaced and/or demoted to servant status for the sake of maintaining or raising the productivity of a farmstead; see, for instance, Melton, “Gutsherrschaft,” 340; or the doctoral dissertation by Hahn, Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse, 45–46, 59, who himself descended from a noble Baltic estate owners’ family; on the Hahn family see Plakans, “Identifying,” 9.
Hahn, Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse, 46, Fn. 1.
Plakans, “Peasant Farmsteads,” 3.
Valdis Bluzma, “Legal Regulation of the Abolition of Serfdom in Baltic Governorates of the Russian Empire in Early 19th Century: Historic Background, Realisation, Specific Features and Effect,” in Social Changes in the Global World: 6th International Scientific Conference; Proceedings (Shtip: Goce Delcev University, 2019), 585.
Bluzma, “Legal Regulation,” 575.
Bluzma, “Legal Regulation,” 585.
Kahk and Uibu, “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte,” 94.
Bluzma, Valdis. “Legal Regulation of the Abolition of Serfdom in Baltic Governorates of the Russian Empire in Early 19th Century: Historic Background, Realisation, Specific Features and Effect.” In Social Changes in the Global World: 6th International Scientific Conference; Proceedings, 575–88. Shtip: Goce Delcev University, 2019.
Cerman, Markus. Villagers and Lords in Eastern Europe, 1200–1800. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Czap, Peter. “‘A large family: the peasants’ greatest wealth’: Serf Households in Mishino, Russia, 1815–1858.” In Family Forms in Historic Europe , edited by Richard Wall, Jean Robin, and Peter Laslett, 105–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Ehmer, Josef, and Michael Mitterauer, eds. Familienstruktur und Arbeitsorganisation in l ändlichen Gesellschaften. Vienna: Böhlau, 1986.
Ehmer, Josef. “Life Interest.” In Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, edited by Friedrich Jaeger. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
Hagen, William W. “Die brandenburgischen und großpolnischen Bauern im Zeitalter der Gutsherrschaft 1400–1800: Ansätze zu einer vergleichenden Analyse.” In Peters, Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften, 17–28. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997.
Hahn, Jürgen Freiherr von. Die b äuerlichen Verh ältnisse auf den herzoglichen Dom änen Kurlands imxvii. undxviii. Jahrhundert .Karlsruhe: G. Braunsche Hofbuchdruckerei und Verlag, 1911.
Hupel, August Wilhelm. Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland. Vols. 1–3. Riga: Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, 1774/1777/1782.
Kahk, Juhan, and Halliki Uibi. “Familiengeschichtliche Aspekte der Entwicklung des Bauernhofes und der Dorfgemeinde in Estland in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts.” In Familienstruktur und Arbeitsorganisation in l ändlichen Gesellschaften, edited by Josef Ehmer and Michael Mitterauer, 31–101. Vienna: Böhlau, 1986.
Kocka, Jürgen. Arbeitsverh ältnisse und Arbeiterexistenzen: Grundlagen der Klassenbildung im 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin: J. H. W. Dietz, 1990.
Kriedte, Peter. Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists: Europe and the World Economy 1500–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Kussmaul, Ann. Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England .Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Lust, Kersti. “How Permanent Were Farms in the Manorial System? Changes of Farm Occupancy in the Nineteenth-Century Russian Baltic Provinces of Estland and Livland.” Continuity and Change 35 (2020): 215–43.
Maur, Eduard. “Das Gesinde in Böhmen nach dem Soupis poddaných podle viry aus dem Jahre 1651.” In Soziale Strukturen in B öhmen: Ein regionaler Vergleich von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Gutsherrschaften, 16.–19. Jahrhundert, edited by Markus Cerman and Hermann Zeitlhofer, 111–25. Vienna and Munich: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik/R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2002.
Melton, Edgar. “Gutsherrschaft in East Elbian Germany and Livonia, 1500–1800: A Critique of a Model.” Central European History 21, no. 4 (1988): 315–49.
Melton, Edgar. “Gutsherrschaften im ostelbischen Deutschland und in Rußland: Eine vergleichende Analyse.” In Peters, Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften, 29–44. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997.
Mitterauer, Michael, and Alexander Kagan. “Russian and Central European Family Structures: A Comparative View.” Journal of Family History 7, no. 1 (1982): 103–31.
Mitterauer, Michael. “Gesindeehen in ländlichen Gebieten Kärntens: Ein Sonderfall historischer Familienbildung.” In Historisch-anthropologische Familienforschung: Fragestellungen und Zugangsweisen, edited by Michael Mitterauer, 233–56. Vienna: Böhlau, 1990.
Mitterauer, Michael. Why Europe? The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2010.
Palli, Heldur. “Estonian Households in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In Family Forms in Historic Europe , edited by Richard Wall, Jean Robin, and Peter Laslett, 207–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Peters, Jan. “Ostelbische Landarmut – Statistisches über landlose und landarme Agrarproduzenten im Spätfeudalismus.” Jahrbuch f ür Wirtschaftsgeschichte 10, no. 1 (1970): 97–126.
Peters, Jan, ed. Gutsherrschaftsgesellschaften im europ äischen Vergleich. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997.
Plakans, Andrejs. “Peasant Farmsteads and Households in the Baltic Littoral, 1797.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17, no. 1 (1975): 2–35.
Plakans, Andrejs. “Identifying Kinfolk beyond the Household.” Journal of Family History 2, no. 1 (1977): 4–30.
Plakans, Andrejs. “The Familial Contexts of Early Childhood in Baltic Serf Society.” In Family Forms in Historic Europe , edited by Richard Wall, Jean Robin, and Peter Laslett, 167–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Plakans, Andrejs, and Charles Wetherell. “Family and Economy in an Early Nineteenth-Century Baltic Serf Estate.” In The European Peasant Family and Society, edited by Richard L. Rudolph, 165–87. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995.
Prytz, Christina. “Life-Cycle Servant and Servant for Life: Work and Prospects in Rural Sweden c. 1670–1730.” In Servants in Rural Europe, 1400–1900 , edited by Jane Whittle, 95–112. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2017.
Schlumbohm, Jürgen. “Micro-History and the Macro-Models of the European Demographic System: Life Course Patterns in the Parish of Belm, Germany – Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.” The History of the Family 1, no. 1 (1996): 81–95.
Seppel, Marten. “Die Entwicklung der ‘livländischen Leibeigenschaft’ im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert.” Zeitschrift f ür Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung 54, no. 2 (2005): 177–93.
Szoltysek, Mikolaj. Rethinking East-Central Europe: Family Systems and Co-Residence in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Vol. 1. Bern: Peter Lang, 2015.
Tenfelde, Klaus. “Ländliches Gesinde in Preußen: Gesinderecht und Gesindestatistik 1810–1861.” Archiv f ür Sozialgeschichte 19 (1979): 189–229.
Waris, Elina. “The Family and Marriage in Southern Estonia.” In Family Life on the Northwestern Margins of Imperial Russia, edited by Tapio Hämynen, Jukka Partanen, and Yuri Shikalov, 333–85. Joensuu: Joensuu University Press, 2004.
Zeitlhofer, Hermann. Besitzwechsel und sozialer Wandel: Lebensl äufe und sozio ökonomische Entwicklungen im s üdlichen B öhmerwald, 1640–1840. Vienna: Böhlau, 2014.