The European Village as Community: Origins and Functions Author(s): Jerome Blum Source: Agricultural History, Vol.

45, No. 3 (Jul., 1971), pp. 157-178 Published by: Agricultural History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3741976 . Accessed: 12/09/2011 12:38
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JEROME BLUM

THE EUROPEANVILLAGE AS COMMUNITY: ORIGINSAND FUNCTIONS

From medieval times down to the nineteenth century the village community was the primary territorialunit of government in most of Europe. During those centuries, when the overwhelming majority of Europeans drew their livelihoods from rural pursuits, the communitiesregulated the collectivelife of their residents accordingto rules understood and accepted by all the villagers.The extent of the collectivediscipline exercised by each community varied widely. The differerzces among them, however, were of degree and not of kind. Each imposed some form of limitation upon the activities of all its residents in the presumed interest of the group as a whole, and each engaged to a greater or lesser extent in some form of collective economic activity that usually involved the management and use of land held communally. The number of village communities-France alone had nearly 44,000 of them in 17891-and the diversities among them allow at best only the broadest generalizations about their nature and activities. The historian finds himself restricted to sampling without any assurancethat his sample is representative. He is further encumbered by the different times at which communal practices appeared and decayed in the different parts of Europe, so that he finds himself swinging back and forth across the centuries. And even a cursory study disabuses him of the often-expressed view that rural life changed little as the years went by. The difficulties-and dangers-of generalizing about ruralcommunities became apparent soon after the inception in the middle third of the last century of scholarly interest in the subject.2German and Danish scholars arrived at the conclusion that the ancient Germanshad practicedagrarian communism, that is, the collective ownership and use of land. Caesarand Tacitus provided them with the only primarysourcesabout early Germanic JEROME jSthe Henry CharlesLea Professorof Historyof PrincetonUniversity. BLUM
1. A. Babeau,Le villagesousl'ancien regime (Paris, 1878), 46n. 2. The standardaccountof nineteenth-and earlytwentieth-century historiography primion tive forms of landholdingis provided in G. von Below,"DaskurzeLebeneiner viel genannten Theorie uber die Lehre von Ureigentum,"Probleme Wirtschaftsgeschichte der (Tubingen, 1920), 1-26. A long footnote in MaxWeber,Wirtschaftsgesc)licAte ed., Berlin, 1958), 19-20, pro(3rd vides a concise summary(the Englishtranslationof Weber'sbook does not include this footnote). See also H. J. E. Peake, "VillageCommunity," Encyclopedia the SocialSciences of (New York, 1937), 15: 253-58.

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landholding, so they sought to support their conclusion with analogies drawn from existing or recently abandoned communal practices. Georg Hanssen, for example, argued that a form of communal landownership in districtsalong the Moselle River, given up only shortlybefore he wrote, was a vestige of a once universalGerman practiceand so "leadsus directly back to the earliest history of our forbears, right through Tacitus back to Caesar's report: Privati ac separati agri apud eos nihil est."3 The search for analogies, joined in by scholars of other lands, revealed the existence of agrarian communism in Europe, in Asia, in India, and in Central and South America. It was an easy step to extend the theory about the original form of landholding in Germany to a universal law that social evolution everywhere began with the communal ownership and use of land. The new "law"was destined to enjoy only a short life and to provide a classic example of the perils in the use of analogy in historicalscholarship. Continued researches showed that the communes of the Moselle region, the Russian mir, the South Slav family commune, and other examples of agrarian communism had their origins not in the ancient past but in far more recent times.4 Archaeologicalexcavationsof Iron Age settlementsof the first century A.D. in Jutland, the Netherlands, and in Englanddisclosed that primitive agriculturethere began with small, individual fields of onetenth to one-half of a hectare, enclosed by balks of earth and stone, with nothing to indicatecommunalownershipor use. These findsled one scholar to conclude that "farmersin the first centuryA.D. were more individualistic than eighteenth century farmers."Agrariancommunism may indeed have prevailed in still earlier centuries when cultivationwas less permanent,but evidence for this is lacking.5 The scanty data indicate that in the first stage of settled tillage property belonged not to the individual but to a patriarchalfamily group of several generations living as a single household. Sometimes the family group lived on an isolated holding and sometimes it clustered together with other patriarchalfamily groups to form a hamlet or village. The amount of land that belonged to the familydepended upon the labor force the familycould provide.6 Presumably in the next stage of development the patriarchal family disintegrated, with its land divided among its constituent conjugal families. Each of these families operated its own holding with its own labor
3. G. Hanssen, 'Die Gehoferschaftenin RegierungsbezirkTrier," Agrarhistorische Abhandlungen(reprint,Osnabruck,1965, orig. ed., 1880), 1: 122. 4. W. Abel, Agrarpolitik (2nd ed., Gottingen, 1958), 140-44; E. Bull, Vergleichende Studien uberdieKulturverhaltnissedesBauerntums 1930), 7; K. Lamprecht,Deutsches (Oslo, Wirtschaftslebenin Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1886), 1: 442-58. 5. G. Hatt, 4'TheOwnershipof CultivatedLand,"DetKgl.Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Hist.Filol. Meddelelser 26 (1939): 8-12, 15-16; R. Latouche,Lesorigines l'economie de occidentale (Paris, 1956), 39-40. 6. W. Abel, Die dreiEpochen deatschen der Agrargeschichte ed., Hannover, 1964), 10; M. (2nd Bloch, "The Rise of Dependent Cultivationand SeigniorialInstitutions," Cambridge Economic IIistory Europe(2nd ed., Cambridge, 1966), 1: 201; G. Duby, L'economie of rurale la vie des et campagnes l'occident dxzns medieval (Paris, 1966), 1: 59-60, 89-95; G. Vernadsky,Kievan Russia (New Haven, 1948), 132-33.

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resources. The conjugal families grouped themselves into new communities, based not upon kinship but upon residence in the same territory,and the ensuing shared social and economic interests. Sometimes the new communities owed their existence to the voluntaryactionof the peasantsthemselves, and sometimes landlords and rulers ordered their creation. These communities appeared at different times in different parts of Europe and bore many diSerent names. The variationsin nomenclature and in time of appearance do not conceal the basic similarityof these organizations.They were all territorialcommunes: groupings of people who lived in a common neighborhood. They differed widely in size of membership and in the amount of land they covered. Some included a number of villages and others had less than twenty isolated farmsteads within their borders. Each member could have his own holding and operate it as a separate and independent unit. All membershad the right to use resources such as forests, pastures, meadows, and streamsthat lay within the boundaries of the commune. These resources did not belong to individuals;they belonged to the territorialcommune.7 The commune acting as a corporate body managed these communal resources, setting the regulations for their use and appointing or electing officers to supervise the applicationof the regulations and to conduct the day-to-day aSairs of the commune. The commune provided newcomers with land or excluded them if it wished. It could serve as a fiscal unit with its members joining together to meet obligations imposed by superior powers. It acted as the guardian of law and order within its boundaries, and sometimes its members acceptedjoint responsibilityfor compensation to be paid for certain crimes committed within its boundaries.8 New pressures, new demands, and a new need for closer cooperation among husbandmen shifted the emphasisin communallife from territorial commune to village commune, from the loose organization that held together people living over a relativelywide area to the much tighter organization and closer cooperation of people who clustered together in a single village. The territorialcommune declined and then disintegrated, leaving behind only vestigial reminders of its existence. In western and central Europe, the urgent need for increasedfood productionand the land shortbis vom Agrarverfassung frahenMittelalter zum der 7. Latouche, 32; F. Lutge, Geschichte deutschen (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1967), 'S5-26; B. H. Slicher van Bath, "Manor, Mark and 19.Jahrhundert 21 Village," Speculum (1946): 122-23; Duby, 1: 125-26, 208-10; S. A. Tarakanova-Belkina, (Moscow, vremiia v piatinakh domoskovskoe v zemlerladenie NorgorodskiAh i Boiarskoe monastyrskoe (PrinceCentury the in andPeasant RllssiaJrom NinthtotheNineteenth 1939), 31-32; J. Blum, Lord in des ton. 1961), 94-97; H. Wiessner, Beitragezllr C;eschichte Dorfesund der DorJgemeinde fonciere Suede(Paris, en de (Klagenfurt, 1946), 28; L. Beauchet, Histoire la propriete' Oesterreich (Bern, 1966), 46. der 1904), 61, 81; E. J. Walter, Soziologie altenEidgenossenschaJt (Jena, der 8. A. Meitzen, "Ansiedlung," HandworterbucXlStaatswissenschaJten 1909), 1: 50'S; B. on, A Europe .D.500-1850 (Lond 1963), 159; History Western oJ H . Slicher van Bath, TheAgrarian (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), 104; F. Century oJ G. C. Homans, EnglishVillagers the Thirteenth I the Law beJore Timeof Edward (CamoJ Pollock and F. W. Maitland, TheHistory theEnglisXl sobpravapozemel'noi bridge, 1898), 1: 564-66; Vernadsky, 134; V. B. El'iashevich, Istoriia v strennosti Rossii(Paris, 1948-51), 1: 49-51.

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age, each the product of the increase in population of the high middle ages, provide the single most important explanation for the emergence of the village commune. The pressures for food and land, met first by clearing new land, therl by conversion of pasture, meadow, and waste to permanent arable, finallycompelled the adoption of more intensivesystemsof cultivation which had been long known but until now not widely utilized. The holdings of individual peasants were consolidated and then divided into two or three fields and rotated bienniallyor trienniallybetween crops and fallow. The fields were parcelled into strips distributed among the villagersin proportion to the amount of land each had before the introduction of the new system. The process did not have to begin with all of the residents of a village; a group of individualscould embarkon it voluntarily. Whateverthe manner of its inception, it developed into a community-wide practice with all of the land of the village amalgamated into open (unfenced) fields parcelledamong the villagers.This irlnovationdemanded increased and continuous cooperation among the holders of the strips to regulate such matters as access to the individual strips, pasturing of cattle on the fallows and on the stubbleof harvestedfields, protectionof the sown fields from trespassby cattleand by unauthorizedpersons, and waterrights. In short, it required the communal regulation of husbandry.9 In much of western Europe the transition to the open-field system occurred in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, though in some regions the changeover took place only in later centuries.10 Germancolonistsbore primary responsibilityfor introducing the technique into Poland in the thirteenth century,where it spread slowly from the Germansettlementsto the autochthonous villages. The earliest known reference to three-field rotation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania dates to 149G,though the method came into general use there only in the second half of the sixteenth century.1lIn Russia fifteenth-centurysources oSer the first clear evidence of the wide adoption of the technique.12 Whereverit was introduced the new systemdid not appear in fully developed form at the moment of its adoption. Instead, it grew graduallythrough the centuries,with increasedregu9. Slicher van Bath, Agrarian History56-60; E. Juillard,La vie ruraledansla plainede BasseAlSace (Paris, 1953), 42; Abel, Die dreiEpochen, 29-30; J. Thirsk, "The Common Fields," Past andPresent, 29 (1964): 8-9; W. O. Ault, Open-Field no. HusbandFand the Village Community, Transactions theAmerican of Philosophical Society, n.s., 55 (1965): pt. 7, p. 5; H. See, Lesclasses rurales le regime et domanial France moyert (Paris,1901), 605-6; M. Bloch, Lescaracteres en au age originaux l'histoire de rurale franfaise(Paris, 1952-56), 1: 181; E. Winkler, DasS'chweizerDorf ed., (Zurich;1941), 45-46; K. Haff, Die dXnische7? Gemeinderecht (Leipzig, 1909), 2: 69-70, 73; A. Nielsen,Daenische Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1933), 9-1 1. (Jena, 10. C. T. Smith,An Hastorical Ceography of'Western Europe before 1800 (New York, 1967), 210; G. Schroder-Lembke,"Wesen und Verbreitung der Zweifeldwirtschaft Rheingebiet," im Zeitschrt1t Agrargeschichte Agrarsoziologie,(1959): 29-30; Ault, 5, 6-7; Thirsk, 24-25; fur und 7 Juillard, 42-44; Nielsen, 14. 1 W. Conze, Agrarverfassung Bevolkerung Latauen Weissrussland 1. und in und (Leipzig, 1940), 1: 25,62-64; W. Rusinski,"Wustungen.Ein Agrarproblemdes feudal Europas," ActaPoloniae Historica (1962): 55. 5 12. Iu. M. Iurginis, "O zemledel'cheskoisisteme, predshestvovavskei trekhpol'iu"; Ezhegodnik agrarnoi po istoriivostochnoi Evropy 1962g., 96.

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larityand controlintroducedinto its operationsas time went by.13 The systemneverrooteditselfin thosepartsof Europewhereterrain, and soil, climatewere unsuitedfor this methodof cultivation its emphasis with on grainproduction whereeconomicnecessity not demandincreased or did output. In the open-field villages communal regulation cooperation and reached their apogee in the introduction compulsory of communaltillage.That meantthat everyonehad to growthe samecropsand performthe same field operations the sametime. It has been suggestedthatthe villagers at acceptedthiscompulsion because a critical of shortage pasture. of The rising pressurefor morecropland broughton the conversion muchgrassof larldinto arable,and at the sametime set up a demandfor moreanimals for draughtand manure,and thus for morepasturage. villagers The met thisproblem pasturing by theiranimals theopenarable on fieldswhenthey lay fallowor after they had been harvested. That requiredthe coordinationof the farming operations all the villagers, thatwhentheanimals of so entereda field it had been clearedof grain.Similarly, timeof plowing the hadto be coordinated thatallwouldknowwhenthe stockmustbe driven so fromthe fallowfield.The commune a corporate as bodyhad the responsibilityof scheduling regulating and theseoperations.l4 It was once thoughtthat compulsory communal tillagewasof ancient origin.Now it seemsclearthatit firstappeared westernEuropein the in eleventhand twelfthcenturies. Moreover, apparently notan essential it was ingredient the open-fieldsystem.Someopen-field of villages managed for centuriesbefore they adoptedcompulsory communaltillageand others never adoptedit. Presumably these people had grassland enoughand so did not have to pasturetheir animalson fallowand stubble,or possibly they tetheredtheirstockon theirown stripsso thatthe animals couldnot wanderonto the stripsof other villagers.15 general,however, In compulsorycommunal tillagebecamein time the standard practice thoseparts in of Europewherethe open-fieldsystemestablished itself.16 In regionswherethe peasants usedotherheldsystems hadno need, they
13. For example, late seventeenth-and eighteenth-centurymaps of open-field villagesshow a more orderly pattern of strips than do the maps of earlier centuries. Thirsk, 5-7; cf. J. Nicod, "Un text sur la strllsture du village Lorrain (1732)," L'lnformation Geographique 14 (1950): 159; E. Heckscher,An Economic History Sweden of (Cambridge,Mass., 1954), 25. 14. Slichervan Bath, Agrarian History, 61-62. 15. Ibid.; Wiessner, Beitrage,62; Ault, 6-7; Thirsk, 5-7, 22-23; Juillard, 68; SchroderLembke,29. 16. E.g., in Bohemia, W. Stark, "Der Ackerbauder bohmischen C;utswirtschaften 17. im und 18. Jahrhundert,"Zeitschrift AgrNrgeschichte Agrarsoziologie,(1957); 21-23; EnfiUr und 5 gland, Ault, 6-7; France, G. Lizerand,Le regime ruralde l'ancienne France(Paris, 1942), 106; Sweden, J. Frodin, "Planscadastrauxet repartitiondu sol en Suede,"Annalesd'histoire economique sociale (1934): 53; Austria,Wiessner,Beitrage, H. Feigl,Die niederosterreichische et 6 62; Grundherrschaft ausgehenden vom Mittelalter zu demtheresianisch1osephinischen bis Reformen (Vienna, 1964), 125; Russia,Blum, LordandPeasant, 328; Germany,F. K. Riemann,Ackerbau und Viehhaltung vorindustrieElen im Deutschland (Kitzingen-Main,1953), 102-4; Abel, Agrarpolitik, 79; Northern Spain, R. Herr, The Eighteenth Century Revolution Spain (Princeton, 1958), in 103-4.

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or at most, limitedneed, for communal tillage.In the systemknownas field-grasshusbandrythe villagersrotated partsof their land arableand pasture. They kepta sectionin cropsfor a period between of yearsand a sectionin grass,and thenallowed thearable revert to backto pasture and putanothersectionof landunderthe plow.l7 onlycommunal The compul sionrequiredthe individual peasantto have his arablein the partof the village landsdesignated the commune by for cropsS to help in fencing and thearableto keep out the cattle.18 In anotherwidelypracticed systemof tillage, calledthe infield-outfield runrigsystem, or thevillagers partof kept their land,knownas the infield,as permanent arable, dividedit intostrips andtilled it communally. They used the methodof field-grass husbandry totill the rest of theirland the outfield,and did not employcompulsory communal tillagein this partof theiroperation.19 Other pressures,too, separatefrom albeit relatedto the heighterled demand the productsof agriculture for spurredthe establishment and strengthening villagecommunes. of The regularization the relationship of between and theirpeasants lords whichtookplacein manypartsof western and centralEuropein the twelfthand thirteenth centuries responseto in the new economicand socialconditions of that era, turnedout to be of special importance. ensurea steadyincome To from their properties, simplifyestate managementto for themselves to keep thelr peasantsfrom leaving, to protect and theirowninterests common in landsandforestsand wastes, seigneurs continental many in western centralEuropegranted and charters franchises madewritten and or to in which definedthe rightsand the declaratlons theirvillagers, they obligations the peasants. of These documents-Marc Bloch calledthem ;'little localconstitutions"-given to the villageas a unit strengthened existingcommunal or stimulated ties the
Compulsory communal tillage persisted in some backwardparts of Europe welI into the twentieth century. D. Warriner,Economics of Peawant Farming(Oxford, 1939), 7; I. Chiva, "Social Organization,TraditionalEconomyand CustomaryLawirl ed., inJ. Pitt-Rivers, Mediterrclnean Countrymen (Parisand La Haye, 1963), 98; R. Corsica," Leonhard,Agrarpolitik Agrarreform in Spanien und unterCarlIII (Munichand Berlin, 1909), 90. 17. system was still used This extensivelyin the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries in, among other places,large partsof Bukowina, Russian easternGalicia, Podolia, in the Alpine zones of the Hungary,Moldavia, Austrianmonarchy,and in inferti e tainous of France. R. Rosdolsky, areas '4DieostgalizischeDorfgemeinschaft and mounund ihre Auflosung," Vierteljahrschrift Sozial-und Wirtschaftsgeschichte fur 41 (1954): 105-6; J. Blum, Noble Landowners Agriculture Austria, and in 1815-1848 (Baltimore, 1948), 157; Bloch, teres originawc, 26-28. 1: Carac18. Rosdolsky,106-8. Cf. 19. Among areas in which this method the was common into the eighteenth and centuries Brittany,Maine, Poitou, were nineteenth parts of the MassifCentral,western parts of East Anglia and England,Wales, Nottinghamshire,Scotiand, Ireland, the Germany, Netherlands, wester northern and central Sweden, Norway, Brandenburg.Smith,Hastorical 213-14;G. East, An Historical W. Geography, Geography Europe(4th ed., New York, of Flatres, 1950), 102-5; P. "Paysagesruraux de pays atlantiques," Annales E.S.C 12 (1957): 609; H. H. Muller, "Die Bodennutzungssystemeund die Separationin Brandenburgvor den Agrarreformen von Jahrbuch 1807," fiir Wirtschaftsgeschichte, pt. 3, 1965, pp. 87-89; M. Gray, TheHighland Economy 1750-1850 (Edinburgh, 1957), Outfield on a Norfolk Manor," 6-7; J. Saltmarshand H. C. Darby, "The InfieldSystem Ecorlomic History (1937): 30-31. 3

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establishmentof communal organizationsin villageswhere they did not yet exist. Elected commune officialsappeared charged with such duties as ensuring that the village met its obligations to the lord, preserving internal order in the village, representing the commune in its dealings with the lord and his officials,and often acting as the representativeof the lord to the villagers.20 In Russia the village commune succeeded to the territorialcommune in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Grantsby the sovereignsof hitherto free peasant land to favored seigneurs, made now in increasingnumbers, often disregarded the boundaries of the territorial communes, thereby destroying their organic unity. The lords, for their part, undermined the autonomy and administrativefunctions of the territorial communes on their properties, and simultaneouslyreduced the peasants to a condition of subjection and dependence. Meanwhile, the isolated homesteads and the hamlets which had been the typical form of peasant settlement were supplanted by villages. Presumablythis came about in part because of the population increase, and in part because the lords wanted to group their peasants together to make supervision easier.21In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,where, as in Russia,the peasantswere enserfed in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both sovereigns and seigneurs grouped their peasantsinto communes to facilitatecontrol and the imposition of obligations.22 The introduction of communal responsibilityfor some or all of the obligations owed to the seigneur and the sovereign reirtforcedcommunalunity and cooperation. This principleof joint obligationbecamecommon in central and eastern Europe with the establishmentthere of serfdom beginning in the fifteenth century, but it established itself in other parts of Europe, too. Instead of levying the obligation upon the individual peasant, all or some of the charges were made against the community as a unit. The villagers had to divide the charge among themselves, and make up for those of their neighbors who for whatever reason did not pay their assessment. The sharing of a common burden and the responsibilitythat each household had for every other household of the village compelled the peasants to cooperateclosely with one another and to function as a communalunit.23 Still other common interests impelled communal cooperation. The need
20. M. Bloch, La societe' feodale(Paris, 1949), 1: 423-26; Duby, 1: 264-65; Juillard, 68-69; Feigl, 291-92; C. S. and C. S. Orwin, TheOpen Fields(2nd ed., Oxford, 1954), 125; See, 61112; E. Patzelt, "Grundherrschaft und bauerlicher Weistumsrecht," Archiv Kulturgeschichte fur '20 (1929): 1-2, 4-5, 9, 10-11. 21. Blum, Lordand Peasant,96-97; A. Miller, Essaissur l'histoire institutions des agraires la de Russiecentrale XVleau XVIIIe du siecles (Paris, 1926), 202-3. 'S2. Conze, 1: 27-28, 95, 117-18, 131. 23. H. Wiessner, Sachinhalt wirtschaftliche und Bedeutung Weistumer deutschen der im Kulturgebiet (Baden, 1934), 248-49; L. Revesz, Der osteuropaische Bauer(Bern, 1964), 20; V. I. Semevskii, Krest'iane tsarstrovanie imperatritsy Ekateriny (St. Petersburg, 1881-1901), 1: 301; P. de SaintII Jacob, Lespaysans la Bourgogne Nordau derniersiecle l'ancien de du de re'gime (Paris, 1960), 58-6'2; W. Wittich, Die CrundherrschaftNordwestdeutschland in (Leipzig, 1896), 139; See, 608-9.

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these and pasture forest,to supervise rightsin common to protectcollective land, sharein thecommon had rightsso thateachvillager his proportional and from usingthe commons, to contestthe diminution to keep strangers the persuaded as by of the commonproperty enclosure privateproperty, of The body.24 division an estate and to villagers organize actasa corporate conor includingits villagethroughinheritance sale and the consequent (somevillageshad as createdby multipleownership fusionsand conflicts to the couldalso force upon the villagers necessity manyas six seigneurs) couldthentakeoverthe The commune organization. a establish communal with all its propriof administration the villageand handlethe relations who of the On etors.25 the islandof Sardinia depredations thecattleraisers thereto band grazedtheirherdsthroughthe islandinducedthe peasants theyhadlackedthe power farmers As togetherintocommunes. individual they to keepthe herdsfromtheirlands;unitedintocommurles couldresist and the cattlemen even drivethemback.26 of the Finally, factof the propinquity villagelife musthaveengendered and consciousness unity.The smallsize of the usual a strongcommunal by intensified intermarriage character, gaveit a familial villagecommunity kneweveryoneelse, and knewand shared Everyone amongthe villagers. each other'sjoys and sorrows.They rejoicedtogetherin villagecelebratogether,they workedtogetherin the fields,they tions,they worshipped and meadows, forestsof in had a commoninterest the use of the pastures, seigneurand his in their village,and they had a commonadversary the with administrations officerselected The creationof communal officials. meetings village and fromamongthemselves, withperiodic by the villagers the lived,servedto intensify cohesion to makethe rulesbywhichthevillage Though the villagerecordsrevealendlessbickerings of the community. by thesewereoutweighed the amongthe villagers and feudsandbitterness and necessity of common of the of community interests, pressure economic of to obligations lord, state,and church,and the tradition cooperation.27 even had a name for their sharedexistence.They calledit The villagers or "neighborhood" "neighborliness."28 of conscious the strength grewincreasingly As timewenton the villagers with themin confrontations the outsideworld.Aboveall, theirunitygave
en et 1: originaux, 185-94; R. Fossier,La terre leshommes 24. Duby, 1: 262-63; Bloch, Cara4teres (Paris, 1968), 2: 714; See, 607-8. Picardiz Review37 (1922): 407-8. villae,"EnglishHistorical 25. Patzelt,9; J. D. Wake, "Communitas (Tours, 1941), 124-37. de 26. M. Le Lannou, Patreset paysans la Sardaigne 29; 27. Wiessner,Beitrage, Slichervan Bath, "Manor,Markand Village,"126; Homans, 106, familiales(Paris, 1963), 161-62; M. Matossian,"The 290; J. Gaudemet, Les communautis Russia(Stanford, Century PeasantWay of Life,"W. S. Vucinich,ed., ThePeasantin Nineteenth 1968), 16-40. 28. Neighborhood in English, Homans, 106; voisin in parts of France, Bloch, Caracteres in 1: origina24x, 172; naoberschup the Netherlands,Slicher van Bath, "Manor,Markand Vilin lage," 125; Nachbarschaft Central Germany, in Austria, and in the Tyrol, K. H. Quirin, (Gottingen, Quellendes 12. bis 18. Jahrhunderts nach und Herrschaft Gemeirmle mitteldeutschen on 248; 60; 1952), 72-76; Wiessner,Beitrage, Wiessner,Sachinhalt, nabac,(neighborliness) the (London, 1896). island of Heisgier in the Hebrides, G. Gomme, TheFillageCommunity

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couldpresenta the communeservedas the vehicleby whichthe peasants The existenceof the comunitedfrontagainstthe claimsof the seigneur. It relationship. therebypromoted mune helped polarizethe lord-peasant rightsanddutiesof the twoparties, of a moreprecisedefinition the mutual that evidencedby the increasein recordedregulationsand ordinances The fifteenthand sixteenthcenturies.29 forceof communal beganin the unity did not directitself solely againstthe seigneur.The outsiderwho of wantedto settlein the village,or rent or buy land in the territory the fieldsand common stubble commune,or graze his stockon the village's of pastureshad to have the approval the commune.This wasnot always did The forthcoming. villagers not wantto dilutetheirrightsandholdings, into their of and so they did not takelightlythe admission new members or communities the grazingof other people'scattleon theirland. If need and be, they resortedto intimidation violenceto driveawayunwelcome
newcomers.30

withthemintothe carriedthe idea of the commune peasants Migrating apcommunes organized newlandstheysettled.In Saxonyand Thuringia of colonization pearedin the twelfthcenturyat the heightof the German in colonists Polandset centuryGerman those regions.3lIn the thirteenth and up communesin their new settlements, soon Polishvillagesfollowed example.32 newcomers' the the in In Franceand England,and especially their open-fieldcountry, with coincided thoseof the frequently of boundaries the landsof the village long antedatedthe communeand church parish. Parish organization to the stage,accustoming villagers cordoubtlessservedas a preparatory the around church. centered life Communal in thesevillages porateactivity. meetingas wereindistinguishable, Often parishand villageorganizations and parishand villagematters, withthe discussing one and concurrently In same men servingas officersof both organizations.33 those partsof Franceand Britainwhere the peasantslived scatteredover the land in and in hamletsthe parishmight have severalcomisolatedfarmsteads of stoodaloneoutin themidst thefields.34 church munesin it, andtheparish did of in Elsewhere Europethe boundaries parishand village notcoincide,
29. K. Blaschke, 'Grundzuge und Probleme einer sachsischen Agrarverfassungsgeschichte," Abteilung82 ( 1965): 275; Quirin, Germanische Zeitschriftder Savigny-Stiftungfur Rechtsgeschichte, 50; Revesz, 204; Juillard, 69; See, 614. (Jena, 30. Wiessner, Beitrage, 64-65; Revesz, 23; J. Kulischer, Russische Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1925), 1: 259; G. Lefebvre, Les paysans du Nord pendant la RevolutionfraMaise (reprint, Bari, 1959), 110-14; Bloch, Caracteresoriginaux, 1: 183-85; E. de Laveleye, De la propridteet de sesformes prsmitives(4th ed. , Paris, 189 1), 119.

20. 31.Quirin,

32. Conze, 1: 62-64. 33. Babeau, 1 16-18, 131-32; Pollock and Maitland, 1: 560-61; A. Soboul, "La communaute 3rd ser., 78 (1957): 287; See, 603-5; Bloch, rurale (XVlIle-XlXe siecles)," Revue de SynthEse, originaux, 1: 175-76; Homans, 382; Orwin, 156. Caracte'res 34. R. Lebeau, La vie rurale dans les montagnesdu Jura meridional(Memoires et documents de l'Institut des etudes rhodaniennes de l'Universite de Lyon, No. 9, (1955), 164; P. Goubert, L'ancien regime (Paris, 1969), 78; P. Flatres, Geographierarale de quatrecontreesceltiques:Irlande, Galles, Cornwall et Man (Rennes, 1957), 259.

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thoughin some placesin centralEuropethe boundaries the of remaining territorial communes werethe sameas thoseof the parish.35 The establishment new communalorganizations of went on continuouslyas population increased as newlandsweresettled.Sometimes and the successive stagesin the creation a commune of from,, the singlehomesay, steadof a renterof monastery in sixteenth-century land Burgundy,36 the or hut of a squatterin the Siberian wilderness the nineteenthcentury,37 in canbe traced. western In Europe rateatwhichcommunes the werefounded declinedas emptylandfilled,thoughnew communes stillemergedin the eighteenthcentury.38 easternEuropethe rate accelerated In as settlers pushedever deeperinto the greatersteppeland. In England communal the organization the villagewasovershadowed of by,and often integrated with,the manorcourt,so thatit is not always certainwhetherthe formerhad a separate existence.39 manorcourt,or The thelord'scourt,seemedscarcely distinguishable from a villageassembly. Thelord of the manoror his steward summoned courtand presided the overit, but a jury of villagersmadepresentments, agreedon regulations needed operatethe village,and concerned to itselfgenerally withall mattersaffecting well-being the community. the the of All villagers to athad tendthe court and fines were leviedfor unexcused absences. The court concerned primarily making enforcing itself with and decisions concerning the agricultural operations thevillage, appointed of it officials the villageS of it admitted new members the community, it servedasjudge in to and disputes amongthe villagers. The manorcourtactedbothas a courtbaron, charged with maintaining mutualrights of lord and the respect one another,and as a courtleet, responsible villagerswith to for administering the king's justice.40 Despitethe activities the lord'scourtas the manager of of villageafEairs, the villagers themselves theirownmeetings decidematters had to aSecting community and husbandry, elect officials, to agree on life to and regulationscalledbylawsor byrlaws (the regulations the manorcourtwere of called bylaws,too). Sometimesthe villageassembly seems to have met simultaneously the lord'scourt,and sometimes with separately. Evidences of these villagesessionsremainscantuntilthe sixteenth century whenthe documentation becomesmoreabundant.41 The meetingstookon specialimportance the many in villages were that
35. Wittich, 122; Wiessner,Beitrage, 28; Winkler,49; Beauchet, 222; Haff, 2: 36. de Saint-Jacob, P. "Le village et les conditionsjuridiques de l'habitat," 68-69. Annales de Bourgogne (1941): 171-79. 13 37. Tschuprow,Die Feldgemeinschaft A. (Strassburg,1 902), 115 ff. 38. Soboul, 285. Cf. 39. Pollockand Maitland,1: 567, 610-1 1. Cf. 40. and B. Webb, English Local Government;romthe S. Revolution to the Municipal Corporation Act: Manor and the Borough (London, 1908), the 1: 9-20; cf. A. G. Ruston and D. Witney, Hooton Pagnelt the Agncultural Evolution of a Yorkshire Village (New York, 1934), 169-72; Orwin, 128-42. 41. Homans, 102; Ault, 50-54.

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dividedamongseveralproprietors thatno singlelord's so courthadoverall authority. Herethe peopleof the villagehadto makeand administer their own rules for management the villageeconomyand providefor the of securityand well-beingof the community. Even on estatesowned by a single proprietorthe day-to-day administration an open-fieldvillage of presentedmanydifficulties required and on-goingsupervision. Landlords avoidedthe problemsby turningthem over for solutionto the villagers themselves.42 When manorialadministration entered into decline and manorcourtsno longermet,the villageassembly gainednewprominence. Often,however, parishvestryand the open meetingsof the vestryatthe tended by the peopleof the parishtookover the supervision the agriof cultural of the villagefrom the defunctmanorcourt.43 life As mightbe expected,communal wereweakest ties wherethe peasants lived in isolatedfarmsteads in hamlets,wherethey employedtillage and systems other than the two-or three-field rotation, whereanimalhusand bandry provided mainstay theeconomy. the mountains eastern the of In of Galicia peasants the livedon theirownholdings rather thanin villages, and communal organization scarcely existed.44 Norway Denmark In and where hamlets isolated and farmsteads werethe predominant formof ruralsettlement, rleighbors formedonly loose organizations providemutualhelp to and supportwhen needed, and to join togetherfor socialoccasions such as weddings.45 Those partsof Englandwhere pastoral farmingpredominated had less rigorouscommunalcontrolsthan did the villagesof the open-fieldcountry. Mrs.Thirsksuggeststhatpastoral areaswereenclosed early precisely becausethe weakness even absenceof theseconstraints or madeit easierto reachagreements extinguishing commonrights.46 The strengthor weakness communal evidencedthemselves of ties most concretely the extentto whichvillagers in accepted werecompelled (or by lord and stateto accept)collective restraints theirrightof private on landholding.The spectrum fromindividual ran possession a specific of pieceof land throughincreasing degreesof regulation agrarian to communism in whichthe commune held the landand decidedhowmucheachof its membersshouldhaveand underwhatconditions. Even the least rigorousof communalorganizations imposedcertain limitations the individual's on controlof his own holding,and especially over his rightsin the collective property the community of (which some in
42. W. G. Hoskins, The MidlandPeasant:the Economic Social Historyoffa Leicestershire and Village(London, 1957), 97-98; Orwin, 126; Wake, 407-8. 43. Hoskins, 97-98; Webb, 1: 128-32; W. E. Tate, TheEnglishFillageCommunity the and Enclosure Movement (London, 1967), 31. 44. Rosdolsky,97-103. 45. R. Frimannslund,"The Old Norwegian Peasant Community: Farm Community and Neighborhood Community," Scandinavian Economic Histo?y Reriew4 (1956): 70-72; Bull, 19; Flatres,"Paysages ruraux,"605-6. 46. Thirsk, 23-24.

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placescomprised or moreof the village's half territory). ensurethatall To sharedfairlyin the use and benefitsof theseresources communeimthe posedregulations whichlimited number animals the of eachmember could pastureon the commongrassland, amountof timberhe could take the fromthe forest,and the amountof meadowhe could mow.47 In placesin Switzerland, SouthGermany, Austria, in Scandinavia and a separatecommunemade up of the residentsof severalvillagesor of a groupof isolatedfarmsteads hamletshad its owncommonland.These or communes were perhapsvestigesof the old territorial communes the and commonland a collectivepatrimony from dayslong gone. The common landoften wentby the nameof Altmend, "property all,"thoughsomeinof dividualvillagesused this word for theircommons.The Allmend not was limitedto forest,meadow, pasture, otheruntilled and land.It couldinclude plowland, vineyards, orchards, vegetable and gardens,distributed among communemembers fixed periods,or rentedout withthe incomeused for to meetcommunal costssuchas the careof the poor.48 Communal ownershipof Allmenden persisted someplaces,asin Switzerland, has in downinto the present.Membership the Swisscommunes hereditary, in is nontransferable,and cannotbe exercisedin absentia. carries rightto use the It the commonpastures forestsand to takeup a plotof communal and landfor individual cultivation.49 The GreatRussian villagecommuneis the best-known exampleof the extremeform of collective restraint the individual. communebeon The camethe de facto possessor the villageland (the lawnevermadeclear of the legal positionof the communein this regard).The memberof the communehad permanent possession onlyof his dwelling the scrapof and landaroundit. Eachpeasant household a rightto an allotment plowhad of landand the rightto use commonpasture, meadow, forest.The comand mune, either through the action of the communalassemblyor of its authorized officers,decidedon the size of the holdingsof its households. The commune,as a corporate body,couldsubdivide holdings, ordertheir periodicredistribution, lease additional land,or rent out someof its own land.The proprietor the villagecouldoverruleany actionof the comof mune,but usually allowed a greatdealof autonomy.50 emerging he it First in the fifteenthand earlysixteenthcentury,communallandholding becamenearlyuniversal GreatRussiaby the nineteenthcentury;in the in early1890s well over ninetypercentof all peasantland was held in this
47. Semevskii,1: 121; Blum, LordandPeasant, 521;Juillard,71, 72-73; Wiessner, Beitrage, 28; Saint-Jacob, 35-36. 48. K. Bucher, "Allmenden,"Handworterbuch Staatswissenschaften der (Jena, 1909), 1: 402, 403; A. Meitzen, "Feldgemeinschaft," ibid., 4: 67; Wiessner,Beitrage, W. Engels, Ablo: 28; sungen und CemeinheitsteilungenderRheinprovinz in (Bonn, 1957), 24-26; H. D. Irvine, The Making RuralEurope o) (London, 1923), 48; Juillard, 71; Laveleye, 130-32. 49. G. L. M. Clauson, Communal Land Tenure,FAO AgriculturalStudies, No. 170 (Rome, 1953),2. 50. Tschuprow, 102, 80-81; W. Preyer,Die russische Agrarreform (ena, 1914), 16-17; Blum, Lord Peasant,524-25. and

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manner.It wasfar lesscommonin WhiteRussia the Ukraine, did and and not exist at all in the Lithuanian and Balticprovinces the Empire.51 of Peasantsin other partsof easternEuropealso adoptedagrarian communism.Communities manyareasof Hungary, partsof Poland,in in in easternGalicia, the plainland of Bukowina, in Moldavia in and used this methodof organization the eighteenth earlynineteenth in and centuries.52 Nor was it unknownin westernEurope.Villagersin districts along the MoselleRiverpracticed collective ownership use for several and centuries up into the nineteenthcentury.53 Widespread agrarian communism still existedin earlytwentieth-century Spain,in Leon,the Aragonese slopesof the Pyrenees,and in Estramadura.s4 Sardinia In villagecommunesheld their land collectively until the mid-nineteenth centurywhen enclosure began.Untilthattimeindividual possession landexistedonlyin periphof eral regionsof the islandthat were firstpopulatedin the seventeenth to nineteenthcenturies.55 Corsica, In too, land was held communally. Individuallandholding thereestablished itselfgradually, process the goingon mostintensively the eighteenth firsthalfof the nineteenth in and centuries, and stillnot completein the 1960s.56 In a formof tenuremidway betweenindividual possession collective and landholding landremainedundivided actuality, wasdividedabthe in but stractly shares.Eachmember thecommune into of received or moreof one these abstract shareswhichgavehim the rightto use a certainamountof villagelandequivalent his abstract to share,but not the rightto use a specific plot. Presumably shareholders descendedfrom a common the all ancestorwho had establisheda patriarchal commune.When members withdrew fromthisoriginal commune set up theirownhomesteads to they receivedan abstract shareof the communal landratherthanan actual portion of that land. The shareof each claimant, then, corresponded his to mathematical shareof the familypatrimony. Thatmeantthatwideinequalitiesexistedin the idealshares eachcommune of member. shareholder The could sell his abstract sharesto his fellowvillagers, to outsidersif the or purchaserreceived the approvalof the commune.Yet the individual peasantcould not layclaimto a specificplot of landas his Landwas held in this mannerinto the eighteenthand nineteenth centuries in Little Russia(Ukraine),northernRussia,among Germanand Bulgarian colonistsin southernRussia, amongthe peasant-nobles (odnodown.57

51. Watters,146-47. 52. Rosdolsky, 103; Revesz, 20-22; K. Grunberg, "Die bauerlichenUnfreiheitsverhaltnisse und ihre Beseitigung in der Bukowina,"Studienzur osterreichischen Agrargeschichte (Leipzig, 1901), 51-54; K. Taganyi, "GeschichtederFeldgemeinschaftin Ungarn," Ungarische Revue 15 (1895): 107-21. 53. Hanssen, 100. 54. Leonhard,90. 55. Le Lannou, 118-19, 162. 56. Chiva, 103. 57. I. V. Lutchitsky,"ZurGeschichteder Grundeigentumsformenin Kleinrussland,"JahrbuchfurGesetzgebung, Vensaltung, Volkswirtschaft (1896): 183-85, 187-88, 195; Blum, und 20 Lordand Peasant,515.

170
vortsi)

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in centralRussia,and in easternGalicia and Poland.58 western In Europeit wasemployed thecommunities in alongthe Moselle the Rhinein land,and up to the secondquarter the nineteenth of century Norway.59 in In Ireland,too, beforethe seventeenth centurythe rightsof eachmember of the communeto land had been expressedin fractional form and had dependedupon his genealogical positionin the familyline.60 The entranceof strangers into these communesthroughpurchase of abstract sharesdilutedtheirfamilial character. northernRussiaand in In Polandthe individual villagerby the end of the eighteenthcenturyhad gainedrecognition permanent as holderof a specific of plowland. plot The commune's to the arable title vanished, thoughthe commune continued its management the pastures, of meadows, fisheries, otherresources and still held in common.61 Recordsof the actualtransformation patriarchal of familysettlements into communeswith ideal sharesprovideevidenceof the familial origins of thesecommunes.62 Thoughsimilar documentary sourcesare lacking, it seemslikelythatthe persistence manypartsof Europeof certainprior in rightsof kinsmento propertyalsobearswitnessto the familial originsof communal organizations. theselandsrelatives firstclaim purchase In had to inherited landoSeredfor saleby a relative. Moreover, the landhadbeen if bought by a person not a memberof the familyof the seller, kinsmen withina degreeof kinshipand withina periodof time set by locallawor customcouldbuybackthe landatthe pricefor whichit hadbeensold.The ruledid not applyto landwhichthesellerhadhimselfpurchased. kinsHis men had their specialclaimonly to land he had inherited;that is, land whichwasconsidered partof the family's patrimony. This customprevailed muchof France,whereit datedat leastto the in tenth centuryand continuedin use up to the Revolution.63 Germany, In too, the priorrightof kinsmento buy landreachedfar backin time,and becamea widespreadpracticeduring the later centuriesof the Middle Ages.64 peasants the cantonof Vaud,in southwest The of Switzerland, had the rightto buybackwithina yearlandalienated a relative.65 Norway by In and Swedenthe customdatedbackto earlytimesand persisted into the twentieth century, thoughstatutes reducedboththe circleof kinsmen with preemptive redemptive and rightsand the periodwithinwhichalienated
58. Lutchitsky, 168-70; Blum, Lord and Peasant, 515; Ministerstvo Gosudarstvennykh Imuchestv, Statisticheskiiobzor gosudarstsennykhimuchestvza 1858 god (St. Petersburg,1861), 740; Tschuprow,2-3; Rosdolsky,139-41; Revesz,205. 59. FIanssen,1: 100-02; Tschuprow,83-84. 60. Flatres,"Paysages ruraux,"611. 61. Revesz, 205; Blum, Lord and Peasant, 515-16. 62. Lutchitsky,179-80, 189. 63. P. Ourliac, "Le retraitlignager dans le Sud-Ouestde la France,"Revue historiquede droit franJcaisetetranger4e. ser., 30 (1952): 330-34, 344-45, 349; G. Lizerand,"Aproposdu remembrement,"Etudes d'histoirerurale (Paris, 1951), 163-64. 64. A. Heusler,Institutionendes deutschenPrivatrechts(Leipzig, 1885), 2: 60-62, 64. 65. G. A. Chevallaz, Aspectsde l'agriculturevaudoisea la fin de l'ancien regime(Lausanne,1949),
57-65.

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had the relatives On land could be bought back.66 the islandof Corsica to fromtheend of the fifteenth the and rightof priorpurchase repurchase and the the In century.67 Bohemia, widow, children, end of the nineteenth had of laterthe grandchildren the alienator the rightto buybackthe land had he had sold.In Polanda muchwidercircleof kinsmen thatprivilege.68 landownedby appliedto inherited the In Hungaryand in Russia practice land.69 but to nobles(andin Russia cityproperty) did notextendto peasant commonin Ento In Englandthe rightof kinsmen buy in land,although did Ages,70 notestabup glishand Irishboroughs to the end of the Middle restraints Often,however, lishitselfas a generalcustomout in the country. of were imposedin medievaltimeson the alienation peasantholdingsto members.71 nonfamily all redistributed or partof their in Communities manylandsperiodically They did this to reduce,if not end, inequaliand meadowland. plowland toward to of tiesamongthe households thecommune, controlthe tendency (indiof holdingsthoughinheritance alienation of splintering individual often had twentyor moreseparateparcels,and vidual peasantholdings throughthe fieldsof the village), someas manyas one hundred,scattered couples,and to asand to provideholdingsfor newcomers for newlywed to sure the abilityof each householdto meet its obligations lord,church, and state. tenureso commonin easternEuropelentitself communal The collective startedin the the In repartitions. Russia practice well especially to periodic that thoughthe meagerdataindicate earlyyearsof the sixteenthcenturys for in that centuryand the next one redistributions purposeof equalizaIn tion wereexceptional. the eighteenthcenturythey becamemuchmore had centuryrepartition befrequentand by the middleof the nineteenth Despite and of comethe ruleamongthe communes GreatRussia Siberia.72 and to in in closesimilarities conditions LittleRussia thosein GreatRussia, through land fromstateandseigneur, equalization pressures despitesimilar in Communities other did communalrepartition not take root there.73 In partsof easternEuropedid engage in this practice. those villagesof coland Moldavia, Hungarywherecommunal easternGalicia Bukowina,
66. M. Olsen, Farms and Fanes oJ Ancient Norway (Oslo: 1928), 30; M. Tcherkinsky,"The Institute Evolutionof the Systemof Successionto Landed Propertyin Europe,"International and ECconomics Soctology32 (1941): 175; Beauchets of Economics,MonthlyBulletin of Agrac?lltural 129-30, 143, 143n. 67. Chiva, 104. 68. Revesz 204, 205. Handbuch des gesamterRussischen 69. Blum, Nobte Landowners,64-66 and 65n; H. Klibanski, (Berlin, 1911-1918), 2: 201. ZivilrecAts 70. M. de W. Hemmeon, Burgage Tenure i7zMediaeval England (Cambridge,Mass., 1914), 114-26. 71. Homarls,195-98. 72. Blum, Lord and Peasant, 510- 2 2. 73. Ibid, 522; A. Leroy-Beaulieu,L'empiredes tsars et les russes (Paris, 1883), 1: 486.

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lectivetenureprevailed, landup into the the nineteenth century rediswas tributedperiodically achieveequality to amongthe householders.74 In western Europe,too, peasants sometimes resorted periodic to repartition of arableland to equalizetheir holdings.The villages the Moselle in regionwhichheld theirlandcollectively engagedin redistribution nineteenth century. Onlythen did it begin to die out.75 the into the In earlystages of open-fieldhusbandryin Denmark periodicredistributions strips of seemsto havebeen general,andas lateas theeighteenth century hadnot it entirely disappeared.76 Swedenpeasants In redistributed commonlyheld land. Land that lay outside periodically the fields subjectto repartition couldbe held permanently. Repartition continuedat eighteenth century;a royaldecreeof 1743 granting least to the midpermission perfor manent division commonly land of held to In parts of Norwaycommonlyheld referred itsannualrepartition.77 land periodically until royaldecreeof 1821 forbadeit as was repartitioned a a hindrance the progress to of agriculture. new law ordered the The permanentdivisionof this land among possessors its withineight years.78 In Scotland groupof families, a in someinstances including manyas as twenty separatehouseholds, often rentedland and held it jointly. Sometimes each family kept the same holding, but more often the member families periodically, often annually, and redistributed stripsamong the themselves according an agreed-upon to arrangement. theearlydecades By of nineteenthcentury,however, the the of ancy given way nearlyeverywhereold arrangements group tenhad to the new fashion"whereevery tenantset downon hisownlot.' Still,as is lateas the middle periodic repartitions not yet entirelyvanishedfrom of thatcentury, had remotepartsof Scotland.79Irelanda writerin the 1830s In reportedthat villagesin the Mullet Peninsula County of Mayo their years.80thirteenth-century redistributed landbyloteverythree In Sardinia villagers the held a lotteryat intervals fromtwoto fiveyearsto of redistribute theirfieldsamongthemselves. The customended in the seventeenth centurywhen the permanentpossession their occupants.In the holdingsbecame of villagesof neighboring Corsica annualredistribution holdings of continued the earlyyearsof into the presentcentury.81 the Austrian In provinces Carinthia, of CarniolaS Tyrol, andVorarlberg manypeasants practiced still periodic repartitions of their fieldsin the nineteenth arable century.82 regionsof northern In and
74. Rosdolsky, 103-6; Taganyi, 107-21. 75. Hanssen, 1: 100; Below, 8, 14-15. 76. Thorpe, "The Influence H. of Inclosure on the Form and Patterns of Rural Settlement in Denmark," Transactions theInstitute British of oJ Geographers, 17 ( 1951): 120. No. 77. Beauchet, 24. 78. Meitzen, "Feldgemeinschaft," 67. 79. Handley, Scottish J.E. Farming theEighteenth in Century (London, 1953), 46, 48; M. Gray, "The Abolition of Runrig in the Highlands of Scotland," Economic History (1952): Review, 46-48; idem, Highland 2nd ser., 5 Economy, 66-68; Gomme, 134, 140, 19, 80. 143. Quoted Flatres, Ce'ographie in rurale, 256. 81.Lannou, 119; Chiva, Le 104n. 82.Schiff, Osterreichs W. Agrarpolitik der Grundentlastung seit (Tubingen, 1898), 1: 171-72.

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Spain in the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturiesonly the northeastern possesin home and vegetablegardenremained his permanent peasant's of by sion.The fieldswereredistributed lot at intervals twoyearsor more.83 rereturnedto periodic communities In at leasttwo recordedinstances villageof Losheimgave it. after abandoning The Rhineland distribution yearslater,in 1724,underthe pressure in up the practice 1655.Sixty-nine perof of the excessiveparcelling holdingsthat resultedfrom individual In the manentoccupancy, villagersdecidedto restorethe old custom.84 ownedlandhadlong been held in wherecommunally FrenchSwitzerland in permanentindividualpossession,the communeof Pully-Petit 1826 of and the resurrected old practice orderedredistribution theselandsevery fifteenyears.85 who amongpeasants seem redistributions to havebeencommon Periodic in husbandry, whichtheypermanently runrig,or infield-outfield employed tilledthe infield,and tilledpartof the outfieldfora fewyears and carefully disit and then abandoned for anotherpartof the outfield.The villagers for tributedthe outfieldland they decidedto farm amongthemselves a was redistribution often done anew specificperiod.In HighlandScotland cornerof Warwickshire, in In each year.86 SuttonColdfield, the northwest untilthe earlypartof the eighteenthcenturyone-acreoutfieldplotswere period.Afterfiveyearsthe landreverted by distributed lot for a five-year choseanothersectionof the outfieldfor tillage to wasteand the villagers In by and madea new distribution lot.87 the secondhalfof the nineteenth the between Rhineand in centurymanyof the communes the Eifeldistrict, the BelgianArdennes,stilldivideda sectionof theirwasteby lotteryeach it year.They tilledthe sectionfor a yearthen allowed to returnto common Often the stripsof the permapastureand divideda new sectionby lot.88 but households, of in nentlytilledinfieldremained thepossession individual this redistributed land,too. In villages periodically the sometimes villagers in Norwayand Irelandthis wasdone untilveryrecenttimes.89 of of The frequency the redistribution land in villagesusingotherfield each land Sometimes wasrepartitioned year,and widely. fluctuated systems sometimesmany years passedbefore the villagersmade a new division. seem to havefavoreda cycleof threeyearsor a multiple Manycommunes to of three years becausethis corresponded the triennialcycle of their and wenton all the timein Russia redistributions methodof tillage.Partial periodic that practiced in EasternGalicia(and undoubtedly other lands to coupleswhowanted establish to repartitions) takecareof newlymarried amongkinsmen.Usuallythe peasand a homestead to makeadjustments
etc. 83. A. Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesender Westgermanen, (1895, reprinted Aalen,1963), 3: 580; Herr, 103. 84. Hanssen, 2: 28. 85. Laveleye, 140-41. 86. Handley, 48. 87. M. W. Beresford, "Lot Acres," EconomicHistoryReview 13 (1943): 75. 88. Laveleye, 92. 89. Smith, 212- 13.

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ant's house and garden and the small plot often attached to each cottage was considered his private property and was not exchanged at the periodic redistributions, but in some places gardens and even house lots were redistributed.90 The actual task of repartition offered many difficulties and complications. The arablehad to be split into holdings that were as nearlyas possible equal to each other in area, productivity,and accessibility.Often the villagers drew lots to decide the allocationof strips, though sometimesvillage officials made the distribution. In some places the villagers redistributed the parcelsaccording to a set rotation so that each household over a period of time held every parcel.91Despite the efforts to achieve equality some peasantsinevitablyfound themselveswith land of inferior quality.As compensation they received larger holdings or were given cash compensations. Sometimes, as in the Austrianprovince of Carniola,the number of people entitled to receive holdings exceeded the amount of availablearableland. In such cases the villagersexcluded some of their fellows periodicallyfrom the possession of holdings.92In the infertile soil of northern Russia,where the household's tax burden was proportionate to the size of its holdings, the peasants tried to get as little land as they could at the periodic redistributions.93 The periodic repartition of meadows was practiced far more generally than was the redistributionof the plowland. In many parts of Europe, including regions where the peasants had permanent holdings, the villagers each year split up their meadows as haying time drew near. The portion allotted to each household was determined by a lottery (in at least one English village it was deemed unseemly for the rector to draw a lot so he was always assigned the strip nearest the brook), or by a predetermined rotation of meadow plots. Sometimes the number of stripscorresponded to the number of households entitled to shares,and sometimesthe meadowswere split into many small pieces to ensure equality,so that the individualhousehold might have to mow its hay from as many as twentydifferent parcels.94 In England the annual redistributionof meadowlandcontinued in many places into the nineteenth century, as it did in the Low Countriesand Bohemia, and in other lands.95In Sweden (and probablyelsewhere) the custom persisted into the twentieth century and was still being practiced in places in that land in the 1930s.96
90. Hanssen, 1: 112;Rosdolsky,103-6,116-20; Watters,143;Semevskii,1:103-4; Revesz,21. 91. Rosdolsky, 109-15; Revesz, 21; Blum, Lord and Peasant, 526-27; Tschuprow,52; Gray, Highlanzl Economy, 19-20; Grunberg,52. 92. Schiff, 1: 172. 93. D. M. Wallace,Russia (New York, 1912), 136-37. 94. Gomme, 165-66, 266-71; Schiff, 1: 173; Wallace,Russza, 136; Semevskii, 1: 106; Lutchitsky, 191; Tschuprow,52. 95. Tate, 32-34; Schiff, 1: 173; Laveleye,93. 96. Frodin, 52n.

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Signs of the disintegrationof the village commune had evidenced themselves long before the institution became an historicalanachronism.Communal usages and communal discipline often fell into desuetude, and inroads of proprietors-noble, clerical, and in some lands bourgeois-on the land and resources of the village weakened the communal structure.97 The commune managed to survive these blows. It could not withstandthe demands for improvements in agriculturaltechniques which became the common coin of agriculturalreformers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Open fields, fallows, intermingling of parcels,compulsorycommunal tillage, common pasture, and all the other trappings of communal life and communal agriculture proved incompatiblewith the need for a more efficient and a more productive agriculture to feed Europe's fastgrowing population. Improvements could be introduced into the openfield method of tillage, but the way was not always easy. For example, it took five years of unending argument among the sixty to eighty familiesof the village of Great Tew, in Oxfordshire, before they could agree among themselves to change from a three-course to a nine-course rotation.98 Individual action was more rapid and more efficientthan communalaction. Nor could communes withstand the advances of rural industry, as the experience of Saxony showed. From the sixteenth century spinners, weavers, miners, and other industrialworkers made up a steadilygrowing proportion of the population there. In 1550 they totalled 18 percent of the rural population of Saxony, 38 percent in 1750, and 52 percent by 1843. These industrialworkers had little or no reason to concern themselveswith the problemsand operations of agricultureor with the preservationof the old commune, particularlysince only peasants with holdings above a certain size could participatein making and enforcing the regulations which controlled village life.99 Similarly,the growth of cottage industry in the Swisscanton of Zurichproduced severe tensions there which, beginning in the eighteenth centuryand taking on greaterproportionsin the nineteenth, led to the abolition of old communal regulations and the division of communal property.100 The improvement of agriculture was associated-indeed, often identified-almost everywhere with the consolidation of scattered strips into unified holdings, and the permanentdivisionof common land and, usually, its conversion into arable. Governmentsfrom the second half of the eighteenth century pursued policies to encourage, and even to order, these
du 97. Cf. Saint-Jacob,89-92; R. Dion, Essai sur la formation paysageruralfransais (Tours, agraire dans la France du XVIIIe 1934), 103-5; M. Bloch, "La lutte pour l'individualisme et economique sociale(1930): 333-36; J. Ruwet, L'agricult2lre les et siecle," Annalesd'histoire (Parisand Liege, 1943), 189-94, 200-12; K. regime classes rurales Paysde Hervesousl'ancien au Blaschke, "Vom Dorf zur Landgemeinde,"H. Haushofer and W. Boelcke, eds., Wegeund (Frankfurta. M., 1967), 233-36. Forschungen AgrargeschurAte der 98. Webb, 1: 79-80, 87-88. 99. Blaschke,"VomDorf," 233-36. (Zurichand Stuttgart, 1960), 55, 180, 205. und 100. R. Braun, Industrialisierung Volksleben

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changes.The collective constraints uponthe individual communal and disciplinewere seen as obstructions the development a more efficient to of agriculture. a few lands,and especially England,enclosurehad alIn in readymademuchprogress the middleof the eighteenth by century. From then on, consolidation parcels,divisionof commons,the frequentreof movalof families fromthe villageto farmsteads raisedin the midstof their newlyconsolidated holdings,and the consequent weakening finaldisand integration the communebecamea generalEuropean of phenomenon. The process wentmuchmoreswiftly somelandsthanit did in others. in In Englandand in Scotland, Denmark in Sweden,nearlyall of the in and farmland been consolidated compact had into individual farmsby the second half of the nineteenth century. villagesdisappeared dwindled Old or into insignificance theirinhabitants as movedto theirnewenclosedfarms. Consolidation the break-up villages and of proceeded mostrapidly Denin mark.Voluntary effortsmade during the eighteenthcenturyto end the excessive parcelling hindered that Danish agriculture littleeffect.Then had in 1781the absolutist regimeissueda well-drafted decreewhichmadeconsolidation easy,and whichforbadethe introduction open fieldson land of newlytakeninto cultivation its reintroduction consolidated and on land. By 1830open-fieldfarminghad disappeared Denmark.10l in OtherlandslaggedbehindBritain Scandinavia the progress and in made in consolidation. the mid-twentieth In centurya surprisingly largeamount of theirfarmland lay parcelled dividedup amongpeasant still and proprietorsand renters.102 survival traditional patterns landuse, The of field and however, even in someplacesthe persistence the three-field and of system, didnot implythe preservation the villagecommune.Duringthe eraof of theFrenchRevolution brief-lived the HelveticRepublic incorporated villagecommunes Switzerland new and largerpolitical in into districts.103 In Germany Austriathe decreesof the firsthalf of the nineteenth and century freeingthe peasantry fromitsservile semi-servile or status emphasized individual freedomand individual landholding. The lawsmade no provision the continuation the villagecommuneand gaveit no role in for of carrying the operations the emancipation.104Austria restored out of In the absolutist regimein its reformof localgovernment 1849established in new townships whichcoincidedneitherin area nor in residentswith the old village communes. newlocalunitsincluded The several communities within their boundaries, gaveequalrightsto participate localgovernment and in toeveryone, unliketheold communes whichonlypeasants holdings in with above certainsize qualifiedas voting membersof the communalasa
101.Orwin, 124: Webb, 1: 118-20; Gray "Abolition," 49-53; H. Gampert,Die Flurbereinigungim westlichenEuropa (Munich,1955),46, 92, 94-95; Thorpe, 122; Froden,57. 102.Cf. F. Dovring, Landand Laborin Europein the Twentieth Century (The Hague, 1956), table p. 40; Gamperl,32-36. 1, 103.Winkler,56. 104.Blaschke, "Grundzuge,"284-87; G. Meyer, Die Verkoppelung Herzogtum im Lauenburg unter hannoverscher Herrschaft (Hildesheim, 1965), 38, 107.

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sembly.105 government Saxonyhad introduced similar The of a reformin 1839incorporating villagecommunities new,largertownships.106 into In Francethe villagecommunewasattacked by the absolutist first governmentand then by the revolutionary regime.The statebeganto intervene in communalaSairs during the reign of LouisXIV as part of its program increase powerof thecentral to the government. 1787the govIn ernmentissueda decreewhichended the democratic controlof the commune by its members.Hencefortha council,electedby limitedsuffrage, and drawnfrom personswho paidat leastthirtylivresa yearin taxes,was to runthe commune. 1789the revolutionary In government confirmed this reform.107 Laterrevolutionary legislation, such as the outlawing comof pulsionof an individual peasantby the villagecommuneto growcertain crops,and the Revolution's emphasis uponindividual exclusive and ownership of propertyfurtherweakenedthe commune,thoughit managedto surviveon into the nineteenthcenturybefore it finallydisappeared.108 In Englandthe lord'scourt,in whichall the villagers participated, had faded awayslowlyin properEnglishstyle.No statuteorderedits abolition or lessenedits authority. Instead,the encroachments the king'scourts, of especiallyfrom the seventeenthcenturyon, reducedthe judicialimportanceof the lord'scourt,andenclosures brought abouta steady diminution in its business in itsactivities administrator manager the fields and as and of and pasturesof the village.Duringthe eighteenthcenturymanyof the functionsof the lord'scourtweresuperseded new statutory by bodies,or byjusticesof the county,or by the parishvestry.Lord's courtsstillsat in the nineteenth century, theirnumberdeclineduntiltheybecamelocal but curiosities and the delightof antiquaries.109 villageassemblies, The too, disentegrated the changesin the techniques tillagewhichendedthe with of open fieldsand the need for closecommunal cooperation.1l0 In contrastto this negativeattitudetakenby westerngovernments, the rulersof Russia strongly supported villagecommune. the Theyrecognized its inefficiencies its retardative and effectsupon Russian agriculture, but theybelievedthatthe political stability the empireresteduponit. They of viewedthe land-equalizing commune insurance as against socialunrestand againstthe creationof a landlessproletariat who might rise againstthe regime.The emancipation in 1861gavethe commune central law the position in the new peasantorder in those provinces whereredistribution of land prevailed. vestedownership the landwiththe communerather It of
105. J. Redlich, Das osterreichische Staats-und Reichsproblem (Leipzig, 1920-1926), 1: 372-75; Feigl, 336. 106. Blaschke,"Vom Dorf,"238. 107. C. Parain, "Une vieille tradition democratique:les assemblees de communaute,"La Pensee. Revuedu rationalzsme moderne, 4 (1945): 47-48. No. 108. Babeau, 29-30; Lizerand,Etudes, 65. 109. Webb, 1: 118-20, 124; G. E. Fussell, VillageLife in theEighteenth Century (Worcester, 1951), 20. 110. Gomme, 232.

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than the individual peasant, provided for the continuation of periodic repartitions, and ordered the retention of communal rather than individual responsibilityfor obligations to the state and redemption payments to the former proprietor of the land.1ll The government continued to rely upon the commune as the mainstay of rural social and politicalstabilityuntil the early twentieth century.Then peasant unrest and attemptedrevolutionpersuaded the regime to abandon its commitment to the preservationof communalorganization,and instead follow the policy of encouragement of individual farming that western nations had long before adopted. The "Stolypin reforms' of 1906-1911 allowed the peasant to claim his share of the communal land, withdraw from the commune, and set himself up as an independent farmer on his own holding, with the government bearing many of the costs of the enclosure operation. By 1 January 1919, on the eve of the Revolution, 9.5 percent of all peasant land in European Russia had been enclosed. The rate of withdrawalfrom the commune ran much higher than the national average in those provinces which were the empire's chief producers for market.1l2In 1906 Stolypin had said, "In twenty years wewillnolonger speak of the commune."113 Though history did not allow the time needed to put his prophecy to the full test, the commune, while still a vigorous institution on the eve of the Revolution, had retreated before the wave of enclosures and withdrawals. In western lands, despite the establishment of individual ownership, communal practices did not vanish completely. In many places pastures, meadows, and forests still remain common property, with their use regulated by communal agreement. In part these vestigesof communalismpersisted because of the difficultiesinvolvedin prohibitingtrespasson privately owned pasture, the sometimes prohibitivecosts of enclosing, and the ill will that raising fences caused among neighbors.1l4And in a few places old open-field villages and compulsory tillage somehow managed to survive almostunchanged into the twentieth century.1l5
111. A. Gerschenkron,"AgrarianPolicies and Industrialization: Russia 1861-1917," CambridgeEconomic History (Cambridge,1966), 6, pt. 2: 748-50; Blum, Lord and Peasant, 514, 593-94, 618-19. 112. G. Pavlovsky,Agricultural Russia on the Eve of the Revolution (reprint, New York, 1968), 123, 135-39. 113. Quoted in Gaudemet, 157. 114. Clauson, 11 and n.; F. Seebohm, "FrenchPeasantProprietorship under the Open Field System Husbandry," of Economic Journal 1 (1891): 61-62. 115. G. Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of the CommonFields (London, 1907), 19-20; S. Dahl, "StripFieldsand Enclosurein Sweden,"ScandinavianEconomicHistoryReview 9(1961): 56; Orwin, 70-71; Leonhard, 90; Chiva, "SocialOrganization,"106; G. P. Strod, "Perekhod parovoi zemledeliia k plodosmena v Latvii v pervoi polovine XIX veka," ot
Ezhegodnik agrarnoi istorii vostochnoiEvropy, 1958g., 45. po