Cerman, Markus Villagers and Lords in Eastern Europe, 1300–1800 (review)

Abstract

SEER, 93, 4, OCTOBER 2015 760 Cerman, Markus. Villagers and Lords in Eastern Europe, 1300–1800. Studies in European History. Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke and New York. 2012. xvii + 155 pp. Maps. Glossary. Tables. Bibliography. Index. £16.50 (paperback). For too long the peasantries of Eastern Europe were framed within the concept of ‘serfdom’ or ‘second serfdom’, a rural social structure that marked the region as distinct from Western Europe. Under ‘second serfdom’, noble landlords were able to ride roughshod over a powerless and depersonalized rural population, unencumbered by any effective centralized state power. This crude construction of rural society in early modern Eastern and Central Europe — often, as Markus Cerman points out, taken from those contemporary critics of ‘serfdom’ who emphasized its abuses to further the cause of reform — has been undermined by much scholarship produced in the last thirty years, notably by those at the Max Plank Institute in Potsdam, and including significant works by William Hagen and Sheilagh Ogilvie amongst others. However much of this work has been overlooked by non-specialists, especially those in the Anglophone world, and the old view of ‘serfdom’ or ‘second serfdom’ has persisted in more general literature, present even in many of the standard textbooks dedicated to our region. As such, Cerman’s short book serves as an invaluable reassessment of lord-peasant relations in Eastern and Central Europe. The author’s main aims are, first, to undo the two pillars of ‘second serfdom’ — of all-powerful noble landlords and a weak and powerless peasantry — and second, to challenge the concept of an ‘agrarian dualism’ that differentiates between Eastern and Western Europe developments. His starting point, developed in the opening two chapters, is a definition of ‘Gutscherrscahft’, here translated as ‘demesne lordship’. Following an overview of recent research and past interpretations in chapter one, chapter two is dedicated to a systematic analysis of demesne lordship, covering mobility restrictions, courts and legal systems, property rights and labour rents. In this, two points of great significance are made. First is the security attached to peasant property rights under demesne lordship for, whilst their tenure was reliant upon the payment of rents in cash or kind and performance of services to their lords (notably labour), there were few means for the peasantry to be denied their rights to the land. Second, is the fact that peasants were able to manipulate the system of demesne lordship through negotiation, resistance or rebellion. The author uses these chapters to distinguish demesne lordship from ‘serfdom’. However, this distinction is not entirely clear, and certain points would have benefited from further explanation. For example, the importance of protest and, in particular, village institutions, local courts and appeals emerge as a vital means for peasants to voice their concerns and avoid the worst abuses so often associated REVIEWS 761 with ‘serfdom’. Yet how this worked in practice, and the forms that protest took, remains underdeveloped. Specifically, the workings of manorial courts and seigniorial justice are passed over in less than a page. The remaining chapters are dedicated to an economic analysis of demesne lordship, in an attempt to explain its rise, its impact on agriculture, and on economic conditions. This provides a systematic critique of those macrohistorical accounts that have sought to use ‘re-feudalization’ as a means to explain wider patterns of East European backwardness and the regions’ divergence from Western trajectories of ‘modernity’ — a framework that, as Cerman points out, has been abandoned in almost all other fields of historiography yet persists in general accounts of East European rural society. Again, Cerman’s arguments are important, yet here the analysis can be lost amidst the statistics used in the author’s attempts to detail the great variety of conditions that existed in a region stretching from Scandinavia to the Balkans. Throughout the book, the reader is left with the clear impression of how varied the terms of lord-peasant relations in East Central Europe were, both in region and over time. The assertive conclusion that there was no age of ‘second serfdom’, nor even a general model of lord-peasant relations and agrarian development that could be applied to anywhere in the region, is important to make, born out...