the Serfdom Paten

Examples of the Serfdom Paten in the following topics:

• Catherine's Domestic Policies

  • Catherine the Great enthusiastically supported the ideals of the Enlightenment, thus earning the status of an enlightened despot, although her reforms benefited a small number of her subjects and did not change the oppressive system of Russian serfdom.
  • The period of Catherine's rule (1762-1796), the Catherinian Era, is often considered the Golden Age of the Russian Empire and the Russian nobility.
  • However, military conscription and economy continued to depend on serfdom and the increasing demands of the state and private landowners led to increased levels of reliance on serfs.
  • In the 18th century, the peasantry in Russia were no longer bound to the land, but tied to their owner, which made Russian serfdom more similar to slavery than any other system of forced labor that existed at the time in Europe.
  • An admirer of Peter the Great, she continued to modernize Russia along Western European lines although her reforms did not benefit the masses and military conscription and economy continued to depend on serfdom.

• Joseph II and Domestic Reform

  • In 1781, Joseph issued the Serfdom Patent, which aimed to abolish aspects of the traditional serfdom system of the Habsburg lands through the establishment of basic civil liberties for the serfs.
  • In contrast, the peasants of the German-speaking provinces were actually aided by the Patent.
  • The Patent granted the serfs some legal rights in the Habsburg monarchy, but it did not affect the financial dues and the physical corvée (unpaid labor) that the serfs legally owed to their landlords, which it practice meant that it did not abolish serfdom but rather expanded selected rights of serfs.
  • Providing the Jewish subjects of the Empire with the right to practice their religion came with the assumption that the freedom would gradually force Jewish men and women into the mainstream German culture.
  • Despite the attempts to improve the fate of the peasantry, Joseph's land reforms met with the resistance of the landed nobility and serfdom was not abolished in the Empire until 1848.

• Slavery

  • In more recent times slavery has been outlawed in most societies, but continues through the practices of debt bondage, indentured servitude, serfdom, domestic servants kept in captivity, certain adoptions in which children are forced to work as slaves, child soldiers, and forced marriage.
  • The services required to repay the debt and their duration may be undefined.
  • It is also used as a general term to describe all types of slavery and may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom, conscription and penal labor.
  • In the United States, the most notorious instance of slavery is the Atlantic slave trade, through which African slaves were brought to work on plantations in the Caribbean Islands, Latin America, and the southern United States primarily.
  • An estimated 12 million Africans arrived in the Americas from the 1600's to the 1900's.

• Enlightened Despotism

  • However, military conscription and economy continued to depend on serfdom, and the increasing demands of the state and private landowners led to increased levels of reliance on serfs.
  • Maria Theresa was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg.
  • The girls who attended the Smolny Institute, Smolyanki, were often accused of being ignorant of anything that went on in the world outside the walls of the Smolny buildings.
  • Joseph II was one of the first rulers in Central Europe, who attempted to abolish serfdom but his plans met with resistance from the landholders.
  • His Imperial Patent of 1785 abolished serfdom on some territories of the Empire but, under the pressure of the landlords, did not give the peasants ownership of the land or freedom from dues owed to the landowning nobles.

• The Manor System

  • The manor system was an element of feudal society in the Middle Ages characterized by the legal and economic power of the lord of a manor.
  • The main reason for the development of the system was perhaps also its greatest strength: the stabilization of society during the destruction of Roman imperial order.
  • Serfdom was the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism.
  • As part of the contract with the landlord, the lord of the manor, they were expected to spend some of their time working on the lord's fields.
  • Seen on the right of the picture, above the tower Poitiers, is a winged dragon representing the fairy Melusine.

• The Capitalist Critique of Socialism

  • Milton Friedman supported his assertion that socialism fails by taking a look at the American economy, contending that the weakest areas were those that were state-owned.
  • Economic liberals, pro-capitalist libertarians, and some classical liberals view private enterprise, private ownership of the means of production, and the market exchange as central to conceptions of freedom and liberty.
  • He pointed to the U.S. to see where socialism fails, observing that the most technologically backward areas are those where government owns the means of production.
  • The philosopher Friedrich Hayek argued in his book The Road to Serfdom that the more even distribution of wealth through the nationalization of the means of production advocated by certain socialists cannot be achieved without a loss of political, economic, and human rights.
  • He argued that the road to socialism leads society to totalitarianism, and that fascism and Nazism were the inevitable outcome of socialist trends in Italy and Germany during the preceding period.

• The Black Death

  • This did help, but not for the reasons the doctors of the time thought.
  • The thought the only way to be rid of the plague was to be forgiven by God.
  • The peak of the activity was during the Black Death.
  • Land was plentiful, wages high, and serfdom had all but disappeared.
  • Plague brought an eventual end of serfdom in Western Europe.

• Crises of the Roman Empire

  • The Crisis of the Third Century was a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression.
  • When Claudius died in 270 of the plague, Aurelian, who had commanded the cavalry at Naissus, succeeded him as the emperor and continued the restoration of the Empire.
  • Aurelian reigned (270–275) through the worst of the crisis, defeating the Vandals, the Visigoths, the Palmyrenes, the Persians, and then the remainder of the Gallic Empire.
  • This provided an early model for serfdom, the origins of medieval feudal society and of the medieval peasantry.
  • Describe the problems afflicting the Roman Empire during the third century

• The USSR

  • From its creation, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
  • Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924.
  • On 3 April 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
  • Collectivization brought social change on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861 and alienation from control of the land and its produce.
  • The early 1930s saw closer cooperation between the West and the USSR.

• Feudalism

  • In exchange for the use of the fief and the protection of the lord, the vassal would provide some sort of service to the lord.
  • The obligations and corresponding rights between lord and vassal concerning the fief formed the basis of the feudal relationship.
  • Karl Marx theorized feudalism as a pre-capitalist society, characterized by the power of the ruling class (the aristocracy) in their control of arable land, leading to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farm these lands, typically under serfdom and principally by means of labour, produce, and money rents.
  • The king was the absolute "owner" of land in the feudal system, and all nobles, knights, and other tenants, termed vassals, merely "held" land from the king, who was thus at the top of the feudal pyramid.
  • Below the king in the feudal pyramid was a tenant-in-chief (generally in the form of a baron or knight), who was a vassal of the king.