Freedom's Price

Serfdom, Subjection, and Reform in Prussia, 1648-1848

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20007310
AutoresS A Eddie (autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Páginas374
Data de publicação2013-10-10
Open AccessNão
TipoBOOK
PeriódicoFreedom's Price (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662753.001.0001
OpenAlexW4210993446
Open LibraryOL28503990M
ISBN9780199662753
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9

The one certain, indeed proverbial, thing about serfs is that they were as oppressed as they were unfree. But is it true? Building on a new reading of archival material, this book attempts a fundamental re-appraisal of the workings of a 'serf' or manorial economy. That of Prussia, the supposed apotheosis of peasant oppression in Europe, was in fact not one in which defenceless serfs were fleeced by a Faustian alliance of nobles and state. Rather, it enshrined mutual rights and obligations: subject peasants were literally dependent on noble capital yet, contrary to modern assumptions, fared better than their 'free' neighbours. Capital was therefore at the centre of the pre-capitalist economy, and also at the centre of the famous reforms of 1806-21, which abolished subjection and transferred land ownership from noble to peasant. Overturning the view that their evident pro-noble bias sealed Prussia's (and thus Germany's) fate as a Junker-dominated state, the reforms emerge as just; if anything, it was nobles, and not peasants, who lost out thereafter. The success of Prussia's reforms is also clear in a pan-European context. Although Prussian reformers were every bit as ambitious as French Revolutionaries (having aimed higher), the final terms steered a safe path between the revolutionary expropriation of the nobles in France and the reactionary expropriation of the peasants in the Highland Clearances. For Prussian peasants, freedom's price was very far from the historical injustice still commonly maintained

Ancient history · Capital (architecture) · Context (archaeology) · Economic history · Expropriation · Peasant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Reactionary · Sociology · State (computer science) · History · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Economic conditions · Prussia · Serfdom · Social conditions