Such was the legal state of affairs up to the end of the i6th cen tury. A great change supervened, however, through the slow work ing of economic and political causes. The peasants settled under the sway of nobles and churches could very seldom produce a clean bill in regard to their money relations with the landlords. Thus, they gradually lapsed into a state of perpetual subjection from which they could not emancipate themselves by legal means. On the other hand, the growth of the Muscovite state with its fiscal governmental requirements involved a watchful repartition of burdens among the population and led ultimately to a system of collective liability in which the farms were considered chiefly as the sources of taxable income. The government was directly interested in maintaining their efficiency and in preventing migra tions and desertions which led to a weakening of the taxpaying communities. A third aspect of the question must also not be dis regarded, namely, the keen competition between landowners try ing to attract settlers to their estates at the expense of their needy or less powerful neighbours. The first legislative measures of the Moscow rulers directed towards the establishment of a servile class similar to the Roman coloni fall into the first years of the 17th century (A.D. 16oi, 1606) and consist in enactments against landowners depriving their neighbours of the tillers of their estates. But matters were clearly ripe for a wider application of the view that the peasant ought to stick to the soil, and the restoration of the Muscovite empire under the Romanovs brought with it the consolidation of all rural arrangements around this principle. Peter the Great regularized and completed this evolution by effecting a comprehensive cadastre and census of the rural population. The ultimate result was, however, not only the fixity of peasant tenures, but the subjection of the entire peasant popu lation as a separate class (Krepostrie) to the personal sway of the landowners. The state insisted to a certain extent on the public character of this subjection and drew distinctions between per sonal slavery and serfdom. In the midst of the peasants them selves there lived a consciousness of their special claims as to tenant right. But, in fact, serfdom naturally took the form of an ugly ownership of live chattels on the part of a privileged class. Emancipation was brought about in the 19th century by economic causes as well as by humanitarian considerations. Private enter prise and the free application of capital and labour were hindered in every way by the bondage of the peasant class. Even such a necessary measure as that of moving cultivators to the rich soil of the south was thwarted by the adherence of the northern peasantry to the glebe. After several half-hearted attempts directed in the course of Nicholas I.'s reign to face the question while safeguarding at the same time the rights and privileges of the old aristocracy, the moral collapse of the ancien regime during the Crimean war brought about the Emancipation Act of Feb. 19, 1861, by which some 15 millions of serfs were freed from bond age. The most characteristic feature of this act was that the peasants, as distinct from household servants, received not only personal freedom but allotments in land in certain proportions to their former holdings. The state indemnified the former land owners, and the peasants had to redeem the loan by yearly pay ments extending over a number of years.
If we turn back from this course of development to the history of serfdom in the West striking contrasts appear. As we have al ready noticed, mediaeval serfdom in the West was the result of a process of customary feudal growth hardly interfered with by central governments. The loosening of bondage is also, to a great
extent, prepared by the working of local economic agencies. Villeins and serfs in France rise gradually in the social scale, redeem many of the onerous services of feudalism and practically acquire tenant-right on most of the plots occupied by them. Tocqueville has pointed out that already before the revolution of 1789 the greater part of the territory of France was in the hands of small peasant owners, and modern researches have confirmed Tocque ville's estimate. Thus feudal overlordship in France had resolved itself into a superficial dominion undermined in all directions by economic realities. The fact that there still existed all kinds of survivals of harsh forms of dependence, e.g. the bondage of the serfs in the Jura Mountains, only rendered the contrast between legal conditions and social realities more pointed. The night of Aug. 4, 1789 put an end to this contrast at one stroke and the further history of rural population came to depend entirely on the play of free competition and free contract.
In the evolution of serfdom in Germany the regulating influence of government made itself felt to a greater extent, especially in the east. The colonization of the eastern provinces and the struggle against the Slays necessitated a stronger concentration of aristo cratic power, and the reception of Roman law during the 15th and i6th centuries hardened the forms of subjection originated by customary conditions. It may be said in a general way that Germany occupied in this respect, as in many others, an inter mediate position between the west of Europe and Russia. Emanci pation followed also a middle course, being brought about chiefly by governmental measures, although the ground was to a great extent prepared by social evolution. The reforms of Stein and Hardenberg in Prussia, of the French and of their clients in South Germany, opened the way for a gradual redemption of the peas antry. Personal serfdom (Leibeigenschaft) was abolished first, hereditary subjection (Erbunterthiitigkeit) followed next. Emanci pation in this case was not connected with a recognition of the full tenant-right of the peasants ; they had to part with a good deal of their land. To the last the landowners were not disturbed in their economic predominance, and succeeded very well in work ing their estates by the help of agricultural labourers and farmers. In the West the small peasant proprietorship had a better chance, but it arose in the course of economic competition rather than through any general recognition of tenant-right. On the whole serf dom appears as a characteristic corollary of feudalism. It grew up as a consequence of customary subjection and natural hus bandry; it melted away with the coming in of an industrial and commercial age.
Histoire de l'esclavage dans Pantiquite; Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopiidie des klassischen Altertums, s.v. "Coloni"; Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problemes d'histoire; Institutions politiques de la France (L'alleu et le domaine rural) ; F. Seebohm, English Village Community (1883) ; P. Vino gradoff, The Growth of the Manor (igo5) ; G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfas sungsgeschichte (1844, ff.) ; P. Viollet, Histoire du droit francais (3rd ed., 1905) ; Engelmann, Geschichte der Leibeigenschaft in Russ land; Kluchevsky, Lectures on the History of Russia (in Russian), ii. (5906) ; G. Hansen, Die Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft in Schleswig and Holstein (1861) ; G. F. Knapp, Die Bauernbefreiung in Preussen (1887) ; Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, ed. by Conrad and Lexis s.vv. "Bauernbefreiung," "Unfreiheit," "Grundherrschaft." (P. Vs. ; X.)