Domar Source: the Journal of Economic History, Vol

Economic History Association

The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis Author(s): Evsey D. Domar Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 30, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History (Mar., 1970), pp. 18-32 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2116721 Accessed: 18-09-2015 10:24 UTC

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This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Causes of Slaveryor Serfdom: A Hypothesis

I THE purposeof thispaper is to present,or morecorrectly, to revive,a hypothesisregarding the causes of agriculturalserf- dom or slavery (used here interchangeably).The hypothesiswas suggestedby Kliuchevsky'sdescription of the Russian experience in the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies, but it aims at a wider applicability.' Accordingto Kliuchevsky,from about the second half of the fifteenthcentury Russia was engaged in long hard wars against her westernand southernneighbors. The wars requiredlarge forcesthat the statefound impossible to supportfrom tax revenuealone. Hence the governmentbegan to assign lands (pomestia) to the servitors, who were expected to use peasant labor (directlyand/or via pay- mentsin kind and/ormoney) for theirmaintenance and weapons. In exchange,the servitorgave the peasants a loan and permitted them,free men as yet,to workall or part of his land on theirown. The systemworked rather badly, however,because of shortageof labor. Severe competitionamong landownersdeveloped, the ser- vitorsbeing bested by lay and clerical magnates. Things became particularlydifficult for the servitorsafter the middle of the sixteenthcentury when the centralareas of the state became depop- ulated because of peasant migrationinto the newlyconquered areas in the east and southeast.Under the pressureof the servingclass

For many helpfulcomments on an earlierdraft, I am gratefulto the following persons: AbrahamBecker, Oleg Hoeffding,Clayton La Force, Edward Mitchell, WilliamParker, George Rosen, Matthew Edel, PeterTemin, Helen Turinand Charles Wolf, Jr. Alexander Gerschenkron'searlier suggestionswere also very helpful. Thanksare also due Ann Peet forher excellentresearch assistance. I am also gratefulto the RAND Corporationfor its supportof an earlierversion of this study (20 October 1966), and to the National Science Foundationfor its assistance(Grant No. NSF-GS-2627) in revisingand extendingthe firstdraft. Neither these two organizations,nor the personslisted above, are responsiblefor the views expressedhere. 1 V. Kliuchevsky,Kurs russkofistorii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoesotsial'no-eko. nomicheskoeizdatel'stvo, 1937). The originalwork was publishedin 1906. All my referencesapply to the 1937 edition.An English translationby C. J. Hogarth,A Historyof Russia,was publishedin New York by Russell and Russellin 1960. For specificreferences, see Part II. is

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Causes of Slavery 19 and forcertain other reasons, the governmentgradually restricted the freedomof peasants,already hopelessly in debt to theirlandlords,to move.They became enserfed by themiddle of the seven- teenthcentury, though the processitself continued for many dec- ades to come. Thisis a veryrough summary of Kliuchevsky's story which hardly does himjustice but whichwill servemy purposesuntil Part II. Like manya historian,he assembledand describedthe relevant facts(and in beautifulRussian at that) and stoppedjust shortof an analyticalexplanation. The economistwould recastKliuchevsky's account as follows: The servitorstried to live offrents (in one formor another)to be collectedfrom their estates. But the estatescould not yielda sig- nificantamount of rentfor the simplereason that land in Russia was not sufficientlyscarce relativeto labor,and ironically,was made even less scarceby Russianconquests. The scarcefactor of productionwas not land but labor.Hence it was the ownership of peasantsand not of land thatcould yield an incometo the servitorsor to anynon-working landowning class. A simpleeconomic model may sharpenthe argument(if any sharpeningis needed) and help to developit further.Assume that labor and land are the onlyfactors of production(no capitalor management),and that land of uniformquality and locationis ubiquitous.No diminishingreturns in the applicationof labor to land appear;both the averageand the marginalproductivities of laborare constantand equal, and if competitionamong employers raiseswages to thatlevel (as would be expected),no rentfrom land can arise,as Ricardodemonstrated some time past. In the ab- senceof specificgovernmental action to the contrary(see below), the countrywill consistof family-sizefarms because hiredlabor, in anyform, will be eitherunavailable or unprofitable:the wage of a hiredman or theincome of a tenantwill have to be at leastequal to whathe can makeon his ownfarm; if he receivesthat much, no surplus(rent) willbe leftfor his employer.A non-workingclass of servitorsor otherscould be supportedby the governmentout of taxeslevied (directlyor indirectly)on the peasants,but it could not supportitself from land rents. As a steptoward reality, let us relaxthe assumption of theubiq- uityof uniformland, and let capital (clearingcosts, food, seeds, livestock,structures and implements)and managementbe included

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 20 Evsey D. Domar amongthe factorsof production.Owners of capital,of superior skilland ofbetter-than-average land will now be able to pay a hired manhis due (or to use a tenant)and stillobtain a surplus.But so longas agriculturalskills can be easilyacquired, the amount of capital forstarting a farmis small,and the per capita incomeis rel- ativelyhigh (because of theample supply of land), a good worker shouldbe able to saveor borrowand starton hisown in time.Most of the farmswill stillbe moreor less family-size,with an estate usinghired labor (or tenants)here and therein areasof unusually good (in fertilityand/or in location)land, or specializingin activ- itiesrequiring higher-than-average capital intensity, or skillfulman- agement.But untilland becomesrather scarce, and/or the amount ofcapital required to starta farmrelatively large, it is unlikelythat a largeclass of landowners, such as requiredby theMuscovite government,could be supportedby economicforces alone. The Amer- ican Northin the Colonialperiod and in the nineteenthcentury wouldbe a good exampleof an agriculturalstructure of thistype. So farthe institutionalstructure has been shapedby economic forcesalone without direct interference by the government.2Sup- pose now thatthe governmentdecides to create,or at least to fa- cilitatethe creationof, a non-workingclass of agriculturalowners. As a firststep, it givesthe membersof thisclass the sole rightof ownershipof land. The peasantswill now have to workfor the landowners,but so longas theworkers are freeto move,competitionamong the employerswill drivethe wage up to the value of the marginalproduct of labor,and since the latteris stillfairly close to the value of the averageproduct (because of the abundanceof land) littlesurplus will remain. The Russiansituation prior to thepeasants' enserfment corresponds to thiscase. The nextand finalstep to be takenby the governmentstill pur- suingits objectiveis the abolitionof the peasants'right to move. Withlabor tied to land or to the owner,competition among em- ployersceases. Now the employercan derivea rent,not fromhis land,but fromhis peasantsby appropriatingall or mostof their incomeabove some subsistence level.3 That Russian serfs could stay alive,and evento multiply,while working for themselves half-time 2 I mean by the "government"any organizationcapable of maintainingsome measureof law and orderand particularlyof usingnon-economic compulsion. It can be a king,an assemblyof landowners,a magnate,etc. 3 He may be restrainedby customand by the fearthat his serfscan run away-a commonoccurence in Russia.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Causes of Slavery 21 and less suggeststhat the productivityof theirlabor (with poor technique,little capital, but abundantland) musthave been quite high. To recapitulate,the strongversion of thishypothesis (without capital,management, etc.) assertsthat of thethree elements of an agriculturalstructure relevant here-free land, freepeasants, and non-workinglandowners-any two elements but never all threecan existsimultaneously. The combinationto be foundin realitywill depend on the behaviorof politicalfactors-governmental measures-treatedhere as an exogenousvariable. The presenceof thisexogenous political variable seriously weak- ens the effectivenessof my model: it makesthe presenceof free land by itselfneither a necessarynor a sufficientcondition for the existenceof serfdom.It is nota necessarycondition because so long as marginalproductivity of labor is high,serfdom may continueto existeven if freeland is no longerpresent; it may even be imposed at thisstage, as it was in the RussianUkraine in the eighteenthcen- tury.Free land is not a sufficientcondition because, as I stated above, withoutproper governmental action free land will give rise to freefarmers rather than to serfs. For the same reasons the model cannot predictthe net effectof a change in the land/laborratio on the positionof the peasants. Suppose that with constantland, technology,and per capita stock of capital,population increases. The economicposition of the peasants will worsen (even serfscan be exploitedmore), but the land- ownerswill be less inclinedto interferewith the peasants'freedom. Let populationdecline instead.The peasantswill be betteroff provided they do not become less free.Thus a change in the land/labor ratio can set in motioneconomic and political forcesacting in opposite directions. The strengthand usefulnessof the model could be increasedby making the political variable endogenous. But this I cannot do withouthelp fromhistorians and politicalscientists. These difficultiesnotwithstanding, I would still expect to finda positive statisticalcorrelation between free land and serfdom(or slavery). Such a correlationwas indeed foundby H. J. Nieboer of whom you'll hear more in Part III. What about the end of serfdom(or slavery)? Traditionallyit was assumed that it would or did disappearbecause of the inherent superiorityof free labor. This superiority,arising from the higher

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 22 Evsey D. Domar motivationof thefree man, was supposedto increasewith greater use of capitaland withtechnological progress. Let us disregardthe possiblygreater reliability of the slave and thelonger hours he may be forcedto work(particularly in traditionalsocieties where leisure is highlyvalued), and let us assumethat the economy has reached theposition where the net average productivity of the freeworker (Pf) is considerablylarger than that of a slave (P8). The abolition of slaveryis clearlyin the nationalinterest (unless the immediate militaryconsiderations, such as of theMuscovite government, over- whelmthe economic ones), but notnecessarily in theinterest of an individualslave owner motivated by hisprofit and notby patriotic sentiment.He will calculatethe differencebetween the wage of a freeworker (Wf) and thecost of subsistence of a slave(W8) and will refuseto freehis slavesunless Pf - P8> Wf- W8,all thison the assumptionthat either kind of labor can be used in a givenfield.4 As the economycontinues to develop,the differencePf - Pa can be expectedto widen.Unfortunately, the same forces-technological progressand capitalaccumulation-responsible for this effect are apt to increaseWf as well,while W8 need notchange. We can- nottell on a priorigrounds whether Pf - P8 will increasemore or less thanWf - Ws.Therefore we cannotbe surethat technological progressand greateruse ofcapital necessarily reduce the profitabilityof slaveas comparedwith free labor. Much will depend on the

4 Actually,it is not easy to comparethe relativeprofitability of free and slave labor. Since the freeworker is paid moreor less concurrentlywith his work,while a slave mustbe eitherreared or purchased,and may have children,etc., the streams of receiptsand expendituresfrom the two kinds of labor must be properlydis- counted. It is assumed in the text that all indirectcosts of using slaves, such as medicalexpense, extra supervision, etc., are includedin W8. In a we -oranized slave market, the price of a slavewill approximate the present value of his discountednet lifetimemarginal product. A buyerwho pays this price will discoverthat he will earn not muchmore than the goingrate of interest;he will complain about the high cost of slaves and expressdoubt regardingthe profitability of slaveryin general,because at the marginhe will be fairlyindifferent between employingfree or slave labor. But so long as the supplyof food and of similaritems forthe maintenanceof slaves is elastic (which it is likelyto be), the slave-breeder should do verywell. He benefitsfrom the chronicperpetual disequilibrium in the slave marketcreated by the abundanceof land and by the limitedhuman capacity to procreate(assuming no importationof slaves). But if the slave-breedercomputes his rate of returnon the currentvalue of his slaves and land, he may not recordmuch morethan the marketrate of interesteither. In otherwords, the marketmechanism transformsthe profitfrom slaves into capital gains. On thissee LewisCecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, publishedin 1933 and reproducedin part in Harold D. Woodman,Slavery and the SouthernEconomy: Sources and Reayings (New York: Harcourt,Brace & World, Inc., 1966), pp. 106-09, and AlfredH. Conrad and JohnR. Meyer,The Economicsof Slaveryand Other Studiesin EconometricHistory (Chicago: Aldine PublishingCompany, 1964), pp. 43-92.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Causes of Slavery 23 natureof technologicalprogress. Thus Eli Whitney'sgin greatly in- creasedthe profitability of slavery, while a transitionfrom raising cropsto breedingsheep in medievalEngland might have acted in the oppositedirection by creatinga surplusof workers.(See Part II.) Americanplanters must have used betteragricultural tech- niquesand morecapital than their Latin-American and particularly Russiancolleagues, but theAmericans defended slavery with much greaterzeal. In a traditionalsociety without technological progress and capital accumulation,the end of slaveryis, paradoxically,more certain. As populationcontinues to increaseand thesociety eventually becomes Malthusian,the marginalproduct of labordescends to the subsis- tencelevel. Now thefree man costslittle more to employthan the slave,while, hopefully, being less bothersome and moreproductive. The ownershipof humanbeings becomes pointless because of the greatmultiplication of slaves,and theybecome free provided they staypoor.5 It is land thatbecomes valuable, and rentscollected fromestates worked by freelaborers or tenantswithout any non- economiccompulsion are sufficientto supportan armyof servitors or idlers.If the Muscovitegovernment could have onlywaited a fewhundred years! II WhereI comefrom, an economicmodel without empirical test- ingis equatedwith a detectivestory without an end. My attempts to testthe present model, however, merely taught me thatthe job is notfor the amateur.I shallreport to you the resultsof my skin deep investigationin thehope thatmy mistakes will stimulatethe specialists.I concentrateon theRussian case, with short excursions intothe histories of Poland-Lithuania, Western Europe and theUni- ted States. 1. Russia.The phenomenonto be explainedhere is not onlythe developmentof serfdombut itsparticular timing: before 1550 Rus- sianpeasants were free men; a hundredyears later they were serfs. The relevantvariables are: (1) the numberof servitorsrequired by the militaryneeds of the Moscowstate, and (2) thepopulation density. 5 It is possiblethat even in a Malthusiansociety slavery (or serfdom)may linger on. Slaves may be kept for reasonsof social prestige(a relic fromthe timeswhen slaverywas profitable),or simplybecause a slave is morereliable than a hiredman. On the otherhand, the use of a tenant (with a limitedlease) or of a hired man allows the landownerto choose the best amongseveral applicants with much greater ease than amongslaves or serfsprotected by custom.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24 Evsey D. Domar Accordingto Kliuchevsky,prior to the middleof the fifteenth century,Moscow, still a Tatarvassal surrounded by otherRussian lands,fought very few foreign wars; its populationbecame dense because Moscowwas the safestspot in the area withfew outlets foremigration.6 We mayconclude that there was no need as yet fora largeclass of servitors,and thatthe landownerscould derive rentsfrom their estates (patrimonies, to be exact) withoutenserfing thepeasants. It is truethat Russia, from the Kievan times onward, alwayshad a substantialnumber of slaves.At thetime, these were mostlyhousehold servants and retainersrather than peasants.7 Fromthe middleof the fifteenthcentury the situationchanges drastically.Having become independent from the Tatars (officially in 1480,actually earlier), and havinggathered a numberof Russian lands,Moscow was confrontedwith powerful enemies: with Po- land-Lithuaniaand Swedenin thewest and northwest,and withthe CrimeanTatars in the south.The strugglewith the latter went on continuously,while 50 out ofthe 103 yearsfrom 1492 to 1595were spentin wars againstPoland-Lithuania and Sweden,as were the following30 out of 70 yearsfrom 1613 to 1682,not to mentionthe Time of Troubles,1598-1613, filled with both civil and foreign wars.8 The militaryproficiency of theMuscovite armies being poor, ref- uge was soughtin largenumbers. More than 300,000 men were re- portedto havebeen under arms during Ivan theTerrible's Livonian War.There must have been a greatincrease in thenumber of servitors.With trade and industrymaking no significantprogress, the governmenthad to assignland to them.This processbegan on a largescale in thesecond half of the fifteenth century and was accel- eratedthroughout the sixteenth century.9 In themeantime, the central areas of the country became depop- ulated.The conquestof the whole expanse of the Volga river (begun in 1552) openedup large areas of bettersoil and attractedlarge

6 Kliuchevsky,Vol. I, p. 379; Vol. III, pp. 9-10, 121. Blum,however, talks about depopulationalready in the fourteenthand fifteenthcenturies. See JeromeBlum, Lordand Peasant in Russia fromthe Ninthto the NineteenthCentury (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1961), pp. 60-61. It is possiblethat Kliuchevsky describes the relativeposition of Moscow among otherRussian lands, while Blum refersto the whole country. 7 Kliuchevsky,Vol. I, pp. 282-83; Vol. IL pp. 182-83. 8 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 121, 125,221-22; Vol. III, p. 135. 9 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 221, 229-42,248; Vol. III, pp. 63-64, 230-31,257, 283. Blum, pp. 93, 157.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Causes of Slavery 25 massesof peasantsfleeing from high taxes, Ivan the Terrible'sop- pression(the famous oprichnina) and Crimeaninvasions. And then camethe Time of Troubles which devastated the country once more. Alreadyin the sixteenthcentury there was fiercecompetition for peasanthands among the landowners. It musthave intensified after 1613.10 Thus bothingredients for the developmentof serfdom-ahigh land/laborratio and the government'sdetermination to createa largeclass of servitors-werepresent. In addition,there were several otherforces working in the same direction.The firstwas the declinein the powerof the greatmagnates, both at the handsof Ivan theTerrible and duringthe Time of Troubles. By offeringthe peasantsprivileges and protection,these magnates had been quite successfulin biddingthe peasants away from the servitors; for this reasonthe magnates favored the free movement of peasants,while the servitors,quite naturally, opposed it. Now thepeasants lost the supportof their"friends."1 The secondreason lay in thefiscal in- terestof thestate: peasant migrations, particularly from the center to theperiphery of thestate, disorganized tax collections.12 And fi- nally,the peasant communities objected to theemigration of their membersbecause the community carried a collectiveresponsibility forthe tax liabilities of its members (until in lateryears this respon- sibilitywas takenover by the masters);the departureof several memberswould leave the rest overburdened until the next census.'3 Space does notallow me to giveadditional details of theprocess whichgradually enserfed the peasants,or to discussthe disagree- mentbetween Kliuchevsky, who emphasizedthe hopelessindebt- ednessof the peasantsto theirlandlords as the mainobstacle to theirmovement, and Grekovand Blumwho put greaterstress on

10 Kliuchevsky,Vol. II, pp. 254-57,339-44; Vol. III, pp. 182, 244. Blum,pp. 147, 152-54, 157, 160, 252. B. D. Grekov,Krest'iane na Rusi s drevneishikhvremen do XVII veka (Moscow-Leningrad:Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1946), pp. 794-96, 849. 11 Kliuchevsky,Vol. II, pp. 259, 307. Blum, pp. 253-54. Grekov,pp. 870-71, 903, 909. Grekov,Glavne shie etapy v istorlikrepostnogo prava v Rossii (Moscow- Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoesotsial'no-ekonomicheskoe izdatel'stvo, 1940), p. 46. It is interestingto note that when the leaders of the gentrymilitia were nego- tiatinga treatywith the Polish king Sigismundregarding the accessionof his son to the Moscow thronein 1610 and in 1611, theydemanded the inclusionof a provi- sion forbiddingthe movementof peasants.Kliuchevsky, Vol. II, p. 349. 12 Kliuchevsky,Vol. III, p. 188. 18 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 317-18,336-37, 340. Blum,pp. 96, 234.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 26 Evsey D. Domar legislativeenactments (particularly on the so-called"Forbidden Years,"zapovednye gody)."' Let me mentioninstead two further reflectionsof the scarcityof labor in Russia: the firstmanifested itselfin thereplacement of the basic land tax by a householdtax in theseventeenth century, and by a poll taxunder Peter the Great.15 The secondis an interestingcultural trait which remained long af- terits cause had probablydisappeared: as late as in the firsthalf of the nineteenthcentury, the social positionof a Russianland- owner,as describedin contemporaryliterature, depended less on the size of his land holdings(which are seldommentioned) than on thenumber of souls (registeredmale peasants) that he owned.16 2. Poland-Lithuania.On the theorythat the lengthof a report shouldbe proportionalto the intensityof researchdone, this sec- tionwill be veryshort. The relevantfacts are as follows: (1) In the fourteenthcentury vast open and verysparsely pop- ulated territoriesin the Ukrainewere conqueredby the Lithua- nians."' (2) In thefifteenth and sixteenthcenturies, Ukraine was repop- ulatedby immigrantsfrom the more central areas of thestate. The migrationdepopulated the central areas to suchan extentas to con- stitute,according to Grekov,a threatto thePolish state.18 (3) By the end of the sixteenthcentury, the peasantswere enserfed.'" What is notclear to me is thetime sequence of events(2) and (3). In Vol. III (p. 110), Kliuchevskydates the repopulationof theUkraine in the sixteenthcentury; in Vol. I (p. 293), in the fifteenthcentury. But in bothplaces he attributesthe migrationof

14 Kiuchevsky,Vol. II, pp. 321-23, 331-50; Vol. III, pp. 181-88. Blum,pp. 254- 55. Grekov,Krest'iane, pp. 826, 850. Grekov,Glavnelshie, pp. 64-65. If the peasants' debts tied them to theirlords as stronglyand as hopelesslyas Kliuchevskyasserts, it is puzzling that the governmenthad firstto limitand then to forbidtheir movement by law. 15 Kliuchevsky,Vol. III, pp. 243-46; Vol. IV, pp. 142-48. Grekov,Gtavnebshie, pp. 71-72. 16 Here are a few examples: In Pushkin'sDubrovsky, the old Dubrovskyis identifiedas the owner of seventysouls, and Prince Vereisky,of three thousand; in The Captain's Daughter,the commandant'swife is impressedby Grinev'sfather's ownershipof threehundred souls; in Gogol's The Dead Souls, Pliushkinowns more than a thousandsouls; in Goncharov'sOblomov, the principal hero owns three hundredand fifty;in his A CommonStory, a certainAnton Ivanich has twelve, mortgagedover and overagain .... 17 Kliuchevsky,Vol. I, p. 293. 18 Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 293-94.Grekov, Krest'iane, p. 387. 19 JeromeBlum, "The Rise of Serfdomin EasternEurope," AmericanHistorical Review, LXII (1957), pp. 807-36. See particularlypp. 821-22.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Causes of Slavery 27 peasantsto theintensification of serfdom in Poland-Lithuania.Po- lishserfdom, according to him,had been establishedalready in the fourteenthcentury, and Lithuanian,in the fifteenthcentury.20 On theother hand, Grekov asserts that according to the Polishconsti- tutionof 1493,each peasantcould stillleave the land,having set- tledaccounts with his landlord.But he also reportsthat in 1444the Galiciangentry demanded that the government prevent other land- lords frominterfering with the peasantmovements.21 Evidently, suchinterference was takingplace eventhen. In Poland-Lithuaniagreat gaps betweenlegal enactmentsand theactual state of affairswere quite possible. There were probably considerableregional variations, both in law and in practiceas well. I wouldbe happierif it could be establishedthat migration to theUkraine preceded the development of serfdom,but I am cer- tainlynot in a positionto settlethe matter. It is quitepossible that migrationand serfdomwere reinforcing each other. Since I have not studiedthe developmentof serfdomin other East Europeancountries, I can makeonly two briefcomments on Blum'swell-known and veryinteresting article on "The Rise of Serfdomin EasternEurope." His stresson theincreasing power of thenobility and on thegeneral depopulation of the area "fromthe Elbe all the way across to the Volga . . ." is heartilywelcome.' But his use of alternatingperiods of prosperityand depressionas importantcauses of therise and declineof serfdomcannot be eval- uated untilhe presentsan analyticalexplanation of the causation involved. 3. WesternEurope. We shall deal here verybriefly with four events: (1) The emergenceof serfdom in thelate RomanEmpire (2) The declineof serfdomby 1300 (3) Its non-recurrenceafter the Black Death (4) The relationshipbetween sheep breeding and serfdom. The depopulationof the late RomanEmpire is, of course,well known.Referring to Byzantium,Georg Ostrogorskystates: "And

20 Kliuchevsky,Vol. IIL pp. 101-02. 21 Grekov,Krest'iane, pp. 381-83. There seems to be considerabledisagreement among the authoritieshe cites. He mentionsa numberof legislativeenactments passed at the end of the fifteenthcentury and in 1510, 1519, 1520, 1532 limiting the freedomof peasantsto move (p. 387). 22 Blum,"The Rise of Serfdom,"p. 819.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 28 Evsey D. Domar so ever-increasingmasses of therural population were tied to the soil. This is a particularinstance of the widespreadcompulsory fasteningof the populationto theiroccupation which scarcity of labourforced the laterRoman Empire to pursuesystematically."23 This is theclearest statement on therelation between scarcity of laborand the developmentof serfdomthat I have come acrossin myreading of Europeaneconomic history. Similarly,the great increase in populationin WesternEurope by theend ofthe thirteenth century when serfdom was decliningis also wellknown. Thus Ganshof and Verhulsttalk about ". . . a considerable and growingreserve of surplus labor. . ." in France,and Postan discussessigns of overpopulation in England:a growingnumber of whollylandless men, sub-holdingsof many tenants,shortage of pasture,etc.24 The sameinformation for Western Europe in general is suppliedby Smith,who adds that:"The problemtherefore for westernlandowners, at anyrate before the demographic collapse of the mid-fourteenthcentury, was not to keep tenants,but how to get the mostout of them.25Since thesefacts fit my hypothesis so nicely,let me stophere while I am stillwinning. But when we come to the depopulationcaused by the Black Death after1348 (though,according to Postan,English population stoppedgrowing even earlier),26 myhypothesis is of littlevalue in explainingthe subsequent course of events.(See PartI.) Whydid serfdomfail to comeback aftersuch a sharpincrease in theland/ laborratio? I addressmyself only to England.Except for one ratherqueer economicexplanation to be discussedpresently, I have none to offer and have to fallback on politicalfactors. Serfdom could not be re- storedunless the landowners were reasonably united in theirpres- sureon thegovernment, and unlessthe latter was willingand able

23 Georg Ostrogorsky,"Agrarian Conditions in the ByzantineEmpire in the Middle Ages," The CambridgeEconomic History of Europe, Second Edition (Cam- bridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1966), I, 206. See also pages 11, 27-28, 33, 66 and 257 of the same volume. Also, W. R. Brownlow,Lectures on Slavery and Serfdomin Europe (London and New York: Burns and Oates, Ltd., 1892), pp. 49-50. 24 Frangois Louis Ganshof and Adriaan Verhulst,"Medieval AgrarianSociety in its Prime: France, The Low Countries,and Western Germany,"Cambridge Economic History,I, 294; M.M. Postan in his essay on "England,"same volume, pp. 552-56, 563-64, 624; Blum, "The Rise of Serfdom,"pp. 810-11. 25 R. E. F. Smith,The Enserfmentof the RussianPeasantry (Cambridge: Cam- bridgeUniversity Press, 1968), p. 4. 26 Postan,essay on "England,"Cambridge Economic History, I, 566-70.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Causes of Slavery 29 to do theirbidding. But it is mostunlikely that every estate lost the same fractionof its peasants.Hence, those landownerswho had sufferedmost would welcomethe freedomof peasantmove- ment,at leastfor a while,while those who had sufferedleast would opposeit. If so,the landowners could not be united.Postan also sug- geststhe probability that the main pressure behind Richard II's leg- islationcame notfrom feudal landowners, but fromsmaller men;27 Englishmagnates, like their Russian colleagues (see above), could evidentlytake care of theirown interests.Though I cannotjudge the"spirit" of medieval legislation, it seemsto me thatthe measures undertakenby Richard'sgovernment were somewhat halfhearted.28 In anycase, they were ineffective. So economicforces could reassert themselvesand helpthe peasants. The queer economicexplanation which I have just mentioned would delightan economistif onlyit squaredwith facts. It is the expansionof sheepbreeding, an activitywhich is land-usingand laborsaving.29 Unfortunately such data as I couldfind do not sup- portthe contention that there was an expansionof sheepbreeding in thehundred years following the Black Death. The legal exports of Englishwool, in raw and in cloth,fell from 12 millionpounds in 1350 to 8.7 millionin 1400-a dropof 27 percent.Another fall of 12 percent(of the8.7 million)took place by 1450.80My author- itiesdo not statethe proportionsof wool consumedat home and smuggledout of the country.3'Perhaps these were affected by the HundredYears' War. But as thingsstand, I certainlycannot claim thatan expansionof Englishsheep breeding took place after1350 and thatit helpedto save thepeasants from the return of serfdom.32 Judgingby ThomasMore's famous passage about sheep devours ingmen, by BishopLatimer's "Sermon of thePlough" (1549), and by othermore direct evidence, there must have been considerable

27 Ibid. p. 609. 28 Brownlow,Lectures on Slavery,pp. 157-83. Smith,Enserfment, pp. 4-5. 29 The idea that sheep-breedingmay have had somethingto do with serfdom was suggestedby Nieboerin his book (pp. 371-75) discussedin Part III. 30 K. G. Ponting,The Wool Trade Past and Present(Manchester and London: ColumbinePress, 1961), p. 30. The figuresare based on a chart facingp. xviii of MedievalMerchant Ventures by E. CarusWilson. 81 Accordingto Postan, p. 568, domesticconsumption of cloth is not known. Peter J. Bowden arbitrarilyassumed it to be 50 percent.See his The Wool Trade in Tudor and StuartEngland (London: Macmillan& Co., Ltd., 1962), p. 37. 32 Data on the size of the sheep population,or morecorrectly on incrementsin it, would not be sufficientfor our problem.We would have to knowhow manycrop- raisingpeasants were replaced,say, by 1,000 extrasheep.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 30 Evsey D. Domar expansionof sheepbreeding at theexpense of cropsand of people in thesixteenth century.33 By thattime, however, English peasants hardlyneeded the help from the sheepin stayingfree. But is it possiblethat the early expansionof sheep breeding whichmust have takenplace sometimeprior to 1350 had helped theEnglish serfs to gaintheir original freedom after all? 4. The UnitedStates. The AmericanSouth fits my hypothesis with such embarrassingsimplicity as to questionthe need forit. The presenceof vastexpanses of emptyfertile land in a warmclimate, land capableof producingvaluable products if onlylabor could be foundseems to me quite sufficientto explainthe importationof slaves.What is not clear to me is the failureof the Northto use themin largenumbers. Besides social and politicalobjections, there musthave been economicreasons why Negro slaves had a compar- ativeadvantage in theSouth as contrastedwith the North. Perhaps it had somethingto do withthe superioradaptability of the Negro to a hot climate,and/or with his usefulnessin the Southalmost throughoutthe year rather than for the few months in theNorth.34 I have a hardtime believing that slaves could not be used in the mixedfarming of theNorth; much food was producedon southern farmsas well,most of the slave ownershad veryfew slaves,and manyslaves were skilled in crafts.35A studyof the possibleprofit- abilityof slaveryin the North,along Conradand Meyer'slines, whichcould showwhether the Northcould have affordedpaying themarket price for slaves, would be mostwelcome. I havenot come across any good evidence that slavery was dying outin theUnited States on theeve ofthe Civil War, and I sidehere withConrad and Meyer,though, in truth,I am notsure that such a thoroughinvestigation was requiredto provethe profitabilityof slaveryin the South.38

33 See E. Lipson, The Historyof the Woollenand WorstedIndustries (London?: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1965), p. 19; E. Nasse, On the AgriculturalCommunity of the Middle Ages, and Inclosuresof the SixteenthCentury in England (London: Macmillan& Co., 1871), pp. 77-78; Brownlow,Lectures on Slavery,p. 184; Bowden, Wool Trade,p. xvi. 34 Woodman,Slavery and the SouthernEconomy, p. 7. 35 Conradand Meyer,Economics of Slavery,p. 80; JamesBenson Sellers,Slavery in Alabama (University,Alabama: Universityof Alabama Press,1950), pp. 71, 120, 162-63; RosserHoward Taylor,Slaveholding in NorthCarolina: An EconomicView (Chapel Hill: Universityof NorthCarolina Press, 1926), p. 72; HarrisonAnthony Trexler,Slavery in Missouri(Baltimore: The JohnsHopkins Press, 1914), pp. 13, 19; Woodman,Slavery and the SouthernEconomy, pp. 14-15. 36 As the authorspractically admit on p. 78. On the profitabilitydebate see

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III In conclusion,let me say a fewwords about the origin of my hy- pothesisand aboutits place in economichistory. Although I had discussedit in myclasses for a good dozenyears, I did notwrite it up until1966 because I had been toldon good authoritythat the idea was old and well known.My sourcewas indeedcorrect because a briefsearch in the libraryrevealed quite a fewpredeces- sors.The mostimportant of themwas the Dutch scholarHerman J.Nieboer whose magnum opus of 465 pagesunder the title of Slav- eryas an IndustrialSystem: Ethnological Researches was published in 1900.37 The hypothesiswhich I have immodestlycalled "mine" was statedby himtime and again,and testedagainst a massof an- thropologicaland historicaldata. As you mightexpect, he was sat- isfiedwith his results. Butthe hypothesis was notreally original with Nieboer. He in turn referredto A. Loria'sLes Bases Economiquesde la ConstitutionSo- ciale of 1893,and to E. G. Wakefield'sA View of the Artof Col- onizationpublished in 1834.Some glimpsescan be foundeven in AdamSmith's The Wealthof Nations.38 I have two disagreementswith Nieboer. First, his definitionof freeland has too muchlegal and not enougheconomic content to mytaste, though he seemsto havebeen unclearrather than wrong. Second,he exaggeratedthe importance of the hypothesis by claim- ing,though not in so manywords, that free land or otherfree re- sourcesare both necessary and sufficientfor the existence of slavery or serfdom:". . . Only among people with open resourcescan slaveryand serfdomexist, whereas free labourers dependent on wages are onlyfound among people with close resources."39 He protected himselfwith a noteon thesame page by excludingsimple societies ofhunters, fishers, and huntingagriculturists, hardly a fitcompany

Stanley L. Engerman,"The Effectsof Slavery Upon the SouthernEconomy: A Review of the Recent Debate," Explorationsin EntrepreneurialHistory, Second Series,IV (1967), pp. 71-97. 37 It was publishedin The Hague by MartinusNijhoff. A republicationis sched- uled in 1970 by BurtFranklin, Publisher, New York. 38 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London: Cannan's edition, 1922), II, 66-68. There is anotherbook by Wakefieldon the same subject: England and America:A Comparisonof the Social and PoliticalState of Both Nations (London: Richard Bentley,1833), Vol. II. Other sources: J. E. Cairnes, The Slave Power (London: Parker,Son, and Bourn,1862); J. S. Mill, Principlesof PoliticalEconomy, 1848 (New York:D. Appletonand Co., 1920), I, 316. 39 Nieboer,Slavery as an IndustrialSystem, pp. 312, 389.

This content downloaded from 129.199.207.113 on Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:24:51 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 32 Evsey D. Domar forthe farmers of the American North. He disregardedthe possibil- itythat serfdom, once established,could exist for a longtime after its initialcause-free land-had disappeared,or thatserfdom may be evenintroduced in theabsence of free land. He ignoredthe role of government.These, however, are minordefects in an important majorcontribution. On theother hand, my source may have been a bitwrong. If his- torianshave alwaysknown about the relationbetween the land/ laborratio and serfdom(or slavery),they must have triedhard not to scattertoo manygood, clear statements in placeswhere I could findthem, though the studentsof the AmericanSouth have been muchkinder to me thanothers.40 Nieboer could also lodge some complaints.His namecan be foundneither in thebibliography nor in the indexof the 1966 editionof the firstvolume of The Cam- bridgeEconomic History of Europe.And it is absentfrom Blum's classicstudy of Russianserfdom. I did findNieboer's name in Gen- ovese'sThe PoliticalEconomy of Slaveryin connectionwith some insignificantpoint, but witha furthernotation that "Phillips read and referredto thisbook." Phillips had read it,and confirmedthat "hiredlabor was notto be had so longas land was free."'41 Perhapsin historythis hypothesis occupies a place similarto that enjoyedby economicgrowth in economictheory not long ago. That place was once describedas "alwaysseen aroundbut seldomin- vitedin." If so, whynot invite it? Afterall, the land/laborratio is readilyquantifiable. EVSEY D. DOMAn,Massachusetts Institute of Technology

40 A clear statementby Ostrogorskywas quoted in Part IL For the American views,see Woodman'scollection. 41 Eugene D. Genovese,The PoliticalEconomy of Slavery(New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 84. UlrichB. Phillips,"The EconomicCost of Slaveholdingin the Cotton Belt," Pol. Sci. Q., XX (June 1905), partiallyreproduced in Woodman, Slaveryand the SouthernEconomy, p. 36.

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