Western Civilization - History Of European Society

The Social and Economic Structure of the Old Regime 317

Aristocratic privilege varied significantly from
country to country. In Britain and the Netherlands,
most exemptions were abolished by revolutions in the
seventeenth century. Both countries made aristocrats
and commoners equal before the law and allowed nei-
ther tax exemptions nor a monopoly on offices. Yet im-
portant privileges persisted there, too. English nobles
held hereditary control of the upper house of Parlia-
ment, the House of Lords, and the right to be tried
only by a jury of their peers.
The core of aristocratic privilege was found on
their provincial estates. An aristocrat, as lord of the
manor, held traditional manorial rights over the land
and its inhabitants. These rights are also known as feu-
dal rights, because many had survived from the feudal
system of the Middle Ages, or seigneurial rights, be-
cause the lord of the manor was known as the seigneur.
Manorial rights increased significantly as one passed
from western Europe to eastern Europe, where peasants
remained in the virtual slavery of serfdom. But even in
regions where serfdom no longer existed, aristocratic

landowners were often entitled to feudal dues (pay-

ments in money or in kind), to unpaid labor by peas-

ants in the seigneurial fields, or to both. Thus, peasants

might be expected to harvest an aristocrat’s crops be-

fore they could harvest their own and then to pay a

percentage of their own crops to the same aristocrat.

Seigneurial rights in many countries (particularly in

central and eastern Europe) also included the powers of

local governance. The seigneur provided, or oversaw,

the functions of the police, the judiciary, and civil gov-

ernment on his lands; a noble might thereby preside

over the arrest, trial, and punishment of a peasant.

Many aristocrats thus governed their provincial estates

as self-sufficient, miniature kingdoms. A study of the

Old Regime manors of Bohemia shows this vividly.

Only the noble landowner was legally a citizen of the

larger state (the Austrian Empire). The residents of the

noble’s villages and farmlands were completely under

his jurisdiction. Peasants farmed their fields for him. He

conscripted them for the corvée,selected them for ser-

vice in the Austrian army, and collected their taxes for

Illustration 17.2

The Corvée.The highway system of eighteenth-century

Europe required a great deal of labor to maintain it. In most of

central and eastern Europe, where serfdom survived, monarchs

expected great landowners to require roadwork as part of the ro-

botowed by serfs. In France, where serfdom had largely disap-

peared, peasants were required to pay a tax, called the corvée,by

their labor, like the roadwork shown here.