National Science Centre, call: MAESTRO 15
project no. 2023/50/A/S3/00524
Principal investigator: dr hab. Piotr Guzowski, prof. UwB
amount awarded: 2 016 965 PLN
project duration: 2024-2028
Co-investigators:
The scientific objective of the project is a comprehensive investigation of the origin, functioning, and evolution of the system of serfdom. This concept refers to a system consisting of several elements, such as: personal servitude of the peasantry, forced labor, limited land rights, the economic dominance of the manor, the socio-political weakness of peasant communities, and the support of the serfdom system by state institutions. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, chosen for this analysis (encompassing the territories of present-day Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia), is one of the key areas in the academic literature where this phenomenon occurred, and it also serves as a frequent point of reference for studies on other regions of the world. Therefore, studying the processes taking place within this state, aside from deepening knowledge about the history of Eastern Europe, should also contribute to a better understanding of similar phenomena in other parts of the world and help formulate theoretical concepts and models useful for a wide range of studies on forced labor and serfdom.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is described as a classic example of a country east of the Elbe, characterized by the absolute dominance of the serfdom system from the late Middle Ages to the second half of the 19th century. Despite the awareness of the local and chronological diversity of this phenomenon, for many decades, the rich scholarly literature on the subject has been dominated by the stereotypical perspective of the overwhelming influence of the manor on all spheres of social and economic life, which consequently led to the state's backwardness and decline. The effects of the early modern manor were believed to shape the social relations and mentality of both peasants and nobility, and their descendants, in the following centuries. The serfdom system was also considered one of the reasons for the persistence of ethnic animosities, for example, between Poles, the nobility ("lords"), and Ruthenian (Ukrainian or Belarusian) peasants. Meanwhile, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which at its peak territorial expansion reached over 900,000 square kilometers, was characterized by a very high diversity of the serfdom system. It was introduced in different regions at different times, evolved inconsistently, and took on forms and levels of intensity specific to particular lands.
The project will verify various hypotheses explaining the emergence of elements of the system, such as the manor and serfdom (military, deserted settlements, monetary, market, and socio-political). The chronology of the introduction of legal and economic elements of the system in specific regions will be established, as well as their evolution resulting from varying levels of marketization of the economy and integration into international markets. Furthermore, the project will examine the level of efficiency of the manorial economy over three hundred years and identify the factors determining this efficiency, including environmental and climatic factors. It will also describe the evolution of the lord's income structure and its impact on the peasant economy. The constituent elements of serfdom will be analyzed from the peasants' perspective, and a universal tool for measuring the level of serfdom across different regions and periods (the "index of serfdom") will be developed. Finally, the project will investigate the impact of the serfdom system on the non-agricultural population and the rural proto-industrial economy. This project, while addressing numerous specific issues in detail, primarily aims to achieve theoretical and synthetic objectives.
A comprehensive description of the serfdom system requires synchronized studies of specific issues conducted at the regional level. These studies will focus on three groups of specific scientific inquiries related to the origin of the serfdom system, its characteristics from the perspective of landowners, and its features from the peasant perspective (understood both at the individual household level and within entire communities). The results of the project will be published primarily in international scientific journals and leading Polish journals. Based on these publications, a monograph will be prepared over time, collecting the key findings of the project, which will be published in both Polish and English. A dedicated website will also be created for the project, featuring a special application that presents data on the production structure of manors in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
