Page 57 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

The Family Economy in the Bohemian Rural Milieu in the Long-Term Perspective

the manorial administration, because the estate did not change hands for
300 years. The beginning of the research is defined by the creation of the
first land register around 1590 and finishes with the gradual transition to
modern record keeping and administration of village homesteads during
the emerging civil society at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Besides the
analyses of economic issues, the pursuit of particular ‘human destinies’
should enable construction of a more plastic picture of village life.

Bohemian Early Modern Rural Space: Sources for its Study
A more detailed study of population in the Bohemian rural space is, for
most areas, facilitated by the preserved sixteenth-century sources. Histo-
riography perceives this period as a time of relative peace and prosperity,
without significant political crises, wars and epidemics. The status of in-
dividual villages and their inhabitants differed according to the attitude
of their manorial lord, which could have been the monarch, a more or less
wealthy nobleman, or an ecclesiastical institution. Royal towns also owned
considerable estates. Subjects were obliged to pay various monetary and
in-kind levies, which also included forced labour (robota in Czech), that is,
unpaid work on the manorial property. The lord also officially owned the
land referred to as rustical, which was held in personal possession by indi-
vidual villagers.¹ They were not the real owners of their homesteads, but
they were also not rightless tenants. The householder was obliged to keep
the homestead in good condition (this mainly concerned the fertility of
the fields and the number and quality of the livestock), pay all taxes, levies
and obligations and gradually repay the homestead to his landlord. If the
householder managed to pay the full price of the homestead, it became a
so-called ‘emphyteutic’ or ‘paid-off’ property, which meant that the sub-
ject gained proprietary rights to the farm, his descendants could inherit
it without difficulty, and it could also be sold or exchanged with only for-
mal permission of the landlord (Mikulec 1993; 2011; Ogilvie 2005; Cerman
2012).
Emphyteusis (also called Burgrecht, purkrecht or zákupní právo)gradu-
ally prevailed in Bohemia at a regionally different pace until the Thirty
Years’ War (1618–1648), which was marked in the countryside not only

¹ I use the terms ‘farm’ (selský statek)and ‘farmer’ (sedlák) for a rural homestead equipped
with a substantial piece of land or for its holder, respectively. The term ‘cottage’ (chalupa)
is reserved for a less wealthy homestead with a smaller area of land. A ‘small house’ (domek)
means a house with no fields. The term ‘homestead’ (usedlost) I use as a superordinate term
for all of them.

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