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Peasantry was different from slavery. The middle age has actually seen slavery disappearing from Europe, which is incidentally why slaves had to be taken from s
by rhizome31 11y ago
Peasantry was different from slavery. The middle age has actually seen slavery disappearing from Europe, which is incidentally why slaves had to be taken from somewhere else to bring to the "new world".
Class struggle that led to welfare and benefits wasn't against the gentry but against the bourgeoisie (factory owners). The same bourgeoisie who had chopped the gentry's heads before.
- yxhuvud 11y agoPeasantry wasn't slavery, but they were serfs, and in the end serfdom didn't end up being very different to slavery.
- throwaway1410 11y agoAFAIK (I'm not a historian): serfdom started disappearing from most of Western Europe around XV century. In XVII-XVIII it was mostly forgotten, and peasants were free men, who either owned land or rented it from the big land owners. Having said that, their standard of living was dismal (including starvation when prices or crops were low) - often actually lower than in countries which maintained serfdom, such as Poland or Prussia.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]