Freedom's Price: Serfdom, Subjection, and Reform in Prussia, 1648-1848 Hardcover

S. A. Eddie

It is usually claimed that serfs were oppressed and unfree, but is this assumption true? Freedom's Price, building on a new reading of archival material, attempts a fundamental re-appraisal of the continuing orthodoxy that a 'serf' economy embodied peasant exploitation. It reveals that, in fact, Prussian 'subject' peasants fared much better than their 'free' neighbours; they had mutual rights and obligations with nobles and the state.

English

OUP Oxford