France, The Low Countries, and Western Germany

Abstract

This chapter focuses on France, the Low Countries, and Western Germany. Geographical and chronological frameworks are modifications which took place respectively in the extent of land under cultivation, in the management of the soil and in the character and distribution of landed property. The old collective economy was replaced by a system of agrarian individualism. This basic change in the system of cultivation was particularly noticeable in Flanders during the thirteenth century. The dominant fact in the history of estate institutions is the decomposition of the villa, or the classical estate. The break-up of the villa was but one aspect of the changes in manorial organization which began in the tenth century. In the first place, as a result of the dissolution of the classical villa and the progressive loss of force of the dominium direction over the rural tenancies, die tenants tended more and more to become in practice small or middling peasant proprietors.

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