Occupational Structure in the Czech Lands Under the Second Serfdom

A shift in occupational structure towards non-agricultural activities is widely viewed as a key component of European economic growth during the early modern ‘Little Divergence’. Yet little is known about this process in those parts of eastern-central Europe that experienced the early modern ‘second serfdom’, the massive increase in the institutional powers of landlords over the rural population. We analyze non-agricultural occupations under the second serfdom using data on 6,983 Bohemian villages in 1654. Bohemia resembled other eastern-central, nordic and southern European economies in having a lower percentage of non-agricultural activities than western Europe. But Bohemian serfs engaged in a wide array of industrial and commercial activities whose intensity varied significantly with village characteristics. Nonagricultural activity showed a significant positive relationship with village size, pastoral agriculture, sub-peasant social strata, Jews, freemen, female household heads, and village mills, and a significant negative relationship with arable agriculture and urban agglomerations. Non-agricultural activity was also positively associated with landlord presence in the village, although the relationship turned negative at higher values and landlord presence reversed the positive effects of female headship and mills. Under the second serfdom, landlords encouraged serf activities from which they could extort rents, while stifling others which threatened their interests. 1 We would like to thank Lenka Matušíková, Pavla Jirková, and Helena Klímová for generous help with historical data sources and useful discussions of the Berní Rula; Josef Grulich and Eduard Maur for illuminating conversations about the economic history of early modern Bohemia; Steve Broadberry, Tracy Dennison, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal for stimulating comments on earlier drafts; and seminar participants at LSE, Caltech, the EHS 2013 meeting in York, and the EHES 2013 meeting in London for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Professor Dame Elizabeth Hill Fund at the University of Cambridge, the British Academy Small Research Grant Scheme, and the Collaborative Project HIPOD, supported by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme for Research, Contract Number SSH7-CT-2008-225342. Alexander Klein Snr, Lucie Matějková, and Václav Žďárek provided excellent research assistance. This project builds on the lifelong work of the late Václav Červený and we are grateful to him for allowing us access to the data he collected.