Crossword clues for serfdom
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Serfage \Serf"age\, Serfdom \Serf"dom\, n. The state or condition of a serf.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1850, from serf + -dom. Earlier in the same sense was serfage (1775).
Wiktionary
n. 1 The state of being a serf. 2 The feudal system that includes serfs.
WordNet
Wikipedia
Serfdom is the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism. It was a condition of bondage, which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century.
Serfs who occupied a plot of land were required to work for the lord of the manor who owned that land, and in return were entitled to protection, justice and the right to exploit certain fields within the manor to maintain their own subsistence. Serfs were often required not only to work on the lord's fields, but also his mines, forests and roads. The manor formed the basic unit of feudal society, and the lord of the manor and his serfs were bound legally, economically, and socially. Serfs formed the lowest social class of feudal society.
The decline of serfdom in Western Europe has sometimes been attributed to the Black Death, which reached Europe in 1347, although the decline had begun before that date. Serfdom became increasingly rare in most of Western Europe after the Renaissance, but conversely, it grew strong in Central and Eastern Europe, where it had previously been less common (this phenomenon was known as "later serfdom").
In Eastern Europe the institution persisted until the mid-19th century. In the Austrian Empire serfdom was abolished by the 1781 Serfdom Patent; corvée continued to exist until 1848. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. In Finland, Norway and Sweden, feudalism was not established, and serfdom did not exist; however, serfdom-like institutions did exist in both Denmark (the stavnsbånd, from 1733 to 1788) and its vassal Iceland (the more restrictive vistarband, from 1490 until 1894).
According to Joseph R. Strayer, the concept of feudalism can also be applied to the societies of ancient Persia, ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt (Sixth to Twelfth dynasty), Muslim India, China ( Zhou dynasty and end of Han dynasty) and Japan during the Shogunate. James Lee and Cameron Campbell describe the Chinese Qing dynasty (1644–1912) as also maintaining a form of serfdom.
Tibet is described by Melvyn Goldstein to have had serfdom until 1959, but whether or not the Tibetan form of peasant tenancy that qualified as serfdom was widespread is contested. Bhutan is described by Tashi Wangchuk, a Bhutanese civil servant, as abolishing serfdom officially by 1959, but Wangchuk believes less than or about 10% of poor peasants were in copyhold situations.
The United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery also prohibits serfdom as a form of slavery.
Usage examples of "serfdom".
In the latter, the nobles, who owned most of the land, received rents or feudal dues from the peasants, who though often kept in a state of serfdom had certain rights and privileges and could, and did, gradually acquire their own land and civic freedom.
Tzar can reconcile himself to going against the majority of his nobles and abolishing serfdom, millions of Russians will continue to be owned by only a select few.
And if he was against serfdom, as that indicated, they would only end up agreeing on any arguments she might raise, and she was in no mood at the moment to agree with him on anything.
But hundreds of years of serfdom, of knowing that a single man has the power of life and death, the power to make you suffer cruelly at a whim, are fears not easily ignored.
But Rodion, tight lipped as he carried the woman out of the woodhouse, was feeling all the impotence and rage that only someone under the yoke of serfdom could feel.
Joseph II, who tried to forge a new social order, abolishing serfdom and introducing general taxation.
This made the abolition of serfdom and villemage service the most important and obvious benefit of these revolutionary events to Croatian society as a whole.
Landowners felt deprived because the state had abolished serfdom without helping them to overcome the protracted crisis of change from feudal to capitalist production.
In the following months the government abolished serfdom and other relations of subjection where they still existed.
He was ambitious, and was founder of the system of serfdom, and also of the Russian State Church, and like many of the other rulers of Russia, met death through infamy, supposedly having been poisoned.
But here, too, and elsewhere, the fundamental demands were the same: freedom from serfdom, from oppressive taxation and forced labor, and for unrestricted rights of hunting and woodcutting in the forests.
In Germany serfdom remained far beyond the end of the sixteenth century, doubtless in part because of the fears excited by the civil war of 1525.
In place of the old serfdom under one master came a new and detailed regulation of labor by the government.
The abolition of serfdom by Alexander II in 1861 blotted out the social evil that Dostoevsky had hated the most, and against which he had been willing to rebel at the risk of his life.
It is thus clear that Dostoevsky considered himself, far from being a partisan of reaction, to stand somewhere in the middle as an enthusiastic supporter of all the liberal innovations, beginning with the abolition of serfdom, instituted by Alexander II.