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“The English Village Community: Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry, An Essay in Economic History”
The question propounded in this book is whether English Economic History began with the freedom or the serfdom of the masses of the people, whether the village communities were free or lived in serfdom under a manorial lordship. The problem is of wider interest than might appear on the surface because (1) the English and German land systems were the same, and there are also fundamental analogies between the village communities of the Eastern and the Western worlds, and (2) because on the answer to the question may depend the attitude of modern statesmen to the solution of present-day problems of social and political freedom.
The question propounded in this book is whether English Economic History began with the freedom or the serfdom of the masses of the people, whether the village communities were free or lived in serfdom under a manorial lordship. The problem is of wider interest than might appear on the surface because (1) the English and German land systems were the same, and there are also fundamental analogies between the village communities of the Eastern and the Western worlds, and (2) because on the answer to the question may depend the attitude of modern statesmen to the solution of present-day problems of social and political freedom.