庄园制度的兴起和衰落：一个理论模型(英文)

Economic History Association The Rise and Fall of the Manorial System: A Theoretical Model Author(s): Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1971), pp. 777-803 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2117209 . Accessed: 24/02/2012 20:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Cambridge University Press and Economic History Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Economic History. http://www.jstor.org The Rise and Fall of the Manorial System: A Theoretical Model EUROPEAN economic history has always been concerned with the grand theme of the rise of the Western World. Sometimes this is put in terms of the transition from feudalism to capitalism and, if a Marxian dialectician is present, eventually to socialism. The literature is essentially the product of historians and as such is particularistic. No consistent theoretical foundation runs through it, except perhaps the Marxian one. The result is a chaotic output for which generalization is difficult, and in which bits and scraps of evidence are proffered for almost every specific explanation. This has helped the Marxist explanation to survive since, despite its evident shortcomings, it does provide a single path through the wilderness of medieval and modern European economic history. One can now do better-much better. Application of the tools used by the new economic historian in analyzing the American ex- perience offers equal promise for Europe. As in the case of America, the toolbox has thus far provided better equipment for the demo- lition of existing interpretations-certainly an important task in the case of the European literature-than for the construction of alter- native hypotheses and explanations. However, recent extensions of economic theory into the economics of property rights and institu- tional change' offer new promise to the economist concerned with We are indebted to many persons for comments on earlier drafts: to Ted Schultz, John Benton, Stan Engerman, Richard Roehl, Don McCloskey, and the members of the University of Chicago Workshop in Economic History; to our colleagues: Steven N. S. Cheung, Tom E. Borcherding, Mary L. Eysenbach, and Gene Silber. berg; and to our students Terry Anderson and Clyde Reed. The research for this article was financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and we hereby acknowledge our thanks to this foundation. We have deliberately omitted extensive bibliographical citation of the historical evidence. The article is essentially concerned with developing a theoretical explan- ation, and our citations mostly provide background for the theory. In the last section only do we provide some historical citation because legal history will be less familiar to the reader. 1 James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967); Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957); William J. Baumol, Welfare Economics and the Theory of the State (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1952); Harold Demsetz, "Some Aspects of Property Rights," Joumal of Law and Economics, IX (Oct. 1966); Harold Demsetz, "The Exchange and Enforcement of Property Rights," Journal of Law and Economics, VUI (Oct. 1964). 777 778 D. North; R. Thomas long-run economic change. Certainly, he can only have been frus- trated by the conventional blunt tools of the economist that were formerly his only recourse for study of past experience. A beginning has been made in applying these tools to American and European economic history in two recent articles.2 This essay not only extends the analysis but also applies an economic theory of contracts to produce a model of the manorial system and an ex- planation of its rise and fall. At stake here is more than simply an explanation for the decay of an archaic system. No sustained eco- nomic growth could be set in motion until fundamental institu- tional developments created or simulated or approximated private property in land and a free labor market. An economic analysis of the decline and fall of the manorial system is, therefore, a neces- sary stepping stone for any explanation for the growth of the Western World. At this point we shall anticipate some of our future argument in order to distinguish our model from that developed by Evsey Domar.3 Domar considers serfdom, like slavery, to have been a form of involuntary servitude. His explanation for the existence of involuntary servitude in Eastern Europe and North America is more convincing than for the existence and decline of serfdom in Western Europe-a case for which he admits (p. 28) his expla- nation is less than satisfactory. The reason why Domar's explana- tion fails is that serfdom in Western Europe was essentially not an exploitative arrangement where lords "owned" labor as in North America, or as it developed in Eastern Europe. Serfdom in West- ern Europe was essentially a contractual arrangement where labor services were exchanged for the public good of protection and justice.4 The Western European serf, while born to a contract specifying the kind and extent of his obligations which he could not change without the lord's permission, was in fact also generally protected from arbitrary changes in the terms of the contract by 2 Lance Davis and Douglass C. North, "Institutional Change and American Economic Growth: A First Step Towards a Theory of Institutional Innovation," THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HIsToRy, XXX, 1 (Mar. 1970), 131-49; Douglass C. North and Robert P. Thomas, "An Economic Theory of the Growth of the Western World," Economic History Review, 2nd. ser., XXIII, 1 (April 1970). 3 Evsey Domar, "The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis," THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIc HISTORY, XXX, 1 (March 1970). 4 A contract is a mutual agreement between parties involved in governing a trans- action-usually in the form of a payment for a specified consideration. An essential part of a contract is that it cannot be unilaterally changed by either party. Manorial System 779 the lord as a consequence of the customs of the manor. This is clearly different from the case of a North American slave or the eventual position of the Eastern European serf. In the latter case, serfdom in Eastern Europe may initially have been consistent with our definition, but as the lords acquired power to make unilateral changes in the contract, the serf's status was in effect changed to that of a de facto, slave. Thus, while our definition of serfdom involves a specific kind of contractual relationship which could be changed only by both parties, a slave by our definition has no legal control over decision-making with respect either to his labor or to his income stream. Since the rise of an organized market economy appears essential for the viability of slavery as an insti- tutional arrangement, the path of development described below differs essentially from the Eastern European case because in the latter the central political power of the state effectively prevented lords from- competing for labor. In contrast, a decentralized politi- cal structure with small areas of coercive enforcement thwarted effective collusion by the lord in Western Europe and made pos- sible a rudimentary labor market. Even in Norman England, the most centralized of feudal areas, the political power of the state was severely limited, as the Great Charter amply attests. Slavery was always more profitable than free labor or serfs when the following conditions existed: (1) a market economy, (2) prof- itable opportunities to produce those types of economic activities where the costs of supervision to reduce shirking were low, and (3) where the costs of enforcing property rights in human beings were low. It should be kept in mind that the output of slaves as is often alleged is not necessarily lower than free labor under the above conditions because the laborer is not free to make the labor- leisure choice and therefore lower productivity per hour may be more than made up by the length of the workday that the slave is forced to accept.5 Therefore, the key to Domar's dilemma is the existence of a central coercive authority which keeps lords from competing for labor (that is, keeps enforcement costs low). In the absence of such a central coercive authority a contractual arrange- ment involving labor will exist. This essay is an analysis of such contractual arrangements in the manor of Western Europe and an 5 See Robert Fogel, "The Relative Efficiency of Slavery: A Comparison of North- ern and Southern Agriculture in 1860," Explorations in Economic History, VIII, 3 (Spring 1971). 780 D. North; R. Thomas explanation of the way the contractual arrangements of the classic manor gave way to a free labor market and private property in land. In subsequent sections of this article, we shall (1) describe the characteristics of the manorial system, contrasting them with con- ditions in 1500 and specify the initial conditions of our model; (2) briefly delineate the elements of our theory; (3) apply the theory in the context of the initial conditions to specify a model of the classic manorial system; (4) identify the parameter shifts that caused the system to change and analyze the resultant intermedi- ate institutional arrangements, the cumulation of which ultimately led to the decline of the manorial system; and (5) in conclusion, show how this response induced a set of basic changes in property and personal rights which, in fact, inaugurated a new system of social and economic organization quite distinct from the classic feudal-manorial pattern which preceded it. I There is general agreement that in Western Europe the feudal world and, more specifically, the manorial system were in an ad- vanced state of decay by the end of the fifteenth century. Some authors date its decline even earlier, placing it generally in the fourteenth century; some are so specific as to pinpoint the years of the Great Plague, 1347-1351, as the beginning of the end. Cer- tainly, by 1500 the arrangements typical of the manorial system (and the feudal world) had been fundamentally altered, as witness the following developments: (1) The feudal relationship within the manor was between lord and serf. In exchange for protection and justice, the main obliga- tion of the serf was to provide the lord with a stipulated quantity of labor services; also often required were minor amounts of speci- fied goods, and/or some other forms of remuneration.6 By the six- teenth century in Western Europe this had yielded to a relationship between a landlord, on the one hand, and tenants, wage earners, sharecroppers, or independent yeoman farmers on the other. (2) An uncodified body of traditional law composed the "cus- 6 One of the more colorful examples of a peasant obligation, the authors have discovered, was the obligation of one serf annually for his lord's benefit to give ". . .a leap, a fart, and a jump." Manorial System 781 tom of the manor" which governed manorial relationships and ob- ligations: included were such topics as the way land changed hands, the common rights of the lord and his serfs to the use of pasture and wasteland, and the nature and extent of mutual obli- gations. These customs were rapidly being replaced by an imper- sonal body of law which explicitly defined property and personal rights. (3) The self-sufficient manor typical of the high Middle Ages increasingly was giving way to a specialized group of farms pro- ducing for the market. (4) In a larger context, the feudal society of the early Middle Ages was characterized by isolated manors spread over relatively unpopulated expanses of Western Europe and maintaining only tenuous ties to any central political authority. Superseding this arrangement came a more dense pattern of settlement, the growth of towns, an upsurge of trade, and the growing authority of po- litical units substantially larger than a single manor. However, even the above generalizations about manorialism and feudalism are open to exceptions. Some parts of Europe never ex- perienced the traditional manorial system; in Eastern Europe what has been inappropriately termed feudalism was emerging during the same period that feudalism was declining in the West.7 While feudalism was in full flower in the West, the Italian cities of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Amalfi, and others had already established a highly developed urban and commercial society which was non- feudal in character. The many detailed published studies of indi- vidual manors and localities appear, in total, to demonstrate some diversity of economic arrangements within the manorial system it- self. Such exceptions have encouraged particularistic approaches by economic historians and have made suspect the broader gen- eralizations by Marxists and others. Nevertheless, there does exist 7 Some students of the Middle Ages may feel that we play loosely with our use of the words feudalism and manorialism. Feudalism is often used to denote the relationships among the nobility and manorialism to denote the relationship between lords and serfs. We view feudalism to have been a fiscal system involving a con- tractual relationship whereby public goods, such as protection and justice, were provided in exchange in the main for labor obligations. In this paper we concentrate on the relationship between lord and serf-manorialism but we believe that the same theoretical model can also be applied to explain the larger social framework of feudalism, and we have frequently used the term feudalism interchangeably with manorialism in this article. 782 D. North; R. Thomas a general view of what constituted the classical manor and how these conditions changed. The model that we shall advance provides a general explanation for the accepted view which, by taking into account the peculiari- ties of local areas and regions, can also account for the diverse evidence accumulated. We limit the analysis to the classical mano- rial system as it existed in Western Europe, and particularly in England. This approach can be generalized, however, to encompass those broader problems encountered when dealing with the rise of Western Europe, which must be left out in this brief essay.8 An economic historian must step into history at some point to specify the conditions that existed when his analytical problem begins. We enter into the tenth century-a time, most scholars believe, during which the manorial system was the dominant method of economic organization in Western Europe.9 Any understanding of the manor as an economic system must take into account three essential descriptive elements. (1) Much of Western Europe was still unsettled; land of arable quality was freely abundant. (2) Population was sparsely scattered through the area in small villages, but was growing. (3) Centuries of wars and invasions had destroyed or severely weakened the central political authority inherited from the Roman Empire. Chaos reigned over much of the area, with only a residue of military prowess and possession of arma- ments separating the ruling classes from the laborers. The following initial conditions derive from these elements: (1) Law generally existed only within the settled areas, a condition that severely limited trade and commerce. Goods were generally less mobile than labor-that is, subject to higher transaction costs. (2) Land, while freely abundant, was valuable only when com- bined with labor and with protection and justice. (3) Labor ex- 8 See the forthcoming book by North and Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. 9 While substantial differences appear between manors at any point in time in terms of the nature and extent of the serf's obligations, a generally accepted view of the direction of change does exist. This view is primarily due to the research of M. M. Postan, "The Chronology of Labour Services," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., XX, pp. 169-93. (See also Cambridge Economic History of Europe, I, pp. 549-632.) Our article attempts to explain the chronology that Postan describes. The chronology for France and Germany is not so well established, hence is less discussed in this article. Manorial System - 783 hibited constant costs when combined with land to produce goods, because of the abundance of land. (4) Because a knight and castle are indivisible, the provision of protection was subject to the tradi- tional u-shaped cost curve of economic theory. Some economics of the manor immediately become apparent when the traditional tools of price theory are employed. The na- ture of the cost function involved in providing protection, in conjunction with some mobility of labor, determines in theory, for example, the size of a manor. Therefore, as population continues to grow, new manors will eventually be formed when, as a result of population growth in any manor, the marginal cost of providing protection exceeds the value of the lord's share of the marginal product of labor. A frontier movement-or the expansion of settled areas-is therefore the necessary result of a continuous growth in population. However, these are not the major type of questions the economic historian asks about the manor. The essential point to be resolved is why the manor provided a unique contractual arrangement- why were labor dues exchanged for protection and justice? It is necessary to employ a theory of contractual arrangements to grap- ple with this problem. II While all the ramifications of a theory of contracts have yet to be worked out, enough elements have been developed to provide a promising model.'0 The theory has evolved in the context of a market economy, but that fact does not vitiate the usefulness of the model when the theory is modified to take account of the con- ditions of the period we are investigating. Every transaction in product or factor markets involves the out- right or partial transfer of rights which in modem times we call property rights. Typically, in the modem world the specification of such a transfer is defined by a contract. Therefore, a theory of contracts is concerned with the structure, organization, transfer, and enforcement of property rights. In previous work it has been shown that with a given structure of property rights and a market 10 Steven N. S. Cheung, The Theory of Tenacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), and Cheung, "The Structure of a Contract and the Theory of a Non- Exclusive Resource," The Journal of Law and Economics, XIII (April 1970), 49-70. 784 D. North; R. Thomas economy, agricultural contracts will vary as a result of a desire to share natural risk and because transaction costs differ with differ- ent physical attributes of inputs and outputs; because institutional arrangements differ; and because different contracts require vary- ing efforts in enforcement and negotiation.' The three categorie