Peasantry in the Cheb Region in the Late Middle Ages. Social Mobility, Migration and Abandonment of Settlements

Abstrakt

The main focus of this study is quantitative analysis of social mobility and migration of the peasantry in the Cheb Region of the Late Middle Ages using the annual land tax payers registers, taxation books of peasant property and other sources. The focus of our interest falls on the differences between rich and poor families - specifically the differences in the stability and continuity of land tenure, the intensity and nature of property transfers, the trajectory of the property status of families both during one life cycle time, and over the course of intergenerational change.

Analysis of the social aspects of migration constitutes a significant part of the study. Separate passages address the theoretical points of departure, how social stratification and mobility of the late medieval peasantry is currently understood, the historical context of the Cheb Region, the institutional framework of land tenure for the peasants of the Cheb Region and the nature of feudal rent as a whole, the degeree of monetarisation, commercialisation and social inequality of the Cheb peasantry.

Differences between rich and poor peasant families and also between the individual descendants of the rich were characteristic for the social and demographic system which we subsequently reconstruct. A significant role was played by migration of poor families, which in a context of population stagnation and mortality crises tended to bring social mobility.

The study also contains analysis of field systems in the Cheb Region where we see the materialisation of local agrarian institutions and therefore too a predisposition for property transfer and social mobility. In the final section, devoted to processes of abandonment and desertion, we provide proof that the social and demographic peasant community system had two different faces in the Late Middle Ages, firstlystable regions in terms of population and economy, like the analysed Cheb Region (Cheb Basin), and secondly adjacent mountain zones affected by depopulation and collapse of peasant communities.

The main text is accompanied by appendices available for download at the web portal of Karolinum Publishing House.