Seigneurial dues (France)
영주적 부담 (프랑스)
Obligatory payments arising from the landed and personal rights a seigneur held over a seigneurie in the French Ancien Régime. A seigneur could be a noble, a commoner or a woman, or a corporate body such as a monastery; dues took the form of cens, payments in kind and corvée labour, and operated alongside seigneurial justice. The August 1789 decrees abolished without compensation only those dues arising from personal servitude, leaving the rest redeemable; on 17 July 1793 the National Convention abolished them outright, without redemption.
In depth
Content and scope
Seigneurial dues were obligatory payments arising from the rights a seigneur held over a seigneurie in the French Ancien Régime. The French terms are droits seigneuriaux and redevances seigneuriales, and 'seigneurialism' is also used as a synonym for manorialism. A seigneur could be an individual or a corporate body such as a monastery, a cathedral chapter or a military order. Dues took the form of cens, payments in kind and corvée labour, and operated alongside seigneurial justice (seigneur justicier).
Itemised dues included the revenues and jurisdiction of the seigneurial court; fees for the use of seigneurial facilities such as mills, bread ovens and wine presses (banalités); a single payment levied on the transfer or inheritance of land; and transfer, judgment and marriage fees (lods et ventes, quint, requint, treizième). The precise level of land-transfer fees varied by region under customary law. Before 4 July 1789 seigneurial dues were levied on more than a quarter of French cultivated land and made up most of the income of large landowners.
The August 1789 decrees: abolition without compensation versus redemption
On the night of 4 August 1789 the assembly made seigneurial rights and the clergy's tithe targets of abolition together, and the proclamation declared that 'the National Assembly entirely abolishes the feudal system'. The targets were the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate (the nobility) and the tithe collected by the First Estate (the Catholic clergy).
Article 1 of the 11 August decree, however, abolished without compensation those feudal and censuel dues 'arising from or representing real or personal servitude', while all other dues were made redeemable, with the terms and method of redemption to be set by the assembly. Until redemption, those dues continued to be collected as before. Article 4 abolished the seigneurial courts, Article 5 abolished tithes of every kind, and Article 6 made ground rents redeemable and prohibited the creation of further non-redeemable dues.
The 'abolition without compensation' of August 1789 was therefore limited to serfdom, and most seigneurial dues, including the cens, remained redeemable. The redemption terms specified in the feudal committee's report of 5 March 1790 were beyond what most peasants could pay, and the Wikipedia text describes them as thirty times the annual cens (other research gives up to twenty-five times). The Constituent Assembly's Lachaise decrees of 3-9 May 1790 implemented the redemption system. Because redemption was effectively impossible for peasants, most of them stopped paying the dues.
The total abolition of 1793
The definitive legal abolition of seigneurial dues in France came with the National Convention's decision of 17 July 1793, which abolished them without compensation. This ended the three-year redemption system instituted after 1789. Kropotkin assessed that the redemption clause of August 1789 delayed the abolition of feudal rights by five years, until August 1793.
Distinction from same-name concepts in other eras
The seigneurial system of New France (régime seigneurial) was a landholding regime centred on hereditary cens et rentes and is not identical with the feudal dues of mainland France. It was abolished in mainland France in 1789, but in New France (Quebec) only in 1854. In English manorialism the last feudal dues were abolished in the era of the French Revolution, while the Junker Rittergut manorial system of East Prussia survived until the Second World War. The concept of 'seigneurial' had institutionally different content in France, England and Prussia. The social status system, tribute and military service of Joseon (1392-1897) fall outside this entry and should not be confused with it.
Implications for our line
The final abolition of feudal dues was completed not by the declaration of August 1789 but under the revolutionary government of 1793. The decree of 11 August 1789 was a compromise that stipulated both abolition and redemption, and the peasants effectively refused redemption. This can be described as a case in which the practical pressure of the working and peasant masses drove legislation to become more radical.