From the early days of settled agricultural societies, control over land was a crucial feature of economics, society and politics in many parts of the world. Its legal and governmental basis varied greatly, but it was force that ultimately ruled.
In the Middle Ages in western Europe, the system now known as feudalism ruled from about the 9th to the 15th century CE . The greater nobles were granted control over their lands in return for military service to the king. Those of lesser rank, such as knights, held theirs in return for military service to the greater nobles. The peasantry farmed, but did not own, their small patches of land in exchange for work performed on the land of their lord. This system – serfdom – was gradually to break down as the payment demanded changed from labour and military service to money, although it persisted in parts of Europe, such as Russia, well into the 19th century.
Other societies around the world had similar systems. Control of the land entailed the control of society and was central to the unequal distribution of wealth. The specific form this took depended on environmental factors and the availability of labour. There were strong contrasts between systems of hierarchy and control where labour was in fairly short supply, as in Africa and eastern Europe, and where it was more plentiful, as in China, India, Japan and western Europe. The former stressed control over labour, the latter control over land. Labour shortages could lead to tighter control, but they could also allow for renegotiations of labour relations that gave more power to the peasantry. In western Europe it was partly the shortage of labour after the Black Death in the 14th century (see here ) that enabled peasants to call for money payments and helped to erode the old feudal system.
The labour services owed by the poorest in society varied around the world, depending on the type of economy. What stand out are the major contrasts between pastoral (animal husbandry) and arable (cultivation) systems. Pastoral systems imposed a less rigid work regime, partly owing to greater flexibility in terms of how territory and land was exploited. Arable systems played key roles in east Asia. In North America, different tribes had differing ways of life. Those who were pure hunter-gatherers had no sense of owning particular pieces of land, whereas those settled in arable farming communities had more permanent connections to particular territories.
Until the system collapsed in the mid-18th century, in the remoter Highlands and islands of Scotland the clans were also tribal, and based notionally on family groups, though their origins lay in a relatively lawless period in which local warlords offered protection to families in return for loyalty. Tribal systems tended to rely on a sense of belonging and sustained loyalty among their members, whereas in feudal systems this kind of blood linkage was mostly absent.
This was also true of slave systems, where outsiders (often captured during wars, or traded in special markets) could be forced to work for a particular owner. Slaves had few or no rights, and no property. They were viewed as the property of their owner, as were their children. This was an extreme version of labour control, and laid few or no duties on the slave owners. Slavery was widespread in the ancient world (for example in Egypt, Greece, Rome and China), the Islamic world, and also among the pre-Columbian civilizations of Mexico and South America.
Serfdom aside, in Europe slavery had largely died out by the 2nd millennium CE . However, once Europeans began to settle in the Americas from the 16th century, they set up extensive plantations to grow such crops as sugar, tobacco and cotton. To work these plantations, they imported millions of slaves from Africa, shipped in appalling conditions across the Atlantic. Many Europeans grew rich both from the slave trade and from the slave plantations, and their profits contributed to the capital that kick-started the Industrial Revolution (see here ).
The end of slavery?
Not until the 18th century did some people in Europe and North America, partly inspired by their religious faith, begin to campaign against slavery. The institution was gradually abolished in the northern states of the USA, while in 1807 Great Britain outlawed the slave trade in its empire, and slavery itself in 1833. But in the USA as a whole, slavery was not abolished until 1865, at the end of the Civil War between the slave-owning South and the slave-free North. It lasted much longer in some other regions, and although criminalized in all countries today, slavery persists in the shadows: the trafficking of human beings across borders, to be used forcibly as sex workers or domestic servants or agricultural labourers, is a global criminal activity.