Last vestiges of serfdom in Ireland?

gaiscioch

I'm reading Richard J. Evans massive and hugely detailed The Pursuit of Power. Europe, 1815-1914. He has a great, detailed section on serfdom across the continent. I had previously thought the freeing of some 23 millions serfs in Russia in 1861 was the end of it but this is far, far from the reality. First, like with our Land Acts from the 1870s on (£5 million in land annuities were still being paid in 1932), the serfs had to pay for decades afterwards for their freedom.

Moreover, serfdom existed in Iceland until the late 1890s, in Bosnia until 1914 and, very surprisingly, in Prussia (where Berlin is), strong elements of serfdom were only abolished after WWI. On a side, but related, note it seems that the last place in Europe to have slavery was in Romania where the Roma were actual slaves, as opposed to mere serfs, until the 1840s.

When was sefdom made illegal in Ireland and in what ways did it survive in society and for how long?

Search for "serfdom" with the Google Books version: https://tinyurl.com/3ncsmrue

Peregrinus

Serfdom as a social/legal status was an aspect of the feudal system of land tenure. But feudalism never really made it to Ireland; Gaelic society had a completely different system of land tenure, which didn't involve serfdom. By the time English laws were effectively imposed in Ireland, and in particular the English system of property laws, serfdom was becoming obsolete in England. So it was never really established in Ireland in the first place; the question of when it was abolished doesn't arise.

Which is not to say that, under the Gaelic system of land tenure, some people might not have had a status similar in some respect to that of serfs in the feudal system.

In the feudal system serfs were not slaves; they could not be bought or sold, for example. But they were tied to the land. They had the right to occupy and farm land in a particular place, in return for which they had various obligations both to the community and to their feudal overlord. Classically the obligations were obligations of service - you must work for your overlord so many days a year, e.g. at harvest time - but as time went on obligations of service were more and more replaced by obligations to pay money or surrender a share of your crop. All this was a matter of status, not contract, so it didn't matter whether you agreed to it or not. If you really didn't like it you could mostly - in practice - up sticks and leave, but if you did your options were limited, because you had no right to occupy or farm land anywhere else, so you would become a landless labourer - lower than a serf.

In the Gaelic system land belonged to the tribe or clan, and membership of the tribe/clan gave you and your family a right to the use of some of the land - exactly how much depending on your status in the tribe/clan and the number of other members with a similar status. You would have some land that you could farm exclusively, plus rights to graze animals on common land. Allocation of rights to tribal/clan was decided partly by precedent and tradition, and partly by communal decision, which in practice meant by senior members of the clan. This was similar to serfdom in that your status gave you rights to land in this place, but no rights to land in any other place, and there was no practicable possibility of acquiring rights in another place, so it was either famr this land or become landless. But it didn't usually come with an obligation to provide labour or service to an overlord. As a clan member you might have an obligation or expectation, e.g., to fight for the clan if the need arose, but this wasn't directly tied to your rights to clan land.

Mick Tator

It is incorrect to say that the land annuities were a means of purchasing freedom – it was the tenant’s purchase mechanism of buying the land he had farmed with subsidized assistance. It should also be noted that the same facility did not apply to tenant farmers in England. 

To add to the above by Peregrinus, in pre-Norman Ireland, society was stratified into five main classes. At the top were kings of various grade, then nobles, freemen with property, freemen without property and finally the bondsmen or unfree. The latter did have rights, but were little better than slaves, as justice was meted out on the basis of position in society. The first four classes had defined rights, duties and privileges, the extent of which was based on the land they occupied. Some land was private and hereditary, usually owned by nobles or professional men such as poets, judges, or physicians but by far the biggest amount of land was held “in common” by the community.

The regional ruler allotted land to tribe members as tenant farmers who paid him by military service, work and/or goods, usually cattle. Every tribesman had to pay his chief a subsidy according to his means. This usually amounted to a payment of one animal for every seven on common pasturage. Although at first glance this seems high, at <15% it is considerably lower than present day basic rate income tax. On death, any non-privately owned land would revert to the community and be reassigned. This frequently led to inter-tribal warfare over territorial boundaries and – given the importance of cattle –cattle raids.