which at once call to mind German, Norse and English gilds, are called “siabri,” “skladniki,” and the gilds themselves “spólkíe,” in south Russia. In a district of the Ukraina called the “Ratensky Sharostvo” there were no fewer than 278 such gilds interchanging with natural kindreds. The organization of all these unions could in no way be called patriarchal Even in cases when there is a definite elder or headman (bolshoy), he was only the first among equals and exercised only a limited authority over his fellows: all the important decisions had to be taken by the council of the community.
In Great Russia, in the districts gathered under the sway of the Moscow tsars, the basis of the household community and of the rural settlements which sprang from it was modified in another direction. The entire agricultural population was subjected to strict supervision and coercive measures for purposes of military organization and taxation. Society was drilled into uniformity and service on the principle that every man has to serve the tsar, the upper class in war and civil administration, the lower class by agricultural labour. A consequence of the heavy burden laid on the land and of the growth of a landed aristocracy somewhat resembling the gentry and the noblesse of the West was a change in the management of land allotments. They became as much a badge of service and a basis for fiscal requirements as a means of livelihood. The result was the practice of reallotments according to the strength and the needs of different families. The shifting of arable (peredel) was not in this case a reapportionment of rights, but a consequence of the correspondence between rights and obligations. But although this admeasurement of claims appears as a comparatively recent growth of the system, the fundamental solidarity between kinsmen or neighbourly associates grouped into villages was in no way an invention of the tsars or of their officials: it was rooted in traditional customs and naturally suggested by the practices of joint households. When these households become crowded in certain areas, open-field systems arise; when they are burdened with public and private service their close co-operation produces occasional or periodical redivisions of the soil between the shareholders.
Let us now pass to village communities in Teutonic countries, including England. A convenient starting-point is afforded by the social and economic conditions of the southern part of Jutland.
Now the Saxon or Ditmarschen portion of this region gives us an opportunity of observing the effects of an extended and highly systematized tribal organization on Germanic soil. The independence of this northern peasant republic, which reminds one of the Swiss cantons, lasted until the time of the Reformation. We find the Ditmarschen organized in the 15th, as they had been in the 10th century, in a number of large kindreds, partly composed of relatives by blood and partly of “cousins” who had joined them. The membership of these kindreds is based on agnatic ties—that is, on relationship through males—or on affiliation as a substitute for such agnatic kinship. The families or households are grouped into brotherhoods, and these again into clans or “Schlachten” (Geschlechter) corresponding to Roman gentes. Some of them could put as many as 500 warriors in the field. They took their names from ancestors and chieftains: the Wollersmannen, Hennemannen, Jerremannen, &c.—that is, the men of Woll, the men of Henne, the men of Jerre. In spite of these personal names the organization of the clans was by no means a monarchical one: it was based on the participation of the full-grown fighting men in the government of each clan and on a council of co-opted elders at the head of the entire federation. We need not repeat here what has already been stated about the mutual support which such clans afforded to their members in war and in peace, in judicial and in economic matters.
Let us notice the influence of this tribal organization on husbandry and property. The regular economic arrangement was an open-field one based on a three-field and similar systems. The furlongs were divided into intermixed strips with compulsory rotation on the usual pattern. And it is interesting to notice that in these economic surroundings indivisible holdings corresponding to the organic unities required for efficient agriculture arose of themselves. In spite of the equal right of all coheirs to an estate, this estate does not get divided according to their numbers, but either remains undivided or else falls into such fractions, halves or fourths, which will enable the farming to be carried on successfully, without mischievous interruption and disruption. Gradually the people settled down into the custom of united succession for agrarian units. The Hufe or Hof, the virgate, as might have been said in England, goes mostly to the eldest son, but also sometimes to the youngest, while the brothers of the heir either remain in the same household with him, generally unmarried, or leave the house after having settled with the heir, who takes charge of the holding, as to an indemnity for their relinquished claims. This indemnity is not equivalent to the market price, but is fixed, in case of dispute or doubt, by an award of impartial and expert neighbours, who have to consider not only the claims of interested persons but also the economic quality and strength of the holding. In other words, the heir has to pay so much as the estate can conveniently provide without being wrecked by the outlay.
This evidence is of decisive importance in regard to the formation of unified holdings; we are on entirely free soil, with no vestige whatever of manorial organization or of coercion of tenants by the lord, and yet the Hufe, the normal holding, comes to the fore as a result of the economic situation, on the strength of considerations drawn from the efficiency of the farming. This “Anerben” system is widely spread all through Germany. The question whether the eldest or the youngest succeeds is a subordinate one. Anyhow, manorial authority is not necessary to produce the limitation of the rights of succession to land and the creation of the system of holdings, although this has been often asserted, and one of the arguments for a servile origin of village communities turns on a supposed incompatibility between unified succession and the equal rights of free coheirs.
We need not speak at any length about other parts of Germany, as space does not permit of a description of the innumerable combinations of communal and individual elements in German law, the various shapes of manorial and political institutions with which the influence of blood relationship, gild and neighbourly union had to struggle.
But we must point out some facts from the range of Scandinavian customs. In the mountainous districts of Norway we notice the same tendency towards the unification of holdings as in the plains and hills of Schleswig and Holstein. The bönder of Gudbrandsdalen and Telemarken, the free peasantry tilling the soil and pasturing herds on the slopes of the hills since the days of Harold Hárfagr to our own times, sit in Odalgaards, or freehold estates, from which supernumerary heirs are removed on receiving some indemnity, and which are protected from alienation into strange hands by the privilege of pre-emption exercised by relatives of the seller. Equally suggestive are some facts on the Danish side of the Straits, viz. the arrangements of the bóls which correspond to the hides and virgates of England and to the Hufen of Germany. Here again we have to do with normal holdings independent of the number of coheirs, but dependent on the requirements of agriculture—on the plough and oxen, on certain constant relations between the arable of an estate and its outlying commons, meadows and woods. The ból does not stand by itself like the Norwegian gaard, but is fitted into a very close union with neighbouring bóls of the same kind. Practices of coaration, of open-field intermixture, of compulsory rotation of lot-meadows, of stinting the commons, arise of themselves in the villages of Denmark and Sweden. Laws compiled in the 13th century but based on even more ancient customs give us most interesting and definite information as to Scandinavian practices of allotment.
We catch a glimpse, to begin with, of a method of dividing
