A brief oversight can be found in "KRASNA AMERIKA: A STUDY OF THE
TEXAS CZECHS, 1851 -1939, written by Clinton Machann and James W.
Mendl; published by Eakin Press, Austin, Texas, in 1983.

"Before the revolutionary war of 1848, Austria was in some ways a century behind Western Europe in political development. In an age when democratic ideas were influencing the development of societies in Western Europe, Czech peasant were still performing feudal obligations and paying manorial dues to the nobility, the state, and the church. These kept the peasant in almost total economic bondage, By the eighteenth century the church, the state, and the
nobility taxed away about 70 percent of all the peasant earned, raised, or grew.(2)

Ostensibly these taxes were paid by the peasant in reward for services performed for his benefit, especially by the lord: for the rights to farm on the manor of the lord, rely on the local judicial system, and appeal for personal protection. Ironically, the peasant sometimes literally needed protection from his 'protector'. (3) Beating a peasant with a caned for failure to meet his duties to the lord was legally permitted until 1848. In 1793 a decree had been issued requiring permission from the regional government official to inflict this punishment; however, the majority of the government officials were biased on the side of the nobility, and the lord still ruled almost as he wished, with little concern about government interference.

The most despised obligation that peasant owed the lord was 'robata'. This bound the peasant to work free for the lord for a specified number of days a year. Of course, these days were taken during the most important periods of the year --during planting and harvesting. Obviously, this situation would lead to resentment on the part of the peasant, for every day he spent working for the lord was a day less he could work for his own gain. Although by
1848 'robota' had been commuted to a monetary payment in much of Bohemia and Moravia, it was by no means extinct. It is significant that the term 'robot' was chosen by Karel; Capek in his 1920 play 'RUR' to mean a machine that performs human labor, but without desire or will.

While the economic and political power of nobles over peasants was oppressive, the social obligations were degrading. The peasant was supposed to take off his hat when he was within three hundred steps of the manor house.(4) Also, he was obligated to address all officials as 'jemnost pane' ('gracious lord'). (5)

(2) Jerome Blum, Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, 1815 -
1948 (Baltimore, 1948), 68.

(3) Stanley Z. Pech, The Czech Revolution of 1848 (Chapel Hill, N.C.,
1969), 15.

(4) Ernest Knapton and Thomas Derry, Europe 1815 - 1914 (New York,
1965), 92.

(5) Pech, 16." (Machann and Mendl 12 - 13)


Excerpts from the book, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE HABSBURG
EMPIRE 1815 -1918, written by Alan Sked, and published by Longman
Group UK Limited, London and New York, in 1989.

"In the countryside, too, the situation was often desperate. Here, again, it is impossible to give precise statistics since living standards varied from place to place and much would depend on weather conditions and how much in the way of domestic farm animals or poaching peasants could lay their hands on. The peasant's income, however, would have been everywhere reduced by a series of dues. These included: the robot or compulsory labour service which varied throughout the Monarchy; the 'Zehnt', tenth or tithe, which meant that the peasant had to pay his lord one-tenth of his crop or produce; as well as other payments in kind - for the vineyards, for example, or when land-holdings changed hands. There was a land tax to the government, which amounted to 17 - 24 percent of the net proceeds of the land; money for the church and state employees (priests and schoolmasters); along with obligations such as maintaining roads and bridges, providing horses and conveyances for state officials, making house-room available for troops if they were quartered on him; and giving sons to the military in times of conscription. Feudal dues in one way or another took up 70 percent of a peasant's income. Yet, he was probably better off than an industrial worker in 1848 and better off that his forefathers had been.

In the 'Volmarz' period as a whole, according to David F. Good's summary: 'Historians are not inclined to view the peasantry's condition...as unduly harsh. Komlos, relying on the contemporary John Paget, argues that 'the material lot of the peasantry varied, but by and large, it was not unbearable'. Blum believes that with respect to his personal status the peasant was "in a servile status' but ' was not a real serf'. There were, of course, substantial
regional differences. The German provinces - Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Styria and Carinthia - had relatively heavier payments in kind and money but lighter labour services and less oppressive personal status. In the Slavic provinces - the Bohemian lands and the Carpathian lands - the situation was the reverse. In general Rosdolski ranks the provinces according to the peasantry's burden as follows: The burden was lightest in the German Provinces, somewhat heavier in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, and most severe in Galicia and Bukovina, where the peasants were simply 'work animals'. (96)

The description of the Galician 'serfs' as 'work animals' goes a long way to explain the events of 1846. Elsewhere, however, it is not so clear how the peasants felt regarding relations with their feudal superiors. This is important, since the impression is often conveyed in the secondary literature that the key to events in Austria in 1848 was the abolition of the robot. It may be the case, however, in some parts of the Monarchy (although it is difficult to believe that this was generally true) that the aristocracy were more in favour of this
than were the peasants. Much, no doubt, hinged on the terms of compensation. At any rate, here is the experience of one landlord as related in an English survey of the Monarchy published in 1840:

'I want work done', said he, 'on a part of my properties upon a Thursday but the robotters nearest at hand objected that this was not their day of service. The Thursday workers lived perhaps at a distance, far and wide apart; they are allowed by law so much time to come and return; they arrive half-tired and bring broken carts and jaded horses and the result of the whole is that hardly any useful work is performed. We always take money payments where we can obtain them and would willingly commute the whole of our robots in
perpetuity; but to proposals of this nature the roboters will hardly ever consent. They compound with us for the work of weeks, or months, possibly even a year (usually, however, on terms lower than the law defines), but rarely for longer periods. One reason may be their want of cash; but another more willing one is, their knowledge of the inclination of government in their favour and their persuasion of what must, in fact, ere long be the case, that robots will either be reduced to a formal nullity, or altogether cease.' (97)

(69) Good, op. cit., pp. 72-3

(97) Turnbull, op. cit., Vol. 2, P. 45." (Sked 76 - 77)
 

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