serf

Serfdom was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed during late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in Europe and lasted in some countries until the mid-19th century and became the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems.

Unlike slaves, serfs could not be bought, sold, or traded individually, though they could, depending on the area, be sold together with land. Actual slaves, such as the kholops in Russia, could, by contrast, be traded, abused with no rights over their own bodies, could not leave the land they were bound to, and marry only with their lord's permission.

Serfs who occupied a plot of land were required to work for the lord of the manor who owned that land. In return, they were entitled to protection, justice, and the right to cultivate certain fields within the manor to maintain their own subsistence. Serfs were often required not only to work on the lord's fields, but in his mines and forests and to labour to maintain roads. The manor formed the basic unit of feudal society, and the lord of the manor and the villeins, and to a certain extent the serfs, were bound legally: by taxation in the case of the former, and economically and socially in the latter.

The decline of serfdom in Western Europe has sometimes been attributed to the widespread plague epidemic of the Black Death, which reached Europe in 1347 and caused massive fatalities, disrupting society. Conversely, serfdom grew stronger in Central and Eastern Europe, where it had been less common (this phenomenon was known as "second serfdom"). In Eastern Europe, the institution persisted until the mid-19th century. Serfdom in Russia gradually evolved from the usual European form to become de facto slavery, though it continued to be called serfdom; one way or another, reforms were carried out to reduce powers of the landowners. In the Habsburg monarchy, serfdom was abolished by the 1781 Serfdom Patent. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. Prussia declared serfdom unacceptable in its General State Laws for the Prussian States in 1792 and abolished in 1807, in the wake of the Prussian Reform Movement. In Finland, Norway, and Sweden, feudalism was never fully established, and serfdom did not exist; in Denmark, serfdom-like institutions did exist in the stavnsbånd, between 1733 and 1788 and its vassal Iceland (the more restrictive vistarband, from 1490 until 1894).