German works dealing with the history of civilization have been directed recently with particular interest to the study of those great of the soil, and owed them services or dues in kind (feudal services). The state, as such, in the beginning did not trouble itself about this “ subjected “ population, the immediate control of which was exercised by the proprietors, who belonged to the nobility. This arrangement was not disadvantageous to the state, so long as the burden of carrying on war rested exclusively on the knights and lords; that is, on the nobles. It was, so to speak, the primitive political economy of nature. The state was defended by an unremunerated, noble proprietor class, and it ceded to them in return the use of the labor of the peasants. When, however, with the changed conditions in the conduct of war from the time of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it came about that the state could rely less and less on the knights, and was compelled to raise and pay its own armies, it was more and more to its interest to protect and uphold that class from which it derived its soldiers and revenue; that is, the peasant class. It was therefore natural that the state had to uphold this class more and more, and that it could not suffer the exploitation of this class at the hands of the lords and knights, who were emancipating themselves from taxation as well as from military service. From these causes originated those political measures which aimed at making the peasant population a free class, protected from the oppression of the nobles. These measures consisted in an interference on the part of the state with the relations between the nobles and peasants, the state’s imposing ever contracting limits upon the oppression and on the exploitation of the rural population by the nobility, till finally, in our century, the government accomplished the complete emancipation of the peasants.

This whole development in „the lands of the Bohemian crown” is described by the author in the first volume on the basis of the material derived from the entire collection of the statutes and archives, while in the second volume he lays before us verbatim the material taken from documents. He begins, indeed, with an explanation of the rural constitution (agrarian constitution) of these countries in the eighteenth century, draws us a true picture of „hereditary subjection,” of the position of the land power, of the different „subject classes,” and of their obligations to this land power. After he has shown us, in an historical review, the origin of these conditions in the previous centuries (before 1689), he takes up the political reforms which were set in motion at the time of the Empress Maria Theresa, and which consisted in the regulation of the obligations of the serfs. In this effort the Austrian government had to have some hard struggles with the representatives of the nobles, with the so-called „estates,” who resented every interference of the government in this matter of the compulsory services as an unjustifiable usurpation. The energy of Emperor Joseph II. did, indeed, succeed in breaking the opposition of the estates, and especially in abolishing serfdom; but after his death a reaction set in, and the old order of things continued in only slightly ameliorated form till 1849. The abolition by compensation

of compulsory services and the final “emancipation of the peasants” first came after 1848, as a consequence of the revolution in Austria.

This whole social development in the lands of the Bohemian crown is presented to us by the author on a basis of abundant material, and by this work he has rendered a lasting service, not only to the history of civilization in Austria, but also to the history of civilization in Europe. It is to be hoped that the next subject of the emancipation of the peasants in the other Austrian countries may find an equally thorough and careful investigation. Who will follow the author’s example?

LUDWIG GUMPLOWICZ.

[Translated from the German by ELLEN C. SEMPLE.]