Corvée
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Corvée refers to: "Corvée Tax", or "Corvée Labor".
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[edit] Overview
A formal tax that peasants paid. Corvée is unpaid labour that persons in power compel their subjects to perform. It differs from slavery in that the worker is not owned outright -- being free in various respects other than in the dispensation of his or her labour -- and the work is usually intermittent; typically only a certain number of days' or months' work is required each year. Since the worker is not free to refuse the work it is a form of unfree labour.
The term is most typically used in reference to Medieval or early modern Europe, where work might be demanded by a feudal lord of his vassal or by a monarch of his subject; however the application of the term is not strictly limited to that time or place: the practice is widespread, of great antiquity, and not extinct. Corvée has existed in modern and ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, China and Japan, France in the 1600s and 1700s, and Portugal's African colonies until the mid 1960s.
[edit] Etymology
The actual word "corvée" has its origins in Rome, and reached the English via France. In the Late Roman Empire the citizens performed operae publicae in lieu of paying taxes; often it consisted of road and bridge work. Roman landlords could also demand a number of days' labour from their tenants, and also from the freedmen; in the latter case the work was called operae officiales. In Medieval Europe, the tasks that serfs or villeins were required to perform on a yearly basis for their lords were called operae rigae. Plowing and harvesting were principal activities to which this work was applied. In times of need, the lord could demand additional work called opera corrogatae (Latin corrogare, "to requisition"). This term evolved into coroatae, then corveiae, and finally corvée, and the meaning broadened to encompass both the regular and exceptional tasks. This Medieval agricultural corvée was not entirely unpaid: by custom the workers could expect small payments, often in the form of food and drink consumed on the spot. Corvée sometimes included military conscription, and the term is also occasionally used in a slightly divergent sense to mean forced requisition of military supplies; this most often took the form of cartage, a lord's right to demand wagons for military transport.
Because corvée labour for agriculture tended to be demanded by the lord at exactly the same times that the peasants needed to attend to their own plots -- eg. planting and harvest -- the corvée was an object of serious resentment. By the 1500s the use of corvée in the agricultural setting was on the wane; it became increasingly replaced by money payments for labour.
[edit] History
[edit] France
In France the corvée existed until August 4 1789, shortly after the beginning of the French Revolution, when it was abolished along with a number of other feudal privileges of the French landlords. In these later times it was directed mainly towards improving the roads. It was, again, greatly resented, and is considered an important cause of the Revolution -- although, it must be said that France's roads were exceptionally good for the time. Counterrevolution revived the corvée in France, in 1824, 1836, and 1871, under the name prestation; every able bodied man had to give three days' labour or its money equivalent towards upkeep of his local roads. The corvée also continued to exist under the Seigneurial system in what had been New France, in British North America. It remains a daily practice in the French Foreign Legion, and focuses on the cleaning of the living quarters.
[edit] Imperial China
Imperial China had a system of conscripting labour from the public, equated to the western corvée by many historians. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor, imposed it for public works like the Great Wall and his mausoleum. However, as the imposition was exorbitant and punishment for failure draconian, Qin Shi Huang was criticised by many historians of China. Corvée-style labour called yō was also found in pre-modern Japan.
[edit] American Civil War
After the American Civil War, some Southern states taxed their inhabitants in the form of labour for public works. The system proved unsuccessful because of the poor quality of work; in the 1910s Alabama became the last state to abolish it.
[edit] Portugal, African colonies
In Portugal's African colonies (Mozambique), the Native Labour Regulations of 1899 stated that all able bodied men must work for six months of every year, and that "They have full liberty to choose the means through which to comply with this regulation, but if they do not comply in some way, the public authorities will force them to comply." [1] Africans engaged in subsistence agriculture on their own small plots were considered unemployed. The labour was sometimes paid, but in cases of rule violations it was sometimes not -- as punishment. The state benefited from the use of the labour for farming and infrastructure, by high income taxes on those who found work with private employers, and by selling corvée labour to South Africa. This system of corvée labour, called chibalo, was not abolished in Mozambique until 1962, and continued in some forms until the Marxist revolution in 1974.
The government of Myanmar reportedly imposes unpaid mandatory labour on its citizens.
Today most countries have restricted corvée labour to military conscription and prison labour. Jury service is arguably a modern remnant of forced corvée labour.
[edit] Egyptian corvée history
[edit] Overview
From the Egyptian Old Kingdom (ca 2613 BCE) onward, (the 4th Dynasty), corvée labour helped in 'government' projects; during the times of the Nile River floods, labour was used for construction projects such as pyramids, temples, quarries, canals, roads, and other works.
In later Egyptian times, during the Ptolemaic dynasty, Ptolemy V, in his Rosetta Stone Decree of 196 BC, listed 22 reasons for being honored. They include abolishing corvée labour in the navy.
- "men shall no longer be seized by force [for service] in the Navy" (Greek text on the Rosetta Stone).
[edit] "Corvée" Amarna letter: Nuribta
The 1350 BC Amarna letters correspondence, (mostly addressed to the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh), has one short letter, with the topic of corvée labour. Of the 382–Amarna letters, it is an example of an undamaged letter, from Biridiya of Megiddo, entitled: "Furnishing corvée workers". See: city Nuribta.
[edit] Nile barrage
The Nile barrage above Cairo was built from 1841-67 using corvée labour.
[edit] See also
- Tax farming
- Impressment
- Indenture
- Nuribta, (corvée letter to pharaoh)
- Mita
[edit] Bibliography
- See the chapter on "Corvées: valeur symbolique et poids économique" (5 articles on France, Germany, Italy, Spain and England), in: Bourin (Monique) ed., Pour une anthropologie du prélèvement seigneurial dans les campagnes médiévales (XIe-XIVe siècles): réalités et représentations paysannes, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004, p. 271-381.
[edit] References
- Budge. The Rosetta Stone, E.A.Wallis Budge, (Dover Publications), c 1929, Dover edition(unabridged), c 1989.
- ^ Native Labour Regulations, section 1, 1899, Lisbon; in Gordon White, Robin Murray, and Christina White, Eds., Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World. 1983; Sussex, U.K.; Wheatsheaf Books. p.77.
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