To add to it: Matt Christman has said a lot of times that peasants weren’t motivated to work harder than necessary for their survival and I agree with him. It was in the best interest of the Lord to keep his peasants alive of course, but there was absolutely no incentive for the peasant to provide the lord with more produce than the minimum. Supervision probably also wasn’t very stringent. The Lord himself certainly didn’t look over every peasants shoulder. Sure, there would be some village guards or whatever, but they probably didn’t do that either. The peasants were free people at least nominally and you couldn’t force them to do these things without risking unrest etc.
Knowing how hard I work when I know my boss doesn’t have the time to check my work…I think those people slacked off A LOT once their own community had what it needed. Some of these linked papers mention a workday of 12 hours and to that I saw: sure, for a few weeks in spring and autumn that may have been true. But the rest of the time, those peasants would spend a lot of time around the village water cooler.
These are good points and sources, thank you!
To add to it: Matt Christman has said a lot of times that peasants weren’t motivated to work harder than necessary for their survival and I agree with him. It was in the best interest of the Lord to keep his peasants alive of course, but there was absolutely no incentive for the peasant to provide the lord with more produce than the minimum. Supervision probably also wasn’t very stringent. The Lord himself certainly didn’t look over every peasants shoulder. Sure, there would be some village guards or whatever, but they probably didn’t do that either. The peasants were free people at least nominally and you couldn’t force them to do these things without risking unrest etc.
Knowing how hard I work when I know my boss doesn’t have the time to check my work…I think those people slacked off A LOT once their own community had what it needed. Some of these linked papers mention a workday of 12 hours and to that I saw: sure, for a few weeks in spring and autumn that may have been true. But the rest of the time, those peasants would spend a lot of time around the village water cooler.