234 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



possession in their new farms ; as a rule, the right of ground 

 rent ; to some extent, also, hereditary leasehold. In these domains 

 of the East, where Germanization was a peaceful process, the 

 Slavic population not being driven out, the latter also received, on 

 the adoption of German methods of agriculture, the better Ger- 

 man right. The fusion of the Slavs with the immigrated German 

 population was accomplished in not more than two centuries, as 

 is shown by the particularly characteristic examples of Pomerania 

 and Riigen. 



German agrarian history in the Northeast begins, therefore, 

 immediately with the second form of the agrarian policy of older 

 Germany, the pure manorial system. But there exists this impor- 

 tant difference, that the large manorial estates in the East were 

 from the very beginning geographically closed domains. And 

 this territorial character of the manorial system in the region of 

 colonization is one source of the later farming estates. We meet 

 with the other source in the knights' frequent and extensive 

 ownership in villages, about a century after the close of the 

 colonization. Among the peasants in the villages we find usually 

 one or more knights in possession of little farms, freeholds given 

 to them for their services. These freeholds consisted either of 

 vacated farms or of settlers' lots, granted in compensation for 

 undertaking and conducting the laying out of a new German 

 village. The knights are originally simply neighbors of the 

 peasants, without rights in them. In the succeeding period of 

 impotence and financial distress of the sovereign, one of these 

 knights would, however, acquire all the rights in the peasants of 

 the village where his property was situated, the rights hitherto 

 enjoyed by the reigning prince or another lord. And perhaps he 

 would "acquire similar rights in one or more neighboring villages : 

 from the reigning prince, the entire, even the highest jurisdiction, 

 and the public tithes ; from the lord, suzerainty with the right to 

 the ground rents and leases. 



In this way the knight's property becomes the center of a 

 small manor, likewise geographically closed ; the knight's land- 

 ownership, right of judicature, and manor are merged, giving rise 

 to estate farming. The manors are broken up into numerous 



