DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES. 



PEASANT COMMUNITIES IN FEANCE. 



By WILLIAM F. ALLEN, 

 Professor of Latin and History in tlie Uuiversity of Wisconsin. 



The investigations into the system of collective property in land, 

 which have recently thrown so much light upon the early history 

 of institutions, have been for the most part confined to the Teu- 

 tonic and Slavonic nations of Europe. Among these nations, col- 

 lective property in land has been found to have been nearly uni- 

 versal in early times, and in many of these, clear traces of it exist 

 to the present day. In regard to the nations of southern Europe, 

 the field has hardly been explored at all. Mr. Maine, in his last 

 work, "The Early History of Institutions," says, in relation to 

 France, that " this darkness has recently given signs of lifting " 

 (p. 6), and that " M, Le Play and others have come upon plain 

 traces of such communities in several parts of France." Bonne- 

 mere, in his "Histoire des Paysans," devotes a chapter to these 

 communities ; La Chavanne, in his " Histoire des classes agri- 

 coles," discusses them at some length ; and Laveleye, in his 

 " Primiiive Property," describes them in two or three very inter- 

 esting chapters. Nevertheless, there has been no systematic and 

 exhaustive examination of this subject for France, such as the 

 works of von Maurer and Thudichum for Grermany, and of Nasse 

 for England. 



Some light may perhaps be thrown upon this inquiry by an ex- 

 amination of such registers of seignorial estates as are accessible, 

 to ascertain whether any traces are discernible in them of a sys- 

 tematic organization of the peasantry, such as is manifest to the most 

 superficial glance in England. I have, in former years, read to this 

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