Peasants and serfs in feudalism?

Question

I know most peasants during feudal times were serfs, and serfs were bound to the land, whereas peasants had more freedom,

Why did they become a serf? Were they born into their status?

Answer 1

A basic definition for a peasant is a member of a class of persons, as in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, who are small farmers or farm laborers of low social rank.

In general, the term peasant is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, the countryside or region, which itself derives from the Latin pagus, country district, is an agricultural worker with roots in the countryside in which he or she dwells, either working for others or, more specifically, owning or renting and working by his or her own labor a small plot of ground. They are also referred to in England as a "cottager". The term peasant today is a pejorative term for impoverished farmers.
Though a word of loose application, once a market economy has taken root the term peasant proprietors is frequently used to describe the traditional rural population in countries where the land is chiefly held by smallholders.
Peasant societies can often have very stratified social hierarchies. A rural peasant population differs enormously in its values and economic behavior from an urban worker population. Peasants tend to be more conservative than urbanites, and are often very loyal to inherited power structures that define their rights and privileges and protect them from interlopers, despite their generally low status within those power structures.
A serf is a a member of the lowest feudal class, attached to the land owned by a lord and required to perform labor in return for certain legal or customary rights. A serf can be considered an agricultural laborer under various systems, especially in 18th- and 19th-century Russia and eastern Europe. And be consider a person in bondage or servitude.
A serf, under feudalism, is peasant laborer who can be generally characterized as hereditarily attached to the manor in a state of semi-bondage, performing the servile duties of the lord. Although serfs were usually bound to the land, many exceptions are found in the medieval economy of Western Europe, and, serfdom, as an institution, assumed a number of different forms in Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Serfdom also appeared with feudalism in China, Japan, India, pre-Columbian Mexico, and elsewhere.
Serfdom is distinguished from slavery chiefly by the body of rights the serfs held by a custom generally recognized as inviolable, by the strict arrangement that made the peasants servile in a group rather than individually, and by the fact that they could usually pass the right to work their land on to a son. In Western Europe during the Middle Ages the status of manorial peasants was regulated by local custom, and a wide diversity of names was applied to the various types of tenancy, which extended from the completely servile tenant to the freeholder who paid only a form of rent. Many serfs were theoretically subject to labor service at the will of the lord and in many cases the lord had the right to arrange the marriage of his serfs, but all such matters came to be governed by set customs. In legal theory the serf's holding was granted at the will of the lord, but in practice the right to hold came to be hereditary.
Serfdom sometimes arose from the conquest of a people by victors who did not reduce the natives to slavery but only depressed them to tributaries; these tributaries held their lands as of old, but paid dues (especially labor dues) to the conquerors. Thus serfdom was established in some Aegean regions by Greek conquests. More generally it may be said that serfdom arose only under a local agricultural economy, connected with a political system based on personal contract—some form of feudalism.
Serfdom was known in the Hellenistic civilization, and in the Roman Empire economic maladjustment led to the appearance of the servile class, the coloni. In the Middle Ages, serfdom developed in France, Italy, and Spain, later spread to Germany, and in the 15th cent. was carried to Slavic countries. It developed separately in England (where serfs were more commonly referred to as villeins), and became widespread by the end of the 10th cent. While the majority of peasants were serfs during the Middle Ages, free peasants continued to exist and in some regions whole villages did not come under the rule of a lord. In Western Europe the breakdown of the manorial system allowed peasants to obtain more freedom in the 14th and 15th cent.
Serfdom disappeared in England before the end of the Middle Ages. In the Hapsburg monarchy, it was ended (1781) by Emperor Joseph II, but feudal labor service continued in some provinces until 1848. In France, where it survived in outlying provinces, serfdom was swept away by the French Revolution. The repercussions of the Napoleonic Wars helped to destroy it elsewhere, the most notable example being the reforms of Karl vom und zum Stein in Prussia. In Russia and the other Slavic countries serfdom took different forms and persisted in some cases as late as the 19th cent.

Answer 2

The word 'peasant' is a generic word to describe a lowly person who depends on agricultural labour or a cottage industry for subsistence. Serf is more specialised and is a status akin to slavery and describes peasants in Russia up until about the 1860s. They were bound to the place where they were born and could be brought and sold by their masters.

Answer 3

Feudalism is even as the king or emperor promises his noble adult males land in replace for his or her loyalty, protection stress service and protection of the individuals alongside with the peasants and the serfs. The king does it that thanks to save anybody equivalent only in case if one noble tried to take over each and each of the land and he could wish the individuals on his aspect first. He could first flow hostile to the different nobles for his or her land and who ever wins the individuals could flow to. the completed aspect is that the peasnats desire food and preserve. they are going to ggo to absolutely everyone who has the land. it truly is even accessible for the noble guy to over trow the king.

Answer 4

Serfs i believe were slaves from wars. They also probably were foreigners. And they were born into their status.

Answer 5

They were born into it, yes. At some point their poor family asked for permission to settle upon a lord's land in exchange for labor and space and it was granted in perpetuity.