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by bbsz 841 days ago
It did suck though. Remember that serfdom (or mandatory military service) in Europe was formally abolished only at the break of the XVIII/XIX century. But even without it, we are talking about generational periods of a moderate poverty (by prices going occasionally down, not by better pays or surplus economy) or just the regular poverty where 90% of time/energy is spent on earning on food only (sometimes, rarely, clothing).

You are right about "no walls everywhere". At the time there were also no concept of a country border as it's today. If only a free peasant, you could walk from France to Russia, start settling some land there and no one was any wiser. It would be a local administration problem at best (if any was present), but not an international one like today.

1 comments

>(sometimes, rarely, clothing)

As it turns out, the various aspect of making cloth and clothing took a massive amount of the Peasant's labor.[0]

[0]https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t...