ABSTRACT
THE colony system, which played a considerable economic rôle in agriculture under the Empire—especially at the end of the Empire—and paved the way to the serfdom of the Middle Ages, rose on the ruins of slavery. It appeared as an intermediate condition between slavery and “liberty”. It was the regime applied to the man working on the land of another, paying rent in nature or money, passing with the property to any new owner—in a word tied down to the property. His condition was similar to that of the slave in that he could not leave the estate; it differed in so far as he ranked as a free man and enjoyed certain prerogatives of liberty. He was, in short, a tenant who had no right to quit his holding and was obliged to work in perpetuity for the landlord.
