ABSTRACT
In England and the Netherlands the ancient feudal order of the countryside gradually vanished in a slow process of disintegration and disruption which led to the gradual transition into modern capitalist agriculture; in France it was abolished by the powerful revolutionary forces which operated between 1789 and 1793. In Prussia, as in the other German states east of the River Rhine, and indeed in most of the European continent, feudal bonds and burdens were, by contrast, removed by way of agrarian reforms, consisting of legislation combined with compensations to the old feudal lords. In these lands, by contrast to England, France and the Netherlands, traditional feudal agrarian structures changed, at varying speeds and with varying completeness, into capitalist agricultural systems which eventually dispensed with all the old legal and economic ties between peasants and lords, once the latter had received their indemnities. Clearly, this procedure allowed a greater continuity between the old and the new orders than was the case when feudal agrarian structures were destroyed through revolutionary activities: essential features of the old order were either preserved or only modified a little. In practice, for example, the landowning families stayed in full possession of their large estates as well as of their often extensive forests.
