Freedom’s Price: Serfdom, Subjection, and Reform in Prussia, 1648-1848

It is usually claimed that serfs were oppressed and unfree, but is this assumption true? lFreedom’s Price, building on a new reading of archival material, attempts a fundamental re-appraisal of the continuing orthodoxy that a ‘serf’ economy embodied peasant exploitation. By locating Prussian serfdom and reforms in a pan-European context, and within debates about the nature of economic development, feudalism, and capitalism, lFreedom’s Price targets a wider audience of early modern and modern European historians, economic historians, and interested general readers.