Storgodsdrift. Godsekonomi och arbetsorganisation i Skåne från dansk tid till mitten av 1800-talet

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to systematically survey and analyse the Scanian manors’ economic and labour organisational development from the province’s Danish times to the middle of the nineteenth century. In this thesis the various surveys provides some clear results that make it possible to generalise the Scanian estate development. Manors were generally large at the end of the the seventeenth century and until the middle of the nineteenth century they grew, in many cases, into agrarian estab-lishments for large-scale production. The estates’ main income came, to an increasingly greater extent, from demesne production, which finally dominated the income profile. The peasants’ most important contribution to the estate owner was the corvée labour in most cases, and the extraction of labour could reach astounding levels in the 1800s. The peasants’ uncertain tenure rights were illustrated with great clarity in the continuing evictions, which were accelerated in the 1800s with the aim of expanding the demesne. The Scanian estate changes fit well into the classical criteria for the conver-sion from Grundherrschaft to Gutherrschaft. But Scania only got to halfway in this process during the agrarian upswing of middle of the sixteenth century. Instead, it was fully accomplished during the second upswing from the end of the 1700s and during the first half of the 1800s. The latter transformation was ambiguous. In answer to the growing market economy, feudal relationships at the estates were intensified, but at the same time society and the labour market were gradually changing. Concomitant with the increase of corvée labour, wage labour became an increasingly important supplement and in some instances had already begun to dissolve the old labour organisation by the middle of the nineteenth century. Fifty years later the corvée labour system had largely been abandoned and capitalistic production and labour forms were predominant at the Scanian estates.