Can Southern slavery be correctly seen as a late form of feudalism?

[benburch]

What I see if I look for it is that people from Europe who were denied being members of the nobility there were able to simply buy serfs and a Barony here, and did.

Or did serfs have significantly more rights than the slaves did?

[HawkerHurricane]

1. Serfs had more rights.

A set of Serfs came with the land; you couldn't break up a Serf family, because they belonged to the acreage they farmed.

Serfs 'owned' a percentage of thier crops, if they managed to pay off thier lord and feed themselves, they were permitted to sell the excess.

Serfs were allowed side jobs, earning money that way (after they had settled thier obligation to thier lord, of course).

The children of Serfs could choose different professions that would get them off the farm... priesthood and soldier were the most common, but it was possible to apprentice to a skilled laborer (blacksmith, weaver, tanner, etc) and become something other than a Serf. (Male Serfs, that is. Female Serfs were limited to marrying out of Serfdom. Sorry, ladies.)

And you couldn't just 'buy' a barony... you bribed someone into giving you a title, then bribed someone (maybe the same) into giving you a land grant... the Serfs came with the land grant.

[bleedingheart]

2. while it may appear similar I don't believe they are related

Here in the US, land was generally given in "grants" by the Kings and Queens of England. Either the landgrants were given as a reward for service or to pay off debts.

Charles II owed money to William Penn's father and when William Penn needed the cash and called in the loan he was granted the area known today as Pennsylvania.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/PENN/pnintro.html

I recently toured the Tryon Palace in North Carolina ( a duplicate of the original that burned in the 1790's) and discovered that one of the first governors of that colony was well-connected through his marriage and was granted a governorship. Now whether that was a payback, a gift...no one knows.

There are also many cases where land was acquired by just plain old homesteading.

That said...the workforce to farm the land could either be obtained expensively or cheaply..and the early capitalists discovered that they could hire free men or acquire indentured servants or slaves.

Now having recently toured Mount Vernon, I read that Washington was not fond of slavery and found that it was better to design more efficient methods of farming which he ended up doing...he freed his slaves as part of his will (funny that Jefferson is touted as such a man of many talents...but yet the same is true for Washington and he is more known for his presidency and his military campaigns...)

As for buying titles...that would be better done in Europe than here in the colonies, because you would have to have been at the court in order to gain the political edge needed to wheedle a title out of the King...

[HawkerHurricane]

3. Washington freed his slaves...

because he had no heirs.

[bleedingheart]

4. he had heirs....

the children of Martha (although not his) could be seen as his heirs and I am sure that he had some cousins.

Plus if he had been a really cold hearted jerk he could have sold them for profit, instead he had the freed.

Granted it is still really sad and disheartening that he had slaves to begin with.