Corvée

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Corvée, or corvée labor, is an administrative practice primarily found in feudal societies: it is a type of annual tax that is payable as labor by the serf or villein for the monarch, vassal, overlord or lord of the manor. It was used to complete royal projects, to maintain roads and other public facilities, and to provide labour to maintain the feudal estate.

Imperial China also had a system of conscripting labour from the public, equated to the western corvée by many historians. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor, imposed it for public works like the Great Wall and his mausoleum. However, as the imposition was exorbitant and punishment for failure draconian, Qin Shi Huang was criticised by many historians of China. Corvée-style labor was also found in pre-modern Japan.

The corvée was abolished in France on August 4, 1789, shortly after the beginning of the French Revolution, along with a number of other feudal privileges accorded to French landlords. It had been a hated feature of the ancien régime. The corvée continued to exist, however, under the Seigneurial system in what had been New France, in British North America.

After the American Civil War, some Southern states taxed their inhabitants in the form of labor for public works. The system proved unsuccessful because of the poor quality of work; in the 1910s Alabama became the last state to abolish it.

Today the term is also used for other forms of unpaid mandatory labour, such as that reportedly imposed by the government of Myanmar on its citizens. Today most countries have restricted corvée labour to military conscription (or prison labor).

[edit] Egyptian corvée history

From the Egyptian Old Kingdom (ca 2613 BC) onward, (the 4th Dynasty), corvée labor helped in 'government' projects; during the times of the Nile River floods, labor was used for construction projects such as pyramids, temples, quarries, canals, roads, and other works.

In later Egyptian times, during the Ptolemaic dynasty, Ptolemy V, in his Rosetta Stone Decree of 196 BC, listed 22 reasons for being honored. They include abolishing corvee labor in the navy.