Metayage: Difference between revisions

In what is now northern Italy and southeastern France, the post [[Black Death]] population explosion of the late Middle Ages combined with the relative lack of free land made métayage an attractive system for both landowner and farmer. Once institutionalized, it continued long into the 18th Century although the base causes had been relieved by emigration to the [[New World]]{{citation needed}}.

In Italy and France, respectively, it was called ''mezzeria'' and ''métayage'', or halving -- the halving, that is, of the produce of the soil between landowner and land-holder. Halving didn't imply equal amounts of the produce but rather division according to agreement. The produce was divisible in certain definite proportions, which obviously must obviouslyhave varyvaried with the varying fertility of the soil and other circumstances and dodid in practice vary so much that the [[landlord]]'s share was sometimes as much as two-thirds, sometimes as little as one-third. Sometimes the landlord supplied all the stock, sometimes only part -- the cattle and seed perhaps, while the farmer provided the implements; or perhaps only half the seed and half the cattle, the farmer finding the other halves. Thus the ''instrumentum fundi'' of [[Roman Law]] was combined within métayage.<ref>Crook, J.A. (1967) ''Law and Life of Rome: 90 B.C. to A.D. 212'' Cornell Univ. Press: Ithaca, NY. p. 158</ref> Taxes were also frequently divided, being paid wholly by one or the other, or jointly by both.

In the 18th Century métayage agreements began to give way to agreements to share profits from the sale of the crops and to straight tenant farming, although the practice in its original form could still be found in isolated communities until the early 20th Century.<ref> Shaffer, John W. (1982) ''Family and Farm: Agrarian Change and Household Organization in the Loire Valley, 1500-1900'' State University of New York Press: Albany. ISBN 0-87395-562-5</ref> As the métayage practice changed, the term ''colonat partiaire'' began to be applied to the old practice of sharing-out the actual crop, while métayage was used for the sharing-out of the proceeds from the sale of the crops. ''Colonat partiaire'' was still practicedpractised in the French overseas departments, notably [[Réunion]]<ref>[http://www.jir.fr/article.php3?id_article=129806 "Le colonat partiaire" ''Clicanoo, Journal de l'Ile de la Réunion'' 15 May 2006];</ref>, until 2006 when it was ablolishedabolished.<ref>[http://www.admi.net/jo/20060106/AGRX0500091L.html Art. L. 462-28, French National Assembly, Law No 2006-11 of January 5 2006 ''Journal officiel de la République Française'' of January 6, 2006];</ref>

In France there was also a system termed ''métayage par groupes'', which consisted of letting a sizablesizeable farm not to one métayer, but to an association of several, who would work together for the general good under the supervision of either the landlord or his bailiff. This arrangement got past the difficulty of finding tenants having sufficient capital and labour to run the larger farms.