This chapter has explored some of the characteristic features of labour legislation in one region of the Low Countries. The analysis of rural labour legislation in Flanders during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has revealed a number of new insights. Although only a selection of local and regional bylaws was scrutinised, some distinct patterns and characteristics emerge. First, in all regions where labour legislation was incorporated into customary law, the material and financial interests of both servants and employers were addressed. Both servant and employer could be held accountable for breaking a contractual agreement. However, this protection did not result in equal treatment in the law. With respect to entry into service, the fines for servants were sometimes higher than those for employers. In addition, further punishment was a likely prospect for servants in some regions. Whereas servants could be temporarily expelled or even barred from employment in the village when they failed to honour their contracts, such additional and profound corrective measures did not apply to employers refusing to hire a servant as promised. A similar picture emerges with reference to early departure or premature dismissal. In no region could a master dismiss servants before the end of their term without some compensation. However, as the example of the district of Bruges indicates, the specific rules concerning premature dismissal were designed with the interests of employers in mind. Looking at the fines and regulations for such infractions, we find that early departure by the servants was frequently sanctioned more heavily than premature dismissal by the employer. The clearest expression of deliberate inequalities in legal labour regimes is to be found in the regulations about compulsory service. In this legal regime, the interests and freedom of servants were unequivocally subordinate to the economic interest of rural elites. Within the Low Countries, the most unequal labour laws were those concerning compulsory service.
In the case of Flanders, the differential treatment and position of servants and farmers in labour laws conforms to a specific spatial pattern. The scope and nature of labour laws in Flanders changes with the economic and social geography of the region. Close to the coast, where commercial farms dominated the landscape and waged workers supplied most of the labour, labour laws were elaborate and gravitated towards the interests of the farmer. It is here that we most frequently encounter additional punishment for servants, unequal fines and compulsory service. In inland regions, characterised by a majority of small peasant holdings and fewer waged labourers, masters and servants were treated more equally and labour legislation was less elaborate.
1 For a succinct but complete overview of the differences between coastal and inland Flanders during the late medieval and early modern period see E. Thoen, ‘Rural Economy and Landscape Organization in Pre-Industrial Flanders’, Sartoniana, 32 (2019), 247–76. In addition to the nature and scope of labour legislation, there were also differences in the timing of the introduction of labour laws. In coastal Flanders the first labour legislation was already introduced during the early fifteenth century and by the 1560s the regions of Bergues, Bruges and Furnes possessed elaborate and detailed labour laws.
2 Lambrecht, ‘The Institution’, 50–4. There is a marked contrast with the more inland regions, where labour legislation did not emerge until the 1640s or later. The timing, scope and content of labour legislation, therefore, was clearly linked to the underlying rural economic structures. Importantly, this differentiated geography of labour laws probably also hints at differences in political leverage and access to power. It seems that large farmers in the coastal regions experienced few barriers in convincing the aldermen of the district to tailor the labour laws to their needs. In inland Flanders, labour laws were not deliberately skewed towards the interests of large commercial farmers although they could also have benefited from a strong bargaining and legal position on the labour market. Although commercial farmers in both coastal and inland Flanders had similar interests with respect to waged labour, the inland commercial farmers could not translate their specific interests into labour legislation. This suggests that farmers in coastal Flanders had more political leverage than their counterparts in the more inland regions.
Admittedly, the evidence of regulation of the rural labour market in Flanders by way of legislative measures relies heavily on normative sources and stipulations. If, how and when labour legislation was used by both servants and masters is a topic that requires more research. In the case of compulsory service, the evidence from the 1770s indicates that those targeted by such measures were reluctant to comply with their forced employment and subordinate position. Also, the survival of lists of recalcitrant independent adolescents proves that clauses on compulsory service were no dead letter. At the same time, the inclusion of compulsory service into the legal toolkit of rural elites did not mean that those targeted by the law were constantly harassed into service. As the case of Furnes illustrates, the efforts of rural elites with respect to enforcing compulsory service were heavily influenced by demographic developments. Importantly, compulsory service could also be enforced through alternative ways. In periods of growing poverty and dependence on public welfare, it was probably much easier and more effective to use the threat of withholding relief to ensure that young adolescents entered service. The example of coastal Flanders illustrates, once again, that labour laws and poor laws often strategically operated in tandem to discipline and control rural labourers in regions where capitalist agriculture dominated.
3 C. Lis and H. Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe (New York, 1979) and C. Lis and H. Soly, Worthy Efforts: Attitudes to Work and Workers in Pre-Industrial Europe (Leiden–Boston, 2012), chapter 7.