Chamstwo

When we think of slavery, we rarely think of Polish peasants, but what else to call their unpaid work under constant threat of flogging? The anthropologist looks closely at this silenced history to understand how serfs survived under the manor system, and traces a thread from forced labour on the Polish estate to the servile forms of work today. Not the industrial revolution, he argues, but the manor's industry of cruelty was the prologue to the present. He writes about the lords' bloody violence and about Polish patriarchy, questioning the myth of the nobles' Commonwealth.

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About the book

Form

Nonfiction

Length

382 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Poland

First published

2021 by Wydawnictwo Czarne

Author's age

41 when first published

ISBN

9788381912198 (original)