Note 161 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

We do not mean to say that there was no internal connection between the transition from serfdom to freedom and the simultaneous rise of town life, commerce and manufactures. We think there was such a connection. But we cannot agree with the theory that the disappearance of serfdom was a consequence of the commercial development of Western Europe. It seems to us that the rise of commerce was not the cause of the decline of serfdom, but that both were effects of the same principal cause, the relative scarcity of land which made itself felt towards the end of the Middle Ages. As soon as people had to shift on a limited area, the use of commerce, which enables each district to produce what it is most fit to, and so enhances the productiveness of labour, became more apparent than it had been at a time when there was plenty of land. In the same sense, Malthus remarks: “The great cause which fills towns and manufactories is an insufficiency of employment, and consequently the means of support in the country; and if each labourer, in the parish where he was born, could command food, clothing, and lodging for ten children, the population of the towns would soon bear but a small proportion to the population of the country”161. Lange also says that poverty of the masses is a condition of the rise of manufactures162. Besides these economists, we may quote the eminent geographist Ratzel, who observes, that in a country with a growing population the soil finally cannot any longer feed the whole of the people and so an ever increasing part of the population devote themselves to manufactures and commerce163. That this occurs even in primitive civilization, follows from what Krieger tells us about the natives inhabiting the small islands adjoining New Guinea, especially Berlin Harbour and Dallmann Harbour. The goad of necessity, he remarks, has urged them to a progress in the arts of life. The want of room rendered extension of the plantations on their islets impossible and so they began to manufacture carved work and pottery, which they exported to the continent in exchange for food164.