Metayage

Another class of land tenancy in France is named fermage [fr], whereby the rent is paid annually in banknotes.

A farm operating under métayage was known as a métairie, the origin of some place names in areas where the system was used, such as Metairie, Louisiana.

[4][5] It proved useful after the emancipation of Roman slaves as the newly freed peasants had no land or cash (the same phenomenon happened in Brazil and the US when slavery was banned).

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.

Métayage was used early in the Middle Ages in northern France and the Rhinelands, where burgeoning prosperity encouraged large-scale vineyard planting, similar to what the ancient Romans had accomplished using slave labor.

The hyperinflation that followed the influx of Incan-American gold made Métayage preferable to cash tenancy and wage labour for both parties.

[14] In France, there was also a system termed métayage par groupes, which consisted of letting a sizeable 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.

They judged it by its appearance in France, where under the ancien régime all direct taxes were paid by the métayer with the noble landowner being exempt.

French metayers, in Arthur Young's time, were "removable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of their landlords," and so in general they so remained.

[36] Simonde de Sismondi expressed dissatisfaction in 1819 with the institution of métayage because it reinforced the poverty of the peasants and prevented any social or cultural development.

[37][page needed] Although métayage and extreme rural poverty usually coincided, there were provinces in France and Italy (especially on the plains of Lombardy) where the contrary was the case.