Corvée

From Freepedia

Corvée, or corvée labour, is a term used in feudal societies. It is a type of annual tax that is payable as labour by the serf or villein for the monarch, vassal, overlord or lord of the manor. It was used to complete royal projects, to maintain roads and other public facilities, and to provide labour to maintain the feudal estate.

Imperial China also had a system of conscripting labour from the public, equated to the western corvée by many historians. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor, imposed it for public works like the Great Wall and his mausoleum. However, as the imposition was exhorbitant and punishment for failure draconian, Qin Shi Huang was criticised by many historians of China.

The corvée was abolished in France on August 4 1789, shortly after the beginning of the French Revolution, along with a number of other feudal privileges accorded to French landlords.

After the American Civil War, some southern states in the U.S. taxed its inhabitants in the form labour for public works. The system proved unsuccessful because of poor quality of work and in the 1910s Alabama became the last state to abolish it.

Today the term is also used for other forms of unpaid mandatory labour, such as that imposed by the government of Myanmar on its citizens. Nowadays most countries have restricted corvée labour to military conscriptions.