Who were serfs loyal to?

Serfdom is a form of slavery in which the serfs are considered to be part of the land upon which they live. They have no right to move someplace else, but neither does anybody else have the right to move them. When the land is sold, the serfs go with it.

The owner of the land is entitled to whatever the land can produce, and that includes whatever the serfs can produce.

I suppose you could say that they work for the landowner, but that's pretty far removed from what we talk about today when "work" usually means the same as "employment." I think it would be more accurate to say that the serfs worked for themselves, but the landowner had the right (and the might) to take as much of their produce he wanted.

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I would agree with the above in large part. But to say serfs were slaves is not quite accurate, because they were free except for the fact that they could not leave the manor and had to pay rent. And to say that the landowner had the right to as much of the production as he wanted is not true - the amount was usually stipulated. Also, serfs sometimes worked for money, and this was especially true of those serfs who were not agricultural.

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