Borough landed estate of Sušice. From borough villages to abolition of corvee and its results

Jan Lhoták Borough landed estate of Sušice. From borough villages to abolition of corvee and its results (abstract) The aim of this doctoral thesis lies in its contribution to a complex problem of economic development of Czech landowning towns in the post-White Mountain period. The research is focused on a selected problem of town feudalisation, i. e. analysis of the importance as well as extent of their seignorial activities. Czech historiography has dealt with such a topic rather marginally, because towns used to be understood as a strange element in feudal environment, which on the contrary created conditions for social modernisation. Aristocratic (chamber) or church landed estates used to be studied as a matter of priority. Introductory chapter balances current research on the topic of borough landed estates. General survey of the research in Western Europe is presented first. Seignorial ambitions of towns are part and parcel of a vast outlined study of mutual relation between the town and the country. The topic has already been applicated in archaeology and medievistics. For the Early Modern period the research has been fragmented between agrarian and urban history, the methods of which approach the topic with various results (above all the work of Adolf Zeman about Pilsen and Rokycany in the 18th..