This chapter assesses the significance of 'serfdom' during and beyond the transition from Lusignan to Venetian Cyprus, and aims to analyse the reasons behind its survival into the sixteenth century. Despite the critical views coming from the administrators, Venice upheld the practice of forced labour and the main characteristics of the Lusignan agrarian system were preserved. Seeking to repopulate the island with immigrants, King James sent a desperate appeal to Venice for settlers from Venetian colonies to be sent to Cyprus: his request was turned down and he was told to look for other sources, turning his attention to refugees from places under Ottoman occupation. In this respect, keeping a close eye on peasant marriage was important, as dependent peasants could pursue upward social movement by marrying someone of higher status or someone who lived under different lordship with better opportunities.
Chapter 1. Rural elites in medieval Valencia
Chapter 3. Lordship and peasant status in Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus
Chapter 8. Access versus influence: peasants in court in the late medieval Low Countries
Chapter 9. Famine in medieval England
Chapter 10. Climate, pathogens and mammals: England in the age of emerging diseases, c. 1275–1362
Chapter 11. Peasant farmers and their farmworkers in later medieval England
Chapter 12. Rural households and the market for commodities in the later Middle Ages
Chapter 13. The commercialization of agriculture in the Mediterranean
Chapter 14. Tenure and the land market in northeastern England: a comparative perspective
Chapter 15. Aspects of farm labour in medieval Iceland: gender and childhood c. 1100–1400
Chapter 16. Technological capacity of women in the High Middle Ages
Chapter 17. The economic opportunities of rural women in late medieval Flanders
Chapter 18. New interdisciplinary approaches to life, land, and environment at Herstmonceux
Chapter 19. Mediterranean irrigation
Chapter 20. The pot, the knife and the ring; an archaeology of later medieval material culture
Chapter 21. A landscape transformed: the English countryside during the long thirteenth century