form of unpaid, unfree labour, which is intermittent in nature and which lasts limited periods of time:

typically only a certain number of days' work each year.

Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of public works.[1] As such it
represents a form of levy (taxation). Unlike other forms of levy, such as a tithe, a corvée does not
require the population to have land, crops or cash. It was thus favored in historical economies in
which barter was more common than cash transactions[citation needed] or circulating money was in short
supply.
The obligation for tenant farmers to perform corvée work for landlords on private landed estates was
widespread throughout history before the Industrial Revolution. The term is most typically used in
reference to medieval and early modern Europe, where work was often expected by a feudal
landowner (of their vassals), or by a monarch of their subjects. However, the application of the term
is not limited to that time or place; corvée has existed in modern and ancient Egypt, ancient Sumer,
[2]
 ancient Israel under Solomon,[3] ancient Rome, China and Japan, everywhere in continental
Europe, the Incan civilization, Haiti under Henri Christophe and under American occupation (1915–
1934), and Portugal's African colonies until the mid-1960s. Forms of statute labour officially existed
until the early twentieth century in Canada[4][5] and the United States.[citation needed]

Contents

 1Etymology
 2History
o 2.1Austria, Holy Roman Empire, and Germany
o 2.2Egypt
o 2.3France
o 2.4Haiti
o 2.5Imperial China
o 2.6Inca Empire and modern Peru
o 2.7India
o 2.8Japan
o 2.9Madagascar
o 2.10The Philippines
o 2.11Portugal, African colonies
o 2.12Romanian principalities
o 2.13Russian Empire
o 2.14United States
 3Modern instances
 4Gallery
 5See also
 6References
 7Bibliography

Etymology[edit]
The word "corvée" itself has its origins in Rome, and reached the English language via France. In
the Late Roman Empire the citizens performed opera publica in lieu of paying taxes; often it
consisted of road and bridge work. Roman landlords could also demand a number of days' labour
from their tenants, and also from the freedmen; in the latter case the work was called opera officialis.
In Medieval Europe, the tasks that serfs or villeins were required to perform on a yearly basis for
their lords were called opera riga. Plowing and harvesting were principal activities to which this work
was applied. In times of need, the lord could demand additional work called opera
corrogata (Latin corrogare, "to requisition"). This term evolved into coroatae, then corveiae, and
finally corvée, and the meaning broadened to encompass both the regular and exceptional tasks.
This Medieval agricultural corvée was not entirely unpaid: by custom the workers could expect small
payments, often in the form of food and drink consumed on the spot. Corvée sometimes included
military conscription, and the term is also occasionally used in a slightly divergent sense to mean
forced requisition of military supplies; this most often took the form of cartage, a lord's right to
demand wagons for military transport.
Because corvée labour for agriculture tended to be demanded by the lord at exactly the same times
that the peasants needed to attend to their own plots – e.g. planting and harvest – the corvée was
an object of serious resentment. By the 16th century its use in agricultural setting was on the wane;
it became increasingly replaced by money payments for labour. It nevertheless persisted in many
areas of Europe until the French Revolution and beyond. [6] The word survives in modern usage,
meaning any kind of "inevitable or disagreeable chore". [7]

History[edit]
Austria, Holy Roman Empire, and Germany[edit]
Corvée labour (specifically: Socage) was essential in the feudal economic system of the Habsburg
monarchy – later Austrian Empire – and most German states that have belonged to the Holy Roman
Empire. Farmers and peasants were obliged to do hard agricultural work for their nobility. When a
cash economy became established, the duty was gradually replaced by the duty to pay taxes.
After the Thirty Years' War, the demands for corvée labour grew too high and the system became
dysfunctional. The official decline of corvée is linked to the abolition of serfdom by Joseph II, Holy
Roman Emperor and Habsburg ruler, in 1781. Corvée labour continued to exist, however, and was
only abolished during the revolutions of 1848, along with the legal inequality between the nobility and
common people.
Bohemia (or Czech lands) were a part of the Holy Roman Empire as well as the Habsburg monarchy
and corvée labour itself was called "robota" in Czech. In Russian and other Slavic languages,
"robota" denotes any work but in Czech, it specifically refers to unpaid unfree work, corvée labour,
serf labor, or drudgery. The Czech word was imported to a part of Germany where corvée labour
was known as Robath, and into Hungarian as robot.
The word "robota" turned out to be optimal for Czech writer Karel Čapek who, after a
recommendation by his brother Josef Čapek, introduced the word "robot" for (originally
anthropomorphic) machines that do unpaid work for their owners in his 1920 play R.U.R..

Egypt[edit]

Egyptian peasants seized for non-payment of taxes during the Pyramid Age.

From the Egyptian Old Kingdom (ca 2613 BC) onward, (the 4th Dynasty), corvée labour helped in
'government' projects; during the times of the Nile River floods, labour was used for construction
projects such as pyramids, temples, quarries, canals, roads, and other works.
The 1350 BC Amarna letters correspondence, (mostly addressed to the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh),
has one short letter, with the topic of corvée labour. Of the 382–Amarna letters, it is an example of
an undamaged letter, from Biridiya of Megiddo, entitled: "Furnishing corvée workers". See:
city Nuribta.
In later Egyptian times, during the Ptolemaic dynasty, Ptolemy V, in his Rosetta Stone Decree of 196
BC, listed 22 accomplishments for being honored and the ten rewards granted to him for his
accomplishments. The last reward listed is his making of the Rosetta Stone, (the Decree of Memphis
(Ptolemy V)), in three scripts, to be displayed to the public in the temples-(two near complete
copies).
One of the shorter accomplishments listed near the middle of the list,
He (pharaoh) decreed:—Behold, not is permitted to be pressed men of the sailors. [8]
The statement implies it was a common practice.
Until the late 19th century, many of the Egyptian Public Works including the Suez Canal[9] were built
using corvée labour.
Corvée labor in Egypt ended after 1882. Britain took control of Egypt in 1882 and opposed forced
labor on principle, but they postponed abolition until Egypt had paid off its foreign debts. It
disappeared as Egypt modernised after 1860. During the 19th century the corvée had expanded into
a national program. It was favoured for temporary projects such as building irrigation works and
dams. However Nile Delta landowners replaced it with cheap temporary labor recruited from Upper
Egypt. As a result, the corvée was used only in scattered locales, and even then there was peasant
resistance. It disappeared by the 1890s.[10]

France[edit]
In France the corvée existed until August 4, 1789, shortly after the beginning of the French
Revolution, when it was abolished along with a number of other feudal privileges of the French
landlords. In these later times it was directed mainly towards improving the roads. It was greatly
resented, and is considered an important cause of the Revolution. Counterrevolution revived the
corvée in France, in 1824, 1836, and 1871, under the name prestation; every able bodied man had
to give three days' labour or its money equivalent in order to be allowed to vote. The corvée also
continued to exist under the Seigneurial system in what had been New France, in British North
America. In 1866, during the French occupation of Mexico the French army under
Marshal Bazaine set up the corvée to provide labor for public works in place of a system of fines. [11]

Haiti[edit]
The independent Kingdom of Haiti based at Cap-Haïtien under Henri Christophe imposed a corvée
system of labor upon the common citizenry which was used for massive fortifications to protect
against a French invasion. Plantation owners could pay the government and have laborers work for
them instead. This enabled the Kingdom of Haiti to maintain a stronger economic structure than the
Republic of Haiti based in Port-au-Prince in the South under Alexandre Pétion which had a system
of agrarian reform distributing land to the laborers.
After deploying to Haiti in 1915 as an expression of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,
the United States military enforced a corvée system of labor in the interest of making improvements
to infrastructure.[12] By official estimates, more than 3,000 Haitians died during this period.

Imperial China[edit]
Imperial China had a system of conscripting labour from the public, equated to the western corvée
by many historians. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor, and following dynasties imposed it for public
works like the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, and the system of national roads and highways.
However, as the imposition was exorbitant and punishment for failure draconian, Qin Shi Huang was
resented by the people and criticized by many historians.

Inca Empire and modern Peru[edit]

The Inca empire levied tribute labor through a system called Mit'a which was perceived as a public
service to the empire. At its height of efficiency, some subsistence farmers could be called to as
much as 300 days of mit'a per year. The Spanish colonial rulers co-opted this system after
the Spanish conquest of Peru and turned it into unfree labour for natives in silver mines. The Incan
system that focused on public works found a comeback during the 1960s government of Fernando
Belaúnde Terry as a federal effort, with positive effects on Peruvian infrastructure.
Remnants of the system are still found today in modern Peru, such as the Mink'a (Spanish: faena)
communal work that is levied in Andean Quechua communities. An example is
the campesino village of Ocra close to Cusco, where each adult is required to perform 4 days of
unpaid labor per month on community projects.

India[edit]
Corvée-style labor (viṣṭi in Sanskrit) existed in ancient India and lasted til the early twentieth century.
[13]
 The practice is mentioned in the Mahabharata, where forced labor is said to accompany the
army. Manu says mechanics and artisans should be made to work for the king one day a month;
other writers advocated for one day of work every fortnight. For poorer citizens, forced labor was
seen as a way to pay their taxes since they couldn't pay ordinary taxes. Citizens, especially skilled
workers, were sometimes made to both pay ordinary taxes and work for the state. If called to work,
citizens could pay in cash or kind to discharge their obligations in some cases. In the Maurya and
post-Maurya time period, forced labor had become a regular source of income for the state.
Epigraphic evidence shows rulers granting lands and villages with and without the right to forced
labor from workers of those lands.

Japan[edit]
Corvée-style labour called yō (庸) was found in pre-modern Japan. During the 1930s, it was
common practice to import Corvée labourers from both China and Korea to work in coal mines.
[14]
 This practice continued until the end of World War II.

Madagascar[edit]
France annexed Madagascar as a colony in the late 19th century. Governor-General Gallieni then
implemented a hybrid corvée and poll tax, partly for revenue, partly for labour resources (the French
had just abolished slavery there), and partly to move away from a subsistence economy; the last
feature involved paying small amounts for the forced labour. This is a solution to problems typical
of colonialism, and the contemporary thinking behind it, are described in a 1938 work:
There was the introduction of equitable taxation, so vital from the financial point of view; but also of
such great political, moral and economic importance. It was the tangible proof of French authority
having come to stay; it was the stimulus required to make an inherently lazy people work. Once they
had learned to earn they would begin to spend, whereby commerce and industry would develop.
The corvée in its old form could not be continued, yet workmen were required both by the colonists,
and by the Government for its vast schemes of public works. The General therefore passed a
temporary law, in which taxation and labour were combined, to be modified according to country, the
people, and their mentality. Thus, for instance, every male among the Hovas, from the age of sixteen
to sixty, had either to pay twenty-five francs a year, or give fifty days of labour of nine hours a day,
for which he was to be paid twenty centimes, a sum sufficient to feed him. Exempted from taxation
and labour were soldiers, militia, Government clerks, and any Hova who knew French, also all who
had entered into a contract of labour with a colonist. Unfortunately, this latter clause lent itself to
tremendous abuses. By paying a small sum to some European, who nominally engaged them,
thousands bought their freedom from work and taxation by these fictitious contracts, to be free to
continue their lazy, unprofitable existence. To this abuse an end had to be made.
The urgency of a sound fiscal system was of tremendous importance to carry out all the schemes for
the welfare and development of the island, and this demanded a local budget. The goal to be kept in
view was to make the colony, as soon as possible, self-supporting. This end the Governor-
General succeeded in achieving within a few years.[15]
The Philippines