Today a peasant-labour force of 1.3m has worked on 7,000-odd 7,000-oddstruction sites that have killed, in a hushed-up way, between 2,000 and 3,000 migiant workers a year.
Forced peasant labour was abolished by Emperor Joseph II in 1789 but restored by Emperor Leopold II.
Very little skilled labour was required to build motte and bailey castles, which made them very attractive propositions if forced peasant labour was available, as was the case after the Norman invasion of England.
This major redistribution of land represented the end of the Haciendas system, in which an impoverished labour force (of peasants) was attached to rural states.
In the future, in the context of the promotion of modernization in agriculture, acceleration of land transfer and the ongoing expansion in college enrolment, the population of peasants and its proportion in the labour force will continue to shrink.
Moreover, this suggests a greater consumption potential among peasants, working class, and old middle classes, who together constitute more than 80% of the entire Chinese labour force (see Table 1).
The huge loss in population deprived the aristocracy of much of its labour force, which led to the abandonment of farms and the decline of many nobles into the peasant class.
A young labour force has new aspirations.
Agriculture employs most of the labour force.
To profit from this demand, nobles and other landlords took back peasant holdings, expanded their own cultivation, and made heavy demands for peasant labour services.
They established feudal systems based on peasant labour that lasted until the sweeping land reforms of the mid-20th century.
