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MARK SYSTEM

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Originally appearing in Volume V17, Page 736 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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MARK See also:SYSTEM , the name given to a social organization which rests on the See also:common See also:tenure and common cultivation of the See also:land by small See also:groups of freemen. Both politically and economically the mark was an See also:independent community, and its earliest members were doubtless See also:blood relatives. In its origin the word is the same as mark or See also:march (q.v.), a boundary. First used in this sense, it was then applied to the land cleared by the settlers in the See also:forest areas of See also:Germany, and later it was used for the system which prevailed—to what extent or for how See also:long is uncertain—in that See also:country. It is generally assumed that the lands of the mark were divided into three portions, forest, meadow and arable, and as in the manorial system which was later in See also:vogue elsewhere, a system of rotation of crops in two, three or even six See also:fields was adopted, each member of the community having rights of pasture in the forest and the meadow, and a certain See also:share of the arable. The mark was a self-governing community. Its affairs were ordered by the markmen who met together at stated times in the markmoot. Soon, however, their freedom was encroached upon, and in the course of a very See also:short See also:time it disappeared altogether. The extent and nature of the mark system has been, and still is, a subject of controversy among historians. One school holds that it was almost universal in Germany; that it was, in fact, the typical 'See also:Teutonic method of holding and cultivating the land. From Germany, it is argued, it was introduced by the See also:Angle and Saxon invaders into See also:England, where it wasextensively adopted, being the See also:foundation upon which the prevailing land system in See also:early England was built. An opposing school denies entirely the existence of the mark system, and a See also:French writer, Fustel de Coulanges, refers to it contemptuously as " a figment of the Teutonic See also:imagination." This view is based largely upon the supposition that common ownership of the land was practically unknown among the early Germans, and was by no means See also:general among the early See also:English.

The truth will doubtless be found to See also:

lie somewhere between the two extremes. The See also:complete mark system was certainly not prevalent in Anglo-Saxon England, nor did it exist very widely, or for any very long See also:period in Germany, but the system which did prevail in these two countries contained elements which are also found in the mark system. The See also:chief authority on the mark system is G. L. von See also:Maurer, who has written Einleitung zur Geschichte der Mark- See also:Hof- Dorf- and Stadtverfassung and der offentlichen Gewalt (See also:Munich, 1854; new ed., See also:Vienna, 1896), and Geschichte der Markenverfassung in Deutschland (See also:Erlangen, 1856). See also N. D. Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problemes de l'histoire (1885); and a See also:translation from the same writer's See also:works called The Origin of See also:Property in Land, by M. See also:Ashley. This contains an See also:introductory See also:chapter by See also:Professor W. J. Ashley. Other authorities are K.

Lamprecht, Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben See also:

im Mittelalter (See also:Leipzig, 1886) ; R. See also:Schroder, Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1902) ; and W. See also:Stubbs, Constitutional See also:History of England, vol. i. (1891).

End of Article: MARK SYSTEM

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