A shift in occupational structure towards non-agricultural activities is widely viewed as a key
component of European economic growth during the early modern ‘Little Divergence’. Yet
little is known about this process in those parts of eastern-central Europe that experienced the
early modern ‘second serfdom’, the massive increase in the institutional powers of landlords
over the rural population. We analyze non-agricultural occupations under the second serfdom
using data on 6,983 Bohemian villages in 1654. Bohemia resembled other eastern-central,
nordic and southern European economies in having a lower percentage of non-agricultural
activities than western Europe. But Bohemian serfs engaged in a wide array of industrial and
commercial activities whose intensity varied significantly with village characteristics. Nonagricultural
activity showed a significant positive relationship with village size, pastoral
agriculture, sub-peasant social strata, Jews, freemen, female household heads, and village
mills, and a significant negative relationship with arable agriculture and urban
agglomerations. Non-agricultural activity was also positively associated with landlord
presence in the village, although the relationship turned negative at higher values and
landlord presence reversed the positive effects of female headship and mills. Under the
second serfdom, landlords encouraged serf activities from which they could extort rents,
while stifling others which threatened their interests
