Metayage System

The Metayage system (French: métayage, Spanish: , Italian: ) is the cultivation of land for a proprietor by one who receives a proportion of the produce, as a kind of sharecropping. Another class of land tenancy in France is named , whereby the rent is paid annually in banknotes.

Métayage was available under Roman law, although it was not in widespread use. It proved useful after the emancipation of Roman slaves as the newly freed peasants had no land or cash (the same phenomenon happened in Brazil and the USA when slavery was banned).

In what is now northern Italy and southeastern France, the post Black Death population explosion of the late Middle Ages combined with the relative lack of free land made métayage an attractive system for both landowner and farmer. Once institutionalized, it continued long into the 18th Century although the base causes had been relieved by emigration to the New World..

Métayage was used early in the Middle Ages in northern France and the Rhinelands, where burgeoning prosperity encouraged large-scale vineyard planting, similar to what the ancient Romans had accomplished utilizing slave labor. The hyperinflation that followed the influx of Incan-American gold made Métayage preferable to cash tenancy and wage labour for both parties. Called complant, a laborer (in French prendeur, in Italian mezzadro) would offer to plant and tend to an uncultivated parcel of land belonging to a land owner (in French bailleur, in Italian concedente). The prendeur would have ownership of the vines and the bailleur would receive anywhere from a third to two-thirds of the vines' production in exchange for the use of his soil. This system was used extensively in planting the Champagne region.Bailleur was also used as the name for the proprietor under métayage. The contract still exists today in Switzerland.

In the eighteenth century c. 75% of leased lands in western, southern and central France were sharecropped. North of the Loire it was only common in Lorraine.

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