https://macropaperwarehouse.com/authors/andrea-matranga/Andrea MatrangaHugo -- gohugo.ioen-ushttps://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/all-along-the-watchtower-military-landholders-and-serfdom-consolidation-in-early-modern-russia/https://macropaperwarehouse.com/papers/all-along-the-watchtower-military-landholders-and-serfdom-consolidation-in-early-modern-russia/<p>This paper investigates the origins of serfdom in early modern Russia, arguing that the institution consolidated primarily through political economy dynamics between the crown and a landholding military class, rather than from economic fundamentals such as labor scarcity, land-labor ratios, or grain trade opportunities. The central argument is that the prolonged defense of Russia&rsquo;s southern frontier against Crimean Tatar nomadic raids generated a class of military landholders who possessed both the coercive capacity and the political leverage to press the state into restricting peasant labor mobility.</p>