This chapter discusses the concept of wage labour and its history and proposes a definition of wage labour that includes the provision of remuneration in exchange for labour power, but also emphasizes the labourers’ continued free status and their concomitant ability to influence the price of their labour power, and thus the level of their wages – thereby allowing the price of labour power to be set on the market. From this follows discussion of the role of wage labour in debates on the ancient economy – in part asking which workers can be seen as wage labourers – and, further, of how paid military service can constitute a form of wage labour. It is argued that for soldiers to constitute wage labourers, their service needs to be voluntary, of temporary nature, and remunerated in coin or in kind.

In this concluding discussion, key aspects of Hellenistic economic development are discussed and related to the presence of military wage labourers. In particular, the presence of paid soldiers and a market for labour are connected to the increased production of goods and services for the market, to the period’s rapid and significant monetization, and to the apparent rise in private wealth generation and profit-seeking behaviour. As a key part of this argument, military wage labourers are discussed as the driving force behind the Hellenistic world’s budding market economy.

In this chapter, we explore this possibility when it comes to the three most known exploitative work forms slavery, serfdom and wage labour. It turns out that they all have an attached ideology, explaining why respective way of organising work is the only morally good and therefore meaningful one. Each work form is portrayed as the single one being beneficial to all involved and thereby meaningful to all. Slavery is good for slave owners as well as slaves, serfdom for feudal lords as well as serfs, wage labour for capitalists as well as wage labourers. Each ideology also says that all other work forms are morally reprehensible and therefore meaningless. The aim of the chapter is to illustrate that the theorisation of the concept of work in the way we suggest opens up the possibility of comparative studies of the meaning of different work forms.

Early modern Europe was predominantly rural and agriculture was the most common form of production. Yet women’s contribution to agricultural work is relatively neglected in studies of women’s work and remains an area of discussion and disagreement among historians. This chapter sets out to tackle misconceptions around women’s agricultural work. It does so first by critically examining the main areas for debate; secondly by offering a survey of women’s work in different parts of Europe; and finally through two detailed case studies (of Norway and south-west England). The case studies not only highlight women’s contribution to agricultural work in detail but also suggest a range of research approaches to uncovering women’s work. We find that women’s work in agriculture was often substantial and was varied and adaptable. For instance, in coastal Norway and some mountainous regions women did the majority of agricultural work because men were absent working elsewhere; in eastern Europe women’s labour was as important as men’s; in south-west England women contributed about a third of labour required in agriculture; while in some economies, such as central Spain in the eighteenth-century, women were largely absent from agricultural work because they could earn more from rural textile production.

Chapter 1 sets out a new sociological model for analysing the relationship between agricultural books, knowledge and labour in early modern Britain. The first section argues that the major socio-economic trends in early modern agriculture, giving rise to agrarian capitalism, necessarily involved a concentration in managerial control and therefore required a change in the social system of knowledge. The second section explores recent sociological approaches to books, knowledge and labour. It concludes by summarising how these sociological insights can be applied to early modern agriculture to develop a new framework for understanding the cumulative social impact of printed information and advice. It establishes the basic research question pursued in later chapters: How did books contribute to new divisions of labour and new ways of controlling knowledge?