The use of documents as mechanisms of control made serfdom’s legal restrictions on peasant movements easier to enforce. These examples demonstrate clearly that restrictions on personal freedom of movement related directly to two central questions facing burgeoning modern states: (1) how the economic advantages available in a particular area were to be divided up, whether these involved access to work or to poor relief; and (2) who would be required to perform military service, and how they would be constrained to do so.
