La Corvea Real consistía en la obligación de trabajar gratuitamente en las tierras del noble, faraón o señor feudal. Fue adoptada como más conveniente que la esclavitud al surgir los varios tipos de feudos, - aunque no surgió en la Edad Media esta modalidad de pago -, ya que al morir un esclavo había que comprar otro, y en la corvea se involucraba a las familias y su descendencia a pagar con trabajo los servicios y deudas contraídos con su señor feudal, por permitir trabajar la tierra, usar el molino, los ríos, etc. También en un sentido práctico, se observaba que el esclavo era un mal trabajador, ya que su rendimiento se estimaba bajo en todas partes, pero en la corvea su trabajo era de mejor calidad, y como tenía que pagar las rentas, será de su propio trabajo del que dependerá el excedente (al cual estaba sujeta su vida) de productos.

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Corvée is a form of unpaid, unfree labor, which is intermittent in nature and for limited periods of time: typically only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of public works. As such it represents a form of levy (taxation). Unlike other forms of levy, such as a tithe, a corvée does not require the population to have land, crops or cash. It was thus favored in historical economies in which barter was more common than cash transactions and/or circulating money is in short supply. The obligation for tenant farmers to perform corvée work for landlords on private landed estates has been widespread throughout history. The term is most typically used in reference to medieval and early modern Europe, where work was often expected by a feudal landowner (of their vassals), or by a monarch of their subjects. However, the application of the term is not limited to that time or place; corvée has existed in modern and ancient Egypt, ancient Israel under Solomon, ancient Rome, China and Japan, everywhere in continental Europe, the Incan civilization, Haiti under Henri Christophe and under American occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), and Portugal's African colonies until the mid-1960s. Forms of statute labour existed until the early twentieth century in the United States and Canada.

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