The analysis, in south-german sources between the 11th and the 15th centuries, of what is usually considered as labour rent, shows that a considerable transformation occurred between the 12th and the 13th centuries. This change does not only consist in a drastic reduction of corvées labour from 3 days a week to 3 days a year, but also in a shift of the social meaning of the labour rent: whereas the post-carolingian manor was characterized by a servitium which encompassed mostly labour rents but also dues in kind and in money, the late-medieval lordship makes a clear distinction between labour rents and all other kinds of rents, and thus allows corvées labour to symbolize seignorial domination - hence to be a central symbol though practically from no more importance. The problem is therefore to know what replaced labour rents as the central mechanism of seignorial domination. If it is generally assumed that dues in kind replaced labour rents, the analysis of price series, as it uncovered phenomenas contradictory to the neo-classical theory (weakness of the link between production and prices, lack of "soudure"), leds to the hypothesis of a control of monetary transactions by landlords. Hence dues in kind and in money do not appear any more as the mechanism of seignorial domination but as the condition of a domination realized through the monetary circulation of products. The rise of the market can thereby not be explained as a shift toward a capitalist system, but as the result of the internal dynamic of the feudal system - a dynamic which allows it to reorganize itself and to improve its efficiency. Indeed domination, as it does not any more occur through the direct control of production but through the indirect control of circulation, has become invisible to tenants.
