Manor Farm

The Renaissance manor farm is the agricultural equivalent of the great trading house — a large enterprise managed for profit rather than subsistence. Under the feudal structure persisting across Europe into the sixteenth century, the lord's demesne was cultivated by dependent tenant labor under a professional estate manager, with output flowing upward to finance military and administrative expenditure. Advances in soil chemistry, selective livestock breeding, and water-powered mills made the well-managed manor farm significantly more productive per hectare than its medieval predecessor. English enclosures and German Gutsherrschaft both reflect the same impulse: consolidating agricultural land for maximum extractable surplus. In the game the manor farm provides substantially higher food and income than the farmstead. It is the agricultural foundation of a Renaissance military campaign — musketeers and cannon cannot be sustained on subsistence farming.