The zadruga, or household community, more common in Servia (q.v.), survives to a small extent in Bosnia and Herzegovina; but, as a rule, the tenure of land resembles, the system called metayage.
Besides the small farms there is the zadruga, a form of community which appears to date from prehistoric times, and mainly survives along the Bosnian frontier, though tending to disappear everywhere and to be replaced by rural co-operation.
Under the zadruga system, each homestead or cluster of cottages is occupied by a group of families connected by blood and dwelling together on strictly communistic principles.
In both countries rural society was based on the old-fashioned household community, or zadruga, which still survives in the territories that formed the Military Frontier, though everywhere tending to disappear and be replaced by individual ownership. The Croatian peasantry are least prosperous in the riverside districts, where marshfevers prevail, and especially beside the Save.
The zadruga system of land tenure was artificially kept in existence (see Servia).