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What have peasant societies had in common?
When asking the question what have peasant societies had in common one first has to define a peasant society. Hilton defined them as ‘primary producers in ancient, medieval and modern civilisations’. It could be assumed that the definition of peasantry consequently would be so wide ranging to make it hard to find what all peasant societies have had in common. Furthermore, types of food production have been so diverse that they could hardly be carried out by people with enough in common to be acknowledged as members of the same class. Yet clear characteristics of such a class, distinguishing it on the one hand from tribal food gatherers and pastoral nomads, and on the other from capitalist or collective farmers and agricultural wage labourers, can be seen to have existed over a long period, in states with widely differing political systems. For example, peasants share in common illiteracy, a lack of rights and peasant societies are dominated by agriculture. There is an ongoing debate amongst Historians as to the definition of a peasant. The conventional definition contains claims that peasants typically are farmers who live in the countryside who provide their own goods. All peasant societies have had these three characteristics in common. It also appears that peasants are conservative, strong believers in custom, reluctant to move and communally harmonious. However, it is debateable as to whether they are politically harmless and whether they belong to families determined to support all their members. The classical definition is wrong to claim peasants live in a world away from power and politics. Many Historians are opposed to the classical definition such as Wolf. He views the peasants role as ‘the production of a fund of rent’. He implies peasants cannot be wholly separated from other communities. Wolf’s ‘unconventional’ definition claims Peasants are not self-supportive, depending on the world around them. They suffer the demands of the non-peasant world, such as landlords. The correct definition of a peasant contains elements of both definitions and therefore the characteristics peasant societies have in common are between the two definitions. A common feature of peasant life appears the association of peasant families ‘in larger communities, hamlets or villages’. Life in a closely organised community appears the norm. This pattern was established in the late Bronze Age. The majority of peasants have lived in small, close-knit communities huddled against exterior danger. Something else peasant societies have in common is that often the peasant communities they live in are ‘not a community of equals’. Southern said 'there were great differences in the fortunes of peasants'. Hilton said the ‘polarisation of fortunes…could not simply have resulted from competition in production for the market’. This suggests that peasants have in common a desire to improve their economic position. Hilton defined a peasant economy as one ‘in which the large majority of the population consists of families who cultivate crops and rear animals on their individual holdings’. The primary function of production for peasants has always been to provide the subsistence needs of the family itself. All peasants have this need in common. However, a society 'composed of nothing but peasants is, if not inconceivable, absent from the historical record’. All Peasants have in common the fact they have had to support aristocracies, priests, craftsmen, merchants and others who were not agricultural producers, such as city dwellers. This has happened since Abbasidian Baghdad in 750CE. As a consequence of this support peasant holdings had to produce more than just the subsistence needs of the peasant family. The surplus has always been transferred ‘directly or through the market to other social groups’. Other classes have always ‘lived off the surplus product of peasant labour’. An example of the ruling classes seeking to maintain this relationship can be seen in Tsarist Russia. Russia's extremely basic administrative structure and arguably the Orthodox Church maintained the status-quo in which the peasants were seen as the cheap part of society and not expected to progress further up the system. Wolf says the peasants provide the ‘food and income’ for the aristocracy and that in modern societies the ‘peasants have to feed the industrial workers’. Both types of society make the peasant ‘economically useless’. Southern said that peasant societies are 'also everywhere aristocratic societies'. The unequal link between the peasants and the rest of society has necessitated the peasants involvement in a ‘wide network of relationships, which inevitably generate antagonism’. This suggests that contrary to the classical definition the peasants are not isolated from society and furthermore that they have resented the unequal relationship. Additional evidence of peasant antagonism is Hilton’s claims that ‘landownership was not the only basis for the power of the aristocracy’ over the peasantry, with ‘jurisdictional control backed by armed force’ also necessary. It appears that peasants have in common bitterness from having to produce for others. The 'Song of the Husbandman' says of the hayward, the bailiff and the King : The most interesting debate as to what peasant societies have in common is the level of their political power and interest. While some Historians claim the peasants are a political force others say they are ‘politically harmless’. Some Historians such as Hilton say that ‘recently, the most ancient social class of all, the peasantry, has come to the front of the stage as a leading actor in the drama of change’. Others claim that as well as not having any political power, peasants are not interested in politics. Carlo Levi, a native of Turin, banished to the village of Gagliano by Mussolini in the 1930s said that none of the peasants felt entitled to power. He says ‘They were not Fascists, just as they would never have been Conservatives or Socialists or anything else’. Levi said ‘such things have nothing to do with them’. Levi says of peasants ‘they belonged to another world’, which reflects the classical definition of the peasants. He claims they ‘saw no sense in’ politics. The state meant ‘the fellows from Rome’ who don’t want us to live like human beings’. Levi says the peasants think of the state as an inescapable evil like they think of ‘hailstorms, malaria, landslides and drought’. He says that to a peasant ‘the whole structure’ is unintelligible and ‘there is no reason why the peasants should ever care to understand it’. There are many examples concerning peasants at various times and places which contradict his statements, such as the case of the Stolypin land reforms which were instituted by Nicholas II after the 1905 revolution in Russia to appease the ‘dark masses’ after 1905. The peasants must have had some political power to make the reactionary Tsar allow peasants to own land individually. The Tsarist regime aimed to stabilise the countryside by creating a class of prosperous, conservative, small farmers that would support the autocracy. The Tsar was worried about the peasants enough to make concessions to them; hence they had a degree of political power. They were not politically harmless. This example contradicts Levi’s statement that the peasants ‘only defence against the state is resignation’ because their actions led to reform. Peasants also opposed the state in the Ukraine in 1929. They refused to have their produce requisitioned by the Communists and protested by burning their crops and slaughtering their cattle. This opposition led to millions of Ukranian peasants dying of hunger and execution. This does not suggest that Levi’s statement ‘what had the peasants got to do with Power, government and State?’ can be applied to peasants as a whole. Large-scale peasant support was seen as vital in the victory of the CCP in the second revolution in China. Other examples could include the 1514 Dózsa Rebellion, an unsuccessful peasant revolt in Hungary or the Leuenbe peasant revolt at Bern in 1653. These uprisings suggest that Levi’s claims the state to a peasant is ‘more distant than heaven’ cannot be applied to all peasants. Peasant actions have affected states and hence, while peasant societies have not always or perhaps never possessed much political power (few peasants have ever belonged to a political party), it is wrong to assume peasants have ‘political harmlessness’ in common. The peasant community is typically a rigid structure. The ‘basic organisms of peasant communities’ such as the family holding, the hamlet, the village, were deeply rooted, having evolved ‘institutions, common practices and a consciousness of their own interests’. Peasant societies have in common a deep conservatism. For example, many peasant societies have used the same basic tools like an Ox and yolk plough for many centuries. Reasons for this conservatism come from the peasant communities' isolation from the rest of society and their lack of education. Also, they do not travel and therefore do not see alternative ways of life. Whilst naturally over hundreds of years the close-knit peasant communities have changed, it is their ‘resistance to change’ that has commanded attention in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially as virtually all the rest of society has been committed to rapid alteration. The solidarity of peasant communities can be seen medieval social history. It showed itself in many ways, most strikingly, of course as a measure of defence against outsiders, invaders or oppressors, such as for example, (some 1300s example). The vast majority of peasant societies have a devotion to religion in common. As early as 250BC the peasantry worshiped trees and mountains in India. Many people think that the peasants were bound by religion and that the rulers used it to condition them to settle for their position in society. Hilton said that in 13th century England ‘the aristocrats considered both their own and the peasant class to be permanent, God-given arrangements of hereditary status’. In spite of the widely different physical environments between peasant societies they share a ‘similarity of social structure’, basically, family labour forces. Blum said ‘the production unit is normally the family’. However, the families have varied in size. ‘Technical and economic requirements’ have tended to govern family size, which has varied from ‘large three-generational extended families down to the nuclear unit of one set of parents’. This deeply rooted sense of family extended to family property rights in the peasant holding being regarded as hereditary - the one thing all peasants have believed in was the land. Some Historians have tended to minimise the deep sense of hereditary family right in the peasant holding such as EA Kosminsky. He emphasised the undoubted fact that in the thirteenth century, holdings tended to be broke up. It appears that many peasants had hereditary inheritance of land in common. The fact that peasants are generally defined only in terms of their function suggests that they are not viewed as important by many. It would be interesting to investigate whether the way in which peasant societies ended was the same. I would conclude by asserting
that peasant societies have a lot in common, although there are always
exceptions. I think this uniformity is due to the simple, conservative nature of
their society compared to other groups. For example, what have all cities or all
Christians had in common? – far less than peasants appear to have had. I think
that much of the classical definition of peasants is correct, although I think
that peasants are not separated from the outside and have a degree of political
power. Bibliography
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