Life for peasants - business as usual until recently?
- Thread starter RedRalph
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North King
blech
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...yes? You can name half a dozen innovations in a given area over that period which radically change their lifestyle. Sure, they're still harvesting crops and whatnot, but that's like saying, "golly, war never changed between 1 and 1500 because most people were still using iron weapons."
ParkCungHee
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Well, to start things, there was the distribution of different crops around the world between 1500 and 1800.
Thinking from a rather Chinese perspective day to day activity would still consist of a lot of grinding labor, but things like the Archimedes screw/ extensive irrigation techniques immediately provided the ability for less labor per acre/ ability for one person to farm more. But, this would have meant farmers would have spent a greater amount of time extending and maintaining these systems. Farmers usually always raised a few chickens or pigs, but the reality meant that the common farmer often had very few/ had the ability to raise much livestock.
For China, one of the greatest changes in agriculture was the successful introduction of rice between/ around the time of Tang and Song. This meant that farmers were able to double or even triple crop in some parts of the south, and farmers in the middle of China were able to double crop with wheat and rice ( planting wheat starting incredibly early around March, and starting the rice crop in July).
For China there was a continual cycle of powerful dynasties rising leading to a reduction of feudal power, and an increase in economic/ land freedom for the peasants. As the central powers decreased (such as that of Han or Tang) a combination of new/ old nobility would rise and co-opt the independence of the peasants.
An awful lot I am forgetting, but I believe that new crop introduction/ irrigation techniques resulted in some of the largest changes to the regular lifestyle of a farmer. But, for some other areas it seems like little or no change happened. Fields were always tilled either by hand or by oxen/horses and farmers kept sowing/ planting by hand/ no matter if it were millet, corn, sorghum, wheat, or rice.
For China, one of the greatest changes in agriculture was the successful introduction of rice between/ around the time of Tang and Song. This meant that farmers were able to double or even triple crop in some parts of the south, and farmers in the middle of China were able to double crop with wheat and rice ( planting wheat starting incredibly early around March, and starting the rice crop in July).
For China there was a continual cycle of powerful dynasties rising leading to a reduction of feudal power, and an increase in economic/ land freedom for the peasants. As the central powers decreased (such as that of Han or Tang) a combination of new/ old nobility would rise and co-opt the independence of the peasants.
An awful lot I am forgetting, but I believe that new crop introduction/ irrigation techniques resulted in some of the largest changes to the regular lifestyle of a farmer. But, for some other areas it seems like little or no change happened. Fields were always tilled either by hand or by oxen/horses and farmers kept sowing/ planting by hand/ no matter if it were millet, corn, sorghum, wheat, or rice.
Verbose
Deity
As the others said, it does depend a fair bit on perspective. Drudging, back-breaking labour growing stuff and rearing things? Why yes, by all means.
What was grown, what was reared, a fair amount of technology, and for society most importantly what kind of return all this work brought would change in that pretty heft time period.
It will be a different world even for an agriculturally labouring peasant whether his work, and his fellow peasants', is able to sustain 5% of the population as an urban elite, or as much as 25% of it. That is not just about choices of crops, know-how and technology but of course also on things like access to fertilizer and quality of farmland. My native Sweden prior to 1900 was compelled to keep 90% of its population busy tilling the land to produce enough for a 10% urban population to be maintained. Denmark next door by comparison around 1800 already produced enough of an agricultural surplus to maintain a 25% urban population. That was mostly due to quality of soil.
That bit about soil quality and demographics also meant there was a bit of a cyclical pattern to things. Population takes a hit (war, pestilence etc.) it frees up the good soil for the remainder. Not too bad to be a peasant then. Then population numbers build back up, meaning newcomers are forced out on the worse soil, until the areable lands runs out, population figures stabilize at a maximum, but your average peasant (due to a for the times abundant workforce) might well find himself increasingly pauperized. Until the nect bout of war and pestilence culls the numbers. (Black Death etc.)
Italy between Roman times and the High Middle Ages apparently had a population maximum of something like 9-11 million people. So from around 900-1000 or so population figures climbed towards that maximum, which was reached sometime before the Plague of the 1340's. Initially while hard labour farming would have been more profitable than later in the cycle, when all the land good for farming was occupied. Initially choice farmland would be used first, in a situation with room to expand but not enough labour to do it immediately. At the end, all land that could bear a crop would be used, and there would still be labour about not possible to put to use tilling the land.
What was grown, what was reared, a fair amount of technology, and for society most importantly what kind of return all this work brought would change in that pretty heft time period.
It will be a different world even for an agriculturally labouring peasant whether his work, and his fellow peasants', is able to sustain 5% of the population as an urban elite, or as much as 25% of it. That is not just about choices of crops, know-how and technology but of course also on things like access to fertilizer and quality of farmland. My native Sweden prior to 1900 was compelled to keep 90% of its population busy tilling the land to produce enough for a 10% urban population to be maintained. Denmark next door by comparison around 1800 already produced enough of an agricultural surplus to maintain a 25% urban population. That was mostly due to quality of soil.
That bit about soil quality and demographics also meant there was a bit of a cyclical pattern to things. Population takes a hit (war, pestilence etc.) it frees up the good soil for the remainder. Not too bad to be a peasant then. Then population numbers build back up, meaning newcomers are forced out on the worse soil, until the areable lands runs out, population figures stabilize at a maximum, but your average peasant (due to a for the times abundant workforce) might well find himself increasingly pauperized. Until the nect bout of war and pestilence culls the numbers. (Black Death etc.)
Italy between Roman times and the High Middle Ages apparently had a population maximum of something like 9-11 million people. So from around 900-1000 or so population figures climbed towards that maximum, which was reached sometime before the Plague of the 1340's. Initially while hard labour farming would have been more profitable than later in the cycle, when all the land good for farming was occupied. Initially choice farmland would be used first, in a situation with room to expand but not enough labour to do it immediately. At the end, all land that could bear a crop would be used, and there would still be labour about not possible to put to use tilling the land.
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