Life of European peasants in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries

Life of European Peasants in the 15th and 17th Centuries

In geological terms, two hundred years is just a blink of the eye, but in social and cultural terms, two centuries can make a great deal of difference in the lives of people. By any standard, life in fifteenth century Europe was not an easy matter, nor was it generally long-lived. While things were beginning to change by the seventeenth century, there were still profound social, political and economic issues that remained firmly in place. To help shed some new light into the lives of people during these periods in history, this paper provides an analysis of the life of European peasants in the fifteen and seventeenth centuries, followed by a summary of the research in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Fifteenth Century Europe. Fifteenth century Europe was characterized by a feudalist system in which peasants performed labor in a largely subsistence economy; in this environment, peasants may not have ever traveled more than a few miles from their homes. A good description of the main features of feudalism is provided by Kheng (1994) in this regard: "A subject peasantry; widespread use of the service tenement (i.e. The fief) instead of a salary, which was out of the question; the supremacy of a class of specialized warriors; ties of obedience and protection which bind man to man and, within the warrior class, assume the distinctive form called vassalage" (243). The encyclopedic entry for the term shows that is was derived from the Latin word feudum (fief); however, the term only came into use after the seventeenth century and was unknown to people in the fifteenth century. In this regard, "The term feudalism has been used most broadly to refer to medieval society as a whole and most narrowly to describe relations between lords and vassals" (Woloch and Popkin 3).

Despite its disadvantages from a contemporary perspective, the feudal system did provide European peasants with a diet that "was certainly more balanced than those of other periods, both before and after. A balanced diet of cereals, pulses, and meats underlay a stable social and economic system that allowed for population growth" (Super 166). There were some fundamental social changes taking place during this period in European history, though, that would have far-reaching implications for the peasantry. According to Pomeranz (2000), "Western European peasants won the first round of a struggle with their lords in the century or so after the Plague, establishing their freedom from forced labor; eastern European peasants lost, and the ruling class lived for centuries thereafter by squeezing peasants harder, without ever modernizing agriculture or introducing labor-saving innovations" (emphasis added) (14). In reality, feudalism was a major constraint to the development of modern concepts of property ownership and to the emergence of an unrestricted market in land; however, the elimination of feudalism did not necessarily affect the ownership of land or the level of ordinary rents and leases. For example, according to Woloch and Popkin (2006), "Seigneurs lost certain kinds of traditional income, but they remained landowners and landlords. While all peasants gained in dignity and status, only the landowning peasants came out substantially ahead economically (emphasis added) (256). Elsewhere in western Europe, another round of struggles resulted, with lords who now owned only the land resorting to managing it so as to maximize profits, a process that was frequently facilitated by removing unproductive or "excess" tenants (Pomeranz 14).

Seventeeth Century Europe. By the seventeenth century, an economic transformation was underway in western Europe; however, most eastern European peasants were largely outside the cash economy. One author reports that in eastern Europe, "Townspeople were few, and a relative handful of rich lords did not by themselves create a very large market.... In general, the further East one got, the slower new techniques were to spread. Thus there were supply-side reasons for grain exports from preemancipation eastern Europe to stagnate at a level far below what was ecologically possible" (Pomeranz 258). While there were distinct differences involved in these regions, there were some commonalities as well.

According to Dean, Hann, Overton and Whittle (2004), there remains a paucity of studies concerning the role of women and early economic history based on a misperception that women either did not have a role in the wider economy or that women were affected by economic and social change in the same way as men. An early study that challenged these assumptions conducted of women's work in the seventeenth century divided production into three co-existing types:

Domestic industry." This type of work was done exclusively for the use of the family;

Family industry." This type of work was done out at home as well, but with the goal of selling or exchanging goods;

Capitalist industry." This type of work was done in exchange for a wage payment (Dean, Hann, Overton & Whittle 4).

The respective work roles performed by men and women, as well as of unmarried and married women, varied considerably depending on the type of production involved; however, these authors note that all peasants were particularly affected by the transformation to capitalist industry, which took the work out of the family home (Dean et al. 4). Furthermore, while the transformation from the 15th century subsistence economy was clearly underway during this period in European history, both types of economies were still found and managed to co-exist just as the domestic, family and capitalist industries frequently co-existed. In addition, by the seventeenth century, the higher incidence of adoption of new material goods in urban places combined with the intense close proximity of people in urban regions encouraged many European peasants "to turn inwards and make their living spaces as pleasant as possible as a compensation for the inconveniences of town life" (Dean et al. 167). Along these lines, according to Super (2002), there was also a transition taking place throughout Europe - and particularly France - during the seventeenth century that represented a change in diet based on dietetics and nutritional needs alone to one that also considered taste and preparation importance components of eating.