The Cycle of Household Structure in Early Modern Peasant Society

This study aims to discuss the significant role of “peasant society” in understanding the economic history of both modern and early modern Japan.Independent peasant households proliferated in Japan in the seventeenth century, and from around the turn of the eighteenth century onwards they underwent a transformation into entities calledie,which owned family properties and bore responsibility for conveying these properties to the next generation. Although the development of the market economy also contributed to maintaining and activating the peasant society, the function of the labour market was strongly influenced by the strategy of peasant households to pursue the optimal utilization of slack labour generated by the seasonally fluctuating labour demand from agriculture. Under these constraints, peasant households tended to deliver non-agricultural employment opportunities to their members, forming a kind of barrier against mobilizing family workers outside the household. These barriers were supported by region-based industrial development such as a weaving industry adopting the putting-out system most suitable to the requirements of peasant households. Rural-based capital accumulation together with the workings of the regional financial markets contributed to maintaining particular peasant household behaviours by supporting region-based industrial development, which featured in Japan's path of economic and social development from the early modern to the modern period.

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Early Modern Siam as a Mainly Urban Society

Modern Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0026749x16000123 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 51 (2) ◽

pp. 235-267

Author(s):

CHRIS BAKER ◽

PASUK PHONGPAICHIT

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Rural Society ◽

Urban Society ◽

Urban Residence ◽

Urban Transition ◽

Peasant Society ◽

Hunting And Gathering ◽

Cultural Preference ◽

Part Time ◽

Urban Places

AbstractEarly modern Siam is usually portrayed as a predominantly rural, peasant society. This picture is assumed from the worldwide trend of rural-to-urban transition, rather than from study of Siam itself. The available sources have a striking lack of any evidence on rural society. This article explores the possibility that this absence may reflect a real-world difference, not just perception. Unlike in temperate zones, enough food could be produced without dedicating the efforts of a majority of the population to agriculture. Rice could be grown by part-time ‘commuter’ agriculture, and other foods found by everyday hunting and gathering. Cultural preference based on the instinct for survival may have reinforced an affinity for urban residence. The scant data on Siam's demography suggest the majority of the population lived in urban places. Descriptions of the capital portray a commercial and industrial centre, capable of employing many in non-agricultural pursuits. The state systems for raising resources were tailored to an urban rather than a rural society. While the scarcity of data on early Siam makes any ‘proof’ impossible, the thesis that Siam was a predominantly urban society is worth exploring. From the early eighteenth century on, Siam was subject to a process of ‘ruralization’ that created the familiar peasant society that historians have projected back into the past.

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Country Politics and Agrarian Systems: Land grab on Bengal frontiers, 1750–1800

Modern Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0026749x16000731 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 51 (2) ◽

pp. 319-349

Author(s):

DAVID LUDDEN

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Early Modern ◽

Urban Expansion ◽

Agricultural Expansion ◽

Land Grabbing ◽

Land Grab ◽

Accumulation By Dispossession ◽

Peasant Society ◽

Agrarian Systems ◽

India And China

AbstractThe forceful expropriation of land, labour, water, and other productive resources is fundamental for processes of agricultural expansion and intensification. What is known today as ‘land grab’ was theorized by Marx as ‘primitive accumulation’ and by David Harvey as ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Today it is most prominent and controversial in Africa, where the governments of India and China are major perpetrators; and it also drives most contemporary urban expansion in India and China. This article deploys David Washbrook's idea of ‘country politics’ to explore the process of land grabbing in the early-modern expansion of agrarian Bengal, where local peasant society and worldwide imperial political economy came together to expand frontiers of farming in what is now the Sylhet District of Bangladesh.

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From Peasant Society to Class Society: Some Aspects of Family and Class in a Northwest German Protoindustrial Parish, 17th-19th Centuries

Journal of Family History ◽

10.1177/036319909201700205 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 183-199 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Jürgen Schlumbohm

Keyword(s):

Household Structure ◽

Real Property ◽

New Class ◽

Northwest Germany ◽

Class Society ◽

Peasant Society ◽

Demographic Behavior ◽

Economic Ties ◽

Social Differentials ◽

Selection Of

In the parish of Belm, Northwest Germany, population trebled between 1650 and 1830, but the number of peasant holdings remained stable. A new class of people without real property came into existence. Protoindustrialization in the form of linen production supplemented incomes from agriculture. This article outlines social differentials in demographic behavior and household structure. It looks at social mobility and the selection of mates. Furthermore, it explores the economic and non-economic ties that bound together propertied and propertyless families. Finally, it asks how important kinship was for propertied peasants and for landless people. It suggests that kin relationships across classes or within class may have been a factor relevant in the formation of classes.

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The English Medieval Village Community and Its Decline

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1086/386063 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

pp. 407-429 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Christopher Dyer

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Central Place ◽

Peak Period ◽

Village Community ◽

Peasant Society ◽

Social And Economic Development ◽

The Subject ◽

The Village

The village community has a shadowy existence in historical writing about the English Middle Ages. With a few honorable exceptions, scholars have been reluctant to assign to the village any central place in their account of medieval society. In some cases it is ignored or given such small emphasis as to imply that it was of little importance, and it is still necessary to provide evidence for the existence of the community and its organization.This essay is concerned first with questions of definition and locating the village community's role in society and government. Second, the problem of the community's decline will be investigated, examining the relationships between villagers, mainly in the peak period of social and economic development around 1300, and then exploring the evidence for deterioration in the unity of the village after 1350. This is intended to reexamine the subject in the light of recent work and in particular to consider the skepticism about the collective nature of peasant society. Attention will also be given to the idea that late medieval villages were as divided in their social structure and as collusive with outside authorities as were their successors in the early modern period.

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