Page 16 - Mocarelli, Luca, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2020. Maize to the People! Cultivation, Consumption and Trade in the North-Eastern Mediterranean (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century). Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 16
maize to the people!
The case of the large area east of Italy is different since the current state
of historiography only allows for hypothesizing. First of all, in the pres-
ent-day Carinthia, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, a late feudal or manorial
system prevailed for centuries, as it had in a large portion of southern Italy,
although it differed significantly here since the peasant population lived on
their farms in small villages. In this part of Europe, landlords and peas-
ants alike had been conditioned by the fact that the tributes were defined
a priori in official registers, meaning that the landlord had to receive and
the peasant had to cultivate precise amounts of certain grains. This limit-
ed the possibility of agricultural modernization, as Sandgruber noted dec-
ades ago (1982, 260-263).
On the other hand, it is well known that in Slovenian lands, for ex-
ample, landlords tended to change the nature of tributes from in kind to
money since the fifteenth century and through the early modern period,
although it was not a linear process (Panjek 2011). In these cases, peasants
could more freely choose which kind of crop to cultivate or what else to
produce and then sell it to get the money needed to pay tributes. In such
a situation, maize cultivation could become a strategic choice since it was
suitable for self-consumption but also had a growing market – on the oth-
er hand, it is documented how peasants in the present-day western Slovenia
would sell their produce and use the revenue to buy maize on the market
for their own consumption (Panjek in this volume).
The issue of taxation is really an interesting one to deal with in order
to understand peasants’ choices. In some parts of Sicily, for instance, peas-
ants started to cultivate maize precisely because, being a new crop, it was
free of taxes. However, its increasing cultivation was soon noticed by the
authorities and, consequently, a tithe was imposed on maize, making peas-
ants abandon its cultivation (Fazio 2018). Something similar happened in
Slovenia with buckwheat from the sixteenth century onwards. In short, un-
like on the Italian Peninsula, where we may lean on numerous studies, the
relation between landownership and tenancy conditions on the one hand
and maize diffusion on the other is still an open research question in the
eastern Alpine and Adriatic regions.
The decision to sow maize, however, did not depend only on the in-
stitutional framework or on economical evaluations, but also on cultural
habits. As a matter of fact, the introduction of a new crop required an open
mind and an interest in innovations since it was necessary in many cases
to abandon the well-known plants and ways of cultivation. One of the rea-
14
The case of the large area east of Italy is different since the current state
of historiography only allows for hypothesizing. First of all, in the pres-
ent-day Carinthia, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, a late feudal or manorial
system prevailed for centuries, as it had in a large portion of southern Italy,
although it differed significantly here since the peasant population lived on
their farms in small villages. In this part of Europe, landlords and peas-
ants alike had been conditioned by the fact that the tributes were defined
a priori in official registers, meaning that the landlord had to receive and
the peasant had to cultivate precise amounts of certain grains. This limit-
ed the possibility of agricultural modernization, as Sandgruber noted dec-
ades ago (1982, 260-263).
On the other hand, it is well known that in Slovenian lands, for ex-
ample, landlords tended to change the nature of tributes from in kind to
money since the fifteenth century and through the early modern period,
although it was not a linear process (Panjek 2011). In these cases, peasants
could more freely choose which kind of crop to cultivate or what else to
produce and then sell it to get the money needed to pay tributes. In such
a situation, maize cultivation could become a strategic choice since it was
suitable for self-consumption but also had a growing market – on the oth-
er hand, it is documented how peasants in the present-day western Slovenia
would sell their produce and use the revenue to buy maize on the market
for their own consumption (Panjek in this volume).
The issue of taxation is really an interesting one to deal with in order
to understand peasants’ choices. In some parts of Sicily, for instance, peas-
ants started to cultivate maize precisely because, being a new crop, it was
free of taxes. However, its increasing cultivation was soon noticed by the
authorities and, consequently, a tithe was imposed on maize, making peas-
ants abandon its cultivation (Fazio 2018). Something similar happened in
Slovenia with buckwheat from the sixteenth century onwards. In short, un-
like on the Italian Peninsula, where we may lean on numerous studies, the
relation between landownership and tenancy conditions on the one hand
and maize diffusion on the other is still an open research question in the
eastern Alpine and Adriatic regions.
The decision to sow maize, however, did not depend only on the in-
stitutional framework or on economical evaluations, but also on cultural
habits. As a matter of fact, the introduction of a new crop required an open
mind and an interest in innovations since it was necessary in many cases
to abandon the well-known plants and ways of cultivation. One of the rea-
14
