Page 232 - Panjek, Aleksander, Jesper Larsson and Luca Mocarelli, eds. 2017. Integrated Peasant Economy in a Comparative Perspective: Alps, Scandinavia and Beyond. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 232
integr ated peasant economy in a compar ative perspective
Introduction
The main purpose of this contribution is to lay some quantitative foun-
dations for a more steadily based, easily verifiable, and better comparable
evidence and interpretation about the peasant economy in Early Modern
Slovenian lands. Peasant living standards, material culture, inclination to
consumption, as well as economic agency and industriousness are often re-
searched through probate inventories, debt and credit activity, and land
markets.1 We also took this direction in our attempt too, in particular by
concentrating on the peasant land market.
There are a number of reasons why the peasant land market and the
information we can derive from it may be of interest when addressing the
integrated peasant economy. A preliminary observation is that in econom-
ic theory and historiography, the land market is connected to the owner-
ship rights of its participants and to the possibilities of growth (Béaur and
Chevet 2013, 19–23). This implies that the existence of a land market be-
tween peasants may bring evidence about their right of (more or less free)
disposal of their farms and land, and therefore about their capability to ac-
tively respond to market opportunities, their chance to “use their own ini-
tiative” and participate in – or even be agents of – agricultural and econom-
ic growth. Apart from the chance and capability only, the land market can
even show this kind of peasant’s response and participation in action. This
is the first aspect, since the connection between market-related activities
and the integrated peasant economy is of fundamental importance.
The role of the land market in peasant income integration practices has
also been well demonstrated through another aspect. It is widely known
how in the Alpine area peasants frequently used their land as a warranty (or
pledge) that allowed them to get access to credit. The purpose of these loans
was not only overcoming temporary subsistence problems, but also to ob-
tain the financial means necessary, for example, for peasant’s commercial
activity as pedlars. The relatively high prices of small plots of feebly produc-
tive mountain land may be interpreted as functional to this mechanism in
the local peasant economy (an example: Fornasin 1998). Again, we are fully
within the integrated peasant economy.
1 Only a few more and less recent, as well as more or less geographically distant exam-
ples: Malanima 1990; Fontaine 1996; Fornasin 1998; de Vries 2008; Béaur and Chevet
2013, Broad and Schuurman 2014. Some dozens of probate inventories dating from
the end of the 16th to the late 18th century have been collected for the Karst area: their
presentation and analysis will be published among the “Integrated peasant economy
in Slovenia” project results in Slovenian language.
230
Introduction
The main purpose of this contribution is to lay some quantitative foun-
dations for a more steadily based, easily verifiable, and better comparable
evidence and interpretation about the peasant economy in Early Modern
Slovenian lands. Peasant living standards, material culture, inclination to
consumption, as well as economic agency and industriousness are often re-
searched through probate inventories, debt and credit activity, and land
markets.1 We also took this direction in our attempt too, in particular by
concentrating on the peasant land market.
There are a number of reasons why the peasant land market and the
information we can derive from it may be of interest when addressing the
integrated peasant economy. A preliminary observation is that in econom-
ic theory and historiography, the land market is connected to the owner-
ship rights of its participants and to the possibilities of growth (Béaur and
Chevet 2013, 19–23). This implies that the existence of a land market be-
tween peasants may bring evidence about their right of (more or less free)
disposal of their farms and land, and therefore about their capability to ac-
tively respond to market opportunities, their chance to “use their own ini-
tiative” and participate in – or even be agents of – agricultural and econom-
ic growth. Apart from the chance and capability only, the land market can
even show this kind of peasant’s response and participation in action. This
is the first aspect, since the connection between market-related activities
and the integrated peasant economy is of fundamental importance.
The role of the land market in peasant income integration practices has
also been well demonstrated through another aspect. It is widely known
how in the Alpine area peasants frequently used their land as a warranty (or
pledge) that allowed them to get access to credit. The purpose of these loans
was not only overcoming temporary subsistence problems, but also to ob-
tain the financial means necessary, for example, for peasant’s commercial
activity as pedlars. The relatively high prices of small plots of feebly produc-
tive mountain land may be interpreted as functional to this mechanism in
the local peasant economy (an example: Fornasin 1998). Again, we are fully
within the integrated peasant economy.
1 Only a few more and less recent, as well as more or less geographically distant exam-
ples: Malanima 1990; Fontaine 1996; Fornasin 1998; de Vries 2008; Béaur and Chevet
2013, Broad and Schuurman 2014. Some dozens of probate inventories dating from
the end of the 16th to the late 18th century have been collected for the Karst area: their
presentation and analysis will be published among the “Integrated peasant economy
in Slovenia” project results in Slovenian language.
230
