Page 234 - 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. 234
integr ated peasant economy in a compar ative perspective
tations or attempting comparative approaches at an international scale, is
represented by the quite discouraging quality of the sources. Until Maria
Theresia’s reforms in the mid-18th century, the weakly structured and rath-
er poorly ramified administrative system of the Austrian Habsburg hered-
itary lands (where most of the ethnical Slovenian population lived) at cen-
tral, regional, and local levels, produced and preserved written sources that
are quite modest in comparison to other early modern European states.
This is especially true in the case of our research which has ambitions in
the field of quantification in rural history. That is an important reason why
not only the sources, but also the prevailing narratives in Slovenian histo-
riography about Early Modern peasant economy and market-activities are
mainly descriptive in nature, as already ‘classical’ Slovenian historians have
pointed out (Gestrin 1982, 207). For this reason, in our attempt to illustrate
and overcome such difficulties we are going to analyse two very different
kinds of documentary evidence.
A trial about the ownership of a wine-cellar will lead us to the discov-
ery of a custom regulating oral real-estate transfers: it will allow us to get
an innovative insight into the local peasant land market in the first decades
of the 17th century, into the economic rationality staying behind it, and into
the ownership rights in practise. At the same time we’ll be able to find an
additional answer to the lack of written sources, and to sketch a time frame
of their emergence. After that, a series of registrations of real estate trans-
fers between peasants, mostly comprising purchase & sale, inheritance and
endowment transactions registered by the manorial administration in the
mid-18th century, represents our gateway to a first quantification attempt
on fundamental aspects, such as the dimensions of holdings, the exten-
sion and ratio between arable land and meadows, the prices of land and the
reclamation of commons, as well as the transfers within the family. An in-
troductory presentation of the environment and the (integrated) peasant
economy in the Karst area will give us the framework for the concluding
interpretation of the more material (transaction registrations) and the quite
intangible (oral custom) evidence on the peasant economy that we’ll gain.
1. The environment, landscape and peasant economy
of the Karst
A rationale of the chosen territory for the present case-study might not be
out of place. The Karst is a limestone plateau stretching for some dozens of
kilometres in length and width (amounting to around 650km2) along the
232
tations or attempting comparative approaches at an international scale, is
represented by the quite discouraging quality of the sources. Until Maria
Theresia’s reforms in the mid-18th century, the weakly structured and rath-
er poorly ramified administrative system of the Austrian Habsburg hered-
itary lands (where most of the ethnical Slovenian population lived) at cen-
tral, regional, and local levels, produced and preserved written sources that
are quite modest in comparison to other early modern European states.
This is especially true in the case of our research which has ambitions in
the field of quantification in rural history. That is an important reason why
not only the sources, but also the prevailing narratives in Slovenian histo-
riography about Early Modern peasant economy and market-activities are
mainly descriptive in nature, as already ‘classical’ Slovenian historians have
pointed out (Gestrin 1982, 207). For this reason, in our attempt to illustrate
and overcome such difficulties we are going to analyse two very different
kinds of documentary evidence.
A trial about the ownership of a wine-cellar will lead us to the discov-
ery of a custom regulating oral real-estate transfers: it will allow us to get
an innovative insight into the local peasant land market in the first decades
of the 17th century, into the economic rationality staying behind it, and into
the ownership rights in practise. At the same time we’ll be able to find an
additional answer to the lack of written sources, and to sketch a time frame
of their emergence. After that, a series of registrations of real estate trans-
fers between peasants, mostly comprising purchase & sale, inheritance and
endowment transactions registered by the manorial administration in the
mid-18th century, represents our gateway to a first quantification attempt
on fundamental aspects, such as the dimensions of holdings, the exten-
sion and ratio between arable land and meadows, the prices of land and the
reclamation of commons, as well as the transfers within the family. An in-
troductory presentation of the environment and the (integrated) peasant
economy in the Karst area will give us the framework for the concluding
interpretation of the more material (transaction registrations) and the quite
intangible (oral custom) evidence on the peasant economy that we’ll gain.
1. The environment, landscape and peasant economy
of the Karst
A rationale of the chosen territory for the present case-study might not be
out of place. The Karst is a limestone plateau stretching for some dozens of
kilometres in length and width (amounting to around 650km2) along the
232
