Page 244 - 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. 244
integr ated peasant economy in a compar ative perspective
ten accomplished before the registration made the transfer an official thing
(if we may believe the statements given by the peasants involved). This is
to stress two aspects: first we may assume the persistence of oral practices,
perhaps connected with the custom described above; secondly, we are not
able to define what share of the real transactions between peasants was ac-
tually being recorded.
Here we’ll present a first analysis of only one of the two aforementioned
record series, the one regarding the valuation procedure.6 This means we
can be sure we’re not working on all the transfers that took place, but still
cannot really estimate their share. Nevertheless the sample is relatively am-
ple, amounting to 246 transfer records in 35 villages and hamlets, ranging
from January 1752 to December 1756 (although with some gaps – especially
for 1754 all data are missing – see Graph 10.1).
With a closer look at the years for which our data are more complete
(1752–53 and 1755–56), we may notice a quite clear seasonality of the records,
most of the transactions being registered during the last months of the year
and the first ones of the next year, that is somehow in the wintertime, at
the end of the agrarian cycle and before the beginning of the new one. Al-
though noticeable, this feature is actually far from being surprising, but it
adds confirmation to the hypothesis that in many cases the registrations
could have been only a formal moment in the transfer process, which con-
tinued to be also oral and at least partly independent from the official pro-
cedure and written act carried out by the manorial officials. At this stage of
the research, the question about the extent to which the peasants spontane-
ously made use of the written registrations (for their better guarantee), and
about the role played by the administrative compulsion in favour of record-
ing transactions (to ensure control on land holding and to collect the trans-
action fees, amounting to 10% of the transaction value), remains open. The
impression is, although, that both factors played a role.
Another general aspect emerging from our data-set is the composi-
tion of transfer registrations by their type. Most of them were purchase
and sale transactions, amounting to nearly three quarters of all records,
followed by inheritances that represented nearly one fifth of the transfers,
while endowments and sequestrations appear to be rarer among our data
(Graph 10.2).
6 All the hereafter presented and analysed data on real estate transactions are in: AST,
ATTA, b. 195.1, fasc. 2, subsection 6, 7, and 13.
242
ten accomplished before the registration made the transfer an official thing
(if we may believe the statements given by the peasants involved). This is
to stress two aspects: first we may assume the persistence of oral practices,
perhaps connected with the custom described above; secondly, we are not
able to define what share of the real transactions between peasants was ac-
tually being recorded.
Here we’ll present a first analysis of only one of the two aforementioned
record series, the one regarding the valuation procedure.6 This means we
can be sure we’re not working on all the transfers that took place, but still
cannot really estimate their share. Nevertheless the sample is relatively am-
ple, amounting to 246 transfer records in 35 villages and hamlets, ranging
from January 1752 to December 1756 (although with some gaps – especially
for 1754 all data are missing – see Graph 10.1).
With a closer look at the years for which our data are more complete
(1752–53 and 1755–56), we may notice a quite clear seasonality of the records,
most of the transactions being registered during the last months of the year
and the first ones of the next year, that is somehow in the wintertime, at
the end of the agrarian cycle and before the beginning of the new one. Al-
though noticeable, this feature is actually far from being surprising, but it
adds confirmation to the hypothesis that in many cases the registrations
could have been only a formal moment in the transfer process, which con-
tinued to be also oral and at least partly independent from the official pro-
cedure and written act carried out by the manorial officials. At this stage of
the research, the question about the extent to which the peasants spontane-
ously made use of the written registrations (for their better guarantee), and
about the role played by the administrative compulsion in favour of record-
ing transactions (to ensure control on land holding and to collect the trans-
action fees, amounting to 10% of the transaction value), remains open. The
impression is, although, that both factors played a role.
Another general aspect emerging from our data-set is the composi-
tion of transfer registrations by their type. Most of them were purchase
and sale transactions, amounting to nearly three quarters of all records,
followed by inheritances that represented nearly one fifth of the transfers,
while endowments and sequestrations appear to be rarer among our data
(Graph 10.2).
6 All the hereafter presented and analysed data on real estate transactions are in: AST,
ATTA, b. 195.1, fasc. 2, subsection 6, 7, and 13.
242
