Page 345 - 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. 345
peasant “economic industriousness” in slovenian ethnology (19th–20th centuries)
pare the time dedicated to this activity, performed by all members of the
family: 200–250 days were needed to prepare and work the wood, while for
farming remained only 1/3 of the year (Bras 1988–1990, 214‒6).
In the branch of basket-weavers (pletarstvo) it’s interesting to note that
they have never been united in guilds, what in the opinion of Ljudmila
Bras, indicates that it has always been an “additional” economic activity for
peasants and linked to farming. Somewhere whole villages worked on the
producing of baskets or cradles. This activity too was reportedly performed
by the economically weakest peasants; especially where there was a lack of
fertile soil, the peasants “improved their lives or went out of their financial
problems with the ‘additional’ income” (Bras 1988–1990, 220).
The oldest written source on pottery-making mentions the pot-
tery-makers by Dreta in 1340 and a lot of written sources derive from the
16th century in relation to guilds. Also Valvasor (1689) mentions places
where “all the inhabitants” were pottery makers. According to a written
source from 1782 nowhere in the Austrio-Hungarian Empire were there so
many pottery-makers as in Carniola (Central Slovenia). At the end of the
19th century the activity was disappearing because of kitchen-range and
metal vessels and it became only an additional activity for small peasants
(with the exception of stove makers in the urban environment) (Bras 1988–
1990, 223‒8).
The ethnological literature is full of all kinds of crafts, too many to list
and describe them all in this short paper. I will expose an example of an
economic activity, which was usually connected with good income: it’s the
lumbering and rafting trade (splavarstvo), which is in the frame of forest-
ry economy. Half-agrarian rafts men prepared the wood and the owners of
forests sold it. Raft men were from the “rural proletariat.” In the 16th, 17th
and still in the 19th century it was still the predominant economic activity
around Ljubno, Gornji Grad and, Mozirje in Northern Slovenia. Most of
them made their living with lumbering and rafting, selling wood abroad,
as far as Belgrade in Serbia. We derive some data about their income from
the time before WWII, when somebody earned 6,000 dinars, apart from
all the food supply and the transport back home in only 2–3 days of work
(Makarovič 1978, 197‒9). To make a comparison, in the same period an in-
dustrial worker had an average monthly wage of around 9,000 dinars (see
Lazarević in this book).
Connected with this economic activity Angelos Baš distinguished be-
tween two categories of peasants after the land release (1848) that he calls
343
pare the time dedicated to this activity, performed by all members of the
family: 200–250 days were needed to prepare and work the wood, while for
farming remained only 1/3 of the year (Bras 1988–1990, 214‒6).
In the branch of basket-weavers (pletarstvo) it’s interesting to note that
they have never been united in guilds, what in the opinion of Ljudmila
Bras, indicates that it has always been an “additional” economic activity for
peasants and linked to farming. Somewhere whole villages worked on the
producing of baskets or cradles. This activity too was reportedly performed
by the economically weakest peasants; especially where there was a lack of
fertile soil, the peasants “improved their lives or went out of their financial
problems with the ‘additional’ income” (Bras 1988–1990, 220).
The oldest written source on pottery-making mentions the pot-
tery-makers by Dreta in 1340 and a lot of written sources derive from the
16th century in relation to guilds. Also Valvasor (1689) mentions places
where “all the inhabitants” were pottery makers. According to a written
source from 1782 nowhere in the Austrio-Hungarian Empire were there so
many pottery-makers as in Carniola (Central Slovenia). At the end of the
19th century the activity was disappearing because of kitchen-range and
metal vessels and it became only an additional activity for small peasants
(with the exception of stove makers in the urban environment) (Bras 1988–
1990, 223‒8).
The ethnological literature is full of all kinds of crafts, too many to list
and describe them all in this short paper. I will expose an example of an
economic activity, which was usually connected with good income: it’s the
lumbering and rafting trade (splavarstvo), which is in the frame of forest-
ry economy. Half-agrarian rafts men prepared the wood and the owners of
forests sold it. Raft men were from the “rural proletariat.” In the 16th, 17th
and still in the 19th century it was still the predominant economic activity
around Ljubno, Gornji Grad and, Mozirje in Northern Slovenia. Most of
them made their living with lumbering and rafting, selling wood abroad,
as far as Belgrade in Serbia. We derive some data about their income from
the time before WWII, when somebody earned 6,000 dinars, apart from
all the food supply and the transport back home in only 2–3 days of work
(Makarovič 1978, 197‒9). To make a comparison, in the same period an in-
dustrial worker had an average monthly wage of around 9,000 dinars (see
Lazarević in this book).
Connected with this economic activity Angelos Baš distinguished be-
tween two categories of peasants after the land release (1848) that he calls
343
