Page 400 - 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. 400
integr ated peasant economy in a compar ative perspective
kscher 1949 II: 1, 559–84; Heckscher 1949 II: 2, 641–3; cf. Utterström 1957
II, 9–26). It has been made clear that the scope and importance of dome-
stic crafts performed for sale in rural environments grew vigorously from
the mid-18th century onwards in Sweden. In somewhat more modern inter-
pretations this process was brought into the proto-industrialisation deba-
te, started by Franklin Mendels, and developed further by Peter Kriedte,
among others (Isacson and Magnusson 1987). Briefly defined, a proto-in-
dustrial area was a rural area where many households, because of seasonal
agricultural unemployment, specialised in technologically handicraft ba-
sed domestic trade, in various ways, controlled by putters out or tradesmen
(Kauf.system, credit system, Verlag-system etc.) and produced goods for far
away markets. The reliance on wage work rather than subsistence or mar-
ket agriculture, made for new demographic patterns, with early marria-
ges, high fertility and consequently, a strong population increase (Mendels
1972).
Proto-industry historians carefully noted that proto-industries for
various reasons rather than leading to industrialisation proper could end
up in de-industrialisation (Kriedte 1981, 145–54). The proto-industry con-
cept however, by the very choice of term, certainly has an evolutionist
touch to it. In an indigenous way, the proto-industry concept linked ru-
ral pre-industrial developments to the industrialisation process: the roots
of industrialisation could be sought for in the rural economy; amongst ru-
ral households in unfavourable agricultural areas substituting craft work
for farming as Mendels originally put it, amongst more well off peasants,
foremost in areas were feudal restrictions of economy were slack, increas-
ing engagement in trades beyond subsistence, and in the development of
skills and the specialisation in production of certain goods. The mecha-
nisms whereby proto-industrialisation paved the way for industrialisation
‘proper,’ is well summarised by Peter Kriedte: It created a ‘broad stratum of
handicraft workers,’ it allowed merchants and artisans to accumulate cap-
ital and made up for a strata of industrial entrepreneurs, it connected mer-
chant capital with the production sphere, a symbiotic relationship between
industrial regions and, commercial farming developed and a network of
markets on all levels developed (Kriedte 1981, 141–2).
Such an interpretation, however, threatens to turn into a teleological
way of writing history: pre-industrial rural societies tend to be analysed not
on their own merits to create an understanding of how they functioned,
but on the merits of what they (perhaps) turned into. Moreover, there is
398
kscher 1949 II: 1, 559–84; Heckscher 1949 II: 2, 641–3; cf. Utterström 1957
II, 9–26). It has been made clear that the scope and importance of dome-
stic crafts performed for sale in rural environments grew vigorously from
the mid-18th century onwards in Sweden. In somewhat more modern inter-
pretations this process was brought into the proto-industrialisation deba-
te, started by Franklin Mendels, and developed further by Peter Kriedte,
among others (Isacson and Magnusson 1987). Briefly defined, a proto-in-
dustrial area was a rural area where many households, because of seasonal
agricultural unemployment, specialised in technologically handicraft ba-
sed domestic trade, in various ways, controlled by putters out or tradesmen
(Kauf.system, credit system, Verlag-system etc.) and produced goods for far
away markets. The reliance on wage work rather than subsistence or mar-
ket agriculture, made for new demographic patterns, with early marria-
ges, high fertility and consequently, a strong population increase (Mendels
1972).
Proto-industry historians carefully noted that proto-industries for
various reasons rather than leading to industrialisation proper could end
up in de-industrialisation (Kriedte 1981, 145–54). The proto-industry con-
cept however, by the very choice of term, certainly has an evolutionist
touch to it. In an indigenous way, the proto-industry concept linked ru-
ral pre-industrial developments to the industrialisation process: the roots
of industrialisation could be sought for in the rural economy; amongst ru-
ral households in unfavourable agricultural areas substituting craft work
for farming as Mendels originally put it, amongst more well off peasants,
foremost in areas were feudal restrictions of economy were slack, increas-
ing engagement in trades beyond subsistence, and in the development of
skills and the specialisation in production of certain goods. The mecha-
nisms whereby proto-industrialisation paved the way for industrialisation
‘proper,’ is well summarised by Peter Kriedte: It created a ‘broad stratum of
handicraft workers,’ it allowed merchants and artisans to accumulate cap-
ital and made up for a strata of industrial entrepreneurs, it connected mer-
chant capital with the production sphere, a symbiotic relationship between
industrial regions and, commercial farming developed and a network of
markets on all levels developed (Kriedte 1981, 141–2).
Such an interpretation, however, threatens to turn into a teleological
way of writing history: pre-industrial rural societies tend to be analysed not
on their own merits to create an understanding of how they functioned,
but on the merits of what they (perhaps) turned into. Moreover, there is
398
