Page 411 - 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. 411
pluriactivity, proto-industrialisation or integrated peasant economy?
The monetary incomes (either from such trades, or from a more spe-
cialised grain cultivation) also allowed some peasants to accumulate wealth
and investment funds from their market activities. Finally, simply a rising
amount of market transactions and wage work relations, paved the way
for a more intense market economy characterising the industrial society.
In this way, and possibly through the demographic effects, contributing to
a faster population increase (principally caused by falling mortality) and
thus resulting in large cohorts of more or less landless labourers, such ac-
tivities could contribute to industrialisation (as indeed argued by Kried-
te and Isacson and Magnusson, see above), whether households were pro-
to-industrial according to the book or not.
Institutional developments, not only such that legalised more of the
peasant trades, but also such that set peasants in command of more of the
surpluses above simple reproduction was important in paving the way for
more direct market action by peasants. It has been convincingly shown that
the gradual easing of the tax and rent pressure on freeholders and crown
tenants during the 18th and 19th centuries, allowed such groups to market a
surplus (mostly of grain) and invest or get consumables from the proceeds,
instead of delivering grain, or in some cases cash payments to the state rep-
resentatives who traded the goods (summarised in Morell 2013b).
These phenomena may however be seen from other angles. Some of
the households referred to above did not specialise in crafts for markets, but
rather performed services. Some of them went part-time traders and trad-
ed with whatever goods suited best. Some combined very diverse activi-
ties aside their subsistence farming. Such varied pluriactivity in itself might
have rather little to do with what we refer to as proto-industry, but quite a
lot with the integrated peasant economy. The households, however adapt-
ed consciously to (mostly nearby) markets for goods, labour, transport and
other types of services which proved profitable to them. These were active
choices. Peasants showed agency.
3. Towards the present day
This certainly did not stop after the Pre-Industrial Era: By the late 19th cen-
tury peasants on the east coast archipelago let out their buildings as su-
mmer houses for the Stockholm bourgeoisie.9 In the 20th century, combina-
tions between forestry and farming remained important. On the one hand,
9 Briefly commented in Morell 2001, 334. It is a theme of a very much red novel by
August Strindberg (Hemsöborna – the Hemsö Islanders).
409
The monetary incomes (either from such trades, or from a more spe-
cialised grain cultivation) also allowed some peasants to accumulate wealth
and investment funds from their market activities. Finally, simply a rising
amount of market transactions and wage work relations, paved the way
for a more intense market economy characterising the industrial society.
In this way, and possibly through the demographic effects, contributing to
a faster population increase (principally caused by falling mortality) and
thus resulting in large cohorts of more or less landless labourers, such ac-
tivities could contribute to industrialisation (as indeed argued by Kried-
te and Isacson and Magnusson, see above), whether households were pro-
to-industrial according to the book or not.
Institutional developments, not only such that legalised more of the
peasant trades, but also such that set peasants in command of more of the
surpluses above simple reproduction was important in paving the way for
more direct market action by peasants. It has been convincingly shown that
the gradual easing of the tax and rent pressure on freeholders and crown
tenants during the 18th and 19th centuries, allowed such groups to market a
surplus (mostly of grain) and invest or get consumables from the proceeds,
instead of delivering grain, or in some cases cash payments to the state rep-
resentatives who traded the goods (summarised in Morell 2013b).
These phenomena may however be seen from other angles. Some of
the households referred to above did not specialise in crafts for markets, but
rather performed services. Some of them went part-time traders and trad-
ed with whatever goods suited best. Some combined very diverse activi-
ties aside their subsistence farming. Such varied pluriactivity in itself might
have rather little to do with what we refer to as proto-industry, but quite a
lot with the integrated peasant economy. The households, however adapt-
ed consciously to (mostly nearby) markets for goods, labour, transport and
other types of services which proved profitable to them. These were active
choices. Peasants showed agency.
3. Towards the present day
This certainly did not stop after the Pre-Industrial Era: By the late 19th cen-
tury peasants on the east coast archipelago let out their buildings as su-
mmer houses for the Stockholm bourgeoisie.9 In the 20th century, combina-
tions between forestry and farming remained important. On the one hand,
9 Briefly commented in Morell 2001, 334. It is a theme of a very much red novel by
August Strindberg (Hemsöborna – the Hemsö Islanders).
409
