Formation of a peasant civilization
Top of the medieval "family pyramid". Above are the noblest, that is, the well-born, living by labor masses of rootless, "simple" people who create all their wealth for them. Magnificent book of hours of the Duke of Berry. 1410-1490s (Museum Condé, Chantilly)
The man has the character of a pig,
Doesn't know how to live decently,
If he gets rich,
That will start to go crazy.
That the villans are not fat,
That deprivation suffered,
Ought from year to year
Century to keep them in a black body.
People are impudent, careless,
Vile, stingy and deceitful
Treacherous and arrogant!
Who will count his sins?
He imitates Adam,
He despises God's will,
Doesn't keep commandments!
May the Lord punish them!
(Bertrand de Born (1140-1215) Sirventa 1195)
Doesn't know how to live decently,
If he gets rich,
That will start to go crazy.
That the villans are not fat,
That deprivation suffered,
Ought from year to year
Century to keep them in a black body.
People are impudent, careless,
Vile, stingy and deceitful
Treacherous and arrogant!
Who will count his sins?
He imitates Adam,
He despises God's will,
Doesn't keep commandments!
May the Lord punish them!
(Bertrand de Born (1140-1215) Sirventa 1195)
The beginning and end of the peasant civilization. Many topics that are constantly discussed at HE, all the time revolve around the same question: why such a powerful state entity, like the USSR, in such an inglorious way ended its existence in 1991. And what kind of explanation is not invented, including the most conspiracy theories. Although there are those who point out that this was a completely historically conditioned process. But how and what caused it, what deep tendencies of the historical process formed its basis - this will be discussed in the next materials of the new cycle "The Beginning and End of Peasant Civilization."
Let's start with some general theoretical propositions so as not to return to them anymore. The first thing to remember when studying history human society, this is that any phenomenon that takes place in it goes through five stages in its development, which are analogous to the life of any living creature on our planet: birth, formation, growth, maturity, death. Although death for artificially created institutions, phenomena or cultural objects is not obligatory. They may well exist somewhere on the outskirts of the fact that this will replace everything.
Further: already in ancient times, the development of the needs of Homo sapiens led to the division of the productive activity of people, initially only hunters and gatherers, into farmers and pastoralists. Both those and others used the land as a source of material benefits obtained by them. But the size of the plot has always been limited by the physical capabilities of the family. The primitive hunter, who became a shepherd, could not graze his livestock where he had to, the borders of his plot were other people's pastures. And in the same way, a peasant farmer could not take himself too much land, since he was not able to cultivate it, and besides, neighboring lands could be located next to his land.
Firewall farming was actively used back in the XNUMXth century!
Over time, this is how a neighboring community emerged, the signs of which are as follows: the presence of a common territory, common land use and communal governing bodies of such a community, consisting of separate families. In an era just as ancient, cities appear on the planet (see. Here Aphrodite went ashore (Cyprus in the era of copper and bronze) и The first metalwork and ancient cities: Chatal-Hüyuk - "the city under the hood" (part 2)), whose inhabitants, although they also have "agricultural plots" or, say, graze goats outside the city wall, but live at the same time by exchanging their products for the products of peasants. The relationship between nomadic pastoralists and farmers is interesting. It is noted that a nomad could establish a well-arranged life and have everything necessary for life, but ... at the same time remained poor. He could become rich and independent primarily from epizootics in only one way: by taking the grain from the farmer. That is, the incursions of the former on the latter were an inevitable consequence of the division of people into farmers and pastoralists. By the way, the farmers themselves could live without trade with nomads, they could build cities inaccessible to their military forces, and then create cannons that allowed them to shoot the most numerous nomadic horde!
It was the presence of peasants, owners of the land plots they cultivated, that became the basis of all civilizations of the Ancient World, which arose first in river valleys, and then, as the tools of labor developed, spread to less fertile lands. There were, of course, some peculiarities. For example, in Athens, all citizens-citizens had land outside the city - a kind of "dacha", from which they had, some less - some more, agricultural products. In Sparta, all the Spartiats were the owners of the land, but they could neither sell it nor buy the surplus, but helots cultivated it, which supplied them with everything they needed.
Terrible Rome collapsed only when peasant farms almost completely disappeared in it, although there was an abundance of agricultural products produced by slaves. The low efficiency of slave labor was so obvious that the process of creating a "pseudo-peasantry" began in Rome - columns and "slaves with huts" appeared. But the process of the collapse of the Roman state could no longer be stopped: the barbarization of Roman society, which became a consequence of the disappearance of the free peasantry, had gone too far, which is why some barbarians simply did not want to fight others.
Rome collapsed, and again it was the peasant community of the neighborhood that became the main unit of society. Now every peasant was theoretically ready to fight and even die for his land, but the raids of the Vikings, Hungarians and Arabs that had just begun put on the agenda for the European community the question of the inadequacy of the weapons available to them. The same free franc-farmer was supposed to appear on the March fields, having with him a spear, a Francis ax, a shield and a leather helmet on his head. A leather jacket was enough as a carapace. And the sword was out of the question. It's just that less than 200 years have passed since the warrior-miles needed a horse, which, by the way, the peasant could not use in the household, "brunia" (or armor), helmet, shield, sword, spear - in words, a whole "gentleman's" set, costing something like 30 cows or 15 mares. Naturally, no peasant could have such a herd and would not buy an expensive, beautiful, but useless horse for his needs. And so it was everywhere, including in Russia, although Art. Lieutenant D. Zenin back in 1980 in his article published in the journal "Tekhnika-Molodyozhi" wrote that every peasant in our farm had a sword and chain mail, as well as an oak shield. And this despite the fact that all the found shields of the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries, as it turned out, were made of linden, and in the Scandinavian sagas one of the allegories of the shield - "Linden of War". But this, so, had by the way ...
Peasant labor in winter. Magnificent book of hours of the Duke of Berry. 1410-1490s (Museum Condé, Chantilly)
The main thing is that as a result of this, the process of enslavement of the peasants began. At first, the king's warriors received from him land with the peasants, who, while remaining personally free, bore various duties in his favor. Then, either this way or that way, they fell into dependence on their lord and became serfs. And this is where the socio-economic processes of interest to us begin, which in the future led to very many truly tragic events and played a huge role in the history of civilizations and peoples.
So, in France, the process of enslavement went quite slowly and was formalized legally, and in the documents issued to the peasants by feudal lords and monasteries (and they also actively participated in their enslavement), the land belonging to them personally was indicated. In England, on the contrary, everything happened very quickly, since the Norman conquest took place there. There was a community - a manor with some amount of land. And it was these lands that were transferred to the lord, who disposed of this land and the peasants living on it. That is, when the English peasant was asked on what basis he owns the land, he replied: "According to the custom of the manor and the will of the lord!" At the same time, he did not have any documents confirming his rights to his personally owned land property.
Neighboring community. Figure: from the textbook Cf. centuries for the 6th grade. Since plots of land are divided by quality into good, medium and bad, peasant plots in the community were divided into wedges of different quality, separated by boundaries. And since the strips of earth lay interspersed (so that no one was offended!), This arrangement was called "across the strip"
Something similar took place in Russia, where the tsar gave a nobleman a "village with peasants" for the service, and he had a paper for that salary, but the peasants were not given anything at the same time, and they, like their English counterparts, used land "according to the custom of the community and the will of the landowner."
And then the Little Ice Age of 1312-1791 began in Europe, bringing with it cold, hunger, epidemics and pestilence. Chroniclers reported that when King Charles VII arrived in Paris in 1438, the winter was so cold that wolves from the Bois de Boulogne ran into its streets, looking for warmth and food. Naturally, warm woolen clothes have become well, simply necessary. Wool was provided by sheep, but small-scale peasant farming was not enough for the production of cloth from sheep's wool on an industrial scale. And here, fortunately for Europe, the Dutch national liberation war against Spain coincided with the first bourgeois revolution at that time. The Dutch bourgeoisie gained power and the opportunity to do what is beneficial without looking back. The most profitable at that time was the production of cloth - this is what the Dutch entrepreneurs did. But there was not enough pasture for sheep in tiny Holland ...
Feudal estate. Figure: from the textbook Cf. centuries for the 6th grade. Through the strip, as you can see, is preserved. The plowing of the feudal lord is highlighted in black. A castle appeared, where you could hide from the enemy invasion and where you can get an invitation to a Christmas dinner in a hungry year - at least eat there from the heart and remember it all next year. And it was possible to give a strong little son there to serve, and there, you see, he will become a squire, and if brave and dexterous - and a knight, then the young baroness will like it, and then the old baron will die, and - what the hell is not joking - the son some Pierre the swineherd will become Pierre de Lacroix!
But again, fortunately for Europe, literally across the strait from Holland was England, where as soon as there was a steady demand for wool on the market, fencing began immediately, driving the peasants from their land, that is, in fact, the mass liquidation of the peasantry. At the same time, laws were consistently passed against the vagabonds and beggars who flooded England, who were yesterday's peasants. There were several such laws (1495, 1536, 1547, 1576), and all of them to one degree or another were aimed at the physical extermination of "superfluous people." Their cruelty was such that these laws were called "bloody". Such was the reality of the time that the scourging of a vagabond, tied to a wheelbarrow, until “until the blood flows through the body,” branding with a red-hot iron and executions by hanging were considered ... quite normal. In fairness, it should be noted that the law still distinguished an old, weak and crippled person from a completely healthy and able-bodied person, but nevertheless begging for alms. The first was allowed this, and it was the second who were punished for it.
However - there really is no silver lining - all this has become a blessing for England. In less than a century, the country has managed to radically change the social structure of its population. The number of peasants dropped sharply. Now they only supplied food to the sovereign lords, and their role as producers of commercial agricultural products became negligible. Bochars, cheese-makers, brewers, shepherds, foresters, wheelers, millers who lived in the countryside were in demand, but the actual grain-producing farmers became significantly smaller. Cheap grain for bread was now purchased abroad, in particular, in the same Russia, where the consequences of climate change were not so severe. Well, the developing British industry received a lot of workers, and for the minimum wage. They stopped selling wool to Holland and began to produce cloth on site. Cloth-making required machine tools, machine tools - advanced mechanical engineering, and so through the blood and suffering of tens of thousands (!) Of ruined English peasants, their country came to become a famous "workshop of the whole world."
Yes, but why was the enclosure only in England, why was it not, say, in France? Or did the nobles there not want to cash in on wool production? And it was in the form of land holding. In England, as we remember, it was based on the "custom of the manor and the will of the lord", that is ... in words, and you will not go to court with them! The lord said "go away" - and that was enough!
Fencing in England. Figure: from the textbook Cf. centuries for the 6th grade. This is how the same feudal estate looked after fencing!
But in France, the transition of peasants from a free state to a serf state was recorded in documents, and they could prove in court that this or that land plot was their property, together with which they became "a man of such and such a baron or count." That is why the revolution of 1789-1799 was required there, in which, by the way, many peasants supported not revolutionaries, but ... aristocratic landowners, which gave the founders of Marxism a basis to talk about the reactionary nature of the peasantry. Well, what exactly is this very "reactionary" is, we will talk in one of the following materials.
To be continued ...
Information