Peasant Village Research Articles

Collectivization as a page of history and its place in the national ideology of modern Russia

The article substantiates the necessity of the national ideology of the modern Russian Federation to be based on adequate representations of most important events of the Soviet period of the country’s history. Russian historiography will inevitably form a system of such representations in the near future. The authors confidently position collectivization of the peasant village as the central of the events in question, showing why the Soviet version of collectivization is approximately as far from the historical truth as the ideological interpretation of the 90s, which arrived to substitute the so-called «Marxism-Leninism». Local history investigations and family chronicles contain one of the principal proofs of this, confirming the consistence of Peasant Studies as a tool for historical and sociological research.

Patterns of peasant way of life in Tobolsk province in the second half of the XIXth century (on the materials of N.N. Mataev’s personal archive)

The goal of the research is to analyze the specifics of the everyday life of old-timer peasants of Tobolsk province on the basis of information collected during ethnographic fieldwork in the Tyumen region. On the basis of the involved narrative sources, such as personal diaries, memoirs, biographies and retelling of ancestral memories of the hereditary peasant N.N. Mataev, marital behavior, child-parent relations, interaction between family members in and out of the home lifehave been studied, the level of child mortality and birth rate have been analyzed, and the cultural specifics of everyday life of several generations of one family have been revealed. The collected records in the form of interviews, diaries and memoirs refer to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, i.e. to the period of active changes and transformations in the way of life of the peasant village in Russia, which determines the relevance of the research, because a thorough study of the identity of the Siberian sub-ethnos allows us to find differences in the consequences of these transformations and understand the history of Western Siberia. The principle of historicism and the civilizational approach applied allow us to observe the stages of development of new forms of family structure and the transformation of peasant life as a result of modernization. The studied ethnographic materials allow to present more fully the picture of peasant everyday life and to draw conclusions about the specific features of the life cycle of the traditional patriarchal peasant family and the community of old residents of Tobolsk province.

The Theories of “Differential Optimums” and “Vertical Integration” and Their Implications for China

Abstract Chayanov, outside of his theoretical analysis of how peasant households are distinctive for being at once a production and a consumption unit, and the multiple implications of that fact, has made two other major theoretical contributions, one making clear that peasant economies observe the logic of “differential optimums” rather than the simple logic of economies of scale, the other having to do with the need for co-operatives for “vertical integration” of small peasant economies, in order to preserve for the peasants more of the value of their products in the BIG MARKET. The former can be readily observed in the “new agriculture revolution” of the Chinese economy in the past few decades; the latter can be readily seen in the striking modernization of the “East Asian” (i.e. Japan, South Korea, and the Taiwan area) economies since 1945. China’s annual “Number One Documents” about agriculture of the past two decades have shown how the country first mistakenly tried to imitate the simple scale-economy logic of the United States, and then shifted since 2018 toward a new emphasis on the peasants as the principal agents of agricultural development and of peasant villages as the basic unit for agricultural co-ops. Those have been the basis for new advances as well as for reinterpretations and modifications of Chayanov’s two major theoretical visions.

Winter-Quartering Tribes: Nomad–Peasant Relations in the Northeastern Frontiers of the Ottoman Empire (1800s–1850s)

AbstractFocusing on the winter quartering of Kurdish nomadic tribes among peasant villages, this article discusses the patterns of Kurdish nomadism and nomad–peasant relations in the Ottoman sanjaks of Muş, Bayezid, and Van during the first half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the political structure of these regions and the requirements of animal husbandry among the nomads not only created a distinct pattern of nomadism among the Kurdish tribes, but also led to the polarization of relations between nomads and peasants. Moreover, the article observes how nomad–settled, tribe–peasant relations in these regions evolved as a result of the gradual sedentarization of the pastoral nomads and related changes in their subsistence economies starting from the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, this article provides a background for a better understanding of the intercommunal tensions and conflicts over land in the Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Theories of “Differential Optimums” and “Vertical Integration” and Their Implications for China

Chayanov, outside of his theoretical analysis of how peasant households are distinctive for being at once a production and a consumption unit and the multiple implications of that fact, has made two other major theoretical contributions, one making clear that peasant economies observe the logic of “differential optimums” rather than the simple logic of economies of scale and the other having to do with the need for co-operatives for “vertical integration” of small peasant economies in order to preserve for the peasants more of the value of their products in the BIG MARKET. The former can be readily observed in the “new agriculture revolution” of the Chinese economy in the past few decades; the latter can be readily seen in the striking modernization of the “East Asian” (i.e., Japan, South Korea, and the Taiwan area) economies since 1945. China’s annual “Number One Documents” about agriculture of the past two decades have shown how the country first mistakenly tried to imitate the simple scale-economy logic of the United States and then shifted since 2018 toward a new emphasis on the peasants as the principal agents of agricultural development and peasant villages as the basic unit for agricultural co-ops. Those have been the basis for new advances as well as for reinterpretations and modifications of Chayanov’s two major theoretical visions.

Farmers’ suicides as an indicator of the agrarian transformation in rural India

The article is a review of the book by the Associate Professor of the Center for Political Studies of the Institute of Social Sciences of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (Delhi, India) Sudhir Kumar Sutar Dilapidation of the Rural: Development, Politics and Farmer Suicides in India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). The book considers the problems which the Indian peasants face under the state-driven transition from traditional rural community to agrarian capitalism. The book combines philosophical, sociological and political analysis of the causes and factors of the high number of suicides among medium-sized and small Indian farmers in recent decades. Suicides are the most striking manifestation of the social consequences of the capitalist development in the traditional communal peasant village. Among other consequences, the author considers rural social differentiation, growth of individualism and disunity, destruction of community institutions of support and social control, political protests up to riots, alcoholism, drug addiction, and rising crime rate. Thus, the inevitable economic reforms require compensatory measures of social policy.

Fields, Noblemen’s Fields, and Noblemen’s Villages of Karšuva in the 14th–18th Centuries: Sources, Statistics, Continuity, and Localization

This paper examines the connection of pre-Christian fields with the 16th c. noblemen’s fields and the 17th–18th c. noblemen’s villages (okolica) on the basis of systematic source complexes. The sample of Karšuva district (powiat) in Samogitia was chosen for the study. After grouping the processed source material, the continuity of the names of the fields and noble villages is proven, thereby assuming the continuity of the field structure in the noble villages. After applying the mapping methodology, the geography of the noble villages and peasant villages of Karšuva is restored.

Halfway to Cancun: The Economic Collocation of a Peasant Community in Yucatan

In defining the ‘peasant’, reference is generally made to an unbalanced and inferior relationship with a larger economic, political and cultural unity. The exact nature of this relationship, however, continues to be unclear. The distinct features of the ‘dominant’ and corresponding ‘peasant’ sectors and the intricacies of their interdependence must be identified and analysed in order to reach a more complete theoretical understanding of complex societies. In this article, I examine one aspect of the economic sphere of a Mayan peasant village in Yucatan. The peasant, as consumer, plays a vital role in the marketing process, a process which is a mechanism in the dependence of the local sector on the urban industrial sector.

Failed entrepreneurship in a heterotopia: the story of Villa Ahumada

PurposeThe heterotopia is frequently portrayed as a third space in organization studies, characterized by its flexibility and receptivity to innovation. Rural entrepreneurship, embodied in the heterotopic space of community-based enterprises (CBEs), is a key concept in emerging economies. Understanding the CBE’s economic and social dynamics is vital for the genesis of entrepreneurship in these spaces, for regional development and for national economies. This paper aims to deep dive into the group dynamics of Villa Ahumada (VA), a well-known subspace located close to the Mexico–USA border, which, despite its market potential, has not been able to support the collectivization required of a CBE.Design/methodology/approachUnder a case study design, four deep interviews were conducted, which explore the stories of entrepreneurship in VA and analyze the rich narrative accounts of the participants. Narratives offer opportunities for extending the current conceptualizations of entrepreneurship and its processes.FindingsThis paper opens a conversation about the negative aspects of heterotopias, especially with regards to entrepreneurship. Much literature has been devoted to the power of rural communities and peasant villages as fertile places for entrepreneurship. They emphasize the role of entrepreneurial culture and governmental support as almost guarantors of entrepreneurial success. This narrative provides one reason for entrepreneurial failure: the deviant heterotopia. Despite government policy that favored collective entrepreneurial efforts, and despite a vibrant underground entrepreneurship culture combined with a valuable brand, entrepreneurship in VA was dead before it started.Originality/valueRural entrepreneurship should be a multidimensional phenomenon focusing upon entrepreneurship, context, group dynamics and social capital; but it has not been interpreted from the perspective of a heterotopia or paratopia.

Review Essay: Violence and Texas History in 2020

Review EssayViolence and Texas History in 2020 Carlos Kevin Blanton (bio) Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers. By Doug J. Swanson. (New York: Viking, 2020. Pp. 466. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875. By Gary Clayton Anderson. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. Pp. 506. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836–1916. By William D. Carrigan. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Pp. 328. Illustrations, notes, appendices, index.) The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas. By Monica Muñoz Martinez. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. 387. Illustrations, notes, index.) I spent a part of the long, hot, isolated summer of 2020 reading about violence in Texas history: heart-pounding chases on horseback across dusty plains, frenzied moments of destruction followed by acrid gun smoke, the rising swell of an angry mob bent on administering its own justice regardless of the law, and the memory of violence that lives on to strike terror and pain for generations. The summer of 2020's mass protests against racial violence and police brutality, the deployment of unmarked federal agents to American cities, and the caging of immigrant children ripped away from their parents based on little more than their origins and darker skin all added a timely urgency for my reading. That this angry summer occurred in the context of the worst global pandemic in a century, which at the writing of this essay has resulted in more than 200,000 American dead, contributed to an even greater sense of alarm. These musings on violence in Texas history have been spurred by a new, big history of the Texas Rangers, Doug J. Swanson's, Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers. Cult of Glory is a compelling, thorough history of that most definably Texan of institutions. Given the political atmosphere of the present, it also [End Page 338] has impeccable timing. Swanson rightfully begins by stating the obvious, "No law enforcement agency has been celebrated so much for so long in popular culture" (2), before getting to his de-mythologizing intent (4–5): They were violent instruments of repression. They burned peasant villages and slaughtered innocents. They committed war crimes. Their murders of Mexicans and Mexican Americans made them as feared on the border as the Ku Klux Klan in the Deep South. They hunted runaway slaves for bounty. They violated international law with impunity. They sometimes moved through Texas towns like a rampaging gang of thugs. They conspired to quash the civil rights of black citizens. They busted unions and broke strikes. They enforced racial segregation of public schools. They botched important criminal investigations. They served the interests of the moneyed and powerful while oppressing the poor and disfranchised. They have been the army of Texas's ruling class. And they have consistently lied about it. In a larger sense Swanson's history of the Rangers is also a history of violence in Texas, a topic that historians of recent decades have analyzed in ways that move past traditional narratives. Those traditional narratives uncritically portrayed Anglo lawmen and settlers as rough-hewn heroes while depicting Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and African Americans who suffered at their hands as victims of evil times rather than evil men. The three other books that offer context for Cult of Glory here, Gary Clayton Anderson's The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), William D. Carrigan's The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836–1916 (University of Illinois Press, 2004), and Monica Muñoz Martinez's The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Harvard University Press, 2018), take Swanson's revisionist narrative into deeper questions. What is the role of violence in the origins of Texas? What is the motivation for violence? What happens when past violence is tolerated and romanticized? And finally, what is our duty to the past in remembering violence? But before pursuing these questions, a brief...

Research on the Mechanism, Influence and Countermeasure of the Integration of Three-industry in Rural Areas of Hubei Province on Farmers’ Income

The integration of rural three-industry is a new growth point for the economic development of peasant villages. From the trend of farmers' income in Hubei Province, combined with the development of the three-product integration, the mechanism of the impact on farmers' income increase is considered to be the integration of rural three-industry in Hubei Province. There are still many unfavorable factors influencing the growth of peasants' income, and targeted measures such as cultivating leading enterprises, establishing a complete interest linkage mechanism, strengthening infrastructure construction, and cultivating industrial integration talents to accelerate the three rural industries. Integration provides a source of power to increase farmers’ income.

Procesos de (re)territorialización en localidades campesinas de Chiapas (México) en contextos migratorios

En el contexto de la migración México-Estados Unidos, este artículo aborda, desde una perspectiva territorial, los cambios en el territorio en dos localidades campesinas de Las Margaritas (en Chiapas, México), ocasionados por la migración internacional a inicios de siglo. Este trabajo argumenta que, si bien hubo cambios relacionados con la migración –como ausencia de jóvenes, envío de remesas, reacomodos familiares y comunitarios-, se mantuvieron antiguos procesos de territorialización –producción agrícola, prácticas socioculturales comunitarias y formas de organización local–.

Editorial Preface

Editorial Preface David L. Howell “Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.” “For a long time, I went to bed early”? Or, “For a long time I used to go to bed early”? Thus begins Marcel Proust’s À la recherché du temps perdu, published in English as In Search of Lost Time—or should it be Remembrance of Things Past? The first possibility, both sentence and title, comes from Lydia Davis and was published in 2002. The second is from C. K. Scott Moncrieff, who published the first volume of his translation before Proust’s death in 1922. Davis’s superb translation is far more faithful to the original French than Scott Moncrieff’s. But it is the Scott Moncrieff rendition that has been hailed as a classic of English literature in its own right.1 The Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies takes no stand on translations of Proust. Yet every HJAS contributor and, I daresay, nearly every reader wrestles with the problem at the core of these two Proust translations: how to balance the desire to render words as faithfully as possible against the need to take liberties to facilitate readers’ comprehension or capture hidden meanings behind the words per se. My own experience of translating lengthy texts for publication goes no further than a few months’ piecework long ago for corporate clients who valued speed and accuracy (in that order) over style. Still, in my own writing on early modern Japanese social history, I often find myself agonizing over how best to render terms like zaizai 在々 (a countryside dotted with peasant villages) and komae 小前 (members of peasant communities who hold land but are otherwise unprivileged)—even as I recognize my own discomfort with “peasant” as the standard translation of hyakushō 百姓 (something like “rural commoner” would be better). [End Page v] I have pretty much given up on finding a concise, idiomatic way to capture a common phrase like ōsetsukeraresōrō 被 仰付候 (receiving an order from on high): How does one translate the blank space between the passive-voice marker 被 (-rare) and the rest of the phrase? Rendering into English the expressed if formulaic respect for the usually unspecified authority behind the order is important but hard to carry off in idiomatic, twenty-first-century English. This issue, like every other issue, of HJAS is full of translations of words, phrases, and concepts. Each of our contributors, in her or his way, has wrestled with many problems no less vexing than “Long-temps, je me suis couché de bonne heure,” and often more fraught than my mostly stylistic contortions over words like zaizai. To take just one example from each article: Chelsea Foxwell examines the character of early Meiji shinbun 新聞, “newspapers” that look like anything but. John Herman acknowledges the pejorative “raw” (sheng 生) and “cooked” (shu 熟) connotations of terms informing whether Miao people were “unincorporated” or “incorporated” (respectively) under direct Qing administrative rule. Michael Hunter inquires into the relationships suggested by the term “disciples” (dizi 弟子) in early China. For his part, Nathan Vedal invites us to wonder how to render a title like Huangji jingshi shu 皇極經世書. In an early draft of his article he used the relatively literal “Book of the august ultimate traversing the ages,” but in the end he settled on the more readily comprehensible “Supreme principles governing the world.” Footnotes 1. Adam Gopnik, “Why an Imperfect Version of Proust Is a Classic in English,” New Yorker, March 30, 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/. Marcel Proust, À la recherché du temps perdu, was originally published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. The quotation here is from the first volume, Du côté de chez Swann (Paris: Gallimard, 1919), p. 9; Marcel Proust, The Way by Swann’s, trans. Lydia Davis, vol. 1 of In Search of Lost Time, ed. Christopher Prendergast (London: Allen Lane, 2002), p. 7; Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff, vol 1 of Remembrance of Things Past (New York: Henry Holt, 1922), p. 1. Copyright © 2018 Harvard-Yenching Institute

Migrations of Hungarian Peasants into and out of a Village at the Borders of Budapest

The Hungarian capital, Budapest, witnessed unprecedented development during the rapid modernization period of the Dual Monarchy. It was also the time period when Austria-Hungary underwent the greatest loss of people in its history to international migration. This paper attempts to analyze this phenomenon in relation to a small town in the vicinity of Budapest. Vecsés had been a peasant village but after the abolition of serfdom and the beginnings of modernization, it lost its previous function and transformed into a residential village. The paper analyzes the growth of the population and the changes in the occupational structure, and briefly examines issues of land distribution in Vecsés based on a variety of archival records. The research demonstrates how at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries a typical agricultural village was utterly transformed by the influence of modernization, the urbanization of the capital city, and domestic and international migration. Keywords: modernization, urbanization, migration, occupational structure

Rozwój przestrzenny i przemiany morfologiczne osiedli Wrocławia wyrosłych wokół dawnych wsi kmiecych

W latach 1928–1973 w granice Wrocławia wcielono trzy miasta (Brochów, Leśnicę i Psie Pole) oraz ponad 50 wsi, w wyniku czego powierzchnia miasta wzrosła z 49,2 do 292,8 km2. Wśród przyłączonych do miasta miejscowości można wyróżnić wsie: warzywnicze, kmiece i folwarczne. W większości przypadków stały się one jądrami genetycznymi, wokół których wyrosły obecne osiedla miasta. Na szczególną uwagę, z uwagi na zróżnicowane tempo i złożony charakter przemian morfologicznych, zasługują zwłaszcza wsie kmiece. Celem artykułu jest analiza rozwoju przestrzennego i głównych tendencji przemian morfologicznych osiedli powstałych w sąsiedztwie wsi kmiecych. Większość z nich położona jest w zachodniej i południowej części miasta. Ich wybór podyktowany był zaawansowaniem procesów rozwoju i zróżnicowania morfologicznego osiedli powstałych wokół dawnych wsi i stopniem przekształcenia pierwotnego siedliska wsi (od zachowanej po częściowo zachowaną i całkowicie wymienioną zabudowę zagrodową), od fazy minimalnych zmian pierwotnego układu (Jerzmanowo) po fazę zacierania formy inicjalnej i powstawania swoistej wewnątrzmiejskiego „zlepieńca” (Ołtaszyn – Wojszyce).

A reportage at the end of the century. European economic journeys of Countess Cecylia Plater-Zyberk in the light of the „Kronika Rodzinna” (1899)

The article was prepared on the basis of the „Kronika Rodzinna”, a biweekly published from 1867 in Warsaw. It was addressed to the gentry and intelligentsia, had a literary-social, as well as diary-travel character and often described the so-called feminine issues. During its existence there were program changes. After ideological disputes of the eighties of the 19th century, editors focused on matters related to the household and education. As they followed a moderate mainstream movement of women, the professional education and activity of the latter were promoted by them. In 1899, Countess Cecylia Plater-Zyberk became the chief editor and the publisher of the magazine. She assimilated landowners’, conservative ideals with an intelligent model of an open Catholicism. During an almost one-year of her cadency, the „Kronika Rodzinna” was transformed into a popular „Czasopismo dla Rodzin Katolickich”. The editor herself inaugurated and ended her functions in a series of travel reports. Using such a modern form of journalistic report, she entered the hard-to-reach for women world of media, professional work, as well as of independent fast travels. While bringing to the common denominator the search for female economic schools in Europe, she was reporting on their civilizational condition. In the descriptions saturated with religious axiology, she presented the readers with her own reflections and social contexts of women’s emancipation. In a travel reportage she returned to the Polish ground with an idea of a social solidarity; a reconciliation of women’s aspirations with religion. The social bond was to join in a special way women from the landowners’ elites and peasant villages, while economic schools were to open to them fields of different activities and work. According to the rules of a press reportage, the story of Plater-Zyberk revealed the European reality of the late 19th century in her subjective images seen from the perspective of an aristocrat and the chief-editor of the Catholic „Kronika Rodzinna”.

Typy morfogenetyczne wsi w środkowej Polsce

Historico-geographical analysis of the layouts of villages in central Poland made it possible to distinguish the morphogenetic types of rural settlements characteristic of the specified historical periods. On the basis of the historical topographic maps, it is also possible to describe the features of spatial distribution of the morphogenetic types of villages for the investigated area. Central Poland presents a very diversified morphogenetic picture of villages, which results from a great number of complex historical and socio-economic processes, as well as from varied geographical conditions. Four main historical periods were distinguished, during which the following characteristic morphogenetic types of villages were established: 1. irregular medieval villages which did not undergo regulation in the Middle Ages; 2. regular medieval villages located on German Law; 3. newer settlements founded in the Modern Period (e.g. manorial layouts and villages connected with the so-called oleder settlement and Frederician colonization); 4. villages formed in the process of regulation and parcellation in 19th c. The villages form Early Middle Ages developed in an evolutionary way, were not regulated, and adapted well to the local topographic position. Among the villages with irregular habitats from this period the following types can be singled out: road villages, little green villages (small oval) and circular villages; cross-road villages and multi-road villages. The land was divided into numerous small fields, irregular in shape. The layout of fields in these villages takes the form of blocks, block-strips and irregular small fields. Two distinct processes were taking place in the Middle Ages: foundation of the new villages on the so-called in cruda radice , and regulation of the villages already existing according to the German law. These villages were built mostly on the Church land of the cloisters and bishops, as well as on land belonging at that time to the Duke. The generally accepted types of villages founded on the German law are: large regular street villages and regular green villages (with oval or rectangular square). Regular field patterns in those villages were organized in the open-field patternadapted to the three-field rotation system. Within the group of villages of later origin, established between the 16th c. and the 1th half of 19th c., the following types were distinguished: manors and marshy row villages (the so-called oleder or Frederician colonies and other colonies – the so-called forest settlements). In Modern Period one can identify mostly the manor-peasant village with a complex of manor buildings and peasant homesteads. Manor and peasant fields intermingled and were cultivated by means of the three-field system. Rarely can one observe manor villages which included only the manor complex with crofters’ small holdings and where fields were consolidated into large blocks. In the 18th c. planned villages were built again, which was connected with the Frederician and the so-called oleder colonization. Marshy row villages located on clearings can be distinguished, which represented a different spatial pattern with regard to the economic functions of their population. Agricultural colonies were mostly regular street villages, densely built-up. The pattern of the fields took the form of regular, schematic, broad stripes, belonging to separate owners. The 19th c. marks the turning point in the development of the forms of rural settlement. The ancient spatial settings of villages have changed mostly in connection with the transformation of the socio-economic life of the countryside, in particular the enfranchisement of peasants, the parcellation of manors and field consolidation, the disappearance of the threefield rotation system, and the introduction of new techniques of cultivation. In the manor- peasant village one can observe the process of separation of manor and peasant land. In the context of parceling-out it is possible to distinguish row villages with fields in the form of ownership stripes, perpendicular to the road and dispersed settlement with block system of fields. The irregular layouts of villages from the Middle Ages were formed mostly in the peripheries of central Poland, in the valleys of the Warta, Bzura and Pilica rivers. Compact settlement regions of regular villages, founded during the medieval colonization, have been identified in the area of former ecclesiastical or royal estates where proprietors were interested in location of villages based on the German law. Manors developed mainly inside the villages, and they did not form separate settlement units and morphogenetic zones. Forest colonies and marshy row villages appear as small enclaves throughout the whole investigated area, especially in the central part of region, because they were mostly founded on clearings, areas not cultivated before, on poor soils and in forests.

Reportaż na koniec wieku. Europejskie podróże gospodarcze Cecylii hr. Plater-Zyberkówny w świetle „Kroniki Rodzinnej” (1899 r.)

Artykuł przygotowany został na podstawie „Kroniki Rodzinnej”, dwutygodnika wydawanego od 1867 r. w Warszawie. Adresowany do ziemiaństwa oraz inteligencji miał charakter literacko-społeczny i pamiętnikarsko-podróżniczy, często podejmował sprawy tzw. kwestii kobiecej. W czasie swojego istnienia zachodziły w nim przekształcenia programowe, a po wyciszeniu sporów ideologicznych w latach osiemdziesiątych XIX w. redakcja skupiała uwagę na sprawach domowych i wychowawczych. Płynąc z umiarkowanym nurtem ruchu równouprawnienia kobiet, propagowała ich zawodowe wykształcenie oraz aktywność. W 1899 r. naczelną redaktorką i wydawczynią pisma została Cecylia hr. Plater-Zyberkówna, która w swoich poglądach asymilowała ziemiańskie, zachowawcze ideały z inteligenckim modelem otwartego katolicyzmu. W okresie jej prawie rocznej kadencji „Kronikę Rodzinną” przekształcano w popularne „Czasopismo dla Rodzin Katolickich”. Sama redaktorka zaś zainaugurowała i zamknęła pełnienie swoich funkcji drukowanym w odcinkach reportażem podróżniczym. Taką nowoczesną formą dziennikarskiego sprawozdania wchodziła w trudno dostępny dla kobiet świat mediów, samodzielnych, szybkich podróży i pracy zawodowej. Sprowadzając do wspólnego mianownika poszukiwania w Europie żeńskich szkół gospodarczych, zdawała relację z ich cywilizacyjnej kondycji. W nasyconych religijną aksjologią opisach przedstawiała czytelnikom własne refleksje i społeczne konteksty emancypacji kobiet. W poincie podróżniczej relacji powracała na polski grunt z ideą solidaryzmu społecznego; pogodzenia aspiracji kobiet z religią. Więź społeczna w sposób szczególny łączyć miała kobiety z ziemiańskich elit i chłopskiej wsi, a szkoły gospodarcze otwierać im pola aktywności i pracy. W myśl reguł prasowego reportażu opowieść Plater-Zyberkówny odsłaniała europejską rzeczywistość końca XIX w. w jej subiektywnych obrazach widzianych z perspektywy arystokratki i naczelnej katolickiej „Kroniki Rodzinnej”.

Three Ancient Colonies: Caribbean Themes and Variations

“This book is mostly a meditation, a personal look back,” Sidney Mintz confesses, “not weighty scholarship” (p. 24). Despite the modest disclaimer, the text sheds light on the characteristics that set the Caribbean apart in world history while also highlighting the diversity within the region. Jamaica, Haiti, and Puerto Rico each followed distinctive historical trajectories, Mintz tells us, which intertwined and overlapped economically, socially, and politically.What distinguished the region, Mintz argues, was the development of large-scale sugar plantations and the use of African slavery to cultivate the crops—what he calls the “plantation complex” (p. 12). This oppressive system encouraged the development of regimented and hierarchical conceptions of race, skin color, and social difference. Plantations and slavery shaped the colonies in ways that would last even after the collapse of these economies.Mintz combines anthropological and historical methods seamlessly to “make my own sense out of the past” and to learn how the past continues to be experienced in Jamaica, Haiti, and Puerto Rico (p. 22). To understand the specificity of these societies, he focuses on church-founded peasant villages in Jamaica, rural market women in Haiti, and workers on American-owned sugar plantations in Puerto Rico. This comparative approach reveals key distinctions among the three societies and therefore how the chronology of economic development was central to both the similarities and differences across the region. The rise of plantation economies in Jamaica and Haiti in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries set them on a different path from Puerto Rico and the Hispanic triad (which also included Cuba and Santo Domingo). Sugar only became a core feature of the Hispanic triad in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, under the ownership of American investors.The development of the sugar plantation complex in Jamaica and Haiti in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was paired with the emergence of a secondary economy in which masters forced slaves to cultivate their own subsistence crops. These crops provided the basis for the creation of a local market economy that shaped the future of the societies in important ways. The cultivation of these small plots of land produced what Mintz calls a “proto-peasantry.”Where Jamaica and Haiti differ, as Mintz highlights, is in the postemancipation period, during which the determining factor was access to land. Since Jamaica remained a colony long after emancipation, the state and the elite were able to continue to extract labor from the ex-slaves who were prevented from gaining access to land. This system therefore blocked the development of a peasant society. On the other hand, Haiti, as a result of the government’s inability to exert power, progressed in the nineteenth century into a peasant society in which the government extracted taxes but was otherwise unable to prevent the occupation of the land by laborers.In contrast to both Jamaica and Haiti, Puerto Rico remained a largely undervalued colony in the Spanish empire until the nineteenth century, when sugar cultivation boomed. By this time, however, slavery was in decline and Puerto Rico already had a poor white laboring class; the labor force, therefore, was a mixture of white, black, and mixed-race people. This meant that the strict racial hierarchies that existed in Jamaica and Haiti did not develop with the rise of sugar in Puerto Rico.Throughout the book, the uniqueness of the Caribbean experience is a consistent theme. In the concluding chapter, Mintz revisits the uses of the terms creole and creolization to argue that the terms reflect the specificity of the Caribbean experience. “Creolization, as the process by which slaves dealt with the immediate postenslavement trauma they faced,” cannot, he argues, be applied to cultural contact and change elsewhere in the world (p. 205). Creolization, Mintz reminds us, was the result of violence against and control of heterogeneous groups who “responded creatively to the condition” (p. 197). The social institutions that they built in response to the plantation complex have remained central to Caribbean societies ever since.Since Mintz offers compelling overarching arguments about the region while also leaving room for debate, expansion, and further comparisons, this book will be an excellent choice for both undergraduate and graduate courses. Students will gain a deep appreciation of the centrality of the Caribbean in world history and especially of the roles of Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica in the increasing globalization of the early modern period. Moreover, readers will learn about the distinctiveness of the region, such as the differences between slavery in the Caribbean and the US South. Along the way, they will see the enduring connections between the past and the present and will understand the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship.

Benevolence, Charity, and Duty: Urban Relief and Domain Society during the Tenmei Famine

Benevolence, Charity, and DutyUrban Relief and Domain Society during the Tenmei Famine Maren Ehlers (bio) In the fifth lunar month of 1783, the people of Ōno 大野 were startled by a roll of thunder that returned over several weeks and reminded them of giant drums or cannon shots.1 The source of this menacing noise was Mt. Asama 浅間, a large volcano in neighboring Shinano 信濃 province, which subsequently erupted later in the summer. A small domain set within the mountainous hinterland of Echizen 越前 province, Ōno was too far away to be directly affected by the eruption, but the noise proved an unlucky omen nonetheless. In 1783, after a cold and rainy summer, the peasants of the Ōno plain suffered what they called a “crop failure” (fusaku 不作). This came in the wake of a meager harvest the previous year and was followed by two more years of dearth in 1784/85 and 1786/87.2 Ōno, together with many other parts of eastern and central Japan, had entered one of the worst and longest food crises of the Tokugawa period: the Tenmei 天明 Famine.3 [End Page 55] This article discusses how Ōno’s domain authorities and the people of the castle town (also known as Ōno) organized hunger relief for the town’s commoner population during the Tenmei Famine. Relief institutions for townspeople in Tokugawa Japan differed from those for villagers because governments were particularly eager to prevent unrest around their seats of power, and because towns were centers of commerce and home to a very diverse mix of nonagricultural livelihoods. Most previous research on urban famine relief has focused on the “three capitals,” Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto.4 Consideration of the situation in Ōno adds a new dimension to such studies by exploring how different schemes of hunger aid were managed, funded, and modified in a much smaller setting. The article argues that famine relief in Ōno was structured by the local social order, especially the roles assumed by urban status groups, which served as a coordinating framework for charitable interactions. As such it also addresses the question of what relief activities reveal about society and domain rule in a small castle town in the late Tokugawa period. The shogunate and domain lords administered their territories by relying on the self-governing capacities of groups such as peasant villages, neighborhoods (which were largely occupation based), guilds, and fraternities of various kinds. Although the warrior authorities expected these groups to submit to their control and could impose their will by force if necessary, they also allowed such entities autonomy in many situations and secured their allegiance by granting them privileges and protection. In return, status groups provided the rulers with duties in the form of goods and services that reflected their particular expertise. Famine relief was shaped by this style of governance, which relied on powerful bonds of mutual obligation and group cohesion. Much of what may at first appear like individual acts of charity actually hinged on the givers’ status ties with the authorities, while the government exercised “benevolent rule” by relying on the contributions of commoners. Commoner and seigneurial interventions in hunger relief were closely intertwined and cannot be understood in isolation from one another. [End Page 56] Two types of status entities stand out as particularly relevant for urban famine relief in Ōno and elsewhere: neighborhoods (chō 町) and various forms of guilds (nakama 仲間). Chō were small, self-governing units of house-owning townspeople through which warrior governments exercised their rule over the town population. They typically comprised the two rows of houses on either side of a block-long street section. Mutual help, including assistance to needy neighbors or tenants, is often identified as one of two major responsibilities of the chō, and especially the five-household groups within them—the second being mutual supervision and control.5 By comparison, the involvement in famine relief of other officially recognized groups in Tokugawa society, such as guilds, has not received much scholarly attention. In Ōno, the sake brewer guild, the purveyor guild, and the beggar guild (a group of mendicant outcastes) all played important roles in the organization and funding of town-wide systems of relief. Their participation in these...