|
 Posted: Sun May 22, 2005 12:12 am
Post subject: Re: Can you explain the life of a peasant? |
 |
|
There have been lots of different variations of aristocrat peasant society, and lots of different kinds of peasants. If a hundred or so history specialists combined their efforts, they could probably put together a pretty good catalogue. Since they don’t seem to want to do that kind of work, you will have to settle for a partial answer.
I will start with a description taken from a book titled “Latin American Civilization”. This passage was written by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes 1478-1557. He was the Royal Chronicler of the Indies, and it was his job to describe the Indian civilizations of the Americas at the time of the Spanish conquest. In this passage he is writing about the Aztec peasants.
“The Indians of New Spain, I have been told by reliable persons … are the poorest of the many nations that live in the Indies at the present time. In their homes they have no furnishings or clothing other than the poor garments which they wear on their persons, one or two stones for grinding maize, some pots in which to cook the maize, and a sleeping mat. Their meals consist chiefly of vegetables cooked with chili, and bread. They eat little, not that they would not eat more if they could get it, for the soil is very fertile and yields bountiful harvests, but the common people and plebeians suffer under the tyranny of their Indian lords, who tax away the greater part of their produce in a manner that I shall describe. Only the lords and their relatives, and some principle men and merchants, have estates and lands of their own; they sell and gambol with their lands as they please, and they sow and harvest them but pay no tribute. Nor is any tribute paid by artisans, such as masons, carpenters, feather-workers, or silversmiths, or by singers and kettle-drummers (for every Indian lord has musicians in his household, each according to his station.) But such persons render personal service when it is required, and none of them is paid for his labor.
Each Indian lord assigns to the common folk who come from other parts of the country to settle on his land (and to those who are already settled there) specific fields, that each may know the land that he is to sow. And the majority of them have their homes on their land; and between 20 and 30, or 40 and 50 houses have over them an Indian head who is called tiquitlato, which in the Castilian tongue means “the finder (or seeker) of tribute.” At the harvest time this tiquitlato inspects the corn field and observes what each one reaps, and when the reaping is done they show him the harvest, and he counts the ears of corn that each has reaped, and the number of wives and children that each of the vassals in his charge possesses. And with the harvest before him he calculates how many ears of corn each person in that household will require till the next harvest, and these he gives to the Indian head of that house; and he does the same with the other produce, namely kidney beans… and chili, which is their pepper… and cocoa, and cotton, … and pulque, which is there wine; and all the various products which they obtain from the maguey plant, from which they obtain food and drink and footwear and clothing. … Of all these and other products they leave the vassal only enough to sustain him for a year. And in addition the vassal must earn enough to pay the tribute of mantles, gold, silver, honey, wax, lime, wood, or whatever products it is customary to pay as tribute in that country. They pay this tribute every 40, 60, 70, or 90 days according to the terms of the agreement. This tribute also the tiquitlato receives and carries to his Indian lord.
Ten days before the close of the 60 or 100 days, or whatever is the period appointed for the payment of the tribute, they take to the house of the Indian lord the produce brought by the tiquitlatos; and if some poor Indian should prove unable to pay his share of the tribute, whether for reasons of health or poverty, or lack of work, the tiquitlato tells the lord that such-and-such will not pay the proportion of the tribute that has been assigned to him; then the lord tells the tiquitlato to take the recalcitrant vassal to a tianquez, or market, which they hold every five days in all of the towns of the land, and there sell him into slavery, applying the proceeds of the sale to the payment of his tribute….
All of the towns have their own lands, long ago assigned for the provision of the orchilobos or ques or temples where they kept their idols; and these lands were and are the best of all. And they have this custom: At seeding time all would go forth at the summons of the town council to sow these fields, and to weed them at the proper time, and to cultivate the grain and harvest it and carry it to the house in which lived the pope and the teupisques, pioches, exputhles, and piltoutles (or, as we would say, the bishops, archbishops, and canons and prebendaries, and even choristers, for each major temple had these five classes of officials). And they supported themselves from this harvest, and the Indians also raised chickens for them to eat.
In all the towns Montezuma had his designated lands, which they sowed for him in the same way as the temple lands; and if no garrison was stationed in their towns, they would carry the crops on their backs to Temestitan [Tenochtitlan]; but in the garrison towns the grain was eaten by Montezuma’s soldiers, and if the town did not sow the land, it had to supply the garrison with food, and also give them chickens and all other needful provisions.”
This description of Aztec peasantry is something of a hard case scenario. Many peasants had an easier life, but others were even worse off. The Aztec peasants had very good, volcanic soil and probably irrigation canals, but they were still extremely poor because of a very high level of exploitation. As far as I can tell, this seems to be a fairly common situation. The more bountiful the land, the more surplus it can provide. This often means that there are more aristocrats, more officials, more non-food producers, and a larger burden of taxes, rent, and tribute is imposed on the peasants in order to provide food for everyone.
In colder climates with poorer soils, the peasants were spread out over a larger area, and they didn’t have officials watching their every move and counting every ear of corn or bushel of wheat that was produced. In either case most of the surplus production was taken from the peasants by the aristocrats and used by them to maintain the highest standard of living that was possible.
Some peasants owned their own land and paid taxes, others worked land owed by the aristocrats and paid rent. The result was pretty much the same. Chinese scholars often talk about rich peasants, medium peasants, and poor peasants. I am sure that the rich peasants had a higher standard of life than the poor peasants, but very few were able to accumulate enough wealth to rise above peasant status. Eventually some calamity would befall the family, and they would be poor again.
The system was usually designed to extract as much surplus from the peasants as possible, but it was not designed to destroy them. That would be counterproductive. The problem was that this left little margin for unforeseen disasters. Bad weather could easily reduce the harvest by half. In these famine years there were still just as many aristocrats
and non-food producers as before. The soldiers, priests, artists, and craftsmen who served the aristocrats generally had higher status than the peasants, who were squeezed even harder to provide the necessary supplies. In a war it was common for armies to take everything that they could carry and burn the rest in order to deny it to their enemy.
Most peasants had a hard life, but there were also some good times. There were festivals, homemade beer and wine, music and dancing. There was occasionally some free time when they could improve their homes or maybe just relax a little. Peasants didn’t have the problem of feeling dejected because they failed to achieve some higher goal. They were born peasants and knew that they would always be peasants. They were never expected to strive to become something better, which causes many problems in modern society.
|
|
