Contenu du sommaire

Process of Change in Rural Castilian Communities. After enumerating the main characteristics of Castilian villages and their peasant populations, this article describes the process by which "traditional" rural society, which emerged in the last half of the 19th century, has been gradually obliterated by urban and industrial development. Among the many factors responsible for the collapse of traditional society, rural emigration served as a catalyst for economic and social transformations. Mechanization, which favored and was favored by emigration changed the concept and content of work and intensified rural and urban-industrial relations. It also affected the social structure by blurring previously clear status gaps between workers and peasants and by encouraging the formation of agrarian cooperatives, which ideologically seem communalist or collectivistic but which are in fact defined in particularistic and capitalistic terms. The repercussions of these transformations on family life are described, the analysis focussing on the educational system and the habitat, and stressing the changes provoked in the perception and values systems of rural communities. After defining the importance of the Civil War for the Castilian peasants, this article shows to what extent their present political attitudes are influenced by the increasing secularization and urbanization of rural life and speculates on the future political evolution of these peasants on their way to becoming small capitalistic farmers.

Land-Ownership and the Capitalistic Mode of Production. The social use of land in developed capitalistic societies is one of today's burning issues. The land problem in societies dominated by the capitalistic mode of production is that of the private appropriation of land; what is the status of land in a capitalistic economy? What is that of the landowner? In order to define the conceptual framework in which these questions will be treated, this article discusses the nature of the ground rent and the social forms that permit its extension as they were perceived by the British and later by the Land Economics School in America. Then there comes an analysis of the problems raised by the ground rent theory as elaborated by Marx. The second section of this paper is devoted to the rise of the small landowners who replaced the dwindling landowning class. Due to the fact that the land, rather than being concentrated, was parcelled out to those who used it directly, Marx's model proves to be inadequate. After developing the meaning of the term "immobilized capital," the article demonstrates how private ownership of land inhibits the extension of capitalistic methods to the agricultural sector. It then shows how it also checks the absorption and direct organization of urban expansion (housing production) by the capitalistic mode of production. The rapid development of real-estate promotion is, however, profoundly changing the role of capital in housing production. In conclusion, one reads an explanation of the ways in which the land- ownership system articulates with the capitalistic mode of production, of conditions under which the social use of land is subordinate to the mode of production, and some comment on the place of land policy in the more general economic policy in dominantly capitalistic societies.

The Accounts of a Portuguese Hospital 1379-13830. After examining the accounts kept by the scribe of a small Portuguese hospital from 1379 to 1383, this article explains how these and similar documents can better our understanding of Portugal's late medieval agrarian economy. In addition to revealing the corruptibility of the administrators who generously helped themselves to the institution's resources, and the yields of a small property worked by a single peasant, the accounts indicate that, despite being shortchanged, the hospital inmates received a ration of grain definitely superior to their minimum requirements. Taking into consideration this relative prosperity, the article questions the validity of recent interpretations of 14th century Portuguese living standards.

Population and Society in Pourrières 1368-1430. An Evaluation of Research Work. This article describes the first stage of a research project undertaken in 1970-71 by the History Department of Aix-en-Provence and devoted to the study of a Provençal village, Pourrières, during the Low Middle Ages. Although much research is still left to be done, the information furnished by fiscal documents and official records from the period in question gives an idea of what the village must have been like near the end of the 14th century. Because the cadastres are incomplete and/or difficult to interpret, only partial and approximate results were obtained in the study of land distribution and exploitation. The documents concerning residence are more informative, indicating a progressive concentration of living space. With the exception of one or two notaries, a smith and a weaver, all the village inhabitants were peasants, but if their activities were similar, their fortunes were far from equal. After treating the political institutions of the community, this article deals with the principal preoccupation of the research group: the demographic evolution of Pourrières. To better understand the steady population decline revealed by the graph established on the basis of various fiscal documents, death rates, life expectancies, generation renewal and immigration are considered. As demographic history proves to be closely related to economic social history, research should be pursued along these lines.

An Imaginary Museum of Peasant Trickery: The Fraud of Tithe-Payers from the 14th to the 18th Century in the Region of Lyon. Using administrative and judicial documents, this article examines the various methods of cheating tithe-collectors fabricated by the peasants who were subjected to this tax. Two categories of frauds are evident: (1) those involving the multiplication of exemptions and (2) those that hinder the levy of the tithe, whether on wine or gain. Although the types of frauds and the motives of the peasants who perpetrated them varied little during the period in question, the rhythm of the tithe-protest movement evolved through centuries, increasing in violence. A study of the official tax rates shows that, although the tithe gradually diminished from one tenth to one eleventh to one twelfth, etc., it still remained relatively high in the region of Lyon. In the fight against the tithe, it is impossible to decide whether the frauders or the collectors were victorious, but in either case, the fear of the odious tax haunted the peasants long after its suppression in 1789.