Contenu du sommaire

Four Centuries of Farming Systems in Kent, 1500-1900. The story of farming in the county of Kent during the four centuries from 1500 to 1900 is one of change and fluctuating fortunes — as in other places. The great monasteries who were farmers on a large scale in the early sixteenth century were replaced in the seventeenth by progressive landowners. The county was already famous for sheep and grazed some cattle, produced some milk and dairy goods. The introduction of hop culture led to a famous industry. Fruit, both bush and tree varieties, were introduced and became famous as did market garden produce in the North of the county. Romney sheep were bred in the marshes of that name, and other breeds were kept in the Isle of Sheppey and else-where. The Weald, formerly covered with forest, was gradually reclaimed and made into smallish farms, partly because of the heavy soil, mainly arable with rather low yields. The essay attempts to describe the methods of the farmers as they changed and were improved by new inventions, new crops that were introduced, and better ways of breeding, keeping and feeding domestic animals; and the economic and other difficulties that had to be overcome. It would be impossible here to set out all the events that are recorded in the essay. where. The Weald, formerly covered with forest, was gradually reclaimed and made into smallish farms, partly because of the heavy soil, mainly arable with rather low yields. The essay attempts to describe the methods of the farmers as they changed and were improved by new inventions, new crops that were introduced, and better ways of breeding, keeping and feeding domestic animals; and the economic and other difficulties that had to be overcome. It would be impossible here to set out all the events that are recorded in the essay.

Traditional Latifundium in Peru until 1914. Marginalisation and Resistance. Mostly because they exclusively insist on the formal opposition between latifundium and minifundium, the studies produced in France dealing with the agrarian structures of Latin America conceal in fact the responsibilities of agrarian capitalism in the blockage of this dualistic structure of the land. What has happened to the traditional or archaic Peruvian latifundia since the end of the nineteenth century, in this respect is very significant. Reduced to a marginal status, through the technical and financial rise of the large capitalistic land estates, they remain however necessary to these estates as land, water and labour reserves ; and still more, as intermediate land institutions able to control the inland masses of the Andean Indian and half-breed peasantry. Between the nineteenth and twentieth century, in order to resist competition from modern capitalistic sector, the traditional Peruvian latifundia reacted by aggravating the exploitation and pauperisation of Indian communities. Such a reaction reflects, in its own way, the laws of unequal economic growth. The true responsibility of the pre-capitalistic development of the latifundia, which takes place in the Peruvian Andes at the beginning of the nineteenth century, can be found in the pressure brought upon the traditional latifundia by agrarian capitalism itself.

Agrarian Reform and Revolution in Attende's Chile. The article argues that Popular Unity's agrarian policy reflects the limitations and contradictions of its strategy to power. Although Allende's agrarian reform was extensive, drastic and rapidly executed, it nevertheless limited the peasantry's contribution to the revolutionary struggle for power. The article starts by briefly examining the rural legacy left by the Christian Democrat government of Frei to the Popular Unity and presenting the agrarian programme of Allende. It proceeds with an analysis of peasant mobilisation and organisation, focusing on land seizures and peasants councils. Then it studies the organisation and functioning of the expropriated latifundia (reformed sector) and analyses why socialist relations of production failed to develop. Finally it attempts an assessment of Popular Unity's agrarian policy in the light of the failure of the revolutionary forces to capture power and initiate a transition to socialism in Chile.

The Revolution and the Struggle of Share-Farmers. The results of a systematic inventory of tithe-levying conflicts between the common people and the clergy, and between landowners and share-farmers in the South-Western province of Gascogne, is given as a contribution to the study of the pre-revolutionary period; we find in it an analysis of the material causes that were instrumental in the radical dechristianisation process, and precisions as to the nature of social conflicts in the village context under the Old Régime. The article also shows how, after 1789, the landowners impropriated the tithes that had supposedly been abolished, and documents the attempts of Gascogne share-farmers to oppose salary limitations and the concentration of ground rent. It recounts certain historically contingent victories gained by share-farmers in the years 1793-1794, but also the reaction that ensued and its long term consequences for Gascony and more speciflcally, for the peasantry of the Gers department.