Doing some math for the demographics of my campaign using the Medieval Demographics Made Easy article (http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm), I was wondering, What do peasants actually do? My players have ran across many travelling the countryside, needing help finding a cure for a disease or defending thier family, etc, etc, etc. But how do they actually survive and thrive in the common medieval community? Using the article: for a city with a population of 10,000 only 700 people had any skill or craft or trade, etc. What about all the rest? How can they afford tax, purchasing items from the skilled, etc? What if I wanted my characters to start out as peasants (albeit more powerful peasants)?
peasants?
- Thread starter redwing
- Start date
alsih2o
First Post
they farmed, gathered peat for burning, gathered firewood, tended horses and cows, scooped poop, scraped hides, spun thread, cleared land, move rocks, made bricks, built and rebuilt fence, tended hunting lands, washed dishes, served drinks, polished rich peoples polishables, caught rats, hung each other, spent time in prison, carried water, scraped hides, repaired roads, washed others clothes(rarely), fed everything but each other, dug ditches and wells, mined, carried stuff to and from ships, pulled and pushed ferries, prayed and prayed and prayed, carried banners, blew trumpets, and ran erands, this and a thousand other mundane tasks of everyday life.
MaxKaladin
First Post
For most of history, the vast majority of people were involved in agriculture of some kind. In a medieval society, it was something like 90% of the population. That number didn't go under 50% in the US until the 1880s.
So, most of your peasants are going to be involved in farming and/or ranching activities.
In cities, things change a little. As others have mentioned, unskilled laborers in cities did all sorts of things that required doing, but didn't require much in the way of special skills to do. In an age when everything is accomplished by muscle power, you tend to have a lot of men doing lifting, carrying, digging and other manual labor of various kinds. Most craftsmen will have apprentices who won't be skilled yet, but who help with basic tasks easily mastered by the young.
Also remember that about 50% of that population is female and most of them are primarily involved in "keeping house". They care for children, cook, clean and so on. That tended to be a full time job. Most of them probably spin and weave cloth for as well. That may be where the family's clothes come from or they may sell the result for a profit. A woman who is married to a craftsman may not have his craft skill herself (though some did), but may run the storefront while he, the journeymen and the apprentices do the actual crafting. Such women likely have a servant girl or two to help with the housework. Some are going to be barmaids, prostitutes and so on, but they are in the minority.
Harvest is manpower intensive without machinery to help. The practice in the middle ages was that many of the unskilled in the cities would flock to the countryside in the fall to wander around taking pay to help with the harvest. I've even seen references to craft apprentices and university students doing this.
Finally, I went and looked at that page and didn't see where you go the 700 number? Were you counting up businesses? If so, most businesses are going to have more than one skilled employee and some may have several. There will be the master craftsman himself and then he will have skilled journeymen and senior apprentices below him. Some shops will have just one skilled person, but I'd say the average is two or three per business.
So, most of your peasants are going to be involved in farming and/or ranching activities.
In cities, things change a little. As others have mentioned, unskilled laborers in cities did all sorts of things that required doing, but didn't require much in the way of special skills to do. In an age when everything is accomplished by muscle power, you tend to have a lot of men doing lifting, carrying, digging and other manual labor of various kinds. Most craftsmen will have apprentices who won't be skilled yet, but who help with basic tasks easily mastered by the young.
Also remember that about 50% of that population is female and most of them are primarily involved in "keeping house". They care for children, cook, clean and so on. That tended to be a full time job. Most of them probably spin and weave cloth for as well. That may be where the family's clothes come from or they may sell the result for a profit. A woman who is married to a craftsman may not have his craft skill herself (though some did), but may run the storefront while he, the journeymen and the apprentices do the actual crafting. Such women likely have a servant girl or two to help with the housework. Some are going to be barmaids, prostitutes and so on, but they are in the minority.
Harvest is manpower intensive without machinery to help. The practice in the middle ages was that many of the unskilled in the cities would flock to the countryside in the fall to wander around taking pay to help with the harvest. I've even seen references to craft apprentices and university students doing this.
Finally, I went and looked at that page and didn't see where you go the 700 number? Were you counting up businesses? If so, most businesses are going to have more than one skilled employee and some may have several. There will be the master craftsman himself and then he will have skilled journeymen and senior apprentices below him. Some shops will have just one skilled person, but I'd say the average is two or three per business.
Cyronax
Explorer
I thought I'd drop a little tidbit about Real World economic statistics regarding GDP calculations for 3rd world countries (which are nearly still medieval in some unfortunate cases).........up until recently (and not in all/many cases of) the wealth generated by "typically womanly duties" (household chores, raising the kids, and what not) as well as certain forms of child labor were not counted in GDP. This means that the wealth brought on by of a subsistence lifestyle is often overlooked or else ignored. Now i'm not saying that its a great way to live, but I thought it was interesting......
On the same token (with more random musings), consider the purchasing power parity of typical chinese workers compared to american workers based on GDP. The (unmodified) GDP of most Chinese workers indicates that they are "very very very poor" compared to "Us." But in fact, if you take into account how much they can buy with what they can earn or receive in endowments compared to Americans, they are only "very poor." Does that make sense?
Anyway, I always thought that kind of thing was an interesting way to look at how things work....especially for my hobby of choice. The DMG uses a more relative use of wealth, with basically a maximum price for a given piece of equipment, but its interesting to consider nonetheless (the fact that poor societies might not be as bad off as we sometimes think they are.)
Shoddy Econ major am I,
C.I.D.
On the same token (with more random musings), consider the purchasing power parity of typical chinese workers compared to american workers based on GDP. The (unmodified) GDP of most Chinese workers indicates that they are "very very very poor" compared to "Us." But in fact, if you take into account how much they can buy with what they can earn or receive in endowments compared to Americans, they are only "very poor." Does that make sense?
Anyway, I always thought that kind of thing was an interesting way to look at how things work....especially for my hobby of choice. The DMG uses a more relative use of wealth, with basically a maximum price for a given piece of equipment, but its interesting to consider nonetheless (the fact that poor societies might not be as bad off as we sometimes think they are.)
Shoddy Econ major am I,
C.I.D.
BigFreekinGoblinoid
First Post
redwing said:
Why... they Burninate, of course!
Dr. Strangemonkey
First Post
It depends a lot on where you are and when.
You've already heard the worst scenarious: tied to the land, unskilled labor, taxed to within an inch of life, and barely able to till the ground.
This was occasionally true, as is the opposite condition in which peasants are protected by a society that values them, gives them more holidays and protections than we enjoy, are allowed to run their own communities, enjoy unabridgable rights, cheat the tax collectors with impunity, make excellent micro entrepeneurs, are able to make or buy nice things - if not too many of them- and become involved in lots of political and religious movements that help build up the basis of liberal democracies.
The truth most often lies somewhere in the middle. We have records of peasants from their own point of view through artifacts such as Books of Days which were occasionally written by peasants but more often by local clergy and minor lords who were sympathetic to them, and we have plenty of descriptions and archaeological evidence. There is a lot of variety.
As someone else said nearly everyone is involved in agriculture, but in the city that you spoke of the vast pool of craftless folk are actually probably better at more forms of skilled labor than you or I. They can easily assist with any number of skilled activities dealing with agricultural products such as vintning, brewing, butchering, tanning, cloth manufacture, animal handling, construction, militia, and so forth. They wouldn't necessarily own a shop or a large set of tools as craftsmen would, but they would possess a fairly large amount of intellectual capital. Some of the orignal industrial revolution machines worked off of peasant ingenuity in the spaces of individual cottages. The main character of Silas Marner is one such.
Remember that the reason Adam Smith hates peasants is that they are generalists and not the specialists he belives should be created.
Agriculture would include everything from grain to land management to fishing to low level hunting to herding and so forth. All of these would have been strictly controlled by local authorities to sustain local resources, though peasants were infamous for cheating. Traditional nobility was also famous for being easy to cheat and not caring, while clergy were much more concerned about the long term viability of the land and clever enough to see what was happening. Clergy, however, were less likely to cheat on their own duties being highly dependent on rule of law.
Let's look at Italy:
Appenines: Peasants ran large scale cattle ranching
Northern Italy: Milk cow and sheep herding
Southern Italy: Orchards ranging from nuts to olives to citrus and some silk trade work
Po and Tiber River Valley: heavy grain farming, olives, and grapes.
Tuscany: grain, dyes, spices, cloth, and, well, we've all seen the specials.
Each of these agricultural industries involves a host of support industries that peasants also see some profit from.
The most important peasants do, however, is form extremely stable communities. They are very group minded and political and fight for their few rights with an amazing tenacity. Even when free to travel they will tend to return if their is any home to return to. Peasant communities develop and accumulate culture at amazing rate, thus peasant art, celebrations, music, liturgy, superstitions, medicine, and folk culture. They tend to form the basis of political and religious life as their loyalty is a constant slow influence.
They also make good consumers, as in the case of Dutch peasants, though not great consumers, which was why the Dutch lost out to the English with their disenfranchised poor market.
Peasants are fiercely protective of their rights as is witnessed by the Chiapas revolt in Mexico recently. The revolutionaries there refferred to themselves as peasants and objected to the loss of their formerly constitutionally protected community land rights. Resorting to the use of their more or less traditional military tradition certain that they would loose but hopeful that they would attract enough attention and sympathy to gain back some legal status.
Traditionally, peasants are extremely inimical to capitalism which tends to erode their rights at the expense of larger land owners. Thus their tragic support of the Soviet revolutionaries who eventually utterly destroyed them through purges and collective farming.
I have a lot of respect for peasants. Just like cavemen and cowboys they're the real adventurers.
You've already heard the worst scenarious: tied to the land, unskilled labor, taxed to within an inch of life, and barely able to till the ground.
This was occasionally true, as is the opposite condition in which peasants are protected by a society that values them, gives them more holidays and protections than we enjoy, are allowed to run their own communities, enjoy unabridgable rights, cheat the tax collectors with impunity, make excellent micro entrepeneurs, are able to make or buy nice things - if not too many of them- and become involved in lots of political and religious movements that help build up the basis of liberal democracies.
The truth most often lies somewhere in the middle. We have records of peasants from their own point of view through artifacts such as Books of Days which were occasionally written by peasants but more often by local clergy and minor lords who were sympathetic to them, and we have plenty of descriptions and archaeological evidence. There is a lot of variety.
As someone else said nearly everyone is involved in agriculture, but in the city that you spoke of the vast pool of craftless folk are actually probably better at more forms of skilled labor than you or I. They can easily assist with any number of skilled activities dealing with agricultural products such as vintning, brewing, butchering, tanning, cloth manufacture, animal handling, construction, militia, and so forth. They wouldn't necessarily own a shop or a large set of tools as craftsmen would, but they would possess a fairly large amount of intellectual capital. Some of the orignal industrial revolution machines worked off of peasant ingenuity in the spaces of individual cottages. The main character of Silas Marner is one such.
Remember that the reason Adam Smith hates peasants is that they are generalists and not the specialists he belives should be created.
Agriculture would include everything from grain to land management to fishing to low level hunting to herding and so forth. All of these would have been strictly controlled by local authorities to sustain local resources, though peasants were infamous for cheating. Traditional nobility was also famous for being easy to cheat and not caring, while clergy were much more concerned about the long term viability of the land and clever enough to see what was happening. Clergy, however, were less likely to cheat on their own duties being highly dependent on rule of law.
Let's look at Italy:
Appenines: Peasants ran large scale cattle ranching
Northern Italy: Milk cow and sheep herding
Southern Italy: Orchards ranging from nuts to olives to citrus and some silk trade work
Po and Tiber River Valley: heavy grain farming, olives, and grapes.
Tuscany: grain, dyes, spices, cloth, and, well, we've all seen the specials.
Each of these agricultural industries involves a host of support industries that peasants also see some profit from.
The most important peasants do, however, is form extremely stable communities. They are very group minded and political and fight for their few rights with an amazing tenacity. Even when free to travel they will tend to return if their is any home to return to. Peasant communities develop and accumulate culture at amazing rate, thus peasant art, celebrations, music, liturgy, superstitions, medicine, and folk culture. They tend to form the basis of political and religious life as their loyalty is a constant slow influence.
They also make good consumers, as in the case of Dutch peasants, though not great consumers, which was why the Dutch lost out to the English with their disenfranchised poor market.
Peasants are fiercely protective of their rights as is witnessed by the Chiapas revolt in Mexico recently. The revolutionaries there refferred to themselves as peasants and objected to the loss of their formerly constitutionally protected community land rights. Resorting to the use of their more or less traditional military tradition certain that they would loose but hopeful that they would attract enough attention and sympathy to gain back some legal status.
Traditionally, peasants are extremely inimical to capitalism which tends to erode their rights at the expense of larger land owners. Thus their tragic support of the Soviet revolutionaries who eventually utterly destroyed them through purges and collective farming.
I have a lot of respect for peasants. Just like cavemen and cowboys they're the real adventurers.
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