Is this really true?
No. That article that does the rounds every few months (it's shortened to weeks now) is by an economist who didn't understand how the feudal system or farming in general worked and so when he read manor record's saying peasants worked X hours on Y days, he thought that was their regular 9-5 job. Instead it's the number of hours they worked for their landlord, which is the only reason it was being recorded in the first place, as part of their feudal obligations to him. Then they would have to walk over to their "own" fields and do the work required to feed themselves there as well, no matter how long it took, going unrecorded because most of them were illiterate.
>>18265366Doing groceries, housework and cooking along with travelling to work and back home isn't counted either in our "working hours" so why should it be for peasants?
>>18265367You reckon hours of manual farm work a day to ensure you don't starve to death are the same as doing groceries? Are you a retard or a cunt who wants to derail the thread?
>>18265366Does the landlord exempt them from rent or charge them less rent after doing these corvee labour for him?
>>18265358People here worked from monday to friday in the mines being forced to live together with their coworkers, at the weekend they returned to their farms to work there. And it didnt matter how good they were with their money, that was their live. An average wagie nowadays, granted hes good with money, can retire after ten years of savemaxxing.
>>18265358Medieval peasants had to work from dusk until dawn
>>18265392Depends on the landlord. Some would expect a portion of whatever they grow on their "own" land, as well as working for him on his land.
>>18265513ThisMedieval and early modern rent/taxation/corvee schemes (all basically the same in a feudal system) were incredibly complex and varied. You might have to deliver money (rent or a poll tax), specific goods (like a specific amount of crops, animals, eggs), part of your harvest, work, special taxes for certain events (like deaths or marriages), possibly all of the above. The actual work and tax load of a medieval farmer is pretty hard to determine.
>>18265527Also the general rule is that given a population at nearly carrying capacity, your average farmer will just barely manage to feed himself and his children such that on average some more than two of them will survive to adulthood. For population loss times (after the plague, or possibly after big famines) it would be more. Also this depends strongly on the farmer, a rich one would be able to rear more than two children, a poor one not even that. The poor classes mostly couldn't reproduce themselves but slowly died out, being replenished by the less fortunate (no heritage, poor luck, etc.) of the middle classes.
Time not spent on working was spent on maintaining what you had (working).
>>18265358No. This claim is based on a book by the economist Juliet Schor (The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure) where she analysed the corvee and socage services certain types of peasants had to perform for their landlord and counted those as work hours. What she didn't take into account were the hours that went into the subsistence farming, general upkeep of ones dwelling and the preparation of foodstuffs and other consumables.>>18265366This. But it was a she.>>18265367You can of course don't count sowing and plowing the fields, tending to the animals, fixing your roof and dewelling , grinding your own contingent of corn and weaving baskets as work. But that would be dumb, wouldn't it? >>18265392In most cases and in most arrangement those corvee services were (part) the rent. But there were also types of peasants that were tenants and had to pay for the land they rented. It all depends on the type of peasant, the customs of a given place and of course the slice of time we are looking at.>>18265527>special taxes for certain events (like deaths or marriagesArticle 11 from the 12 Articles of Memmingen (a list of demands that was adopted by some of the rebellious peasants during the German Peasants War) demanded that the Mortuary-Tax should be abolished. Imagine one of your family members died and you had to pay your landlord for this.
>>18265652Well of course, your landlord just lost an asset, why SHOULDN'T you have to pay him compensation?
>>18265358Life was more fulfilling in the middle ages.lefties will screech, which is weird because karl marx himself said subsistence life was better than the modern life, but life was really better.They worked less, their work was more fulfilling, they were stronger, they killed themselves less, they had much stronger communal and national bonds.Look at how happy africans living a traditional life are today compared to American negroes.
>>18265781Yes, Africans are so happy, millions of them keep swarming into Europe...
>>18265358Anyone who has ever tended livestock or even just had a pet should know this is not true. You don't get a single day off from that.
>>18265781>muh leftists out of nowhereMind =broken since 2020
>>18265781If subsistence agriculture is so great why not practice it yourself.
>>18266058You literally cannot replicate it in the modern world. The amish come close, but they are born into this lifestyle and their community.
>>18266165>You literally cannot replicate it in the modern worldSure you can, in fact it's easier than ever.It just also happens to be tiresome, boring shit that fucking sucks.
>>18265781>which is weirdwhy's that weird? progressivism is the belief that current year is better than previous year
If you were a noble problaly
Which one, modern man?
>>18265366>>18265369no way their fields were that bigwouldn't have taken them that long to plant their personal shit
>>18265358The basic problem is people treating Middle Ages Europe as single entity. Living and working conditions differed substantially between places like Spain and England which was grim impoverished backwater.Life, diet and work was quite superior in Italy, Spain and Southern France compared to England or Sweden
>>18265538>your average farmer will just barely manage to feed himself and his children such that on average some more than two of them will survive to adulthood. For population loss times (after the plague, or possibly afterMiddle Ages Europe doesn't consist only of England. Not every region was threatened with famine.
>>18265403They didn't work in the winter
>>18267585except all the feeding the animals, mending whatever needed mending, spinning and weaving, butchering the pig, cutting wood, providing corvee transport for the feudal lord etc.
>>18267589All of that is easy work it's not the same as being out in the fields all day. Winter was basically annual neetdom for serfs.
>>18267540Well it's just not their "personal shit". But also the naturalia that would be transferred to their landlord.
>>18267592my paternal grandparents lived a traditional peasant lifestyle, small adobe house in the outskirts of the village, reed thatch roof, no electricity, no running water, nothing (this is 1970s Transylvania). they worked constantly from sunrise to sunset, except on religious holidays. ancient shit needs way more maintenance, making stuff under those conditions requires way more preparation than the modern equivalents. just imagine washing clothes in winter. I have no idea how corvee would have fit into their schedule, a mere 120 years earlier when my ancestors were still serfs.
>>18266167I didn't mean subsistence agriculture. I mean the community, the cultural surroundings, the entire view of the world that medieval people had. A modern person born and grown up in the modern world cannot acquire that.
>>18267610You're exaggerating it was hard work of course but in winter there wasn't much to do.
>>18267622no, I'm not. cooking and then washing the dishes would take a lot of time with all the water warming on ancient stoves and puzzle-solving about which pot needs to be washed next so that it can be used to warm more water. let's not even start about breadmaking which was a much larger enterprise, once in two weeks. plus, as I said it was the winter when we set up the weaving machinery, all wooden parts, and made those rag carpets that were then bartered away for stuff we did not have.in the summer it's worse. the days are much longer so people sleep only about five hours per night (in the winter it's more like 13), and that's constant work. it does not matter if it's easy: you have to pay full attention to it, easy work or not.the real problem back during the wondrous old days of christian theocracy and serfdom was weather versus corvee and religious holidays. certain field work activities are extremely time-bound. you have one week to reap wheat. before that it's green, after that it's fallen on the ground, and if during that week you had days when you could not work at your own harvest because of corvee, or st. Nobody's day, and then a rainstorm came and flattened the stalks to the ground, then your wheat was fucked and so were you.
