Peasants against landowners

Before the industrial society, almost all peasants grew food for household needs. Their constant problem was that they had to keep the mafia – which in Europe was called ”nobility” – in a good mood by paying them protection money. Keeping such protection money at reasonable levels was the main political goal of the peasants.
For a long time, the mafia also had a vested interest in not pushing too hard – then the farmers could go to the forest, which was vast at the time, and then they paid nothing at all. In addition, it happened that they simply killed the bailiffs and even burned the mafia bosses’ houses if they were too pressured.

But in the 13th century, the conflicts became tougher. The population increased and the forests were cultivated, the trade in luxury items also increased and the mafia leaders needed more money to buy status. The peasants were pressed harder and harder, the lack of food began to spread, and the mortality became worse.

In the middle of the 14th century, the system collapsed. On the one hand, a plague epidemic struck the starving population and ended the overpopulation in a hurry. On the one hand, the Chinese made a revolution<LÄNK> and put an end to the Eurasian trading system. Wealth dried up and the European upper class began to fight more and more intensely about what remained.

In that situation, it also became easier for the peasants to revolt, cut back on the protection system and in some cases get rid of it completely. In some areas people were more successful than in others.

The first was southern Germany, now called Switzerland. There the peasants in the so-called forest cantons succeeded to wipe out a noble army in 1315, which gave the same echo over Europe as when Vietnamese peasants defeated the United States in 1975.

The other was the North Sea coast, in an area from England to southern Denmark. Especially in the marshes of Friesland and Ditmarschen, the peasants managed to keep away all nobility until the 16th century.

The third was Sweden, where the forest areas were never cultivated and it was difficult for the nobility to maintain control. There, a large uprising of peasants, miners and dissatisfied nobility in 1435 led to the peasants retaining their weapons and organization and being able to establish themselves as a power factor. For the rest of the 15th century, the approval of the peasants was required for each regime, and when the Riksdag began to be established, the peasants were representet.

The fourth was Catalonia, where the peasants could use a conflict between king and nobility to organize a defense war, the so-called The Remensa, in the 1460s-70s, until the nobility gave up and the looting was made illegal.

These were the most successful mobilizations. But throughout Europe, at this time, peasants were gaining some sort of civil rights and improving their economic status.

Reading
Janken Myrdal: Medeltida bonderesningar och bondekrig i Europa, in Folkets Historia 2-3 1995,
Rodney Hilton: Bond men made free, Routledge 1988
Ranajit Guha: Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India, Duke University Press 1999.