Perspectives on the peasantries of Europe

A collected volume on The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Tom Scott, is reviewed. It contains an Introduction by Scott; papers on France (Jonathan Dewald and Liana Vardi), Iberia (Teofilo F. Ruiz), Italy (S.R. Epstein), Western Germany (Thomas Robisheaux), East‐Elbian Germany and Poland (William W. Hagen), the Austrian Empire (Hermann Rebel), Russia (Edgar Melton), the Ottoman Empire (Fikret Adanir), Scandinavia (David Gaunt) and England (Richard M. Smith); and a concluding essay (John Langton). The volume's scope and the claims made on its behalf, as a work of major historiographic importance, are noted; the theoretical/ methodological intent and the authors’ remit identified; and the individual papers considered critically. It provides a useful depiction of the specificities of a wide range of European peasantries. It is, however, in several ways, analytically defective. This is so, it is argued, inasmuch as the authors’ quest for diversity turns out to be unhelpful; it is structured by an inadequate political economy, seen in an absence, or deficient treatment, of various crucial themes — most notably sharecropping, differential land productivity, social differentiation, and the state; and the volume has major shortcomings in terms of comparative history (including a curious neglect of the influential work of Robert Brenner).

The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Tom Scott. London and New York: Longman. 1998. Pp.xi + 416. £44 (hardback); £19.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 582 10132 8 and 10131 X