The Social Order 357regions where lords dominated peasants of another ethnic group, as in
Bohemia, where German landowners drew on the labor of Czech peasants.
The village was the center of the peasant’s universe. Village solidarities
helped them pull through as best they could in hard times, through harvest
failures, epidemics, and wars. Villagers viewed outsiders with suspicion.
Folk songs celebrated peasant wisdom and wiliness, as humble rural peo
ple outfoxed naive and bumbling outsiders, whose wealth could not impart
common sense.
All peasants were vulnerable to powerful outsiders in the overlapping and
interdependent systems of domination that characterized early modern Eu
rope. The state, nobles, and churchmen extracted taxes, produce, labor, and
cash. The proportion of peasant revenue in kind or cash that disappeared
into the pockets of nobles, officials, and clergy ranged from about 30 percent
(France) to 70 percent (Bohemia). Rulers extracted money, commodities,
and labor payments, imposing additional taxes when they were at war.
The peasantry was not, however, a homogeneous mass. In Western Eu
rope, where almost all peasants were free, a peasant’s status depended
upon the amount of land, if any, owned or controlled through leases. In
northern France, Flanders, southwestern Germany, Switzerland, and Swe
den, many peasants owned or rented plots of sufficient size and productiv
ity to do well enough in most years. Swedish peasants owned about a third
of the cultivable land in their country. Recognized formally as a fourth
estate, the Swedish peasantry maintained a degree of independence per
haps unique in Europe. Charles XII of Sweden bragged that he would
rather be the most miserable Swedish peasant than a Russian noble unpro
tected by law from the whims of the tsar. Rural industry—for example,
linens—provided supplementary income for peasant families in parts of
France, Switzerland, and in German states. In Zurich’s hinterland in the
1780s, about a quarter of the population spun or wove at home for the cot
ton and silk industries.
Many landowning peasants were constantly in debt, borrowing against
the often empty hope of the next harvest. Sharecroppers worked land
owned by landlords in exchange for one-third to one-half of what was pro
duced. Landless laborers scraped by, if they were lucky, working on rural
estates. All over Europe, some peasants took to the road as peddlers. Sea
sonal migrants left their homes in the Alps, Pyrenees, and other mountain
regions each year for construction work in Milan, Lyon, Barcelona, or
other large cities, or to work in the grain fields in the summer or in the
vineyards in the fall.
Serfdom had largely died out in Western Europe. Yet many free peasants
continued to be subject to some kind of seigneurial justice. In France, thou
sands of manorial courts still existed in 1789, providing lords with addi
tional income by virtue of legal fees and fines assessed on peasants. Most
of these courts, presided over by nobles, occupied themselves with minor