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Peasantry and the State in Colonial Mexico: A Tentative Comparison with Western Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Raymond Buve
Raymond Buve
Affiliation:
University of Leiden
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Extract

Peasants is a blanket term for all those who, one way or another are involved in agrarian activities, be it as a labourer, a herdsman, a sharecropper, a tenant, an independent cultivator or in a combination of two or more of these activities. Besides this, one will have to account for part-time income from migratory labour or economic activities as home industries, petty trade, transport or mining. Many peasant societies are internally stratified into richer peasants, sometimes village élites, middle peasants and their poor brethren. In Western Europe and in Mexico most peasants belonged to the latter category. For them Darnton's conclusion, ‘to eat or not to eat, that was die question peasants confronted in their folklore as well as in their daily lives’ was certainly valid, and, out of necessity, these peasants were often looking for additional land or income. They were, for that matter, mobile.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , July 1991 , pp. 97 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1991

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References

Notes

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2 I am roughly following here conditions laid out by Tilly, Charles in ‘Reflections on the History of European State-Making’ in: Tilly, Ch. ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton 1975) 3–84, esp. 70.Google Scholar

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14 The best introductory chapter to prehispanic conditions isLockhart, J. and Schwartz, S.B., Early Latin America. A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (Cambridge 1983)Google Scholar; Slicher van Bath, Spaans Amerika; Ibidem, Indianen en Spanjaarden, 117–137; Ouweneel, Arij, ‘Altepeme and Pueblos de Indios’, 5–6 andGoogle Scholar Rik Hoekstra, ‘Different Way of Thinking’; , Ouweneel, Onderbroken groei, 153–155Google Scholar.

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16 See also Pietschmann, Staatliche Organisation.

17 , Ouweneel, ‘Altepeme and Pueblos de Indios’, 7.Google Scholar

18 Ibidem, 9.

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20 Pietschmann, Horst, ‘Agriculture e industria rural indígena en el México de la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII’ in: Ouweneel, Arij and Pacheco, Critína Torales eds., Empresarios, indios e estado. Perfil de la economía mexicana (Siglo XVIII) (Amsterdam 1988) 71–85.Google Scholar

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25 See f.e. Ouweneel, Onderbroken groei, and Garcia Martínez, ‘Pueblos de Indios’.

26 See Archer, Army, William B. Taylor ‘Conflict and Balance in District Politics: Tecali and the Sierra Norte de Puebla in the Eighteenth Century’ in: , Ouweneel and , Miller eds., Indian Community, 270–294.Google Scholar

27 For the discussion on peonage: Young, Eric Van, ‘Mexican Rural History since Chevalier: the Historiography of the Colonial Hacienda’, LARR 18, 3 (1983) 5–62;Google ScholarIbidem, ‘The Age of Paradox: Mexican Agriculture at the End of the Colonial Period, 1750–1810’ in:Jacobsen, N. and Puhle, J.H. eds., The Economies of Mexico and Peru during the Late Colonial Period, 1760–1810 (Berlin 1986) 64–90Google Scholar.

28 Arij Ouweneel, ‘Don Claudio Pesero y la administratión de la hacienda de Xaltípan (Tlaxcala 1734–1777)’ in: Ouweneel and Cristina Torales Pacheco eds., Empresarios;Borah, Woodrow, Justice by Insurance. The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico and the Legal Aides of the Half Real (Berkeley 1983)Google Scholar; Ibidem, ‘El status jurídico de los indios en la Nueva Espana’, América Indígena 45,2 (1985) 257–276Google Scholar.

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30 See f.e. the essays on the Indian Community in Colonial Mexico in Ouweneel and Miller eds., Indian Community, and the earlier essays of Pietschmann.

31 Tutino, John, From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico. Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940 (Princeton 1986)Google Scholar Introduction; Nickel ed. Paternalismo, Ouweneel, Onderbroken groei; Ibidem, ‘Altepeme and Pueblos de Indios’, 26–27.

32 See the earlier cited works of Pietschmann and Ouweneel; On the role of the Church and indigenous Catholicism, see Van Oss, Catholic Colonialism; Gruzinski, Hommes-dieux.

33 , Ouweneel ‘Don Claudio Pesero’, 268–269;Google ScholarIbidem, Onderbroken groei, Ch. IX; Tilly, Charles, ‘Food Supply and Public Order in Modern Europe’ in: , Tilly ed., Formation, 380–455Google Scholar.

34 Stern, ‘Latin Americas Colonial History’.

35 , Tutino, Insurrection, 242–249;Google ScholarStern, Steve, ‘Latin Americas Colonial History. Invitation to an Agenda’, Latin American Perspectives 12 (1985) 3–16;CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Ouweneel, ‘Don Claudio Pesero’, 171–174;Google ScholarIbidem, Onderbroken groei, 168–178Google Scholar.

36 Archer, Christon I., ‘Banditry and Revolution in New Spain, 1790–1821’, Biblioteca Americana 1 (1982) 58–59.Google Scholar

37 Serge Gruzinski, ‘Indian Confraternities, Brotherhoods and Mayordomías in Central New Spain. A List of Questions for the Historian and the Anthropologist”; Lotte de Jong, ‘Community Discourse: A Family Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Coyotepec, Oaxaca’; and Eric Van Young, ‘The Raw and the Cooked: Elite and Popular Ideology in Mexico 1800–1821’ in Ouweneel and Miller eds., Indian Community, Taylor, ‘Conflict and Balance’.

38 Taylor, ‘Conflict and Balance’.

39 See, , VanYoung, ‘Raw’, 304Google Scholar; on France seeWeber, Eugene, Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Paris 1976)Google Scholar.

40 De Jong ‘Community Discourse’.

41 , VanYoung, ‘Raw’, 308.Google Scholar