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A Comparative Study of Tenant Labor in Parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America 1700-1900: A Preliminary Report of a Research Project in Social History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Magnus Mörner
Magnus Mörner*
Affiliation:
Institute of Ibero-American Studies Stockholm, Sweden
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In Different Parts of the World, Landowners Have Sometimes Found fit to compensate labor, wholly or partially, by letting laborers have the usufruct of a small plot of land. The border between this category of labor and that of tenants is blurred, as is suggested by the English term, tenant labor (or labor tenants).

Type
Topical Review
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Summer 1970 , pp. 3 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © 1970 by the University of Texas Press

References

Notes

1. In International Labor Office, “Indigenous Peoples,” p. 342, it is pointed out that the Latin American forms of tenant labor are of two different types: those by which they worker receives the usufruct of a parcel or right of pasture as part of his wages, and those by which his day-work form the rent, wholly or in part, for the land he cultivates as a tenant or sharecropper. “There are various intermediate forms or stages but their differences are often nebulous.”

2. G. Utterström, “Jordbrukets arbetare. Levnadsvilkor och arbetsliv på landsbygden från frihetstiden till mitten av 1800-talet,” (Stockholm, 1957), pp. 791-794. See also L. Furuland, “Statarna i litteraturen” (Stockholm, 1952), pp. 28-30. The main work for the history of the “jordtorpare” is V. Elgeskog “Svensk torpbebyggelse från 1500-talet till laga skiftet” (Stockholm, 1945). See p. 361. Another monograph is by Elfrid Kumm, “Jordhunger och dagsverkstorp,” (Stockholm, 1949). He does not clearly distinguish jordtorpare from statartorpare. In the documentation of the time, the two terms are often confused.

3. E. Jutikkala, “Finnish Agricultural Labour in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” The Scandinavian Economic History Review, X (1962), p. 214. The Finnish term was “muonatorppari.”

4. S. Skappel, “Om husmandsvaesenet i Norge. Dets oprindelse og utvikling” (Kristiania, 1922).

5. F. Skrubbeltrang, Den danske husmand (Copenhagen, 1952). See also Skappel, op. cit, pp. 179-180.

6. F. Wunderlich, Farm Labour in Germany, 1810-1945 (Princeton, 1961), pp. 17-18; Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Social und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1924), p. 473 and passim. See also Skappel, op. cit. pp. 181-182. A specialized research institution in East Germany has informed the writer of the present report that no recent studies have been carried out concerning instleute. Rather similar groups of crofters were Häuslern, Käthnern and, on a somewhat more favored level, Kossäthern or Gärtnern. Wunderlich, op cit. p. 7.

7. H. J. Seraphim, Das Heuerlingwesen (Münster, 1948). See also Skappel, op cit., p. 182. Earlier studies by Heuschert, 1929 and Wrasmann, 1919.

8. International Labor Office, “Labour Survey of North Africa” (Geneva, 1960), p. 63.

9. See, for instance, Farm Labour in the Oranje Free State (Johannesburg, 1939), and Margaret Roberts, Labour in the Farm Economy (Johannesburg, 1959), an investigation of 76 farms in the Cape Colony. Both are pamphlets published by the Institute of Race Relations. See also R. H. Robertson's essay in I. Schapera, ed., Western Civilisation and the Natives of South Africa: Studies in Culture Contact (London, 1967; orig, ed., 1934), and C. W. De Kiewit, A History of South Africa, Social and Economic (Oxford, 1941), pp. 202-205. According to De Kiewit, the system was replaced in some parts by payment in cash after World War I. The study by M. Roberts (1959) shows, however, how tenaciously it has been preserved in the Cape Colony. Printed sources are presented in I. Schapera, ed., Select Bibliography of South African Native Life and Problems (London, 1941), pp. 160-161.

10. Karlernst Ringer, “Agrarverfassungen im tropischen Afrika zur Lehre von de Agrarverfassunge” Veränderungen zur Hebung der Agrartechnik“ (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1963), p. 187. According to the author, ”Arbeitspachtverträge“ have come to exist in Senegal, Dahomey and on the Ivory Coast areas in which ”Marktkulturen im Vordrigen sind.“

11. “Indigenous Peoples,” pp. 343-352, 376-385 on the huasinpungueros, e.g. Aníbal Buitrón, B. Salisbury Buitrón, “Condiciones de vida y trabajo del campesino de la provincia de Pichincha” (Quito, 1947). On Bolivian colonos, Rafael A. Reyeros, “Historia social del indio boliviano,” 2nd ed., (La Paz, 1963). A particularly disfavored category are the “cuidanderos” mentioned by Orlando Fals Borda, El hombre y la tierra en Boyacá: Bases socio-históricas para una reforma agraria“ (Bogotá, 1957), pp. 116-117.

12. “Indigenous Peoples,” p. 352. On regional variations, see José Matos Mar in Les problèmes agraires des Amériques Latines: Paris, 11-16 Octobre 1965 (Paris, 1967), pp. 340-341.

13. International Labor Office, “Landless Farmers in Latin America” (Geneva, 1957), pp. 8-9. Inquilinos and their families even today constitute about 300,000 people in central Chile, that is, a quarter of the rural population. CIDA, Chile. Tenencia de la tierra y desarrollo socio-económico del sector agrícola (Santiago, 1966), p. 50. Interesting glimpses of inquilinos' conditions in the “Memoria sobre la Hacienda 'Los Condes” en 1895,“ published by G. Izquierdo in Boletin de la Academia de la Historia, XXXV, no. 79 (1968), pp. 121-205.

14. J. C. de Oliveira Torres, Estratificação social no Brasil (São Paulo, 1965), pp. 26-27; M. Diégues Júnior, Establecimientos rurales en América Latina (Buenos Aires, 1967), pp. 154-155; S. J. Stein, Vassouras. A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 268-269. A recent case study on this category of labor in Sapé, Paraíba, summarized in “Posse e uso de terra e desenvolvimento sócio-economico do setor agrícola; Brasil” (Washington, D.C.: CIDA, 1966), p. 249ff.

15. In Les problèmes agraires (pp. 356-358), the geographer Dollfus discusses in an interesting way how the colonos system is being undermined by the rapid population growth and the desire of the landowners to rationalize production, particularly cattle breeding.

16. Myrdal, Asian Drama, (New York, 1968), II, 1055, mentions the existence of peasants (tenants or owners) who at the same time are day-laborers. But this does not suggest a system of the type we are concerned with. I have been unable to consult J. Surenda Patel, “Agricultural Labourers in Modern India and Pakistan” (Bombay, 1952).

17. A. Wrasmann, “Das Heuerlingwesen im Fürstentum Osnabrück,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte und Landeskunde von Osnabrück, XLII ( 1919), pp. 72-81.

18. See for instance the bibliography in F. Lütge, “Geschichte der deutschen Agrarverfassung vom frühen Mittelalter bis zum 19. Jahrundert” (Stuttgart, 1963).

19. The Hungarian “Inquilinus” receives short mention (under the name of häusler) in E. Lukács, “Die wirtshaftliche und soziale Lage des Feltarbeiterstandes in Ungarn” (Heidelberg, 1909), p. 36. We also know of some studies in Hungarian. There seems to be a rather extensive literature, almost entirely in Russian, on the Russian “Otrabototshnaia” system. In his famous Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (new ed., Santiago de Chile, 1953), p. 68, J. C. Mariátegui stressed the similarities between this Russian institution and the Peruvian Colonato.

20. This also applies to such good studies as the chapters on “Peasants” and “Rural Labor” In John J. Johnson (ed.), Continuity and Change in Latin America (Stanford, Calif., 1967).

21. “This complex of latifundia-coloni … kept alive in Spain and Portugal, was effectively transported to the New World,” S. Schulman, “The Colono System in Latin America,” Rural Sociology, XX (1955), p. 35.

22. M. Góngora, Origen de los inquilinos de Chile Central (Santiago, 1960); J. Borde and M. Góngora, Evolución de la propiedad rural en el Valle del Puangue (Santiago, 1956).

23. Skappel, op. cit, pp. 177-182; Góngora, “Origen,” pp. 105-112. Utterström, op. cit., p. 796, points out, probably correctly, that the system of statartorpare was based on national conditions and that foreign models played an insignificant role. “When similar systems appeared also in other countries, they are explained by the similarity of prevailing conditions.” It should be noted that an article in the periodical Hushållnings-Journal in 1777, when discussing the institution, explicitly referred to various similar labor arrangements in the Netherlands, England, Germany, and the Baltic Provinces.

24. Ludwig Hempel, “Heuerlingwesen und Crofter-system. Ein agrar- und sozialgeographischer Vergleich von Siedlerschiehten in Deutschland und Schottland,” Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologi, V (1957), pp. 169-180.

25. M. Duverger, An Introduction to the Social Sciences (New York, 1964), pp. 261-267.

26. B. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, Mass., 1967), pp. xii-xiv.

27. Folke Dovring, Land and Labor in Europe in the Twentieth Century, 3rd ed. (The Hague, 1965), p. 7.

28. See Carlo M. Cipolla, The Economic History of World Population (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 99-100.

29. Charles Gibson, Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, II, 1955, pp. 602-603, has pointed out that the period 1810-1890 constitutes the greatest void in Latin American social history, “the former date marking the approximate point at which colonial documentation ceases; the latter, the point at which the memory of living Indians begins.”

30. Different criteria or rural stratification presented and discussed in B. H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe (London, 1963), pp. 310-314.

31. W. Abel, “Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur in Mitteleuropa vom 13. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert” (1925). See also the works published by the group of historians connected with E. Labrousse.

32. M. Carmagnani, “Colonial Latin American Demography: Growth of Chilean Population, 1700-1830,” Journal of Social History, I (Berkeley, Calif. 1967), pp. 179-191.

33. E. Florescano, Precios del máiz y crisis agrícolas en México (1708-1810) (México, 1969).

34. He illustrates his thesis by reference to instleute. Weber, General Economic History (New York, 1961), pp. 79-81.

35. We are well advised to remember the words of Labrousse that “La mentalité d'un milieu change plus lentement que ce milieu lui-méme.” L'histoire sociale: sources et méthodes (Paris, 1967), p. 5.

36. According to R. Adams in Johnson, op. cit., p. 60, “the colono system .. is a product of the cultural isolation of the colono on the one hand, and the political dominace of the landowners on the other.”

37. It is also worthwhile to consider the alternatives to such samples discussed by J. Dupaquier in L'histoire Sociale …, pp. 183-190.

38. See “Computers and Historical Research,” Soviet Studies in History, III (White Plains, N.Y., 1964), pp. 3-20 and Dupaquier, op. cit., pp. 148-156.

39. Myrdal, op. cit., II, p. 1039.

40. Arturo Urquidi in Les problèmes agraires, p. 777.

41. Revisionist viewpoints expressed by F. Dovring in Agrarhistorien (Stockholm, 1953), pp. 99-102, and by F. Lütge, “Freiheit und Unfreiheit in der Agrarverfassung,” Historisches Jahrbuch, 74 (1955), pp. 642-652.

42. Góngora, op. cit., pp. 19-24; the very solid introduction by P. Macera to the edition of Instrucciones para el manejo de las haciendas jesuítas del Perú (XVII-XVIII), (Lima 1966); G. Colmenares, “El trabajo en las haciendas jesuítas en el siglo XVIII,” UN. Revista de la Dirección de Divulgarión Cultural, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, no. 1 (Bogotá, 1968), pp. 175-190, or his book, Haciendas de los jesuítas en el Nuevo Reino de Granada. Siglo XVIII (Bogotá, 1969), pp. 81-96. See also H. Aranguiz Donoso, “Notas para el estudio de la hacienda de La Calera de Tango,” Historia, VI (Santiago de Chile, 1967), pp. 221-262.

43. See, e.g. my article “Los jesuítas y la esclavitud de los negros. Algunas sugestiones para la investigación histórica,” Revista Chilena de Geografía e Historia, no. 135 (Santiago, 1967), pp. 92-109.

44. See for instance, Charles H. Harris, The Sánchez-Navarros: A Socio-Economic Study of a Coahuilan Latifundio, 1846-1853 (Chicago, 1964).

45. A short survey in my article “The History of Race Relations in Latin America: Some Comments on the State of Research,” Latin American Research Review, I:3 (Austin, Texas, 1963). A detailed and carefula analysis of the Peruvian census of 1792 by Günter Vollmer, is, Bevölkerungspolitik und Bevölkerungsstruktur im Vize-Königreich Peru zur Ende der Kolonialzeit, 1741-1821 (Bad Homburg v.d.H., 1967).

46. See above, note 32.

47. This material has been used most skillfully by George Kubler, The Indian Caste of Peru, 1795-1940. A Study based upon Tax Records and Census Reports (Washington, D. C., 1952).

48. Vollmer, op. cit., pp. 117-118.

49. The study mentioned by Carmagnani provides an exception: cf. pp. 189-190.

50. Vollmer, op. cit., pp. 52-56. Cortés y Larraz is an excellent example of this. His work “Descripción geográfico-moral de la diócesis de Goathemala (1769-1770), I-II (Guatemala, 1958) provides an extraordinary detailed description of the conditions of every parish of the diocesis, and he proves a most intelligent observer.

51. As Utterström points out, op. cit., II, p. 370.

52. Utterström, op. cit., II, p. 380.