Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T20:23:06.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Eighteenth-Century Mexican Peonage and the Problem of Credits to Hacienda Labourers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Extract

The transition to modern, capitalist agriculture is usually marked by the replacement of traditional forms of farm service by a free labour market based on short-term contracts and cash payments. This process is often described in terms like ‘pauperisation’ and ‘proletarianisation’. But, of course, proletarianisation is not an inevitable consequence of the rise of day-labouring in capitalist agriculture; a point emphasized, for example, with particular reference to eighteenth-century Scotland by Alex Gibson and Alastair Orr. Contrary to much of southern England, where the forces of production developed rather fast, in Scotland traditional forms of farm service survived largely intact well into the nineteenth century despite the development of capitalist agriculture. As late as 1861 over 60 per cent of the total agricultural work-force in some Scottish regions were servants on long hires as opposed to day-labourers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Gibson, A., ‘Proletarianization? The transition to full-time labour on a Scottish Estate, 1723–1787’, Continuity and Change 5: 3 (1990), 357389;CrossRefGoogle Scholar referring to Orr, A., ‘Farm servants and farm labour in the Forth Valley and the South-east Lowlands’, Devine, T.M. (ed.), Farm Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1770–1914 (Edinburgh, 1984), pp. 2954.Google Scholar

2. Gibson, , ‘Proletarianization?’ pp. 374–5, quote from p. 387,Google Scholar and passim.

3. Bloch, M., Feudal Society: Volume One: the Growth of the Ties of Dependence (2 Vols.; London, 1961; transl. from the French), I, 279, also 241–54.Google Scholar

4. See the discussion in Searle, C.E., ‘Custom, class conflict and agrarian capitalism: the Cumbrian customary economy in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present 110 (1986), 106–33, esp. 108–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Carr, H., Old Mother Mexico (Boston and New York, 1931), pp. 6371.Google Scholar

6. Enock, R., Mexico. Its Ancient and Modern Civilisation, History and Political Conditions, Topography and Natural Resources, Industries and General Development (London, 1909), see for example pp. 213–14.Google Scholar

7. See, for example, the essays in Miller, S., Landlords and Haciendas in Modernising Mexico: Essays in Radical Reappraisal (Amsterdam, 1995).Google ScholarAny study of Mexican colonial haciendas should include: Altman, I. and Lockhart, J. (eds.), Provinces of Early Mexico: Variants of Spanish American Regional Evolution (Los Angeles, 1976);Google Scholarde Bontempo, M. J. Amerlinck, ‘From Hacienda to Ejido: The San Diego de Rioverde Case’ (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York, Stony Brook, 1980);Google ScholarBadura, B., ‘Biografia de la hacienda de San Nicolas de Ulapa’, Ibero Americana Pragensia 4 (1970), 75111;Google ScholarBarrett, E., Land Tenure and Settlement in the Tepalcatepec Lowland, Mexico (Ann Arbor, 1970);Google ScholarBazant, J., Cinco haciendas mexicanas: Tres siglos de vida rural en San Luis Potosi (Mexico City, 1975);Google ScholarBeltran, U.B., ‘La Hacienda de San Pedro Jorullo, Michoacán, 1585–1795’, Historia Mexicana 26 (1977/ 104), 540575;Google ScholarBlood, R.W., ‘A Historical Geography of the Economic Activities of the Jesuit Colegio Maximo de San Pedro y San Pablo in Colonial Mexico, 1572–1767’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1972);Google ScholarBrading, D. A., Haciendas and Ranchos in the Mexican Bajo: Leon 1700–1860 (Cambridge, 1978)Google ScholarChevalier, F. (ed.), Instrucciones a los hermanos jesuitas administradores de haciendas (manuscrito mexicano del siglo XVIII)(Mexico City, 1950)Google ScholarCouturier, E. B., ‘Hacienda of Hueyapán: The History of a Mexican Social and Economic Istitution, 1550–1940’ (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1965)Google ScholarDuncan, K. and Rutledge, I. (eds.), Land and Labour in Latin America: Essays on the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge, 1977);Google ScholarEwald, U., ‘Versuche zur Änderung der Besitzverhältnisse in den letzten Jahreszehnten der Kolonialzeit. Bestrebungen imHochbecken von Puebla-Tlaxcala und seiner Umgebung zur Rückführung von Hacienda-land an Gutsarbeiter und indianische Dorfgemeinschaften 1, Jahrbucli fur Geschichte … Lateinamerikas 7 (1970), 239251,Google ScholarDas Poblaner Jesuitenkollegium San Francisco Xavier und sein Landwirtschaftlicher Grossbesitz’, Jahrbuch fur Geschichte … Lateinamerikas 8 (1971), 3973,Google Scholar and, Estudios sobre la hacienda colonial en México: Las propiedades rurales del Colegio Espritu Santo en Puebla (Wiesbaden, 1976);Google ScholarHarris, Ch. III, A Mexican Family Empire: The Latifundio of the Sanchez-Navarros, 1765–1867 (Austin, 1975);Google ScholarHoekstra, R., ‘Profit from the waste lands: Social change and the formation of haciendas in the Valley of Puebla (1570–1640)’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 52 (Amsterdam, 1992), 91123;Google ScholarKatz, F. (ed.), Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico (Princeton, 1988);CrossRefGoogle ScholarKeith, R. G., ‘Encomienda, hacienda and corregimiento in Spanish America: a structural analysis’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 51 (1971), 431–46,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and, Keith, R. G. (ed.), Haciendas and Plantations in Latin American History (New York, 1977);Google ScholarKonrad, H. W., ‘Life in a Jesuit hacienda in colonial Mexico: Santa Lucia, 1576–1767’, in ACTAS International Conference of Americanists 42:2 (1976), 460–76,Google Scholar and, A Jesuit Hacienda in Colonial Mexico: Santa Lucia, 1576–1767 (Stanford, 1980);Google ScholarLiehr, R., ‘Entstehung, Entwicklung und sozialökonomische Struktur der hispanoamerikanischen Hacienda’, in Puhle, H.-J., Lateinamerika: Historische Realität und Dependencia-Theorien (Hamburg, 1977), pp. 105146;Google ScholarLockhart, J., ‘Encomienda and hacienda: the evolution of the great estate in the Spanish Indies’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 49 (1969), 411–29,CrossRefGoogle Scholar‘Capital and province, Spaniard and Indian: the example of late sixteenth-century Toluca’, in Altman, and Lockhart, (eds.), Provinces, pp. 99124;Google ScholarSarrelangue, D. Lopez, ‘La hacienda de San Jose de Coapa’, in Florescano, (ed.), Haciendas, pp. 223–41,Google ScholarSanta Ana Aragón: Una hacienda comunal indigena de la Nueva España’, Historia Mexicana 32:1 (1982), 138;Google ScholarMartin, C. E., Rural Society in Colonial Mexico (Albuquerque, 1985);Google ScholarAmbia, C. J. Maya, ‘Tres ensayos sobre la hacienda mexicana del siglo XIX’ (Tesis Lic., Universidad Autónoma de Mexico, 1974),Google Scholar and, Estructura y funcionamiento de una hacienda jesuita: San José Acolman (1740–1840)’, Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv nf 8 (1982), 329–59;Google ScholarMelville, R., Crecimiento y rebelión: El desarrollo económico de las haciendas azucareras en Morelos (1880–1910) (Mexico City, 1979)Google Scholar; Morin, C., Michoacán en la Nueva Espana del siglo XVIII. Crecimiento y desigualdad en una economa colonial (Mexico City, 1979),Google Scholar and, Techniques et productivité sur les haciendas mexicaines au XVIIIe siècle’, Nord-Sud 4 (1979/7), 120;Google ScholarMörner, M., ‘The Spanish American hacienda: a survey of recent research and debate’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 53 (1973), 183216;CrossRefGoogle ScholarNickel, H. J., Soziale Morphologie der Mexikanischen Hacienda (Wiesbaden, 1978),Google ScholarReclutamiento y peonaje de los gananes indigenas de la epoca colonial en el altiplano de Puebla-Tlaxcala’, Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv nf 5 (1979), 71104,Google ScholarLas deudas pasivas de los gananes en las haciendas de Puebla-Tlaxcala (epoca colonial)’, Jahrbuch fur Geschichte … Lateinamerikas 16 (1979), 245–65,Google ScholarPeonaje e inmovilidad de los trabajadores agricolas en Mexico (Bayreuth, 1980),Google ScholarElemente der ‘Moral Economy' in de Arbeitsverhältnissen Mexikanischer Haciendes’, Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv nf 14:3 (1988), 357400;Google ScholarRomero, M. E. and Villamar, E., ‘San Jose Acolman y anexas (1788–1798)’, in Semo, E. (ed.), Siete ensayos sobre la hacienda mexicana, 1780–1880 (Mexico City, 1977), pp. 151–87;Google ScholarSchell, W. Jr, Medieval Iberian Tradition and the Development of the Mexican Hacienda (Syracuse, 1986);Google ScholarSemo, E. and Pedrero, G., ‘La vida en una hacienda-aserradero mexicana a principios del siglo XIX’, in Florescano, (ed.), Haciendas pp. 273306;Google ScholarSwan, S.L., ‘Climate, Crops and Livestock: Some Aspects of Colonial Mexican Agriculture’ (Ph.D. diss., Washington State University, 1977);Google ScholarTaylor, W.B., Landlord and Peasant in Colonial Oaxaca (Stanford, 1972);Google ScholarTrautmann, W., Las transformaciones en el paisaje cultural de Tlaxcala durante la epoca colonial: Una contribución a la historia de Mexico bajo especial consideración de aspectos geografico-economicos y sociales (Wiesbaden, 1981);Google ScholarTutino, J.M., ‘Hacienda social relations in Mexico: the Chalco region in the era of Independence’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 55 (1975), 496528;CrossRefGoogle ScholarYoung, E. Van, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675–1820 (Berkeley, 1981);Google ScholarWobeser, G., San Carlos Borromeo: Endeudamiento de una hacienda colonial (1608–1729) (Mexico City, 1980).Google Scholar

8. See Knight, A., ‘Mexican peonage: what was it and why was it?’, Journal of Latin American Studies 18 (1986), 4174, esp. pp. 43, 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Gibson, C., The Aztecs Under Spanish Rule: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1S10 (Stanford, 1964), pp. 249256.Google Scholar

10. Tutino, J. M., ‘Life and labor on North Mexican haciendas: the Querétaro-San Luis Potosi region, 1775–1810’, in Frost, E. C., Meyer, M.C., and Vazquez, J. Zoraida (eds.), El trabajo y los trabajadores en la historia de Mexico (Mexico City and Tucson, 1979), pp. 339–77, esp. p. 363.Google Scholar

11. Van Young, E., ‘Mexican rural history since Chevalier: the historiography of the colonial hacienda’, Latin American Research Review 18:3 (1983), 562, esp. p. 6.Google Scholar My own conclusions on the Central-Mexican hacienda can be found in my articles ‘Eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan agriculture: diary 9 of the Hacienda San Antonio Palula, 1765–1766’, in Buve, R.T.J. (ed.), Haciendas in Central Mexico from Late Colonial Times to the Revolution (Amsterdam, 1984), pp. 183,Google Scholar‘Schedules in hacienda agriculture: the cases of Santa Ana Aragón (1765–1766) and San Nicolas de los Pilares (1793–1795), Valley of Mexico’, Boletin de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 40 (Amsterdam, 1986), 6397,Google Scholar and, ‘Don Claudio Pesero y la administration de la hecienda de Xaltipan (1734–1737)’, in Ouweneel, A. and Pacheco, C. Torales (comps.), Empresarios, indios y estado: Perfil de la economia mexicana (Siglo XVIII) (Amsterdam, 1988; repr. Mexico City, 1992), pp. 165185.Google Scholar See also Cuello, J., ‘El mito de la hacienda colonial en el norte de México’, in Ouweneel, and Torales, (comps.), Empresarios, pp. 186205.Google Scholar

12. For references, see Ouweneel, A. and Bijleveld, C.C.J.H., ‘The economic cycle in Bourbon Central Mexico: a critique of the recaudación del diezmo liquido en pesos’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 69:3 (1989), 479530, esp. p. 488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. The term ‘Central Mexico’ is not without difficulties for it is generally used to refer to a region stretching from coast to coast – from Veracruz to Acapulco and from Tampico to Mazatlán – and might therefore cause misunderstanding. To avoid this confusion it seems appropriate to use its more popular name ‘Anàhuac’.

14. Noriega, F. Navarro, Memoria sobre la poblacóon del reino de Nueva Espana (Mexico City, 1820; reprint, 1954), p. 31.Google Scholar It is not entirely clear what the terms haciendas and ranchos precisely meant, but the statistics can still be used for comparative purposes because the terminological confusion was the same in every region.

15. The statistics for the intendencies have been combined for each of the four regions mentioned to arrive at a standardised presentation. Thus Anahuac consists of the intendencies of Mexico, Puebla and Veracruz and the gobierno Tlaxcala (this area was governed by a governor, not an intendant), resulting in a region which is larger than it actually was. But this presentation of Anahuac contained a vast area of sparsely inhabited provinces in far off mountain areas. The Michoacán region is formed by the administrative units of Valladolid, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi. This included an extensive area of northern Mexico which was dominated by huge livestock estates. The intendency Guadalajara and Zacatecas form the third region, while the region of Oaxaca consists of no more than the intendency of the same name.

16. Ouweneel, A., Shadows over Anahuac. An Ecological Interpretation of Crisis and Development in Central Mexico, 1730–1800 (Albuquerque, 1996).Google Scholar

17. See Ouweneel, A., ‘Growth, stagnation, and migration: an explorative analysis of the tributario series of Anahuac (1720–1800)’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 71:3 (1991), 531–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Greenow, L., Credit and Socioeconomic Change in Colonial Mexico: Loans and Mortgages in Guadalajara, 1720–1820 (Boulder, 1983);Google ScholarLindley, R.B., Haciendas and Economic Development, Guadalajara, Mexico, at Independence (Austin, 1984);Google ScholarBauer, A.J., ‘The church and Spanish American agrarian structures, 1765–1865’, The Americas 18 (1971), 7898;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRural workers in Spanish America: problems of peonage and oppression’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 59 (1979), 3463;CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe church in the economy of Spanish America: censos and depositos in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 63 (1983), 707–33;CrossRefGoogle ScholarJesuit enterprise in colonial Latin America: a review essay’, Agricultural History 57 (1983), 90104;Google ScholarWobeser, G. von, San Carlos Borromeo: Endeudamiento de una hacienda colonial (1608–1729) (Mexico City, 1980),Google Scholar one of the better introductions to the problem. See also her La formacïon de la hacienda en la època colonial: El uso de la tierra y el agua (Mexico City, 1983),Google ScholarMecanismos crediticios en la Nueva Espańa: El uso del censo consignativo’, Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 5:1 (1989), 1318.Google Scholar Also, Schwaller, J.F., Origins of Church Wealth in Mexico: Ecclesiastical Revenues and Church Finances, 1523–1600 (Albuquerque, 1985);Google ScholarCosteloe, M.P., Church Wealth in Mexico: A Study of the ‘Juzgado de Capellanias’ in the Archbishopric of Mexico, 1800–1856 (Cambridge, 1967);CrossRefGoogle ScholarKicza, J., Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City (Albuquerque, 1983);Google Scholar and, Tutino, J.M., ‘Creole Mexico: Spanish Elites, Haciendas and Indian Towns, 1750–1810’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1976),Google Scholar and, From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico. Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750–1940 (Princeton, 1986).Google Scholar

19. Lockhart, J. and Schwartz, S.B., Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil (Cambridge, 1983), p. 142.Google Scholar

20. van der Meer, P.L.G., ‘Suikerrietcultures in koloniaal Mexico: Bedrijf en beheer van Xochimancas en Barreto’ (Doctoraalscriptie, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, 1986)Google ScholarJezuïetenhaciendas in koloniaal Mexico’, Leidschrift 8 (1987), 3550Google Scholar‘El Colegio de San Andrés y la producción del azúcar en sus haciendas de Xochimancas y Barreto (1750–1767)’, in Ouweneel, and Torales, (comps.), Empresarios, pp. 138164. For Barrett and von Wobeser, see elsewhere.Google Scholar

21. The work of Riley, J.D., ‘Crown law and rural labor in New Spain: the status of gañanes during the eighteenth century’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 64 (1984), 259–85, esp. p. 262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also his Hacendados jesuitas en Mexico: El Colegio Maximo de San Pedro y San Pablo, 1685–1767 (Mexico City, 1976);Google ScholarThe wealth of the Jesuits in Mexico, 1670–1761’, The Americas 33 (1976), 226–66;Google Scholar‘Landlords, laborers and royal government: the administration of labor in Tlaxcala, 1680–1750’, in Frost, Meyer, and Zoraida, (eds.), Trabajo, pp. 221–41;Google Scholar and, ‘Santa Lucia: desarrollo y administración de una hacienda jesuita en el siglo XVIII’, in Florescano, (ed.), Haciendas, pp. 242–73.Google Scholar

22. Romano, R., ‘American feudalism’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 61 (1984), 121–34. p. 126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar But see as well Katz, F., ‘Labor conditions on haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: some trends and tendencies’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 54 (1974), 147;CrossRefGoogle Scholar also Bauer, ‘Rural workers.’

23. Ouweneel, , ‘Schedules in hacienda agriculture’, pp. 81–3.Google Scholar

24. Using data from: Ouweneel, , ‘Eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan agriculture’, and, ‘Don Claudio Pesero.’ Further documentation Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain, Ms. 2449, Exp. 5Google ScholarArchive, Microfilm, Institute Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico City, AJP, Rollo 28 (Rancho Nopala);Google ScholarArchivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City, Colegios, Vols. 12, 30, 31, 33.Google Scholar Interesting are Loomis, R.S., ‘Agricultural systems’, Scientific American 235:3 (1976), 99105, esp. p. 99;CrossRefGoogle ScholarTrautmann, , Transformaciones, pp. 166, 168170;Google ScholarSwan, , ‘Climate’, pp. 130, 143–47;Google Scholar and, Gibson, , Aztecs Under Spanish Rule, pp. 322–5, 331.Google Scholar The correlation between these series was expressed in high coefficients low correlation in a few cases was explained as the result of disappointing or even bad harvests. The data for Figure 1 from Ouweneel, ‘Schedules in hacienda agriculture’, p. 95, Appendix 2 and Figure 3.

25. Mortality from exhaustion was high among oxen, and the hacendado purchased additional oxen all year round (at a price of 10 pesos, the equivalent of 40 to 50 man-days) or made more use of hired oxen and laborers from the pueblos de indios than earlier in the year.

26. Ouweneel, , ‘Eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan agriculture.’Google Scholar

27. Ouweneel, , ‘Eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan agriculture.’Google Scholar

28. Ouweneel, , ‘Eighteenth-century Tlaxcalan agriculture.’Google Scholar

29. Miller, , Landlords and Haciendas.Google Scholar

30. Microfilm archive, Institute Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico City, AJP, Rollo 29, Number 6; the Hacienda San Juan Mixco (Tlaxcala) produced wheat and maize with the help of sharecroppers.

31. Wilken, G., ‘Management of productive space in traditional forming’, in ACTAS International Conference of Americanists 42:2 (1976), 409–19, esp. p. 414.Google Scholar See also his Good Farmers: Traditional Agriculture and Resource Management in Mexico and Central America (Berkeley, 1987).Google Scholar

32. Ouweneel, Shadows over Anáhuac.

33. This is underscored in Ouweneel, Shadows over Anahuac.

34. Ouweneel, ‘Growth, stagnation, and migration.'

35. This is well-known, see Mörner, ‘Spanish American hacienda.’

36. Sanchez, I. Gonzalez, Los trabajadores alquilados de Tlaxcala para las haciendas foraneas, siglo XVIII (Mexico City, 1976), Cuadro 1.Google Scholar

37. Microfilm archive, Institute Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico City, Tlaxcala, Rollo 32; Archive General del Estado de Tlaxcala, Mexico, 1762, Leg. 3;Google ScholarArchive General del Estado de Tlaxcala, Mexico, 1778, Leg. 2, Exp. 71;Google ScholarArchive General del Estado de Tlaxcala, Mexico, 1770, Leg 1, Exp. 1;Google ScholarArchive General del Estado de Tlaxcala, Mexico, 1752, Leg. 1, Exp. 121.Google Scholar Also, Badura, ‘Biografia’ Nickel, , Peonaje, pp. 32, 54Google Scholar‘Deudas pasivas’, pp. 249259.Google Scholar

38. An investigation conducted by a Spanish official on shopkeeping in the province of Chalco is telling in this respect. See, Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain, Audiencia Mexico, Leg. 2096.

39. Nickel, Peonaje, p. 13, 35–6;Google ScholarEwald, Estudios, p. 35.Google Scholar

40. Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City, Tierras, Vol. 2545, Exp. 1.

41. Archivo General de la Nacion, Mexico City, Tierras, Vols. 917 and 964.

42. The ‘customary economy’, or better known as the ‘moral economy’, is discussed by Thompson, E.P. in his Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963), pp. 6873,Google ScholarThe moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present 50 (1971), 76136,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Customs in Common (London, 1991).Google Scholar For a discussion of this notion in the Latin American context, see my Shadows over Anahuac.

43. See the excellent discussion in Appleby, J.O., Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, 1978), pp. 5272.Google Scholar

44. Thompson, , ‘Moral economy’, pp. 78–9, also for a political statement.Google Scholar Also Rudé, G., Ideology and Popular Protest (New York, 1980), p. 28.Google Scholar A similar argument in Rudé, G., The Crowd in History (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

45. For some generalisations, see Lindzey, G., Hall, C.S., and Thompson, R.F., Psychology (New York, 1975);Google ScholarHilgard, E.R., Atkinson, R.C. and Atkinson, R.L., Introduction to Psychology (New York, 1975, 6th ed.).Google Scholar Also, Frijda, N., The Emotions (Paris and Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar

46. Mann, M., The Sources of Social Power: Volume I: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 51–5.Google Scholar

47. Sabean, D.W., Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (New York, 1984), pp. 23–6, 3793, quote from p. 25.Google Scholar See also Robisheaux, T., Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1989), esp. pp. 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I have used the ideas expressed in these studies for my Altepeme and pueblos deindios: Some comparative theoretical perspectives on the analysis of the colonial indian communities’, in Ouweneel, A. and Miller, S. (eds.), The Indian Community of Colonial Mexico: Fifteen Essays on Land Tenure, Corporate Organisations, Ideology and Village Politics (Amsterdam, 1990), pp. 137.Google Scholar A further elaboration can be found in Rik Hoekstra's book on the changing relationships between Indian lords and Indian commoners in the Valley of Puebla, during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Two Worlds Merging: The Transformation of Society in the Valley of Puebla, 1570–1640 (Amsterdam, 1993).

48. Robisheaux, , Rural Society, p. 9.Google Scholar For an extended discussion of Herrschaft see also Brunner, O., Conze, W. and Kosseleck, R. (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe Historisches Lexikon zur politischen-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stutgart, 1982) Volume III, 1102.Google Scholar

49. Sabean, , Power, pp. 2027.Google Scholar

50. See also Scott, J., ‘Exploitation in rural class relations. A victim's perspective’, Comparative Politics (1975), 489532, esp. p. 494.Google Scholar The effect of population growth in this context can be expressed by a formula to understand peon-hacendado – vassal-lord – relationships, see Chapter One of my Shadows over Anáhuac, and my ‘Altepeme and pueblos de indios’. Since it is known that the collective mentality adjusts to changes in socio-economic circumstances, in a situation of population growth or a relatively high population density we can state:

where P stands for the volume of population (↑ = growth or high population density; ↓ = decrease or low population density), p stands forpower of, that is, a dominant bargaining position, 1 stands for ‘the lords, elite and state’, and b for the ‘peons’; the → sign indicates who exercises power over whom. In a situation of low population density or a decrease in population, in which alternative sources of income are available to the peons, the situation is the reverse:

51. For Europe, see Thompson, , ‘Moral economy’, p. 78;Google ScholarSabean, , Power in the Blood, p. 13;Google ScholarAppleby, , Economic Thought, pp. 242–79;Google ScholarMacfarlane, Alan, The Culture of Capitalism (Oxford, 1987), pp. 223–7.Google Scholar

52. See among others, Garcini, R. Rendón, Dos haciendas pulqueras en Tlaxcala, 1857–1884 (Mexico City, 1990).Google Scholar For changing relationships after further population growth, see Loete, S.K., ‘Aspects of modernization on a Mexican hacienda: labour on San Nicolas del Moral (Chalco) at the end of the nineteenth century’, Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 54 (1993), 4564.Google Scholar