Working Days – A Assortment of Unmitigated Pedantry

That is the continuation – the primary of a number of – of the fourth a part of our sequence wanting on the lives of pre-modern peasant farmers – a majority of the entire people who’ve ever lived. Final time we mentioned the survival necessities (in meals and textiles) of a peasant family in addition to what completely different ranges of fabric consolation past simply survival may appear like.

This week, we’re going to take these figures and start evaluating them to manufacturing, modeling out our farmers and their means to develop the meals they should survive and maybe a bit further to promote, commerce or reward away to get different issues they need. We’re going to separate this into two components: this week we’re going to mannequin out farmers assuming they personal successfully infinite land. Then subsequent week we’re going to revise these assumptions in gentle of the very small farm sizes we really see in our sources. And after that – as a result of we’re not completed – we’ll transfer to discussing other forms of labor within the family, like meals preparation, cleansing, textile manufacturing and so forth, to get a extremely thorough have a look at family labor.

Specifically, on one of many persistent myths I needed to handle on this sequence is the concept that fashionable employees work extra than historic or medieval peasants, one thing that we’ll see is just not true. Lastly, observe that whereas we’re going to be modeling farming subsistence right here, we’re not going to get into the gritty particulars of how that farming was completed; if you wish to examine that, we have already got a sequence on it only for you!

However first, in case you like what you might be studying, please share it and in case you actually prefer it, you may assist this venture on Patreon! Whereas I do educate as the tutorial equal of a tenant farmer, tilling the Large Man’s courses, this venture is my little plot of freeheld land which allows me to maintain working as a writers and scholar. And if you would like updates at any time when a brand new submit seems, you may click on under for e-mail updates or comply with me on Twitter and Bluesky and (much less continuously) Mastodon (@bretdevereaux@historians.social) for updates when posts go reside and my common musings; I’ve largely shifted over to Bluesky (I keep some de minimis presence on Twitter), on condition that it has develop into a significantly better place for historic dialogue than Twitter.

Works and Days

The origin level for practically all of these “you’re employed more durable than a medieval peasant” memes and articles is Juliet Schor’s The Overworked American (1993). The argument has been debunked fairly a couple of occasions, so I received’t belabor the purpose right here. Schor bases her estimates of medieval working hours on a 1935 article by Nora Kenyon, and an unpublished article by Gregory Clark, and in each instances ignores the authors’ cautious efforts to tell apart between whole days labored and as a substitute simply cherry-picks the bottom quantity, even because the authors warning that these numbers possible don’t characterize somebody’s whole employment. Kenyon notes a set of day-laborers working 120 days per 12 months which makes it into Schor’s work, however Kenyon’s last suggestion that the traditional annual working 12 months was 308 days doesn’t, as an illustration. I can’t get at an unpublished article, however Clark has continued to jot down on the subject and in his 2018 “Development or stagnation?” presents an in depth argument for a 250-300-day work-year with no sense that this can be a revision of his earlier positions, main me to suspect comparable cherry-picking as with Kenyon.

Briefly, Schor’s works is sort of shoddy and we shan’t depend on it.

Now a part of the complication there’s that for the European Center Ages, throughout a lot space, what we see is a number of complicated proof – statutory minimums, required labor on a lord’s land and so forth – which can or could not characterize a full working 12 months. What we don’t sometimes get is somebody simply telling us what number of work days had been within the agricultural calendar. However as you could recall, we’re anchoring this dialogue within the Roman world and in a uncommon occasion the place the traditional proof is higher, Roman agricultural writers simply straight up inform us what number of working days there have been in a 12 months on the Roman agricultural calendar: 290 (Columella 2.12.8-9). He permits 45 days for holidays in addition to inclement climate and one other 30 days for relaxation instantly after the crop is sown, to recuperate from the troublesome labor of the ultimate plowing.

The medieval work calendar is just not meaningfully completely different. As famous above, Each Clark and Kenyon find yourself with comparable working-day estimates from the medieval proof as Columella’s determine. The medieval quantity might be barely decrease: the medieval spiritual calendar may need round 45 feast days however employees may also be anticipated to spend Sundays in spiritual observance, which could pull the work-year right down to round 270 whole working days, plus or minus.

By all proof, these working days had been each much less inflexible but in addition longer than fashionable working hours. On the one hand, peasant farmers are primarily self-employed entrepreneurs, making their very own hours. They will arrive within the subject a bit late, generally go away a bit early. It was definitely frequent in hotter climates for employees to take a noon break (a siesta) to keep away from exhausting themselves within the hottest a part of the day. I’ll say, anybody who has completed functionally any exterior work in a heat local weather will acknowledge {that a} noon break can mean you can work extra than simply pushing straight by the warmth of the day since you tire extra slowly.

So on the one hand the work hours are considerably versatile. Then again as functionally anybody who has ever labored on a farm or spoken with somebody who has will inform you, the working day in absolute phrases is lengthy, primarily beginning at dawn and working to sundown. And that is definitely the implication we get from our sources. Due to atmospheric refraction, there are literally barely greater than 12 daylight hours per day on common (it’s round ~12.3 or so, relying on latitude), although this in fact varies seasonally. The unhealthy information for our farmers, in fact, is that the shortest days are within the winter when the labor calls for are decrease. Whereas competition calendars characteristic occasions all year long, it’s not an accident that main festivals in a number of pre-modern agrarian cultures are concentrated in late Fall, winter and early Spring. For the Christian calendar, that features issues like All Saints Day (Nov 1), Martinmas (Nov 11), the common slew of December holidays as because the holidays of the Eastertide in early spring. For the Romans, you may have main festivals just like the Parentalia and Lupercalia in February, the Liberalia in March, the Cerialia in April and the Saturnalia in December.

So in observe the common most working day may really be a bit longer than 12 hours, however we should always account for breaks and common schedule flexibility. We’d assume, for comparability, one thing like a ten hour work day. By that measure, our peasants in all probability put in someplace between 2,500 and three,000 working hours per 12 months. In contrast, your common ‘overworked American’ has 260 working days a 12 months, at eight hours a day for simply 2,080 hours.

So to reply the query: no, you don’t work greater than a medieval (or historic) peasant (regardless of your labor shopping for a a lot larger lifestyle). However there’s extra complexity for us to attract out right here within the construction of peasant labor, so we have to return to our mannequin and begin working by some implications.

Farming Time

As I famous beforehand, we’re going to anchor our mannequin within the Roman proof as a result of I do know it finest and right here the Roman agricultural writers – the agronomists (Cato the Elder, Columella, Varro and Palladius) – equip us with a number of helpful data, particularly Columella. These fellows are writing guidebooks on the best way to run massive estates – the best way to be good at being the Large Man – however the data they embrace, particularly Columella, helps illustrate lots concerning the labor and subsistence constructions concerned. As we’ve famous above, Columella already computed a typical agricultural work-year. We might convert that again into hours, however we don’t must, as a result of Columella does all of his labor calculations in working days.

The temptation right here is to run our mannequin on a single crop – wheat or barley – however that could be a mistake. Columella himself suggests an property (once more, he’s considering huge farms) break up between a variety of crops, with major plantings in wheat, a wide range of legumes, together with turnips (and different root greens), barley, and so forth. Our peasants will virtually definitely do the identical. There are a couple of causes for this selection.

First, even from antiquity, farmers had been conscious that some crops exhausted the soil extra quickly or in another way than others. They don’t totally perceive it, however even Columella notes that some enhance the land and others ‘burn’ it. And he’s principally appropriate: lupines, beans, vetch, lentils, peas and such he regards are bettering the land, whereas issues like wheat cut back its fertility and a few crops (he notes flax) put substantial pressure on it (Columella 2.13). In fact farmers want these demanding crops, so rotation is important and was practiced since antiquity.

Second these crops all have completely different planting and harvesting timings. (Winter) wheat is planted in late Fall, barley in early winter, chick-pea might be sown in January or February, sesame in October, and so forth and so forth (Columella 2.10). That’s essential as a result of planting and harvest create enormous peaks in labor demand and our farmers wish to attempt to flatten these spikes out a bit. In the event you plan nothing however wheat, you’ll by no means have sufficient labor to get all of it into the bottom after which harvested once more through the supreme calendar home windows to take action.

Third is the attitude of threat administration. All of those crops are susceptible to completely different issues. A dry 12 months will savage your wheat crop however barley is much less bothered by dry situations. Crops tolerate early frosts, excessive warmth or low warmth and so forth in another way. Pests that afflict one type of crop could not afflict others. So by splitting your fields between completely different crops, you cut back the danger that anyone downside will wipe you out. Keep in mind that our peasants will not be seeking to maximize revenue, however to attenuate threat.

So our farmers are possible going to rotate various completely different crops. Now as to crop rotation, we regularly educate a reasonably easy story of technological development from historic two-field rotation programs (with half the land fallow) to medieval three-field programs to early fashionable four-field states (with the fallow largely changed by fodder and grazing crops). And that description is kind of true however as at all times complexity abounds on nearer inspection. As Pliny the Elder notes, the true maxim of farming was quid quaeque regio patiatur – “regardless of the area permits.” For the Romans, we discover attestations of two-field, three-field and steady cropping programs the place, within the latter case, intensive manuring was used to maintain land below steady cultivation, all relying on the native situations: the richness of the soil, the provision of water, the native worth of crops (and thus the affordability of manure) and so forth.

For the sake of simplicity, we will assume with three crops, wheat, barley and a few legumes (on this case, vicia faba, the broad bean, as an illustration), although we additionally must do not forget that a few third of our fields shall be fallow in any given 12 months. The legumes right here are literally fairly essential (and Columella appears to assume a wheat-focused farming operation would sow wheat and legumes in even portions, even whereas fallowing among the fields, Columella 2.12.7-8) as a result of they’re nitrogen-fixing (technically, they’ve nitrogen-fixing micro organism) and so serve to keep up the fertility of the soil.

Completely different crops, in fact, could have completely different productiveness, demand completely different quantities of labor and so forth. And right here, as a reminder, since I’m leaning on Columella, my background calculations are going down in Roman items: modii (8.73 dry liters) and iugera (0.623 acres).

Wheat, Columella studies, was sown 5 modii to the iugerum (that’s, it takes 5 modii – c. 43.5 liters or c. 1.2 bushels – to supply sufficient seed for 1 iugerum (0.623 acres) of farmland), and requires 10.5 days of labor. Columella (2.9) has barley sown 5 modii to the iugerum however Varro (1.44.1) suggests 6 modii to the iugerum; barley being extra tolerant of unhealthy situations requires based on Columella solely 6.5 days of labor for five modii for one iugerum. For beans, Columella says between 4 and 6 modii to the iugerum with 7 or 8 days of labor. That mentioned, Columella’s labor-time estimates have left various issues out – significantly threshing – and has in all probability considerably underestimated plowing time so we have to account for that working time too. M.S. Spurr figures the wheat determine ought to be 14.25 days per iugerum, whereas Rosenstein estimates 19.5 days when accounting for the lacking duties, although observe that we’ve got not included a number of background upkeep like sustaining instruments or constructions – that is purely the work for particular person crops in particular person fields. If we apply an identical under-count-adjustment to the labor necessities for barley and beans, we would come to a seed-and-labor-inputs estimate that appears like this:

Now we’ve got to consider how a lot labor our households have to throw at this downside. You’ll recall that final time we proposed three pattern households, the Smalls, the Middles and the Biggs. How a lot farming labor have they got?

Labor patterns in these households had been gendered, however not infinitely so. As Paul Erdkamp notes, in Roman paintings – and in my expertise this sample continues in medieval paintings – we do see girls doing farming labor, however sometimes solely in intervals of peak labor demand (just like the harvest, which must be completed comparatively quickly) or in households the place some form of misfortune has resulted in extreme labor shortages. So for the sake of calculating the farming labor ‘spine’ we could – for now – exclude the ladies of the family, although I wish to be clear that girls did farming labor when needed and completely weren’t going to take a seat round ravenous to dying if the entire males had been gone. That mentioned, as we’ll see in subsequent components of this sequence, the ladies of the family had been certainly not idle: there was a ton of needed work past farming required to maintain the family and so they’re doing most of it.

Columella’s labor calculations are for giant estates using slaves or paid workmen and so assume totally match grownup males, however our precise peasant households are extra diversified than that. We should assume that every grownup male (none of our mannequin households has any very previous males, so we don’t must issue for that) is supplying a full unit of labor, 290 working days per 12 months. Kids below 6 or 7 or so will not be going to be performing the principle labor duties, however we would determine that males of their late teenagers (16 and older) are offering one thing like three-quarters the labor-power of a totally grown grownup and youthful sons (10-15 or so) maybe half as a lot. Primarily based on these assumptions, our labor ‘spine’ (which, once more, can be supplemented by the ladies and women of the family when wants be) appears like this:

Assuming then that land isn’t any object (which it clearly is, however that’s subsequent time’s downside) and a roughly even break up between wheat, barley and beans, we would suppose totals for land below cultivation for every household very roughly like this (making an attempt to get moderately near most labor employment with out going over):

Now, I see you there within the again, your hand already shot straight up as a result of these farming areas are manner, wildly larger than what we’ve mentioned typical peasant farms appear like and sure, that’s true. We’ll see how land shortage components within the subsequent half, which is why I wish to reiterate that this week’s evaluation is just not full in itself for the plain cause that very few peasants have unencumbered possession of something near farms this huge. Even a farm of 49 iugera would mark a family out to be very wealthy peasants. Nonetheless, we’ve got to determine a baseline someplace and this can be a cheap spot to do it.

Our subsequent query must be what these farmers may anticipate to get out of all of that work.

Farming Yields

As a rule, farming yields within the pre-modern are mentioned not when it comes to productiveness per-land-area however fairly in seed yields: for a given dry measure of seeds planted, how lots of the similar dry measure of seeds (as a result of these are the tasty, edible components of those vegetation) do you get again? So they’re expressed in figures like 4:1 which suggests for each one modius/dry liter/bushel sown, 4 are harvested.

Yields had been extraordinarily variable, each season to season and area to area and our proof for historic yields is commonly frustratingly restricted or troublesome. That is sophisticated by the truth that we can’t use fashionable farming yields to estimate, as a result of a whole lot or hundreds of years of selective breeding have come to imply that fashionable crops will not be equivalent to their historic forebears and infrequently have considerably larger yields, even in case you used historic farming methods. As Theophrastus notes, ἒτος φέρει, οὒτι ἂρουρα, “the 12 months bears [the harvest], not the sphere” (Theophr. Caus. pl. 3.23.5) by which he means seasonal variation was larger than regional variation: a nasty 12 months on glorious farmland was typically worse than an excellent 12 months on marginal land. That excessive degree of variability makes charting an ‘common’ troublesome. That downside is additional intensified by the truth that our sources for antiquity typically distort reported yields for rhetorical functions – suggesting unreasonably low yields for crops they don’t favor, or reporting absurdly excessive yields to easily the richness of particular areas.

The most effective compilation of the proof for historic yields, which incorporates some comparative proof for early fashionable and medieval crop yields, is in P. Erdkamp, The Grain Market within the Roman Empire (2005), 34-54. Yields on grains (like wheat and barley) may fluctuate lots, from as little as 3:1 on poor land in unhealthy years to as excessive as 12:1 or extra on good land in good situations. Regional variability right here is substantial: Spurr notes that in medieval Italy, hilly, marginal lands typically yielded 3:1 or 4:1, whereas extra typical flatter farmland may yield 5:1 or 6:1, however Sicily – with unusually good farmland – appears to have typically yielded between 8:1 and 10:1. The common vary for these yields is pretty constant by the pre-modern proof, bettering modestly over time (so we would anticipate considerably, however not radically, larger yields for a peasant in 1500AD as in comparison with 1500 BC).

For our farmers, we in all probability ought to choose a reasonably modest yield: our peasants in all probability don’t have the perfect land out there (the Large Man could have tried to get management over that) and likewise don’t have limitless entry to issues like manure to actually push yields on the higher finish. On the flipside, our peasants are in all probability not on totally marginal land (rocky floor, hills and so forth). So we would suggest one thing like a spread of 4:1 to eight:1 to get a way of the vary from a nasty 12 months (4:1 yield) to an excellent 12 months (8:1). For what it’s price, areas with very excessive productiveness don’t are inclined to essentially have richer peasants – they have a tendency as a substitute to have larger taxes.

Now in fact some seed have to be held again from every harvest to supply the seed for the following planting, however our yield ratios neatly include this data. So whereas at a 4:1 yield, 4 modii/liters/bushels are harvested, a kind of goes straight again into the bottom, so the web yield is 3 items of no matter dry measure we’re utilizing; at 8:1, the web yield is 7 items. On this case that works out to the next productiveness per iugerum:

With that in hand, we will loop again to our chart above and calculate the vary of web harvest after eradicating seed for subsequent 12 months that our mannequin households may anticipate from their farming listed above.

That’s a number of modii. However of coruse now we’ve got one other downside to account for: the modius is a dry measure. Pre-modern farmers largely reckoned in dry measures as a result of it was straightforward to measure however it’s awkward for us as a result of these crops, as soon as harvested and put in sacks for storage, would not have the identical density (that’s, mass per unit quantity) or calorie density (that’s, energy per unit mass) as one another. So we’d like some approach to convert these figures to our subsistence measure we developed final time which was kilograms-of-wheat-equivalent.

For wheat that’s comparatively straightforward: threshed wheat has a density of roughly 6.72kg per modius (about 770 kg/m³), so a modius of wheat is 6.72kg of wheat equal. For the opposite two, we have to convert from a dry measure to a density to a calorie worth to transform again to wheat equal. Barley is rather less dense than wheat, roughly 6.465kg per modius (740 kg/m³) however a lot much less calorie dense – simply ~2,160 energy per kilogram in comparison with wheat’s 3,340. So a modius of barley has roughly 13,960 energy in it, making a modius of barley simply 4.17kg of wheat equal. A modius of beans (vicia faba) is about 5.43kg and accommodates about 18,842 energy, making that modius 5.64kg of wheat equal.

That neat train must also inform us one thing about farming methods. A single iugerum, planted with wheat, yields (web after seed) between 100 and 235kg of wheat equal. Planted with barley, it takes a lot much less labor and is extra tolerant of unhealthy (significantly dry) climate, however yields solely between 75 and 175kg of wheat equal. Planted with beans, it consumes an intermediate quantity of labor, helps the soil recuperate and supplies distinctive and needed diet – man can’t, as a matter of biology, reside on bread alone – however supplies solely 68 to 158kg of wheat equal. A farm that finds itself strained – particularly if the restrict is land and never labor -might focus increasingly closely on barley (if it is rather dry) or particularly wheat on the expense different crops with a view to maximize the yield per land space (which in flip means using extra labor). Maintain that in thoughts for subsequent time once we begin factoring in land shortage.

Nevertheless for now, let’s head again to our tables and now issue our yield ranges into wheat equivalents to a get sense of how they stack up in opposition to our subsistence necessities (I’m rounding a few of these figures off, so there could also be some imprecision within the desk):

If we examine to the subsistence and respectability wants of our households, we will make a couple of observations. First, given most labor employment and no land shortage, even in modestly unhealthy years every household clears its subsistence wants (although solely the Smalls clear their respectability wants). In one thing like an ‘common’ 12 months, the Smalls produce round 187% of their respectability wants, the Middles 155% and the Biggs 150%.

If labor and never land was the limiting think about peasant agriculture, we should anticipate our peasants to reside fairly nicely. In fact even an off-the-cuff look on the first submit on this sequence will warn in opposition to leaping to that conclusion. In any case, by ignoring – to this point – land shortage, we’ve put our households on monumental farms by pre-modern requirements, between 30 and 60 acres, kind of. However we all know from the proof that whereas our households may need the means to farm 30-60 acres, the everyday measurement of an precise smallholder farm was nearer to 3-6 acres than 30-60; a farm of even one thing like 15-25 acres may mark a household out as ‘wealthy’ peasants. And above we will see why: a household on 20 or 30 acres in all probability has sufficient land to get near and even attain its respectability basket with out partaking in any type of tenant or wage labor. As an alternative, that household could have a lot land it might probably afford to lease out what it doesn’t farm itself.

What we’ve got completed right here to this point is basically simulated very wealthy peasants, which is nicely sufficient however as we’ve seen, wealthy peasants represented solely a reasonably tiny minority of the peasantry. In observe, households with as a lot land as above can be more likely to start repurposing a few of it for issues like livestock, vineyards or orchards – issues with a decrease per-acre calorie yield however which could present larger meals selection or market worth. As you may inform from wanting on the relative steadiness of labor- and land-intensity for crops, the “largely grains” technique goes to be a direct response to land shortage fairly than abundance.

Slightly, as we’ll see, most households could have nowhere close to sufficient land to match both their labor or their subsistence calls for, which in flip will present among the wedges that the Large Males and the broader society will use to attempt to flip that ‘surplus’ labor to their very own ends.

And that, in fact units up the place we should go to subsequent: how this mannequin adjustments – and goodness, does it change – as soon as we begin interested by land shortage and tenant farming.