3 ms·
"Subsistence farming" is not an accurate description of the European world before the industrial revolution. Farmers worked cash crops like wool, made plans yea
by spenczar5 10y ago
"Subsistence farming" is not an accurate description of the European world before the industrial revolution. Farmers worked cash crops like wool, made plans years in advance, and there were substantial markets. See for example Christopher Dyer, "Making a Living in the Middle Ages" (2009) [1]:
> "In managing the earth, vegetation and animals, the first priority of medieval men and women was to produce food, but they also expected to receive the benefits of their work in the foreseeable future, so the practised (to use the modern term) 'sustainable' agriculture. They planned for the same land to yield crops regularly, and the appreciated that well-managed resources renewed themselves. They anticipated the changeability of the seasons and the harvests, and hoped that their farming methods would allow them to survive in a year of unusual weather, for example by planting a variety of crops. At no time or place within our period can they be described as 'subsistence farmers' [emphasis added], in the sense that they ate only food that they had grown, or that they produced solely for their own consumption needs. They always expected that their land would yield a surplus, whether for the benefit of the state, the church or their lords, or for exchange for goods and services which they could not obtain from their own land.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that the industrial revolution was obviously bad for most people, but to say it was obviously good is wrong too. It's a complex thing, and it's not clear whether people are happier or even healthier in an industrial economy than an agrarian one.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=82zXFn-EDisC https://books.google.com/books?id=82zXFn-EDisC
- greedo 10y ago"it's not clear whether people are happier or even healthier in an industrial economy than an agrarian one." Plague, famine, et al, sure sounds happier and healthier than compared to modern (First World) living. Even if you look back at hunter-gatherer societies where it's been claimed that leisure time was substantially greater than today, things like infant mortality make that seem like hell. I take these type of historical deconstructions with a large grain of salt; it used to be the idea of the Noble Savage, now it's moving on to medieval times.
- spenczar5 10y agoI agree: modern life is better than ancient life, in general, for the reasons you describe. But that's not the two choices I was putting forward, which are an industrial economy or an agrarian one. Those changes in infant mortality, for example, are largely due to better hygiene around births and in handling infants. Wash your hands and boil your water; you can still be in an agrarian economy and do this.
- kuschku 10y agoThis is an interesting discussion in Star Trek IX: Insurrection. A society which knows about warp travel, but has chosen to live an agrarian lifestyle again, while keeping their technological knowledge.
- afarrell 10y agoBut you also need the technology and culture of birth control or else you run up against the ability of your methods of food production to prevent starvation.
- icebraining 10y agoWhile I'm not arguing it's technically wrong, that definition of subsistence farmer seems kind of useless. I mean, even in the Early Bronze Age, you had people who were not full-time farmers, which implies there was some surplus from the others. Seems like you'd have to be very precise to produce exactly enough to eat but with no surplus to use.
- spenczar5 10y agoThat's just what the term means, I'm afraid. I agree that it rarely has occurred in history. It's most often used instead as a pejorative term when people are describing pre-industrial life, because usually the intended meaning is that subsistence farmers rarely hit their mark and are perpetually starving. I think it comes from a pretty triumphalist view of the last 300 years rather than any real history. So basically: I agree.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoYa sure, living in squalor without modern medicine or electricity seems like paradise to me.
- fuzzfactor 10y agoI would say by definition, as in most societies, those who were actually making a living were surely not the ones living in squalor, especially by comparison to those whose conditions were much more unfavorable. Nobody had modern medicine or electricity that far back anyway. By now there's no reason for anyone urban or rural to do without medicine or electricity unless their society is consuming more than it produces, or is handling surplus in unbalanced ways. Maybe paradise would be more within reach if those little problems could be overcome.