"Strip farming was communal?" Topic

Hi all,

Not strictly military, I know, but I am bothered by an apparent contradiction in the way that medieval and early-modern strip farming is generally described in history books.

Obviously there were large regional variations in the way that the open-field system was executed, but it is generally said that each household was allocated scattered strips in each of the main growing fields of the manor (generally barley and wheat).

It is also often said that the farming of the land (ploughing, weeding and harvesting) was done *communally*.

So why bother issuing strips to each household, if the farming of those strips was done in such a way, communally, that the household's efforts were not directly related to the produce extracted from those strips?

Or did each strip get harvested in such a way that the produce extracted from each strip was immediately carted to that household's home?

Anyone want to set me straight?

Many thanks!
Redcoat

I would imagine its much like today with smallholders – the communal tractor is owned by all – everyone will help everyone else with sowing and harvesting – yet each individual will own his own harvest. It's done that way because its the most efficient labour wise, enabling small acreages to survive

I think the idea was that each household held several scattered strips. The household worked those strips and harvested the proceeds.

The communal aspect is that the community decided among themselves, guided by the elder/leader types, what was to be grown, when it was to be sown, when harvested etc etc. So you may get up on a Tuesday morning and the whole village would spend the day hoeing the lower field, for example. You would hoe your strips in the lower field.

It was so the better land was shared out equally, with every body getting a piece of it and similarly the poorer land

Acatcalledelvis has pretty much hit the nail on the head, though practice varied somewhat from place to place and time to time.

When I took a Social Geography course at university, medieval farming came up as a topic of diversity. Each region had its own method of farming. In England and parts of France for instance, peasants owned plots of land and worked their fields, taking what they yielded. However, in Germany, it was a slightly different system. You did not see the numerous plots of fields as you did in England and France. You only saw large single fields, and of course, fewer of them. However, in Germany the peasants still owed their plots, and these plots were important. All the plots were combines for working and harvesting. Peasants worked the land and consequently, at the lord's request, worked where ever they were needed. At harvest time, they received a portion of the grain that was equal to the number and size of their total plots.

Yup; plenty of variation. Mostly in Scotland farms were tenanted by an individual or – more commonly – a group, but there were proprietor farms as well. Demesne farming (or a 'home farm'), where the lord kept one farm unit 'in hand' for which tenants provided labour as part of their rent for their own holding was pretty rare but that was much more common elsewhere. Small holdings were also pretty common with the smallholders supplementing their income through paid day labour on the lord's estate.

"I told you, We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune, we take
it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week."

And that is how it was done. Whoever was the "officer for the week" ordered people to hoe and dig and harvest here or there.

Run away! Run away!
But no; that's really not how it was done.

The larger (and more productive) fields were farmed by the community for the benefit of the local lord or religious house and the small scattered strips were for the peasants themselves.

Nope. More commonly the farming types paid rent in produce/labour/cash to the landlord (temporal or spiritual) who in turn leased the land (generally heritably) from a more important landholder or directly from the crown. By the mid 13th C. (if not before) Demesne farming – farms kept in hand by the landlord and worked by a mixture of labour burdens (part of the rent for the tenants of other farms on the estate) and day-labour for wages was not especially common in England or Scotland and a bit more so in France but generally was not on a big scale; more a matter of feeding the landlord's household. Demesne farms were more common in the 11/12C, but landlords found that setting them to rent for a fee – 'firma' – was more profitable.

Well maybe. Things changed with time and varied with locality. But I would think that produce/labour/cash were harsh burdens. What cash does a peasant have to pay rent? He sells his produce as does his neighbors produced on land that eventually gets hocked to the landlord as he can't meet his rent during poor years. Over time then, the good large fields are owned by the lords, and when he is freed from his labour requirements to said lord, he farms his low quality strips of land for himself.

rents were generally a combination of burdens – cash/labour/goods, but increasingly cash/labour and then eventually just cash. The cash came from selling produce. Tenancies tended to he short in theory but long in practice. The land is never 'hoked' to the landlord since he peasant does n't own it in the first place. The landlord does not generally keep much land 'in hand' and very often none at all . Even 'home farms' were very often rented out just like any other.

Well that's confusing: if the peasant doesn't own the land and the landlord doesn't keep the land 'in hand', who owns it?

Before going down the rabbit hole, I would like to say my belief is that the choice parcels of land were not owned by the people who worked them and that the products of the land whether in kind or cash (by the way, who bought the produce, the land owner?)was used by those workers to pay the land owner. And so, to answer the OP, the land was communal (in a sense) because the mass of workers worked the works to pay the owner.

And to think my publishers rejected the idea that anyone would want to buy a book on medieval landholding and agriculture.
Actually, I suppose they were right.
Where to start?
The king owns all the land. He leases it out, mostly on heritable leases but not always. Some tenants are great lords (magnates,religious houses) some are more modest aristos (barons, lords, or even quite petty ones (parish gentry), some farmers and some are just smallholders (king's cottars).
Lords sub-let to lesser tenants (again, some are fairly substantial, some are petty or even very obscure souls) and the more significant tenants in turn let land to farmers. Some farmers hold their property as individuals and some as group-tenancies. They all owe rent of some kind, often a mixture of cash/produce/labour and for the more affluent/posh there's knight service – though mostly they are not actually knights. A good deal of knight service owed was fractional ('property X, held for the service of half a knight') and was largely discharged with money to the greater convenience of both parties.
By the 13th C landlords at any level don't generally keep farming land 'in hand' (hunting parks being an exception) but let it out. Whether the land is better or worse is mostly reflected in the level of rent and/or the size of the farm. The produce over and above rent and subsistence is sold at market which supports the towns and bigger villages….wool for merchants (largely for export from England and Scotland), meat for butchers, wheat for millers/bakers, barley for brewers…and everyone likes to get their oats…
Cash…almost all farms needed extra labour at certain times of year which is what provides much of the cash income of smallholders.
Wool is the money crop for England and Scotland. Almost 80% of trade-able-quality of wool across Europe came from England, 20% from Scotland, less than 1% from everywhere else put together. Broadly speaking, it's wool (also hides and linen 's not insignificant) going out for spices and wine coming in. The wool is taxed and therefore there's records, so that's income for the king and we know a good deal about the wool trade. Linen is not, so we don't know as much as we would like.
The OP is pretty close. It's not so much the land being communal as the plant (oxen,) being collectivised. The beasts are owned by individuals, but yoked together to till the soil.
A,id all this there's serf landholding. Mostly the serf's economy just works like anyone else's, but he can't quit his job and leave. OTH, though he's a serf on one bit of land he may be a 'normal' tenant – even a substantial tenant – on another. By 1300 servile status is in decline because it's not all that convenient for either party It disappears in England by the later 16th century, but not in France until the revolution, though it had become pretty rare. It disappeared in Scotland by about 1360, which may explain the absence of peasants revolts there. Why so early? Nobody knows. I've been studying it off and one for years and I'm really no better off now than I was when I started.

Yes, I imagine it's all very complicated. BTW, I'd read the book.

So would I.

"Serfdom" is a very murky subject, even exclusively to one place. Compared to other forms of serfdom it gets even murkier. The popular view of "peasants", Lords and clergy, i.e. workers, fighters and preachers/prayer givers, is quaint and novelistic…………..

Sadly not many other folk would! Servile status is indeed a complex subject and perhaps we should think of the serf as having rights in the land as well as being tied to it. There are instances of free men marrying what we can only describe as 'serf heiresses'. Serfs were not necessarily poor by the standards of the day and might even have influential friends and associates. There are several instances of serfs threatening court action to prevent them being evicted.
Questions of class and status are complicated by the fact that medieval concepts of status bear little resemblance to ours.