labradores - History Lab

Life cycle and peasantry in the Sierra de Alcaraz (1753)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:31 +0000

One of the most characteristic groups due to their mobility and social reproduction during the Modern Age were the labour and livestock labourers. The large number of this profession, together with that of labourer and farm labourer, marked the labour activities for young people up to 35 years of age in the Sierra de Alcaraz, a study area in central-southern Spain. Why did it increase so much up to that age? These activities were a good way to enter the world of work. Of the three dominant professional groups, from the age of 35 onwards, it was the young men who abandoned their work the most to seek another livelihood, normally sponsored by the clientele networks they had acquired in their old trade, while the day labourers and farm labourers remained relatively stable until the age of 45. This structure is influenced by the life cycles of the protagonists; the departure from the family nucleus, where many of the young men’s own tasks were carried out, led them to seek another form of independent life.

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Share of the labour force engaged in agricultural activities, 1787

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:57 +0000

Spain was still a fundamentally rural country in the 18th century, as certain areas of the peninsula were characterised by the existence of agrocities, large towns made up of farmers and day labourers. An arc can be traced that stretches from Alicante and Murcia through Andalusia and delimits a region that already in Roman times had important centres of mainly agricultural population. The proportions are surprisingly high in the seventeenth century: Murcia, 75.7%; Malaga 53.6%; Cordoba 61.61%; Lorca, 82.4%; Jerez de la Frontera, 58.2%. However, Asturias has high proportions, as do Galicia and the north of Portugal with a population dedicated to the countryside. In this sense, the more or less appreciable presence of the rural population in the cities is a fact in urban Spain in the 18th century, where the presence of the agricultural population exceeded a third of the active population, which was not evenly distributed in the cities. The medium and large municipalities are characterised by proportions of agricultural workers that are practically non-existent in the smaller provincial capitals. Of the 27 largest municipalities in Spain, 13 of them have agricultural activities employing more than 50% of their workforce.

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Distribution of the population according to social groups in Navahermosa (Toledo) in 1752

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:52 +0000

Navahermosa formed part (1243-1837) of the Montes y Propios de Toledo, a lordship in the hands of the city, which appointed the authorities and administered justice through the Fiel Juzgado. Its population experienced a notable quantitative growth in the little more than one hundred years between 1752 and 1877. From the 1,874 inhabitants recorded in the Ensenada Cadastre, it grew to 3,217 in the 1877 census. The growth, which must have been vegetative in the first instance, was due to the arrival of immigrants, whose presence is common in the parish registers from the second decade of the 19th century. The existence of the social division of labour within a society meant that, on occasions, certain members of a family were involved in different productive processes. Each family unit occupied a place in the social division of labour determined by the head of the family, even if some of its members had a different activity. In functionalist terms, we assume that the social position of a family was primarily determined by the socially ascribed valuation and the social role played by the head of the family. The category of farmers is the result of an aggregation of neighbours to whom the Cadastre of 1752 gives various designations. In its conformation, everything indicates that, in the majority of cases, the day labourers cultivated their own land, alternating this work with the work they carried out as wage labourers. These circumstances placed them in a somewhat precarious position. The day labourers were able to find relief from their situation thanks to the exploitation rights of the inhabitants of the villages in the mountains and in the city of Toledo. The group of craftsmen was made up of potters, wheelwrights, tailors, masons, shoemakers and weavers, among others; under the term “professionals” we have gathered together eight residents who worked as doctors, surgeons, apothecaries, surveyors, notaries, teachers of the first letters, sacristans and sacristans. Within the group of the poor, widows without property were added to those classified as the solemnly poor.

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