View source for Peasant

{{pp-semi-indef|small=yes}}
{{Short description|Agricultural laborer or farmer with limited land ownership}}
{{other uses}}
{{distinguish|Pheasant}}
{{Use dmy dates|date= May 2020}}
{{English Feudalism}}
{{wikt | peasant}}
{{Rural society}}
[[File:Prokudin-Gorskii-08.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|Young women offer berries to visitors to their ''[[izba]]'' home, 1909. Those who had been [[Serfdom in Russia|serfs]] among the Russian peasantry [[emancipation reform of 1861|were officially emancipated in 1861]]. Photograph by [[Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky]].]]
A '''peasant''' is a [[Pre-industrial society|pre-industrial]] [[Farmworker|agricultural laborer]] or a [[farmer]] with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the [[Middle Ages]] under [[feudalism]] and [[Tenant farmer|paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord.]]<ref>{{cite web|url= https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/peasant|title=peasant|work=Wiktionary|date=20 February 2024 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peasant|work=Merriam-Webster online |title=peasant|date=28 March 2024 }}</ref> In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free [[Slavery|slaves]],  semi-free [[Serfdom|serfs]], and [[Free tenant|free tenants]]. Peasants might hold title to land outright ([[fee simple]]), or by any of several forms of [[land tenure]], among them [[socage]], [[quit-rent]], [[Leasehold estate|leasehold]], and [[copyhold]].<ref name="Webster2004">{{cite book |last= Webster |first= Hutton |author-link= Hutton Webster |title= Early European History |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=1rpEHPuAgncC&pg=PA440 |access-date= 3 June 2012 |year=2004 |publisher= Kessinger Publishing |isbn= 978-1-4191-1711-4 |page= 440}}</ref>

In some contexts, "peasant" has a pejorative meaning, even when referring to farm laborers.<ref name="Hill">{{Cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=fp4gdkJP1dYC&q=peasant+derogatory&pg=PA10 |title= Dry Grain Farming Families: Hausaland (Nigeria) and Karnataka (India) Compared |last= Hill |first= Polly |year=1982 |publisher= Cambridge University Press |isbn= 978-0521271028 |language= en}}</ref> As early as in 13th-century Germany, the concept of "peasant" could imply "rustic" as well as "robber", as the English term [[villain]]<ref>{{oed | villain}}</ref>/[[villein]].<ref>{{oed | villein}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/WGPleasants/Edelman.pdf |title= What is a peasant? What are peasantries? A briefing paper on issues of definition |last= Edelman |first= Marc |date= 2013 |website= United Nations Human Rights |access-date= 11 September 2019 | quote = Very early on, both the English 'peasant,' the French 'paysan' and similar terms sometimes connoted 'rustic,' 'ignorant,' 'stupid,' 'crass' and 'rude,' among many other pejorative terms. [...] The word could also imply criminality, as in thirteenth-century Germany where '"peasant"' meant 'villain, rustic, devil, robber, brigand and looter.'}}</ref> In 21st-century English, the word "peasant" can mean "an ignorant, rude, or unsophisticated person".<ref>{{cite web | url= https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/peasant | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190712005403/https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/peasant | url-status= dead | archive-date= 12 July 2019 |title= peasant {{!}} Definition of peasant in English by Lexico Dictionaries |website= Lexico Dictionaries {{!}} English |access-date= 2019-07-12 | quote = 1 A poor farmer of low social status who owns or rents a small piece of land for cultivation (chiefly in historical use or with reference to subsistence farming in poorer countries) <br /> 1.1 ''informal, derogatory'' An ignorant, rude, or unsophisticated person; a person of low social status.}}
</ref>
The word rose to renewed popularity in the 1940s–1960s<ref>{{cite web |url= https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=peasant&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cpeasant%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bpeasant%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPeasant%3B%2Cc0t4;,peasant;,c0;,s0;;peasant;,c0;;Peasant;,c0|title= Google Ngram Viewer |website= books.google.com |access-date= 2019-07-12}}</ref> as a collective term, often referring to rural populations of developing countries in general, as the "semantic successor to 'native', incorporating all its condescending and racial overtones".<ref name="Hill"/>

The word '''peasantry''' is commonly used in a non-pejorative sense as a [[collective noun]] for the rural population in the poor and developing countries of the world.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}} [[Via Campesina]], an organization claiming to represent the [[Farmers rights|rights]] of about 200 million farm-workers around the world, self-defines as an [[Peasant movement|"International Peasant's Movement"]] {{as of | 2019 | lc = on}}.<ref>{{cite web|url= https://viacampesina.org/en/|title= Via Campesina – Globalizing hope, globalizing the struggle !|website= Via Campesina English |language= en-GB |access-date= 12 July 2019}}</ref> The United Nations and its [[Human Rights Council]] prominently uses the term "peasant" in a non-pejorative sense, as in the [[United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants|UN ''Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas'']] adopted in 2018. In general English-language literature, the use of the word "peasant" has steadily declined since about 1970.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=peasant&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cpeasant%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bpeasant%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BPeasant%3B%2Cc0t4;,peasant;,c0;,s0;;peasant;,c0;;Peasant;,c0 |title= Google Ngram Viewer |website= books.google.com |access-date= 12 July 2019}}</ref>

==Etymology==
[[File:1794 Morgenstern Bauernhof anagoria.JPG|thumb|A farm in 1794]]

The word "peasant" is derived from the 15th-century French word {{lang|fr|païsant}}, meaning one from the ''pays'', or countryside; ultimately from the Latin {{lang|la|pagus}}, or outlying administrative district.<ref>''Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary''. Merriam-Webster. pp. 846, 866. {{ISBN|978-0877795094}}</ref>

==Social position==
[[File:Farmers in a cottage in Savonia, Finland (25183314403).jpg|thumb|[[Finland|Finnish]] [[Savonia (historical province)|Savonian]] farmers at a cottage in early 19th century; by Pehr Hilleström and J. F. Martin]]

Peasants typically made up the majority of the agricultural labour force in a [[pre-industrial society]]. The majority of the people—according to one estimate 85% of the population—in the Middle Ages were peasants.<ref>{{cite web |author1=Alixe Bovey |author-link=Alixe Bovey |title=Peasants and their role in rural life |url=https://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/peasants-and-their-role-in-rural-life |website=The British Library |publisher=[[British Library]] |access-date=4 July 2020 |date=30 Apr 2015 |archive-date=23 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220323232802/https://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/peasants-and-their-role-in-rural-life |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Though "peasant" is a word of loose application, once a [[market economy]] had taken root, the term ''peasant proprietors'' was frequently used to describe the traditional rural population in countries where [[smallholder]]s farmed much of the land. More generally, the word "peasant" is sometimes used to refer pejoratively to those considered to be "lower class", perhaps defined by poorer education and/or a lower income.{{Citation needed|date=December 2022}}

==Medieval European peasants==
The [[open field system]] of agriculture dominated most of Europe during medieval times and endured until the nineteenth century in many areas. Under this system, peasants lived on a [[Manorialism|manor]] presided over by a [[Lord of the manor|lord]] or a bishop of the [[Catholic church|church]]. Peasants paid rent or labor services to the lord in exchange for their right to cultivate the land. Fallowed land, pastures, forests, and wasteland were held in common. The open field system required cooperation among the peasants of the manor.<ref>Gies, Frances and Gies, Joseph (1989).  ''Life in a Medieval Village''  New York: Harper. pp. 12–18. {{ISBN|978-0060920463}}</ref> It was gradually replaced by individual ownership and management of land.

The relative position of peasants in Western Europe improved greatly after the [[Black Death]] had reduced the population of [[medieval Europe]] in the mid-14th century, resulting in more land for the survivors and making labor more scarce. In the wake of this disruption to the established order, it became more productive for many laborers to demand wages and other alternative forms of compensation, which ultimately led to the development of widespread [[literacy]] and the enormous social and intellectual changes of the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]].

The evolution of ideas in an environment of relatively widespread literacy laid the groundwork for the [[Industrial Revolution]], which enabled mechanically and chemically augmented agricultural production while simultaneously increasing the demand for [[Industrial labour|factory workers]] in cities, who became what [[Karl Marx]] called the [[proletariat#Usage in Marxist theory|proletariat]]. The trend toward individual ownership of land, typified in England by [[Enclosure]], displaced many peasants from the land and compelled them, often unwillingly, to become urban factory-workers, who came to occupy the socio-economic stratum formerly the preserve of the medieval peasants.

This process happened in an especially pronounced and truncated way in Eastern Europe. Lacking any catalysts for change in the 14th century, Eastern European peasants largely continued upon the original medieval path until the 18th and 19th centuries. [[Serfdom]] was abolished in Russia in 1861, and while many peasants would remain in areas where their family had farmed for generations, the changes did allow for the buying and selling of lands traditionally held by peasants, and for landless ex-peasants to move to the cities.<ref>Moon, David (2001) ''The abolition of serfdom in Russia, 1762–1907''. Routledge. pp. 98–114. {{ISBN|9780582294868}}</ref> Even before emancipation in 1861, serfdom was on the wane in Russia. The proportion of serfs within the empire had gradually decreased "from 45–50 percent at the end of the eighteenth century, to 37.7 percent in 1858."<ref>{{cite book|title=Russia Under the Old Regime: Second edition |page=163|author=Pipes, Richard|orig-year=1974|year=1995|publisher=Penguin Publishing |isbn=978-0140247688}}</ref>

==Early modern Germany==
[[File:Unbekannter Meister 18-19 Jh Feiernde Bauern.jpg|thumb|"''Feiernde Bauern''" ("Celebrating Peasants"), artist unknown, 18th or 19th century]]

In Germany, peasants continued to center their lives in the village well into the 19th century. They belonged to a corporate body and helped to manage the community resources and to monitor community life.<ref>Sagarra, Eda (1977) ''A Social History of Germany: 1648–1914''. Methuen young books. pp. 140–154. {{ISBN|978-0416776201}}</ref> In the East they had the status of serfs bound permanently to parcels of land. A peasant is called a "Bauer" in German and "Bur" in [[Low German]] (pronounced in English like ''boor'').<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wedgwood|first=Hensleigh|author-link=Hensleigh Wedgwood|title=English Etymologies|journal=Transactions of the Philological Society|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3924121;view=1up;seq=127|year=1855|issue=8|pages=117–118}}</ref>

In most of Germany, farming was handled by tenant farmers who paid rents and obligatory services to the landlord—typically a nobleman.<ref>The monasteries of Bavaria, which controlled 56% of the land, were broken up by the government, and sold off around 1803. Nipperdey, Thomas (1996) ''Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck: 1800–1866''. Princeton Univ Press. p. 59. {{ISBN|978-0691636115}}</ref> Peasant leaders supervised the fields and ditches and grazing rights, maintained public order and morals, and supported a village court which handled minor offenses. Inside the family the patriarch made all the decisions, and tried to arrange advantageous marriages for his children. Much of the villages' communal life centered on church services and holy days. In Prussia, the peasants drew lots to choose conscripts required by the army. The noblemen handled external relationships and politics for the villages under their control, and were not typically involved in daily activities or decisions.<ref>For details on the life of a representative peasant farmer, who migrated in 1710 to Pennsylvania, see Bernd Kratz, he was a farmer, "Hans Stauffer: A Farmer in Germany before his Emigration to Pennsylvania", ''Genealogist'', Fall 2008, Vol. 22 Issue 2, pp. 131–169</ref>

==France==
{{Main|French peasants}}

Information about the complexities of the French Revolution, especially the fast-changing scene in Paris, reached isolated areas through both official announcements and long-established oral networks. Peasants responded differently to different sources of information. The limits on political knowledge in these areas depended more on how much peasants chose to know than on bad roads or illiteracy. Historian Jill Maciak concludes that peasants "were neither subservient, reactionary, nor ignorant."<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1093/fh/15.3.273|author=Maciak, Jill |title=Of News and Networks: The Communication of Political Information in the Rural South-West during the French Revolution|journal=French History|volume= 15|issue=3 |year=2001|pages=273–306}}</ref>

In his seminal book ''Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernization of Rural France, 1880–1914'' (1976), historian [[Eugen Weber]] traced the modernization of French villages and argued that rural France went from backward and isolated to modern and possessing a sense of French nationhood during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=3788392|author=Amato, Joseph A. |title=Eugen Weber's France|journal=Journal of Social History|volume=25|year= 1992|issue=4 |pages=879–882|doi=10.1353/jsh/25.4.879 }}</ref> He emphasized the roles of railroads, republican schools, and universal military conscription. He based his findings on school records, migration patterns, military-service documents and [[Economic history|economic trend]]s. Weber argued that until 1900 or so a sense of French nationhood was weak in the provinces. Weber then looked at how the policies of the [[French Third Republic|Third Republic]] created a sense of French nationality in rural areas.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Weber, Eugen |title=The Second Republic, Politics, and the Peasant|journal=French Historical Studies|volume=11|issue=4 |year=1980|pages=521–550 |doi=10.2307/286349 |jstor=286349}}</ref> The book was widely praised, but some<ref>{{cite journal|author=Margadant, Ted W. |title=French Rural Society in the Nineteenth Century: A Review Essay|journal=Agricultural History|year=1979|volume=53 |issue=3|pages=644–651|url=https://www.proquest.com/openview/dcc5f48d087ef148eca00a9bc74952b2/1}}</ref> argued that a sense of Frenchness existed in the provinces before 1870.

==Chinese farmers==
{{See also|Agriculture in China}}
[[File:Rice farming.jpg|thumb|A Chinese painting depicting an agricultural scene probably during the [[Ming dynasty]]]]
[[File:China from the Eyes of the Flying Tigers 1944-1945 27.jpg|thumb|Chinese peasants in [[Kunming]]]]

Farmers in China have been sometimes referred to as "peasants" in English-language sources. However, the traditional term for farmer, ''nongfu'' ({{lang|zh|农夫}}), simply refers to "farmer" or "agricultural worker". In the 19th century, Japanese intellectuals reinvented the Chinese terms ''fengjian'' ({{lang|zh|封建}}) for "feudalism" and ''nongmin'' ({{lang|zh|农民}}), or "farming people", terms used in the description of [[feudal Japan]]ese society.<ref name="Myron Cohen 2005. p. 64">[[#Cohen|Cohen]], p. 64</ref> These terms created a negative image of Chinese farmers by making a class distinction where one had not previously existed.<ref name="Myron Cohen 2005. p. 64"/> [[Anthropology|Anthropologist]] Myron Cohen considers these terms to be [[neologism]]s that represented a cultural and political invention. He writes:<ref>[[#Cohen|Cohen]], p. 65</ref>

{{blockquote|This divide represented a radical departure from tradition: [[Frederick W. Mote|F.&nbsp;W. Mote]] and others have shown how especially during the later imperial era ([[Ming dynasty|Ming]] and [[Qing dynasty|Qing]] dynasties), China was notable for the cultural, social, political, and economic interpenetration of city and countryside. But the term ''nongmin'' did enter China in association with [[Marxism|Marxist]] and non-Marxist Western perceptions of the "peasant," thereby putting the full weight of the Western heritage to use in a new and sometimes harshly negative representation of China's rural population. Likewise, with this development Westerners found it all the more "natural" to apply their own historically derived images of the peasant to what they observed or were told in China. The idea of the peasant remains powerfully entrenched in the Western perception of China to this very day.}}

Writers in English mostly used the term "farmers" until the 1920s, when the term ''peasant'' came to predominate, implying that China was feudal, ready for revolution, like Europe before the French Revolution.{{sfnb|Hayford|1997|}} This Western use of the term suggests that China is stagnant, "medieval", underdeveloped, and held back by its rural population.<ref>Mei, Yi-tsi (1998). ''Ideology, Power, Text: Self-Representation and the Peasant 'Other' in Modern Chinese Literature''. Stanford University Press. p. 26. {{ISBN|978-0804733199}}</ref> Cohen writes that the "imposition of the historically burdened Western contrasts of town and country, shopkeeper and peasant, or merchant and landlord, serves only to distort the realities of the Chinese economic tradition".<ref>[[#Cohen|Cohen]], p. 73</ref>

==Latin American farmers==
In Latin America, the term "peasant" is translated to "Campesino" (from '''''campo'''''—country person), but the meaning has changed over time. While most [[:es:campesino|Campesinos]] before the 20th century were in equivalent status to peasants—they usually did not own land and had to make payments to or were in an employment position towards a landlord (the [[hacienda]] system), most Latin American countries saw one or more extensive [[land reform]]s in the 20th century. The [[Land reform by country#Latin America|land reforms of Latin America]] were more comprehensive initiatives<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000914810.pdf |title=The Agrarian Reform Law |publisher=Central Intelligence Agency |access-date=26 July 2022}}</ref> that redistributed lands from large landholders to former peasants<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.saber.ula.ve/bitstream/handle/123456789/45548/libro_la_cuestion_agraria.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y%20 |title=La Cuestión Agraria en Venezuela |language=es |date=2018 |last=Delahaye |first=Oliver |publisher=Universidad de Los Andes |isbn=978-980-11-1939-5}}</ref>—[[farm worker]]s and [[tenant farmers]]. Hence, many Campesinos in Latin America today are closer smallholders who own their land and do not pay rent to a landlord, rather than peasants who do not own land.

The [[Episcopal Conference of Paraguay|Catholic Bishops of Paraguay]] have asserted that "Every campesino has a natural right to possess a reasonable allotment of land where he can establish his home, work for [the] subsistence of his family and a secure life".<ref>Paraguayan Bishops' Conference, Pastoral Letter ''El campesino paraguayo y la tierra'' (12 June 1983), quoted by Pope Francis in [https://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf Laudato si'], 2015, paragraph 94, accessed 1 January 2024</ref>

==Historiography==
{{See also|Agrarianism}}
[[File:Peasants 3French Best.jpg|thumb|upright|Portrait sculpture of 18th-century French peasants by artist [[George S. Stuart]], in the permanent collection of the Museum of Ventura County, [[Ventura, California|Ventura]], California]]

In medieval Europe society was theorized as being organized into [[Estates of the realm|three estates]]: those who work, those who pray, and those who fight.<ref>[[Richard Southern|Southern, Richard]] (1952) ''The Making of the Middle Ages''.</ref> The [[Annales School]] of 20th-century French historians emphasized the importance of peasants. Its leader [[Fernand Braudel]] devoted the first volume—called ''The Structures of Everyday Life''—of his major work, ''Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century'' to the largely silent and invisible world that existed below the market economy.

Other research in the field of peasant studies was promoted by [[Florian Znaniecki]] and [[Fei Xiaotong]], and in the post-1945 studies of the "great tradition" and the "little tradition" in the work of [[Robert Redfield]]. In the 1960s, anthropologists and historians began to rethink the role of [[peasant revolt]] in world history and in their own disciplines. Peasant revolution was seen as a [[Third World]] response to capitalism and imperialism.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Wolf|first1=Eric R.|author-link1=Eric Wolf|title=Peasants|date=1965|publisher=Prentice-Hall|location=Englewood Cliffs, NJ|isbn=978-0136554561}}</ref>

The anthropologist [[Eric Wolf]], for instance, drew on the work of earlier scholars in the Marxist tradition such as [[Daniel Thorner]], who saw the rural population as a key element in the [[transition from feudalism to capitalism]]. Wolf and a group of scholars<ref>Van der Ploeg, Jan Douwe (2012). ''The new peasantries: struggles for autonomy and sustainability in an era of empire and globalization''. Routledge.</ref><ref>Moore, Barrington (1993). ''Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world''. Vol. 268. Beacon Press.</ref><ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1080/03066157308437872|title=The nature and logic of the peasant economy 1: A Generalisation|year=1973 |last1=Shanin |first1=Teodor |journal=The Journal of Peasant Studies |volume=1 |pages=63–80 }}</ref><ref name="diva-portal.org">Alves, Leonardo Marcondes (2018). [http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1222013/FULLTEXT01.pdf ''Give us this day our daily bread: The moral order of Pentecostal peasants in South Brazil'']. Master's thesis in Cultural Anthropology. Uppsala universitet.</ref> criticized both Marx and the field of Modernization theorists for treating peasants as lacking [[agency (sociology)|the ability to take action]].<ref>Wolf, Eric R. (1969) ''Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century''. New York: Harper & Row.</ref> [[James C. Scott]]'s field observations in Malaysia convinced him that villagers were active participants in their local politics even though they were forced to use indirect methods. Many of these activist scholars looked back to the [[peasant movement]] in India and to the theories of the revolution in China led by [[Mao Zedong]] starting in the 1920s. The anthropologist Myron Cohen, however, asked why the rural population in China were called "peasants" rather than "farmers", a distinction he called political rather than scientific.<ref>{{cite journal|jstor=20027171|author=Cohen, Myron |title=Cultural and Political Inventions in Modern China: The Case of the Chinese "Peasant"|journal=Daedalus|volume=122|issue=2 |year=1993|pages=151–170}}</ref> One important outlet for their scholarly work and theory was ''[[The Journal of Peasant Studies]]''.

==See also==
[[File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder - Peasant Wedding - Google Art Project 2.jpg|thumb|''[[The Peasant Wedding]]'', by [[Flemish people|Flemish]] painter [[Pieter Brueghel the Elder]], 1567 or 1568]]
[[File:Adriaen van Ostade - Peasants in a Tavern.jpg|thumb|"Peasants in a Tavern" by [[Adriaen van Ostade]] (c. 1635), at the Alte Pinakothek, Munich]]
[[File:Wiki Šumadija XI Spomenik srpskom seljaku 970.jpg|thumb|right|Monument dedicated to [[Serbia]]n peasant, [[Jagodina]]]]

* [[Agrarianism]]
* [[Cudgel War]]
* [[Family economy]]
* [[Feudalism]]
* [[Folk culture]]
* [[Land reform]]
* [[Land reform by country]]
* [[List of peasant revolts]]
* [[Peasant economics]]
* [[Peasants' Party (disambiguation)|Peasant Party]] (political movements in various countries)
* [[Dithmarschen|Peasants' Republic]]
* [[Peasants' Revolt]]
* [[Petty nobility]]
* [[Popular revolt in late-medieval Europe]]
* [[Serfdom]]
* [[Via Campesina]]

===Related terms===
* [[Aloer]]
* ''[[Am ha'aretz]]''
* [[Boor (disambiguation)|Boor]]
* [[wikt:bracciante|Bracciante]]
* [[wikt:campesino|Campesino]]
* [[Churl]]
* [[Colonus (person)|Colonus]]
* [[wikt:contadino|Contadino]]
* [[Cotter (farmer)|Cotter]]
* [[Fellah]]
* [[Free tenant]]
* [[Gabellotto]]
* [[Honbyakushō]]
* [[Kulak]]
* [[Muzhik]]
* [[Remença|Pagesos de remença]]
* [[Pawn (chess)|Pawn]]
* [[Peon]]
* [[Serfdom|Serf]]
* [[Sharecropper]]
* [[Smerd]]
* {{ill|Șerb (peasant)|ro|Șerb|lt=Șerb}}
* [[Tenant farmer]]
* [[Terrone]]
* [[Villeiny|Villein]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Cited sources==
*{{cite book|ref=Cohen| last=Cohen | first=Myron L. | title=Kinship, Contract, Community, and State Anthropological Perspectives on China. | publisher=Stanford University Press | publication-place=Basel/Berlin/Boston | date=2005 | isbn=978-1-5036-2498-6 |doi=10.1515/9781503624986| s2cid=246207129 }}

==Bibliography==
* Bix, Herbert P. ''Peasant Protest in Japan, 1590–1884'' (1986){{ISBN?}}
* Evans, Richard J., and W. R. Lee, eds. ''The German Peasantry: Conflict and Community from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries'' (1986){{ISBN?}}
* Figes, Orlando. "The Peasantry" in {{cite book|editor=Vladimir IUrevich Cherniaev|title=Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NAZm2EdxKqkC&pg=PA543|year=1997|publisher=Indiana UP|pages=543–53|isbn=0253333334}}
* {{citation | first= Charles W.| last =Hayford | chapter = | pages =150-172| title = The Storm over the Peasant: Orientalism, Rhetoric and Representation in Modern China | series = | volume = | editor1-first = Shelton| editor1-last =Stromquist| editor2-first=Jeffrey |editor2-last=Cox | location = Iowa City| publisher =University of Iowa Press | year =1997 | isbn = |url=}} 

* Hobsbawm, E. J. "Peasants and politics", ''Journal of Peasant Studies'', Volume 1, Issue 1 October 1973, pp. 3–22 – article discusses the definition of "peasant" as used in social sciences
* Macey, David A. J. ''Government and Peasant in Russia, 1861–1906; The Pre-History of the Stolypin Reforms'' (1987).{{ISBN?}}
* Kingston-Mann, Esther and Timothy Mixter, eds. ''Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800–1921'' (1991){{ISBN?}}
* Thomas, William I., and Florian Znaniecki. ''The Polish Peasant in Europe and America'' (2 vol. 1918); classic sociological study; [https://chla.library.cornell.edu/c/chla/browse/title/3074959.html complete text online free]
* Wharton, Clifton R. ''Subsistence agriculture and economic development''. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1969. {{ISBN?}}
* Wolf, Eric R. ''Peasants'' (Prentice-Hall, 1966).{{ISBN?}}

===Recent===
* Akram-Lodhi, A. Haroon, and [[Cristobal Kay]], eds. ''Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rural Transformation and the Agrarian Question'' (2009){{ISBN?}}
* Barkin, David. "Who Are The Peasants?" ''Latin American Research Review'', 2004, Vol. 39 Issue 3, pp.&nbsp;270–281
* Brass, Tom. ''Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism'' (2000){{ISBN?}}
* Brass, Tom, ed. ''Latin American Peasants'' (2003){{ISBN?}}
* [[James C. Scott|Scott, James C.]] ''The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia'' (1976){{ISBN?}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Peasants}}
{{Wikiquote}}

{{Social class}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Medieval society]]
[[Category:Early modern period]]
[[Category:History of agriculture]]
[[Category:Feudalism]]
[[Category:Social history]]
[[Category:Rural economics]]
[[Category:Estates (social groups)]]
[[Category:Social classes]]
[[Category:Peasants| ]]