Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T23:30:52.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forms of property rights or class capacities: The example of Tuscan sharecropping

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Rebecca Jean Emigh
Rebecca Jean Emigh
Affiliation:
University of California, (Los Angeles).
Get access

Abstract

This paper criticizes the economic perspective that property rights determine economic outcomes, by examining sharecropping, because this form of property right can be associated with remarkably different economic outcomes. In particular, drawing on evidence from fifteenth-century Tuscany, it is argued that landlords' and tenants' class capacities explain sharecropping's variability. The results show that Tuscan sharecropping was efficient and contractual, because the difference in landlords' and tenants' class capacity was relatively small.

L'article critique la perspective économique selon laquelle la forme prise par les droits de propriété déterminerait les résultats économiques. Une étude de cas sur la Toscane du xvʿ siècle montre que des éléments liés aux appartenances de classe rendent compte de la variabilité du métayage. En Toscane, il était efficace et contractuel parce que la différence sociale entre propriétaires et tenanciers était relativement faible.

Diese Studie kritisiert die wirtschaftliche Sichtweise, laut der die Form der Besitzstandsrechte die wirtschaftlichen Ergebnisse bestimmt. Eine Fallstudie in der Toskana des 15. Jahrhunderts zeigt, dass die Klassenzugehörigkeit für die Veränderlichkeit der Pachtverhältnisse seht. Die Ergebnisse lassen erkennen, dass das toskanische Pachtsystem effizient und vertraglich war, weil die Unterschiede zwischen Grundbesitzer und den Pächtern verhältnissmäßig gering waren.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 2000 , pp. 22 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Archivio di Stato, Florence. Archivio del Catasto, 1427 (AC), Volumes 49, 51, 55, 60, 142, 144, 177, 241, 272, 321, 330 bis.Google Scholar
Aymard, Maurice, 1982, From Feudalism to Capitalism in Italy: The Case that Doesn't Fit, Review 6: 131–208.Google Scholar
Balestracci, Duccio, 1984, La zappa e la retorica: Memorie familiari di un contadino toscano del Quattrocento, (Florence: Salimbeni).Google Scholar
Bardhan, Pranab, 1989, A Note on Interlinked Rural Economic Arrangements, The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, Bardhan, Pranab (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 237–242.Google Scholar
Becker, Marvin, 1968, Florence in Transition, Volume 2: Studies in the Rise of the Territorial State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Bell, Clive, 1989, A Comparison of Principal-Agent and Bargaining Solutions: The Case of Tenancy Contracts, The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, Bardhan, Pranab (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 73–92.Google Scholar
Bell, Clive and Srinivasan, T.N., 1989, Some Aspects of Linked Product and Credit Market Contracts among Risk-neutral Agents, The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, Bardhan, Pranab (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 221–236.Google Scholar
Bhaduri, Amit, 1973, A Study in Agricultural Backwardness Under Semi-Feudalism, Economic Journal 83: 120–137.Google Scholar
Biernacki, Richard, 1995, The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
Block, Fred, 1990, Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse, (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
Braverman, A. and Stiglitz, J.E., 1982, Sharecropping and the Interlinking of Agrarian Markets, American Economic Review, 72: 695–715.Google Scholar
Brenner, Robert, 1985, Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, ed. Aston, T.H. and Philpin, C.H.E. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 10–63.Google Scholar
Britnell, R. H., 1991, The Towns of England and Northern Italy in the Early Fourteenth Century, Economic History Review, 44(1): 21–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Judith, 1989a, The Economic ‘Decline’ of Tuscany: The Role of the Rural Economy, Florence and Milan: Comparisons and Relations, ed. Smyth, C.H. and Garfagnini, G.C. (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice), 101–115.Google Scholar
Brown, Judith, 1989b, Prosperity or Hard Times in Renaissance Italy? Renaissance Quarterly 42: 761–825.Google Scholar
Caiati, Vito, 1984, The Peasant Household Under Tuscan Mezzadria: A Socioeconomic Analysis of Some Sienese Mezzadri Households, 1591–1640, Journal of Family History 9: 111–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cherubini, Giovanni, 1984, L'Italia rurale del basso medioevo (Rome: Laterza).Google Scholar
Cheung, Steven N.S., 1969, The Theory of Share-Tenancy; with Special Application to Asian Agriculture and the First Phase of Taiwan Land Reform (Chicago: Chicago University Press).Google Scholar
Chirot, Daniel, 1975, The Growth of the Market and Servile Labor Systems in Agriculture, Journal of Social History, 8, 67–80.Google Scholar
Chirot, Daniel, 1976, Social Change in a Peripheral Society: The Creation of a Balkan Colony, (New York: Academic Press).Google Scholar
Cipolla, Carlo M., 1970, The Economic Decline of Italy, The Economic Decline of Empires, ed. Cipolla, C.M. (London: Methuen), 196–214.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jon S. and Galassi, Francesco L., 1990, Sharecropping and Productivity: ‘feudal residues’ in Italian agriculture, 1911, Economic History Review, 43(4): 646–656.Google Scholar
Conti, Elio, 1966, I catasti agrari della republica fiorentina e il catasto particellare toscano (secoli XIV–XIX), (Rome: Istituto storico itatiano per il Medio Evo).Google Scholar
Cooper, Adrienne, 1983, Sharecroppers and Landlords in Bengal, 1930–50: The Dependency Web and its Implications, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers, ed. Byres, T.J. (London: Frank Cass), 227–255.Google Scholar
Datta, Samar K., O'Hara, Donald J., and Nugent, Jeffrey B., 1986, Choice of Agricultural Tenancy in the Presence of Transaction Costs, Land Economics 62: 145–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Janvry, Alain, 1981, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demsetz, Harold, 1967, Toward a Theory of Property Rights, American Economic Review 57(2): 347–359.Google Scholar
Dobb, Maurice, 1947, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Emigh, Rebecca Jean, 1993, Tuscan Transformations: The Undevelopment of Capitalism. Ph.D. Dissertation (University of Chicago).Google Scholar
Emigh, Rebecca Jean, 1996, Loans and Livestock: Comparing Landlords' and Tenants' Declarations from the Catasto of 1427, Journal of European Economic History 25: 705–723.Google Scholar
Emigh, Rebecca Jean, 1997, The Spread of Sharecropping in Tuscany: The Political Economy of Transaction Costs, American Sociological Review 62: 423–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emigh, Rebecca Jean, 1998, Labor Use and Landlord Control: Sharecropping and Household Structure in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany, Journal of Historical Sociology 11: 37–73.Google Scholar
Emigh, Rebecca Jean, 1999, Means and Measures: Property Rights, Political Economy, and Productivity in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany, Social Forces, 78(2): 461–491.Google Scholar
Epstein, Stephan R., 1991, Cities, Regions, and the Late Medieval Crisis: Sicily and Tuscany Compared, Past and Present 130: 3–50.Google Scholar
Epstein, Stephan R. and Galassi, Francesco L., 1994, A Debate on Tuscans and Their Farms, Rivista di storia economica 11: 111–137.Google Scholar
Fligstein, Neil, 1996, Markets as Politics: A Political-Cultural Approach to Market Institutions, American Sociological Review 61: 656–673.Google Scholar
Friedmann, Harriet, 1980, Household Production and the National Economy: Concepts for the Analysis of Agrarian Formations, Journal of Peasant Studies 7: 158–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galassi, Francesco L., 1992, Tuscans and Their Farms: The Economics of Share Tenancy in Fifteenth Century Florence, Rivista di storia economica 9: 77–94.Google Scholar
Gerber, Theodore P. and Hout, Michael, 1998, More Shock than Therapy: Market Transition, Employment, and Income in Russia, 1991–1995, American Journal of Sociology 104: 1–50.Google Scholar
Gill, Desmond, 1983, Tuscan Sharecropping in United Italy: The Myth of Class Collaboration Destroyed, The Journal of Peasant Studies 10: 146–169.Google Scholar
Giorgetti, Giorgio, 1974, Contadini e proprietari nell'Italia Moderna. Rapporti di produzione e contratti agrari dal secolo XVI a oggi (Turin: Einaudi).Google Scholar
Goldthwaite, Richard A., 1968, Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence: A Study of Four Families (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Goodman, David and Redclift, Michael, 1982, From Peasant to Proletarian: Capitalist Development and Agrarian Transitions (New York: St. Martin's Press).Google Scholar
Herlihy, David, 1958, Pisa in the Early Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University).Google Scholar
Herlihy, David, 1965, Population, Plague, and Social Change in Rural Pistoia, 1201–1430, Economic History Review 18: 225–244.Google Scholar
Herlihy, David, 1968, Santa Maria Impruneta: A Rural Commune in the Late Middle Ages, Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. Rubinstein, N. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), 242–276.Google Scholar
Herlihy, David and Klapischzuber, Christiane, 1981, Census and Property Survey of Florentine Domains in the Province of Tuscany, 1427–1480: Machine Readable Data File (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, Data and Program Library Service).Google Scholar
Herlihy, David, 1985, Tuscans and their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Hoffman, Philip T., 1996, Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450–1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imberciadori, Ildebrando, 1958, Proprietà terriera di Francesco Datini e parziaria mezzadrile nel' 400, Economia estoria 5: 254–272.Google Scholar
Jones, Philip J., 1956, Florentine Families and Florentine Diaries in the Fourteenth Century, Papers of the British School at Rome n.s. II: 183–205.Google Scholar
Jones, Philip J., 1965, The Agrarian Development of Medieval Italy, International Conference of Economic History. Proceedings, 1962, 2: 69–86 (Paris: Mouton).Google Scholar
Jones, Philip J., 1968, From Manor to Mezzadria: A Tuscan Case-Study in the Medieval Origins of Modern Agrarian Society, Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. Rubinstein, N. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press), 193–241.Google Scholar
Jones, Philip J., 1969, Florentine Families and Florentine Diaries, Social and Economic Foundations of the Italian Renaissance ed. Molho, A. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.), 33–41.Google Scholar
Jones, Philip J., 1978, Economia e società nell'Italia medievale: la leggenda della borghesia, Storia d'ltalia. Annali, vol. 1, ed. Romano, R. and Vivanti, C. (Turin: Einaudi), 187–372.Google Scholar
Jonsson, Ulf, 1992, The Paradox of Share Tenancy under Capitalism: A Comparative Perspective on Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century French and Italian Sharecropping, Rural History 3: 191–217.Google Scholar
Keegan, Timothy, 1983, The Sharecropping Economy on the South African Highveld in the Early Twentieth Century, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers, ed. Byres, T.J. (London: Frank Cass), 201–226.Google Scholar
Klapisch, Christiane and Demonet, Michel, 1975, A Correspondence Analysis of a XVth Century Census: the Florentine Catasto of 1427, Journal of European Economic History 4:415–428.Google Scholar
Kotel'nikova, L.A., 1974, Condizione economica dei mezzadri toscani durante il sec. XV, Bollettino Storico Pistoiese 9: 19–27.Google Scholar
Kuehn, Thomas, 1991, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Lachmann, Richard, 1990, Class Formation Without Class Struggle: An Elite Conflict Theory of the Transition to Capitalism, American Sociological Review 55: 398–414.Google Scholar
Lampland, Martha, 1995, The Object of Labor: Commodification in Socialist Hungary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Lehmann, David, 1986, Sharecropping and the Capitalist Transition in Agriculture: Some Evidence from the Highlands of Ecuador, Journal of Development Economics 23: 333–354.Google Scholar
Luporini, Annalisa and Parigi, Bruno, 1996, Multi-Task Sharecropping Contracts: the Italian Mezzadria, Economica 63: 445–457.Google Scholar
Luzzatto, Mario, 1948, Contributo alia storia della mezzadria nel Medio Evo, Nuovarivista storica 32: 69–84.Google Scholar
Malanima, Paolo, 1982, La decadenza di un'economia cittadini: l'industria di Firenze nei secoli XVI-XVIII (Bologna: II Mulino).Google Scholar
Mann, Susan Archer, 1984, Sharecropping in the Cotton South: A Case of Uneven Development in Agriculture, Rural Sociology 49:412–429.Google Scholar
Mann, Susan Archer, 1990, Agrarian Capitalism in Theory and Practice (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press).Google Scholar
Marshall, Alfred, [1890] 1964, Principles of Economics, 8th ed. (London: Macmillan).Google Scholar
Martin, Philip L. and Taylor, J. Edward, 1990, The Initial Effects of Immigration Reform on Farm Labor in California, Population Research and Policy Review 9: 255–283.Google Scholar
Martines, Lauro, 1963, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390–1460 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Mann, Susan Archer, 1968, Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Marx, Karl, [1894] 1977, Capital, Vol. III (New York: Vintage Books).Google Scholar
Mazzi, Maria Serena and Raveggi, Sergio, 1983, Gli uomini e le cose nelle campagne fiorentine del Quattrocento (Florence: Olschki).Google Scholar
McArdle, Frank, 1978, Altopascio: A Study in Tuscan Rural Society 1587–1784 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart, [1848] 1915, On Metayers, Principles of Political Economy, ed. SirAshley, W. J. (London and New York: Longmans, Green), 302–317.Google Scholar
Moore, Barrington Jr., 1966, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press).Google Scholar
Nee, Victor, 1996, The Emergence of a Market Society: Changing Mechanisms of Stratification in China, The American Journal of Sociology 101(4): 908–949.Google Scholar
Newbery, David M.G., 1975, The Choice of Rental Contract in Peasant Agriculture, Agriculture in Development Theory, ed. Reynolds, Lloyd G. (New Haven: Yale University Press), 109–137.Google Scholar
Niccolini Di Camugliano, Ginevra, 1925, A Medieval Florentine, His Family and His Possessions, The American Historical Review 31: 1–19.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. and Thomas, Robert Paul, 1973, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Otsuka, Keijiro and Hayami, Yujiro, 1988, Theories of Share Tenancy: A Critical Survey, Economic Development and Cultural Change 37: 31–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paige, Jeffery M., 1975, Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World (New York: The Free Press).Google Scholar
Pearce, R., 1983, Sharecropping: Towards a Marxist View, Journal of Peasant Studies 10: 42–70.Google Scholar
Pertev, Rashid, 1986, A New Model of Sharecropping and Peasant Holdings, The Journal of Peasant Studies 14: 27–49.Google Scholar
Piccinni, Gabriella, 1982, “Seminare, fruttare, raccogliere”: mezzadri e salariati sulleterre di Monte Oliveto Maggiore (1374–1430) (Milan: Feltrinelli).Google Scholar
Piccinni, Gabriella, 1985, Le Donne nella mezzadria Toscana delle origini. Materiali per la definizione del ruolo femminile nelle campagne, Ricerche storiche 15: 127–182.Google Scholar
Pinto, Giuliano, 1978a, Il libro del Biadaiolo. Carestie e annona a Firenze dalla metá del' 200 al 1348 (Florence: Olschki).Google Scholar
Pinto, Giuliano, 1978b, Commercio del grano e politica annonaria nella Toscana del Quattrocento: la corrispondenza dell'Ufficio fiorentino dell'Abbondanza negli anni 1411–1412, Studidi storia economica toscana nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento in memoria di Federigo Melis (Pisa: Pacini), 257–283.Google Scholar
Pinto, Giuliano, 1980, Forme di conduzione e rendita fondiaria nel contado fiorentino (secoli XIV e XV): le terre dell'Ospedale di San Gallo, Studi di storia medievale e moderna, ed. Sestan, Ernesto (Florence: Olschki), 259–337.Google Scholar
Pinto, Giuliano, 1982, La Toscana nel tardo Medievo: ambiente, economica rurale, societá (Florence: G.C. Sansoni).Google Scholar
Polica, Sante, 1980, An Attempted « Reconversion » of Wealth in XVth Century Lucca: The Lands of Michele di Giovanni Guinigi, Journal of European Economic History 9: 655–707.Google Scholar
Poni, Carlo, 1978, Family and ‘Podere’ in Emilia Romagna, Journal of Italian History I: 201–234.Google Scholar
Poulantzas, Nicos, 1973, Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books).Google Scholar
Pratt, Jeff, 1994, The Rationality of Rural Life: Economic and Cultural Change in Tuscany (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers).Google Scholar
Reid, Joseph D. Jr., 1976, Sharecropping and Agricultural Uncertainty, Economic Development and Cultural Change 24: 549–576.Google Scholar
Robertson, A.F., 1987, The Dynamics of Productive Relationships: African Share Contracts in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Romano, Ruggiero, 1974, La Storia economica: Dal secolo XIV al Settecento, Storia d'ltalia, vol. 2: Dalla caduta dell'Impero romano al secolo XVIII, pt. 2 (Turin: Einaudi), 1813–1931.Google Scholar
Royce, Edward, 1993, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping (Philadelphia: Temple University Press).Google Scholar
Schlosser, Eric, 1995, In the Strawberry Fields, The Atlantic Monthly 276(5): 80–108.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya K., 1966, Peasants and Dualism With or Without Surplus Labor, The Journal of Political Economy 74: 425–450.Google Scholar
Silverman, Sydel, 1975, Three Bells of Civilization: The Life of an Italian Hill Town (New York: Columbia University).Google Scholar
Singh, Nirvikar, 1989, Theories of Sharecropping, The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, ed. Bardhan, Pranab (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 33–72.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda, 1973, A Critical Review of Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Politics and Society 4: 1–34.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam, [1776] 1937, Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library).Google Scholar
Srinivasan, T.N., 1989, On Choice among Creditors and Bonded Labour Contracts, The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, ed. Bardhan, Pranab (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 203–220.Google Scholar
Stark, David, 1996, Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism, American Journal of Sociology 101(4): 993–1027.Google Scholar
Stephens, John D., 1989, Democratic Transition and Breakdown in Western Europe, 1870–1939: A Test of the Moore Thesis, American Journal of Sociology 94: 1019–1077.Google Scholar
Stern, Laura Ikins, 1994, The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press).Google Scholar
Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1974, Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping, Reviews of Economic Studies 41: 219–256.Google Scholar
Swain, Nigel, 1985, Collective Farms Which Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Szelényi, Iván, 1988, Socialist Entrepreneurs: Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press).Google Scholar
Szelényi, Iván, 1998, Introduction: A Theoretical Framework, privatizing the Land: Rural Political Economy in Post-Communist Societies, ed. Szelényi, Iván (London: Routledge), 1–17.Google Scholar
Szelényi, Iván and Kostello, Eric, 1996, The Market Transition Debate: Toward a Synthesis? American Journal of Sociology 101: 1082–1096.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles, 1990, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell).Google Scholar
Walder, Andrew G., 1992, Property Rights and Stratification in Socialist Redistributive Economies, American Sociological Review 57: 524–539.Google Scholar
Wells, Miriam J., 1990, Mexican Farm Workers Become Strawberry Farmers, Human Organization 49: 149–156.Google Scholar
Wells, Miriam J., 1996, Strawberry Fields: Politics, Class, Work in California Agriculture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Wright, Erik Olin, 1985, Classes,(London: Verso).Google Scholar
Wright, Erik Olin, 1997, Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Yoon, Soon Young Song, 1975, Provençal Winegrowers – Affluent Sharecroppers, Summation 5: 86–99.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana A., 1994, The Social Meaning of Money (New York: Basic Books).Google Scholar