Sorry, I don't credit this whole 'everyone before 1950 was a toothless withered crone with 800 diseases by the age of 22 and wore nothing but filthy rags' narrative. Because that's just not how people live.
If you look at totally primitive hunter gatherer tribes on remote islands, guess what. They have colour and culture and ornament. Even when they need to go to extreme lengths to make and maintain those things. They find a way, because people always find a way to express themselves, even in poverty. Would dirt-poor medieval peasants really be willing to spend what would have been a very large amount of money on dyed and colored clothes according to the fashions of the period and location, even knowing their clothes would just be grey rags in two months? I doubt it.
I've read that medieval workers averaged 1600 hours annually, while modern people work 1900 hours, and industrial revolution-era workers put in 3000+ (https://tudorscribe.medium.com/do-you-work-longer-hours-than-a-medieval-peasant-17a9efe92a20). The horror stories about the wretched condition of peoples teeth and health in premodern times I've come across also seem to mostly come from the industrial age. I suspect that Malthusianism is partly to blame for declining standards, but also the power that capitalists and landowners gained over the commonfolk. Medieval economic systems were chaotic and inefficient, but they served to protect the peasantry against the ruling class through their illegibility. As the economy became more streamlined and efficient, it also gave the powerful greater leverage over the common people. The maximization of profitability for those at the top led to the sacrifice of complex arrangements that satisfied a broader array of needs for those at the bottom.
On a similar note, I've come to believe that medieval peasants weren't necessarily super different from tribalists in their economic engagement, and also that the distinction between hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, etc. is somewhat misleading, since most societies derived their nourishment from a motley of sources. Medieval people fished, foraged, hunted, etc., too, and many hunter-gatherers I've read about seem to have engaged in some amount of cultivation, so the categories aren't entirely discrete. In Seeing Like A State, it seems to be indicated that primitive peoples, including medieval peasants, had a complex arrangement of nutrient sources, which depended on access to farms, forests, and streams, but as society became streamlined and living spaces monopolized, they were forced into factories and workshops and fed mono-diets of grain. From there, various vitamin deficiencies and rapid tooth decay ensued.
I've read that medieval workers averaged 1600 hours annually, while modern people work 1900 hours, and industrial revolution-era workers put in 3000+
While I'm generally in the camp of 'medieval life was horribly awful but not that horribly awful' I tend to object to these comparisons because they're almost always apples-to-oranges. Medieval subsistence farming is not really directly comparable with modern employees for a number of reasons, one of the more prominent reasons being that there is no clear distinction between work for your 'job' and work you do as part of personal/household maintenance (whereas for almost everyone today, the work we do for our jobs is clearly separate from the work we do for our household). A peasant might get the winter "off" because you can't really do any farming, but there's still all sorts of chores that need doing and they're generally quite a lot more labor intensive than their modern counterparts (for example: I spend exactly 0% of my time getting fuel for warmth and cooking).
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
Skibboleth 1yr ago
With the Lord's Day off, 1600 amounts to five hours a day. Sounds low to me. My rural great-grandmother would easily spend four hours a day working outside in the middle of summer, and she didn't need to plant or harvest or thresh or winnow her wheat or rye, nor did she have animals to feed and take care of; a truck brought her coal for fuel and a tractor plowed her half-acre of potatoes.
On the other hand presumably your great-grandmother was producing proportionally much more for the market than a medieval farmer could have done. Those trucks and tractors and all the new goods that could be bought provided an incentive and the ability to work far beyond what was needed for survival.
She produced exactly zero surplus goods, as she was a retired collective farm serf worker. She used her pension to buy coal, cooking gas, bread, eggs, dairy, salt and sugar (and vodka for the tractor guy if she hadn't been a respected pious old lady who would read over your corpse).
A medieval spinster would have kept her own chicken at least and would've had to spin a lot of thread to buy firewood, flour, dairy, salt and honey (and some help to plough her patch of swedes in spring).
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Notes -
Sorry, I don't credit this whole 'everyone before 1950 was a toothless withered crone with 800 diseases by the age of 22 and wore nothing but filthy rags' narrative. Because that's just not how people live.
If you look at totally primitive hunter gatherer tribes on remote islands, guess what. They have colour and culture and ornament. Even when they need to go to extreme lengths to make and maintain those things. They find a way, because people always find a way to express themselves, even in poverty. Would dirt-poor medieval peasants really be willing to spend what would have been a very large amount of money on dyed and colored clothes according to the fashions of the period and location, even knowing their clothes would just be grey rags in two months? I doubt it.
I've read that medieval workers averaged 1600 hours annually, while modern people work 1900 hours, and industrial revolution-era workers put in 3000+ (https://tudorscribe.medium.com/do-you-work-longer-hours-than-a-medieval-peasant-17a9efe92a20). The horror stories about the wretched condition of peoples teeth and health in premodern times I've come across also seem to mostly come from the industrial age. I suspect that Malthusianism is partly to blame for declining standards, but also the power that capitalists and landowners gained over the commonfolk. Medieval economic systems were chaotic and inefficient, but they served to protect the peasantry against the ruling class through their illegibility. As the economy became more streamlined and efficient, it also gave the powerful greater leverage over the common people. The maximization of profitability for those at the top led to the sacrifice of complex arrangements that satisfied a broader array of needs for those at the bottom.
On a similar note, I've come to believe that medieval peasants weren't necessarily super different from tribalists in their economic engagement, and also that the distinction between hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, etc. is somewhat misleading, since most societies derived their nourishment from a motley of sources. Medieval people fished, foraged, hunted, etc., too, and many hunter-gatherers I've read about seem to have engaged in some amount of cultivation, so the categories aren't entirely discrete. In Seeing Like A State, it seems to be indicated that primitive peoples, including medieval peasants, had a complex arrangement of nutrient sources, which depended on access to farms, forests, and streams, but as society became streamlined and living spaces monopolized, they were forced into factories and workshops and fed mono-diets of grain. From there, various vitamin deficiencies and rapid tooth decay ensued.
While I'm generally in the camp of 'medieval life was horribly awful but not that horribly awful' I tend to object to these comparisons because they're almost always apples-to-oranges. Medieval subsistence farming is not really directly comparable with modern employees for a number of reasons, one of the more prominent reasons being that there is no clear distinction between work for your 'job' and work you do as part of personal/household maintenance (whereas for almost everyone today, the work we do for our jobs is clearly separate from the work we do for our household). A peasant might get the winter "off" because you can't really do any farming, but there's still all sorts of chores that need doing and they're generally quite a lot more labor intensive than their modern counterparts (for example: I spend exactly 0% of my time getting fuel for warmth and cooking).
With the Lord's Day off, 1600 amounts to five hours a day. Sounds low to me. My rural great-grandmother would easily spend four hours a day working outside in the middle of summer, and she didn't need to plant or harvest or thresh or winnow her wheat or rye, nor did she have animals to feed and take care of; a truck brought her coal for fuel and a tractor plowed her half-acre of potatoes.
On the other hand presumably your great-grandmother was producing proportionally much more for the market than a medieval farmer could have done. Those trucks and tractors and all the new goods that could be bought provided an incentive and the ability to work far beyond what was needed for survival.
She produced exactly zero surplus goods, as she was a retired collective farm
serfworker. She used her pension to buy coal, cooking gas, bread, eggs, dairy, salt and sugar (and vodka for the tractor guy if she hadn't been a respected pious old lady who would read over your corpse).A medieval spinster would have kept her own chicken at least and would've had to spin a lot of thread to buy firewood, flour, dairy, salt and honey (and some help to plough her patch of swedes in spring).
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