Exploring and Defining the Possibilities of a Global History of the pre-modern Peasantry
Lead name: Professor John Arnold
Department: Faculty of History
Themes:
- Social, cultural, economic transformations
- Legacies of the Past or Historical Transitions
This research network seeks to gather international expertise, both within and far beyond Cambridge, to explore, through a variety of colloquia, how future research projects might effectively frame meaningful comparative questions about the material conditions and political agency of the medieval peasantry in a global perspective. The project does not in itself aim to produce a detailed ‘history’ but rather to allow collaboration between historians of different geographical zones to exchange knowledge regarding the fundamental bases of enquiry – the nature of the surviving source base, the major currents of interpretation – in order to refine what questions could subsequently be addressed in a meaningful fashion. The thematic areas to be considered include: (1) how one might explore a ‘global history’ for the many, in a comparative rather than in the networked/connected sense that currently predominates; (2) what spaces of agency, within what structures of subjugation, might have existed for the premodern peasantry, whether individual or collective. Such agency might be economic (the ability to generate surplus), technological (the development of agricultural techniques), or political (collective action); and (3) what wider issues or structures inflected the experience of peasant lives, beyond those of the economy? Issues of climate, environment, gender, cultural/religious are likely to be important factors for exploration. The Past & Present Society has agreed to fund a final conference as a capstone to the networking project, and is interested in publishing a selection of essays arising, as a Special Issue for the journal, to be edited by Prof John H Arnold (History) and his main collaborator Dr Rob Portass (University of Lincoln, previously Visiting Fellow at King’s).
Project benefits
Within the Faculty of History there are several colleagues with particular, albeit nascent, interests in this area (John Arnold, Lorenzo Bondioli, Chris Briggs, Caroline Goodson, Tom Lambert, Peter Sarris), and there are likely to be others elsewhere within the University (e.g. Rory Naismith [ASNC], Ulf Büntgen [Geography], Jason Hawkes [Archaeology]) who can be drawn into collaboration. Primarily however the project seeks to connect with colleagues in a variety of other institutions internationally, all of whom have already indicated their interest in participating. These include Alexandra Sapoznik (KCL), Nick Evans (KCL), Susan Kilby (University of Nottingham), Nik Matheou (University of Edinburgh), Spike Gibbs (LSE), Graham Barrett (University of Lincoln), Charles West (University of Sheffield), Stuart Pracy (Exeter); and, from beyond the UK, Álvaro Carvajal Castro (University of Salamanca), Guillermo García Contreras (Universidad de Granada), Sara Prata (Universidade Nova Lisboa), Athanasios Vionis (University of Cyprus), Nicolas Schroeder (University of Brussels), and Ling Zhang (Boston College). Collectively their expertise cover a variety of places within western Europe, plus expertise in east Asia, west Africa, and India. Chris Wickham (Oxford), Wendy Davies (UCL), Shami Ghosh (Toronto) and Kim Bowes (Penn) have already acted informally as an advisory board to preparing bids for the network, and would continue to offer their considerable academic expertise, that collectively spans late antiquity to the late middle ages.
The benefits to HSS from the network are firstly in terms of developing collaborative research skills both within Cambridge, and in collaboration with colleagues elsewhere, that will feed back into existing research projects undertaken by individual researchers. Secondly, however, the network aims to provide a foundation for much larger collaborative research funding bids, having refined some of the approaches and analytical techniques in preparation. Thirdly, if successful to any meaningful extent, the project would establish Cambridge as leading the way for an importantly different mode of addressing the ‘global middle ages’, which is currently a much contested, rather amorphous but also deeply exciting development in UK, US and European research. It would potentially leapfrog Cambridge into taking an international lead on one neglected aspect of ‘going global’ for premodern studies.
Project use of HSS Interactive Mapping Tool for Networks & Research Collaborations
As it deals with ‘the peasantry’ – a deliberately and necessarily vague term – and with issues of environmental change and development, there are likely to be opportunities to interact with other areas of HSS expertise for example in Land Economy, in Archaeology, in Geography and so forth. The mapping tool (as we understand it currently) could allow us to make our international contacts visible to other researchers; we would also hope to be able to benefit from methodological and interpretive techniques developed elsewhere in HSS, where they relate to agricultural producers and rural dwellers.
One potential contribution within and beyond Cambridge, assisted by the Mapping Tool, will be subsequent funding bids to AHRC, ESRC (and ERC if we’re still allowed) for follow-on comparative project grants, focussed on more substantive aspects arising: for example, (1) environmental adaptations of the pre-modern peasantry in a global context, (2) pre-modern peasant economic and political agency in global comparative perspective. The purpose of the initial network is to refine the shape of such research questions, and to exchange knowledge regarding the feasible source base for exploring such questions, so that subsequent funding bids can be launched with a secure sense of what is feasible when conducting comparative research.